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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (255043)	7/5/2014 3:06:59 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 543032

Why we stuck with Maliki — and lost Iraq By Ali Khedery July 3 at 1:39 PM Fascinating piece. Thanks for posting it. Where was it published?

To: bentway who wrote (255043)	7/6/2014 8:01:48 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543032

That is indeed an interesting account, but the author strikes me as a guy who is desperate to rationalize his own errors and those around him. For instance, he cavalierly throws out this line: By the closing months of 2008, successfully negotiating the terms for America’s continued commitment to Iraq became a top White House imperative. But desperation to seal a deal before Bush left office, along with the collapse of the world economy, weakened our hand. In an ascendant position, Maliki and his aides demanded everything in exchange for virtually nothing. They cajoled the United States into a bad deal that granted Iraq continued support while giving America little more than the privilege of pouring more resources into a bottomless pit. My bolding above. This is just nonsense. They weren't "forced" to get a deal before Bush left office, and Maliki didn't have to have "an ascendant position." They gave him that position. I knew from that point on that this guy was going to blame the Obama administration for whatever went wrong in Iraq. But the other truth is that Iraq was "lost" when Bush invaded. What the Iranians said to Maliki was true-- Our debates mattered little, however, because the most powerful man in Iraq and the Middle East, Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, was about to resolve the crisis for us. Within days of Biden’s visit to Baghdad, Soleimani summoned Iraq’s leaders to Tehran. Beholden to him after decades of receiving Iran’s cash and support, the Iraqis recognized that U.S. influence in Iraq was waning as Iranian influence was surging. The Americans will leave you one day, but we will always remain your neighbors, Soleimani said, according to a former Iraqi official briefed on the meeting. This is a truism in international affairs. It was recognized by Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, among others, and it hasn't changed today, despite obvious technological advances. Making it even more true is the fact that most Iraqis are Shias like Iranians. And that they were severely oppressed by Sunnis. And of course Maliki was disposed to listened to Iranian leaders given his past dependence on them. Khedery mentions this, but doesn't give it the significance that it has. They chose a guy to lead Iraq in 2006 who had past strong ties to Iran. Next to the invasion and the mass "debathification" of Iraq, this was a really really stupid move, one that was absolutely destined to create strong tensions. Khedery doesn't like to dwell on his bad decisions, he prefers to blame it on Obama--"oh, look, I told them to get rid of Maliki, they wouldn't listen to me"--as if that was actually something that would have been easy to do in 2010, and as if that wouldn't itself have provoked a civil war with large US casualties as US soldiers would have been caught in between factions. Yes, it is a "fascinating" read, but it is self serving and incomplete, a neo-con dream world in which the surge could have saved everything if only Obama and Biden had listened to the genius neo-cons.