It appears that the Iraqi Prime Minister is learning the gentle art of political outrage.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 1 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians.
As outrage over reports that American marines killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha last year continued to shake the new government, the country’s senior leaders said that they would demand that American officials turn over their investigative files on the killings and that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry.
In his comments, Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a “daily phenomenon” by many troops in the American-led coalition who “do not respect the Iraqi people.”
“They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion,” he said. “This is completely unacceptable.” Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in Iraq, the prime minister added.
The reason I say this is politically-based outrage is that there is a very easy solution to the supposed problem: simply ask the US military to leave. If, in fact, the situation has become a daily problem (something I very much doubt), all Maliki has to do is say the word and we’ll pack up and leave. We’ll be happy to do it.
Unfortunately, that’s not the situation. Maliki has problems and he’s using the age-old political tactic of blaming the other guy to try to earn some unity inside the Iraqi government. It is the same tactic the Democratic Party has been using for the past six years, with little to no success, to regain control of our nation as well. What Maliki hasn’t figured out is that when you make and unsupportable statement about America, the American people tend to take it personally and you lose a lot of goodwill. Maliki desperately needs the goodwill of the American people, not only for right now but also for a decade or three into the future. He’s not very wise to burning it up today when it could save his nation down the road.
But he’s new at this, so we ought to cut him a little bit of slack, but only a little bit. We can’t afford to have the leader of Iraq sounding like Michael Moore, Jimmy Carter, and John Murtha.
UPDATE: Welcome visitors from the Daou Report! Remember the rules of civility in the comment section and, please, at least take off the tin-foil hats if you’re going to stay long enough to comment.
UPDATE 2: Okay, folks. Time to (ahem) move on and read something else. I’ve spent the whole weekend dealing with comments and not posting and, quite honestly, I’m tired of rehasing arguments and reintroducing facts I’ve hashed out and introduced repeatedly in other posts here. Talk amongst yourselves.
Jimmie,
The day the president announced ‘the end of major combat operation…’ on that aircraft carrier, was the day we lost the war. The occupation was never planned for. Rummies ‘shock and awe’ didn’t have an exit strategy.
I know a twenty-two year old Vermont Gaurdsman, who has been stationed in al-Ramadi for almost a year. When he was home on leave last early winter, he told of how their patrols will never stop while going through a village or neighborhood. Anything that gets in their way is run-over. This includes children. If the patrol or convoy were to stop, they would be hit with small arms, rpg’s, or God-forbid an IED.
I can’t see how this story has a happy ending.
ps. Yes, I did get to your site via Daou.
peace
Bill, on your points.
1) “Collaborative” does not mean “no connection”. That’s a hoary old fallacy tht’s been refuted to death, yet the left still uses it as if we’re not capable of using a dictionary.
2) Then the UN should have made a definitive report to that effect. They did not. IN fact, in report after report the inspectors told of not being granted unrestricted access to the site they needed and of being bullied and intimitated at several others.
3) Resolution 1441 also mandated one other thing that you left out: that Saddam Hussein by a date certain provide a full accounting of all his weapons and weapons activities. The UNSC even moved that date back several months to allow Hussein more time to provide it. He never provided such an accounting.
Biull, if your policy is to change you mind when you learn new facts, I must say that it look as if you have an extensive fact-screening process. See, I’ve heard all the things you’ve said, pretty much when they were first said. I also weigh them against who says them and for what purpose. In the end, though, in cases where we do not have certain information (like, say, intelligence estimates), I lean toward the conclusion that seems simplest, instead of the one where I have to create a convoluted conspiracy in order to believe. That’s what I believe that you and other Bush-haters have done over the past five years – overlooked the simplest solutions for the ones that have Bush at the Greatest Evil Ever to Walk the Earth.
For the record, I am not a “Bush hater”.
My view is that the president is simply not up to the job. Like President Reagan, he brings personal popularity to the White House. But he is also a lazy, unthoughtful, uncurious man, unburdened by intellect. That gives too much influence to people who are motivated by baser desires, like VP Cheney.
But hatred, no. President Bush is now in a really awful situation, largely of his own making. America will one day come back from this pit, but President Bush’s legacy will always be that he took a surplus and ran up the largest debt ever; he ignored climate change and favored gas companies; he took peace and re-formed it into war; and he worsened the lives of all Americans except for the very richest.
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As for the UN, please re-read my last post. I did in fact mention the piece you say I omitted. I wrote: Resolution 1441 requires Iraq to provide “an accurate full, final, and complete disclosure … of all aspects of its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles”.
Iraq did in fact do that. I well remember the 5 CDs of data being passed to the USA, and I remember the curious and lengthy delays in copying them so that other UN members could also review the data.
There isn’t a “convoluted conspiracy” here and President Bush isn’t “the greatest evil ever to walk the earth”. He is simply a man who has failed (once again) at a very important task, and is having great difficulty admitting it.
Iraqui PM, Nuri al-Maliki, has called for most of the foreign troops to be in the process of withdrawing by the end of this year. If we were to meet that deadline, we’d have to be starting now. We’re not.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq.....19,00.html
The first to withdraw would be British forces. Blair, on the other hand, plans to stick around for another four years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....wirq23.xml
We’re not leaving when asked, Jimmie.