Hillary develops Foot in Mouth Disease on Dumping al-Maliki
PM Nuri al-Maliki responded to Senator Carl Levin's (D-Michigan) call for him to be unseated, and Bush's failure to support him on Tuesday by unwisely getting hot under the collar and saying he can find other friends in the world to support his endeavor. I predicted that Levin's unwise and inappropriate comment (in a conference call with Tel Aviv!-- Americans have no clue about Middle Eastern politics) would elicit an angry response. Levin managed to make it look as though he were ordered by the Israeli government to see al-Maliki gotten rid of because he was making economic deals with Syria (thus strengthening the latter). I underline that such an interpretation is unfounded, but that is how many in the region see it. Levin is usually sure-footed and careful on Middle East issues, including especially Iraq, so I can't understand why he wants to appoint himself secretary of state all of a sudden.
The serial episodes of unwisdom are lengthening and feeding on one another. Now Hillary Clinton has urgedthat al-Maliki be unseated.
But as Farah Stockman of the Boston Globe and Damien Cave of the NYT point out, it may not be easy for parliament to dump al-Maliki. And, Senator Clinton should be more careful about this sort of thing. Here's a scenario: al-Maliki survives and is PM in January 2009, and Hillary is inaugurated as US president. She now has to deal with him in arranging for an orderly withdrawal of US troops. She needs him, depends on his sway with Shiite militias to have them avoid harassing our troops on their way through the Shiite south to Kuwait. And he should put himself out to help her at that point. . . why?
Of course, al-Maliki's survival is a little unlikely (see above), but it is not out of the bounds of the possible and wisdom would dictate taking that possibility into account.
Presidential candidates should not box themselves in on foreign policy issues by making categorical statements of this sort. Hillary Clinton has to stop talking like a junior senator and start thinking like a president if she wants to succeed abroad.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/23/2007 12:12:00 AM
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6 Comments:
Given the timing, I think there is an alternate explanation for Levin's remarks. He and Warner just returned from a visit to see Petraeus. My guess is that Petraeus, Levin, and Warner are on the same page trying to make the case that political progress is not in the cards. Having the Malaki house of cards collapse, or having Malaki invite the US to leave, may be precisely what Petraeus, Warner, and Levin want.
If I'm right, Levin probably briefed the Armed Services Committee, including Clinton, this morning and asked for backup.
I think they are trying to box Bush into a corner, leaving no plausible explanation for delaying a drawdown of US forces.
I've seen some news reports from military commanders in Iraq (off the record) that Malaki has been actively undercutting them at every turn. I don't think Clinton is worried about dealing with Malaki in the future. She's met with him and clearly come away from her meeting with the belief that he is useless.
One further thought:
Given his continued intransigence, President Bush has all but abducated his leadership on the Iraq issue.
It seems to me that the Democratic Party leadership has the constitutional mandate and moral obligation to take a more active leadership role. The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the presumptive Presidential nominee (Armed Services Committee member) certainly qualify as Democratic leadership.
While I respect your concern about how this will be perceived in the Middle East, Clinton is displaying her innate cleverness in terms of her campaign. Since Levin opened the door on this one and was not attacked by the administration, she is herself presumably innoculated from criticism for this. Piling on Maliki will make her look tough and decisive about Iraq, while Bush is stuck vacillating and making excuses for him. I recognize that it is galling to anyone such as yourself, who, by dent of education, can see the viewpoint of the Iraqis, but sadly, blaming Iraqis is the future. Clinton deftly managed to appear to get out in front on this one without actually taking any risk at all.
I can't find any evidence that the Iraqis support Malaki.
Sistani thinks he's useless. Moqutada thinks he's useless. The Kurds think he's useless. The Sunnis (of all stripes) certainly think he's useless.
Levin's conference call is worth listening to. While he and Warner were in Baghdad, the five major leaders of various factions had a meeting with Malaki in which they claimed to have hammered out some compromises. Malaki came back the next day and scuttled the whole thing.
At the end of the day, the American people have to decide if we are buying any prospect for progress with our enormous cost of remaining in Iraq. If the answer is no, then we should get out and divert some of that money to a massive humanitarian refugee program and let the Iraqis figure things out when they are ready. We can talk all we want about what we'd like to see happen, but if we are just there for no reason other than losing 100 soldiers a month and a monstrous deficit, then what is the point?
Everyone's happily piling on Maliki, even Hilary. But I think Maliki is largely a red herring. Bush gives him a mixed public blessing only a day before the release of the NIE. Poor Maliki: in deep trouble. Poor Bush: undone by the NIE. That's the way it is described by virtually every story. But another way of putting it is that Bush gets to do his mixed blessing just a few key hours before the NEI comes out. Does anyone really believe that Bush did not know the contents of the NIE? That there may even have been some internal pressure applied by the administration or its operatives to make the NIE as negative as possible about Maliki? The NEI release was to the public, and Bush is anything but the peon public. He knew what was coming. Timing Bush's "endorsement" of Maliki just ahead of the NIE release gives Bush a way to back out, slowly, from support of Maliki. It also gives everyone a brand new target other than Bush, which is the reason for the timing, and Dems and Repubs alike are firing away like Maliki is the problem. George doesn't care; he's running out the clock and any ammunition fired at Maliki isn't being fired at him, and isn't fueling impeachment. The question that gives Bush's standup routine perspective is: If Maliki is the wrong person to save Iraq, who is? The glaring answer is: no one. Sadr? That would be a laugh. Bush moves throughout the war gutted the Iraqi political center and disempowered anyone and any bloc that might challenge US authority. America is in denial, still acting like it might be able to retain some control in Iraq. In truth, it can't. It is a passenger along for the ride. This is the worst case scenario that was talked about before the war began. The answer is that there isn't an answer, Maliki or no. It's Bush's War. He lost it fair and square. This is just the bloody endgame and a lot of CYA.
I don't know that it's so unwise for Maliki to throw a fit like this. His prospects are poor in any case, but publicly being nice to the Americans won't help him. Looking obviously like an American puppet can only further undermine him in Iraq.
He can hope that one-finger salutes to the Americans will make him look a little independent, and that the plotting against him is the Americans wanting him to punish for that, thus making anyone who wants to replace him look like an American tool and therefore dead on arrival.
This play worked for quite a while for Ngo Dinh Diem, and it also worked during Vietnam for the Shah of Iran, who postured against the war while in no way impeding it. Harold Wilson, come to think of it, did the same to his political profit.
The Americans aren't going to get rid of Maliki for mouthing off at Bush, and they won't support him to reward him for being nice. They'll get rid of him if they can find someone else they think will be more useful. Maliki's mission is to make sure that can't happen.
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