To declare Iraq a mess would be to put it kindly.
To ignore Nouri al-Maliki's role in creating one crises after another would be sheer stupidity.
Last week, the threats against Iraqi Christians meant Iraq got a little more media attention than it did the week prior.
That wasn't always a good thing.
For example, in Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Senator Barbara Boxer called out "Iraqis" and "the Iraqi people" -- as opposed to Iraqi leaders. In one 'those people' statement after another, she insisted that they did not honor the American sacrifice (a sacrifice most Iraqis did not ask to be made) and that 'those people' couldn't get their own act together.
We thought that was the low.
We were wrong.
At Pathos, Oklahoma legislator Rebecca Hamilton wrote a column which included:
What we have is a bunch of killers who’ve obviously gotten their arms
from countries who are capable of making armaments, who are running
around Iraq, engaging in mass murder as a quasi military tactic in
another of those wars of civil destruction the region can’t seem to
avoid. They are also killing every Christian in sight.
What we have is an on-going, real-time genocide of the Christians in Iraq.
We
made this mess my friends. We pulled the Saddam Hussein stopper out of
the bottle and now we’ve got something even worse. What we never
considered, and what I hate to say and hope I’m wrong about, is that the
only kind of government that can control these murderous mobs that run
throughout society in this part of the world is a government that is
under the thumb of a murderous dictator.
What a disgusting statement to make -- and couching it with you "hope I'm wrong about it" doesn't make it any less disgusting.
Boxer and Hamilton are lawmakers. You'd think they'd take care to not come off so xenophobic and racist when discussing Iraqis.
As for Iraq needing "a murderous dictator"?
That's what they've had since 2006, Hamilton. They've had Nouri al-Maliki since 2006. It hasn't made things better.
More importantly, when has "a murderous dictator" -- in any part of the world -- been a good thing?