Bush To Maliki: Doing a Heck of a Job, Brownie! Ryan Crocker as Gertrude Bell
Will Iraq's hapless prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki be scarificied by BOTH parties to gain some time for an extended surge? The pressure is mounting even as he flies to neighboring countries to enlist their help in stopping terrorists from crossing the border (He also needs to visit those neighbors whose oil money flows into financing the terrorists).
The almost coordinated pressure on the PM from both Republicans and Dems seems to point that way. Nothing would give more time for the surge to continue than a new Iraqi government which would need more time, a courtesy 'grace period'. This would get the Republicans off the hook through 2008. It would also get the major Democrat presidential candidates off the hook through November 2008.
Add to that the suddenly renewed talk in some Arab media, especially the vast Saudi-controlled offfshore media, of an American shift toward the Sunnis in Iraq- and there may be a pattern. This shift seems to coincide with the arrival of Ryan Crocker as ambassador. Some Arab media claim that Crocker, who served in the region and is close to some Persian Gulf monarchies, believes that Iraq may need a Sunni ruling junta or clique to restore stability. There no doubt has been intense pressure on the Bush administration, as well as on receptive senators, to effect a shift in policy toward the Sunni minority. One clear result has been the decision to undermine one foundation of U.S policy in Iraq by arming and encouraging certain new militias who are hostile not only to the elected government but to the whole American enterprise.
All this is most likely wishful thinking, but then again it sounds eerily like the positions taken by Gertrude Lothian Bell when the Iraqi state was being patched together by the British Colonial Office over eighty years ago. Bell firmly believed that the 'moderate and pro-British' Sunnis should run the new Iraqi state. The Shi'a (Shi'ite) majority accommodated her bias by revolting against colonial rule and against a British mandate. They, and the Kurds, were 'severely reprimanded' by land and from the air and many thousands died. Those Sunnis who sided with the British, just as they had sided with the Ottoman Turkish occupiers earlier, were handed political power by the grateful Colonial Office. They lost no time revolting against the Brits and siding with the Nazis in the dark days of early 1941. Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath henchmen were direct descendants of the political system installed at that time.
It is almost certain that any successor to Maliki will fail as well, and for the same reasons. The former ruling elites want power back, Iraq's neighboring absolute monarchies want a pliable Sunni elite reinstated (in case you did not know it: they are masochists besides having very short memories: why else would they want their former tormentors back in power?), and the Shi'as and Kurds are armed to the teeth.
Then, to show that she is 'doing something' about Iraq, the comeback chick jumped on the bandwagon. Senator Clinton also called for Malik's removal, using the prefered Saudi public term for Shi'as: "sectarian"- their private and not so private terms are quite different. But like Carl Levin she did not specify who or what should replace him. I am skeptic not only about al-Maliki but also about all Iraqi leaders' ability to unify the country at this late stage. Only Sen. Biden seems to have a reasonable solution: a federation or confederation of regions, something that is already happening on the ground.
Cheers
Mohammed
m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com
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