KD: I continue to think this is more a negotiating posture than a genuine breakdown

Negotiating posture?

That seems incredibly naive!

You can't possibly be looking at this from a historical perspective which includes the basic premise that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior.

A few questions if I may ....

Are unaware of what al-Maliki (Dawa), al-Hakim (SCIRI), et al were doing in Iran and Syria during the twenty plus years prior to the deposing of Saddam Hussein in 2003?

How do you regard the pro-Islamic fundamentalist posture al-Maliki, al-Hakim, et al firmly and consistently assumed during the twenty years prior to the deposing of Saddam Hussein?

When exactly did al-Maliki, al-Hakim, et al firmly plant the dagger in the backs of their former Iranian and Syrian **sponsors** and hosts and then turn around and embrace Americans?

Can you refer to any deals and/or legislation that has been passed and has been enacted which is pro-American?

Thank you!

You will have picked up the strange speech Bush made in Europe apologising for his belligerent language over the years. He was worried about this giving him the legacy of a warmonger. That legacy is assured but its less to do with language than with the wars he has mongered.

KD: Maliki is doing what he's doing because there are elections coming up and he's trying to demonstrate his nationalist street cred.

You cannot be looking at the situation in Iraq from a historical pov.

Maliki is not a nationalist.

Maliki has been **fighting** for the last few decades to transform a secular Iraq into a fundamentalist Shiite republic which has long and close ties to extremist elements in Iran.

Maliki has been around a helluva lot longer than 2003.

He's no puppet.

He's never been one.

Since 2003, he and the rest in the Iraqi Parliament are killing the US with a death by a thousand cuts.

Strategically, it would be to their disadvantage to cut the `Great Satan' free when there's still some blood letting to complete. And why cut GS free before the military has been equipped and trained?

Again, you cannot be looking at the situation in Iraq from a historical pov.

Victory, blah blah, stay strong, blah blah, terrorists, etc.

Go, Tiger!!

Given what we hear from both countries, our long-term prospects in Iraq are probably similar to our long-term prospects in South Korea. (I.e., there is an excellent long-term prospect of local politicians showing their "independence" by ritual denunciations of America.)

Yeah - Iraq is JUST like South Korea if you ignore the minor detail of the ritual denunciations in Iraq tending to be punctuated with a lot more bombs and bullets than cheers and jeers.

Oh yeah - and the fact that there's actually a FUNCTIONING government in South Korea.

But other than that and a few other similarly minor things they're exactly the same. As is Germany.

/snark

"what does it say about our long-term prospects in Iraq when pretty much every party feels like their winning campaign strategy is to appeal to anti-American sentiment"

Mr. Drum made a similar comment a few days ago, and I still don't get it - what does "our long-term prospects" mean? Prospects to keep troops in Iraq? If not, are you concerned with the American image, popularity in a post-occupation Iraq? Why would that matter?

And further - I think it's fairly unremarkable that political groups make hay by scapegoating, demagoguing, and pointing the finger at an occupying power. The Republican party has been very successful, electorally, by scapegoating immigrants, welfare Moms, food-stamps and Cadillacs, gays, liberals, etc., and the US is not in as desperate a situation as Iraq (liberals in the US haven't gone around killing hundreds of thousands of conservative people).

That's how politics has been done forever - you create group solidarity by defining, and opposing, some enemy group. That it would be happening in Iraq is not really noteworthy, IMO.

Popular to be anti-American, but they still want our money. Anyone still remember back when we were told that Iraqi oil was going to pay for the invasion and occupation?

Popular to be anti-American, but they still want our money. Anyone still remember back when we were told that Iraqi oil was going to pay for the invasion and occupation?

Boy, talk about being hoist on your own petard.

We spend five years helping Iraq build up its armed forces, and the result is going to be that it will become strong enough that it no longer needs our own military and will ask it to leave. The only question is when this will happen.

And the SOF agreement is irrelevant. Iraq can sign one now, but tear it up in a year or two.

Elaborating on the above:

There are two questions here. The first is what the Iraq government wants in the long run. The answer is that it wants the U.S. out. It is a sovereign country, and as Islamists it is unalterably hostile to the U.S. The only reason it has let the U.S. stay so far is that it needed its military power to fight the insurgency. But the Iraqi military is becoming strong enough to do this on its own, so soon it is going to ask the U.S. to leave. And remember the vast majority of the Iraqi public agrees the U.S. should get out.

If it was under threat of invasion from its neighbors, then it might want the U.S. military to stay. However, it is on friendly terms with Iran, and no other country in the region has both the power and the interest in invading it. So it simply wants the U.S. to leave as soon as it feels able to fight the insurgents and militants on its own.

The second question is whether the U.S. could force Iraq to let it stay anyway. The answer is no. Now a lot of people claim that the U.S. could threat to attack Iraq if it asked it to leave, but this is not a workable idea.

Yes, Bush got the U.S. public to support an invasion in 2003, but Saddam Hussein was a deranged imperialist who had started two wars, and even Bill Clinton thought he should be thrown out of power. But if the democratically-elected government of Iraq informed the U.S. it wanted it to leave, there is no way Bush or McCain could persuade the public to support military action, especially since the vast majority believe the Iraq war was a mistake in the first place.

As to the financial blackmail that Kevin posted about a few days ago, this is just silly. Iraq's government has never been able to spend its vast oil income, and in the last year that income has gone up by tens of billions, so it really doesn't care if the U.S. hangs on to 20 billon or 50 billion or whatever.

So we should expect to see the U.S. entirely out of Iraq in the not-too-distant future, with the country itself dominated by Islamists. Hardly what Bush and the neocons promised us back before the war.

y81: Given what we hear from both countries, our long-term prospects in Iraq are probably similar to our long-term prospects in South Korea.

