How’s that for timeliness?
This morning all the major media outlets were talking up Bush’s “distancing” himself from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, while averring that he didn’t go as far as Senator Carl Levin, who openly called for the Iraqi sock-puppet’s replacement. Except the sock puppet is switching to another hand.
No sooner had U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said the Maliki government’s performance was “extremely disappointing,” then Bush, pointedly refusing to endorse the Iraqi Prime Minister, expressed “a certain level of frustration with the leadership.” Â
Maliki, having just returned from a trip to Tehran, where he held hands with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is now in Syria, where he was quoted as saying:
“The Iraqi government was elected by the Iraqi people. Maybe this person who made a statement yesterday is upset by the nature of our visit to Syria. These statements do not concern us a lot. We will find many around the world who will support us in our endeavour.”
This is bound to give Maliki added street cred, and, ironically, help dispel his image as a weak leader. Or could that have been the idea all along?
I doubt it. Such an explanation is too clever by a bit more than half — after all, we’re talking about the US government here — and yet the end result is that this will strengthen Maliki’s beleaguered government, and perhaps even prevent it from losing its parliamentary majority.
As I said in my Monday column, it’s all about what Seymour Hersh calls “the redirection.” The new enemy is Iran, and that means the Shi’ite government we installed in power is now being treated as an Iranian proxy — or, at least, an ally of Tehran. Levin’s call for Maliki’s ouster, apparently on behalf of the Allawi lobby in Washington, is congruent with Hillary Clinton’s recent statement endorsing the alliance with Sunni insurgents in Anbar and Diyala provinces, and averring that “We have to be preparing to fight the new war.”
Ah yes, the new war. That’s what the people voted for in the last congressional elections — or is my memory playing tricks on me?
At any rate, I’ve blogged on this topic over at Taki’s Top Drawer, where an energetic discussion is taking place in the comments. Go on over there and join in the conversation.
