Soccer Dad

Maliki's machinations

IN today's column, Charles Krauthammer declares that Maliki votes for Obama (or here).

Whether warranted or not, Maliki's confidence allows him to set out a rapid timetable for U.S. withdrawal, albeit conditioned on continuing improvement in the security situation -- a caveat Obama generally omits. But Maliki calculates that no U.S. president, whatever his campaign promises, would be insane enough to lose Iraq after all that has been gained and then be saddled with a newly chaotic Iraq that would poison his presidency.

So Maliki is looking ahead, beyond the withdrawal of major U.S. combat forces, and toward the next stage: the long-term relationship between America and Iraq.

Krauthammer believes that Maliki is confident enough that if the situation in Iraq deteriorates again, the Americans will be there to bail him out, regardless of who is sworn in on Jan 20, 2009.

However JoshuaPundit sees things a little more risky for Maliki than Krauthammer does. (JoshuaPundit reads the situation giving Maliki confidence pretty much exactly as Krauthammer does.):

In doing this, Maliki probably has made a couple of classic mistakes. First of all, he may be pricing himself out of the market, especially given the political climate today in America, and that could come back to haunt him. In rushing to get rid of one foreign presence, Maliki may simply be making an exchange for an even worse master, and cutting the ground out from underneath him and his government. Lebanon is a good example of the way the Mullahs play this particular game, and with the Americans gone, if Maliki is insufficiently pliant and submissive he's history.

As in six feet under.

Second, while he may feel he has to take Iran and the pro-Iranian factions in his government into account, the Americans could likely care less. If Maliki and the Shi'ite factions of his government renege on their earlier agreement to provide the US with bases there, the Americans will simply declare victory and leave. Just like the Iranians did, I'm pretty sure the Americans probably told Maliki that he can be a friend and ally of the US or of Iran, but not both.

Another thing Maliki may not be considering is the effect of an American withdrawal on the Sunnis and Kurds. Both factions consider the Americans the guarantor of their rights in the Iraqi federation, and an American withdrawal might just spark the need to be out from under the Shi'ites collective thumb that's been smoldering since the fall of Saddam..especially among the Kurds.

Max Boot (and advisor to Sen. McCain) however takes a different view. He thinks that Maliki is bluffing.

With provincial elections coming up in the fall, there is every incentive for Maliki and other Iraqi politicos to show they are not puppets of Uncle Sam. They are driving a hard bargain in the negotiations over a Status of Forces Agreement and a Strategic Framework Agreement that will set the future conditions of the U.S. military presence. And they are blustering about the need to withdraw U.S. troops-eventually. But note that, unlike Barack Obama, they are not attaching any timelines to this withdrawal. Certainly they are not calling for U.S. troops to be gone by 2010, a pledge that the Democratic candidate once made and hasn't quite renounced.

The point that Maliki isn't calling for an immediate withdrawal is one that Krauthammer makes too. But that's a subtlety that's likely lost on many voters. And it doesn't change the fact that Mailki has clearly handed Sen. Obama a political victory. The cost of that maneuvering though, is still to be determined.

But even if Maliki's embrace of Obama helps the latter get elected, it may carry a cost as Right Wing Nuthouse observes:

If he is elected, Iraq will be seen as "Obama's War." Don't believe me? Ask Dick Nixon who despite taking office in 1969 with America fully and fatally committed by his Democratic predecessor to the survival of South Viet Nam's government, he ended up being blamed for circumstances not of his making nor of his choosing. By the time we landed on the moon, columnists and opinionmakers were writing it was "Nixon's War" and that he was responsible for bringing Viet Nam to a successful conclusion despite the fact he didn't start it, didn't prosecute it, had nothing to do with troop deployments that placed more than half a million Americans in Viet Nam, and wasn't involved in the sham "peace negotiations" in Paris.

Unless one wishes to argue that Obama's plan exists in a political vacuum and he should get credit for Maliki embracing it but no blame if, when implemented, it is proved less than successful, then the alternative is that on the day he takes the oath, Iraq will become his tar baby and the briar patch will still be a long way away.

There's one other irony:

Just keep in mind that if we had followed the starter Senator's judgment at any point during his political career, Iraq could have been too dangerous a place for his flight to even consider touching down.

Michael Yon feels that it is the time to declare victory, and casts Maliki's stubborness (or, as he calls it, toughness) in a positive light::

The center of gravity in this war has always been the Iraqi people. And when you talk to them, as I have over the past three and a half years, you realize that victory is at hand. They no longer live in fear. Despite sectarian conflicts that are now political rather than military in nature, the feeling of Iraqi nationalism is palpable. Yes, they are Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds, but they are also Iraqis. Just like we are Floridians and New Yorkers, but also Americans.

Relations between Iraqis and Americans are very good and continue to improve. This does not mean that we will always agree on every issue. The Status of Forces Agreement, for instance, is particularly nettlesome, and the fact that the Iraqis are hanging tough in negotiations shows how confident the Maliki government is about its own sovereignty. Good for them.

Baseball Crank feels that it's necessary to give the Iraqis the initiative, even if it incurs risks.

It seems unavoidable that for our larger long-term project in the region to succeed, we have to step back and give them the chance to determine their own path, even if it's against our better judgment, just as we have stood by with only periodic and limited interference as the post-Communist and Communist-aligned states have gone their many different ways since 1989. The job will never be done in Iraq, any more than it is done today in Ukraine or Nicaragua.

In a nutshell then, the surge championed by McCain has enabled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to embrace a withdrawal largely on the terms of McCain's rival for the office of President, Obama. And while the McCain strategy is apparently helping Obama, had the U.S. followed Obama's path, Maliki would not be so secure today.

NOTE: In preparing this, I linked to a number of posts that were cited in this week's Watcher Council vote. The Watcher's council is undergoing some changes in the coming weeks, but if you want to stay on top of the important news of the day, stay in touch with the Watcher's Council!

Posted by SoccerDad at July 25, 2008 8:03 AM