Wow...history plays NO role on this site at all...why is this site referred to at all?????

Some of you people must think al-Maliki is inept, when in fact he is the puppet master and Bush is the puppet (hint: Countless oceans of blood + 3 trillion = a Shiite fundamentalist republic: does that sound like he's a loser?)

That makes zero sense.

To start ....

Who exactly would be analogous to Dawa and the SCIRI in your scenario?

Dawa was a bona fide terrorist organization up until recently. Which Korean group attacked the US in the past which would be analogous to Dawa?

Who exactly would be analogous to Saddam Hussein?

al-Maliki has spent the last few decades of his life trying to transform a secular Iraq into a fundamentalist Shiite republic? What Korean play a similar role respective of the climate?

Tia!

I thought last year that the Iraqis would run us out of there by the end of this year (2008). It could be possible they will just ask us to leave and we will go. However, now I think they will just extend the UN mandate (possibly modified) another year and kick the can. Of course all that reasoning is done without Iran being considered in the equation at all. If Israel attacks Iran maybe they will be running us out of there?

It is only to be expected that the Iraqi politicians would begin to feel more confident and independent as their government gained in strength. This is a distinct mark of our success and shows that we are making progress towards one of our foremost goals - a robust Iraqi government.

It is possible - even likely - that the negotiations between Iraq and the US will bring about the long awaited drawdown of American combat units, leaving logisitical and other support units in place to assist the increasingly more powerful Iraqi army.

This is an outcome everyone should welcome. Certainly, the US military will count it as a win, regardless of whether we get bases in Iraq or not.

trashhauler: It is only to be expected that the Iraqi politicians would begin to feel more confident and independent as their government gained in strength.

Dawa feels more confident and independent?

After having waited and planned for a few decades for imposing Sharia Law in S. Iraq, Dawa feels more confident and independent now that Sharia law has been in place since 2003?

The SCIRI feels more confident and independent?

The Iraqi Parliament does not have sense of alliance, debt, gratitude, etc. to the USA.

It is filled with men who belonged to anti-Baathist groups who sought to transform Iraq into a pro-Khomenei regime during the decades prior to the deposing of Saddam Hussein.

Dawa and the SCIRI were founded in Iran decades ago.

Dawa and the SCIRI supported Iran during The Iraq-Iran War back when Saddam Hussein was supported by the USA.

Despite these facts, "it is only to be expected that the Iraqi politicians would begin to feel more confident and independent as their government gained in strength".

This sort of gross disregard for the past is why America is hating it now.

Almost all have ignored the past of Dawa and the SCIRI.

Americans are victims of their **ignorance***.

*

mhr: There is nothing like a US surrender to make liberal Democrats prove how patriotic they are.

You have no clue who Dawa and the SCIRI are do you?

`War supporters' like you need to get (back) to Iraq and prove how patriotic you really are.

What is so patriotic about sacrificing American blood and treasure for the sake of the Shiite fundamentalist republic now burgeoning in Iraq?

Why is it that no pro-American legislation has been passed?

Why is it that the Iraqi Parliament has not announced its support for Israel's right to exist?

You appear to be absolutely clueless!!

You question the patriotism of those who wish to stop having people maimed and killed for a Shiite fundamentalist govt that is filled with men who have been and will always be closely associated with extremists in Iran.

You think you are patriotic.

Some would say you are ignorant.

Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic, by Galbraith

Real power in Shiite Iraq rests, however, with two religious parties: Abdel Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa ("Call," in English) of Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. Of the two, SCIRI is the more pro-Iranian. Both parties have military wings, and SCIRI's Badr Corps has grown significantly from the five thousand fighters that harassed Saddam's regime from Iran in the decades before the war; it now works closely with Iraq's Shiite interior minister, until recently the corps' commander, to provide security and fight Sunni Arab insurgents.

SCIRI and Dawa want Iraq to be an Islamic state. They propose to make Islam the principal source of law, which most immediately would affect the status of women. For Muslim women, religious law—rather than Iraq's relatively progressive civil code—would govern personal status, including matters relating to marriage, divorce, property, and child custody. A Dawa draft for the Iraqi constitution would limit religious freedom for non-Muslims, and apparently deny such freedom altogether to peoples not "of the book," such as the Yezidis (a significant minority in Kurdistan), Zoroastrians, and Bahais.

This program is not just theoretical. Since Saddam's fall, Shiite religious parties have had de facto control over Iraq's southern cities. There Iranian-style religious police enforce a conservative Islamic code, including dress codes and bans on alcohol and other non-Islamic behavior. In most cases, the religious authorities govern—and legislate—without authority from Baghdad, and certainly without any reference to the freedoms incorporated in Iraq's American-written interim constitution—the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL).

Dawa and SCIRI are not just promoting an Iranian-style political system —they are also directly promoting Iran- ian interests. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the SCIRI leader, has advocated paying Iran billions in reparations for damage done in the Iran–Iraq war, even as the Bush administration has been working to win forgiveness for Iraq's Saddam-era debt. Iraq's Shiite oil minister is promoting construction of an export pipeline for petroleum from Basra to the Iranian port city of Abadan, creating an economic and strategic link between the two historic adversaries that would have been unthinkable until now. Iraq's Shiite government has acknowledged Iraq's responsibility for starting the Iran–Iraq war, and apologized. It is an acknowledgment probably justified by the historical record, but one that has infuriated Iraq's Sunni Arabs.

Certainly, the Republican Party will claim it as a win

Fixed it for you, Trashy.

I'm amused by Trashy's attempt to spin the desperation of the Vichy government of Iraq as a positive. Unfortunately, Republicans have been claiming "victory" in Iraq for long enough that only the incurably partisan or the incurably bloodthirsty -- or in Trashy's case, both -- believe it.

Afl 762

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