06 January 2008
The Maliki Government and Post-WWI Realpolitik
The Democrats vying for the 2008 presidential nomination of their party should be careful when they lay blame for the lack of progress towards the establishment of democracy and order in Iraq. They should not accept the Bush Administration’s identification of the future of that country with the survival of the Maliki government.
If it weren’t for the American invasion of Iraq there would be no Maliki government. As soon as the U.S. withdraws its troops from Iraq, the Shiite-dominated central government of Iraq will fall. If and when the Democrats win the presidential election and they complete a withdrawal of the U.S. military, as all of the candidates promise, a bloodbath and ethnic cleansing that will surely follow. That disaster will be the direct consequence of the Bush Administration’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein and its presumptive occupation of a territory that had never achieved a national reconciliation.
The Democrats can be sure, however, that responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in post-invasion Iraq will be laid at their feet by Republicans aiming to recapture control of the Congress and the White House. One way for Democrats to prevent this turnabout in their political fortunes is to concede the impossible position into which the Bush Administration has thrust Prime Minister Maliki. He is a puppet head of a contentious shell federation where the only real powers of order are the ethnic Kurdish community in the North, the American military under General Petraeus and its Sunni allies, and the neighboring mullahs of Iran. The Democrats must form a foundation now for the international intervention that will be needed to sort out the ethnic, religious, and economic rivalries that bedevil this forsaken artifact of post-WWI realpolitik, otherwise known as Iraq.
The Democrats vying for the 2008 presidential nomination of their party should be careful when they lay blame for the lack of progress towards the establishment of democracy and order in Iraq. They should not accept the Bush Administration’s identification of the future of that country with the survival of the Maliki government.
If it weren’t for the American invasion of Iraq there would be no Maliki government. As soon as the U.S. withdraws its troops from Iraq, the Shiite-dominated central government of Iraq will fall. If and when the Democrats win the presidential election and they complete a withdrawal of the U.S. military, as all of the candidates promise, a bloodbath and ethnic cleansing that will surely follow. That disaster will be the direct consequence of the Bush Administration’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein and its presumptive occupation of a territory that had never achieved a national reconciliation.
The Democrats can be sure, however, that responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in post-invasion Iraq will be laid at their feet by Republicans aiming to recapture control of the Congress and the White House. One way for Democrats to prevent this turnabout in their political fortunes is to concede the impossible position into which the Bush Administration has thrust Prime Minister Maliki. He is a puppet head of a contentious shell federation where the only real powers of order are the ethnic Kurdish community in the North, the American military under General Petraeus and its Sunni allies, and the neighboring mullahs of Iran. The Democrats must form a foundation now for the international intervention that will be needed to sort out the ethnic, religious, and economic rivalries that bedevil this forsaken artifact of post-WWI realpolitik, otherwise known as Iraq.
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