US Vice President Joe Biden spoke in West Bloomfield last week and met with Iraqi Christians. The Arab American News observes, "The Obama Administration has been condemned for not doing enough to protect Iraq’s minorities." The administration hasn't done anything to protect any Iraqi other than Nouri al-Maliki.
Last week, AEI's Max Boot (Commentary) offered:
A
great deal of that success [in Iraq] has been undone, alas, by two bad
decisions made by President Obama: First the decision to back a
coalition headed by Nouri al Maliki in forming a government even after
Maliki finished second in the 2010 election. If the U.S. had gone all
out to support the winning slate, led by Ayad Allawi, the result might
well have been a government in Baghdad far less amenable to Iranian
influence than the current one.
This
initial mistake was made much worse by Obama's failure to negotiate an
accord to allow U.S. troops to remain in Iraq past 2011.
We disagree that there was 'success' in Iraq but things certainly do get worse month after month.
In 2010, the White House backed Nouri for a second term even though the Iraqis didn't. But their wants and their votes were tossed aside by the White House. They backed Nouri. And they backed him in his 8 month political stalemate. And they got him a second term by lying to the political blocs.
Everyone tosses in something, they told the blocs. You make the concession that Nouri gets a second term and then he gives you . . .
And it was negotiated and written up in what the US government swore was a binding contract. The leaders of the political blocs, including Nouri, signed off on the Erbil Agreement. Nouri used it to get his second term. And then he tossed it aside.
And the US never says a word.
The ongoing political stalemate in Iraq?
They pretend they don't know what it's about.
The Sunni-Shi'ite, et al alliance that is Iraqiya is calling for a return to the Erbil Agreement. The Kurds are calling for a return to the Erbil Agreement. Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr is calling for a return to the Erbil Agreement.
And the US government plays dumb, pretending it's a puzzler why the various blocs can't sit down and solve the current stalemate.
Why the White House backed Nouri to begin with is a question that will plague historians for decades. He'd already had one term -- thanks to the Bush administration -- and accomplished nothing. Half-way into his second term, it appears he will do even worse.
At least in his first term he had a Minister of Interior and a Minister of Defense.
He's never had those this go round. Or a Minister of National Security. He's left the posts empty so that he could control them.
He was supposed to have nominated people for those posts and had the nominees confirmed by the Parliament. That was back in December of 2010.
All this time later, he can't name nominees.
And people want to pretend that the increased violence or lack of progress is the result of something other than Nouri's inability to provide leadership?
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