{"id":3817,"date":"2007-08-22T13:08:27","date_gmt":"2007-08-22T20:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/22\/malikis-new-street-cred\/"},"modified":"2007-08-22T13:43:13","modified_gmt":"2007-08-22T20:43:13","slug":"malikis-new-street-cred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/22\/malikis-new-street-cred\/","title":{"rendered":"Maliki’s New Street Cred"},"content":{"rendered":"

How’s that <\/a>for timeliness?<\/p>\n

This morning all the major media outlets were talking up<\/a> Bush’s\u00c2\u00a0“distancing” himself from\u00c2\u00a0Iraqi Prime Minister\u00c2\u00a0Nouri al-Maliki, while averring that he didn’t go as far as Senator Carl\u00c2\u00a0Levin, who openly called for the Iraqi sock-puppet’s replacement. Except the sock puppet is switching to another hand.<\/p>\n

No sooner had U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said the Maliki government’s performance was “extremely disappointing,”\u00c2\u00a0then Bush, pointedly<\/a> refusing to endorse the Iraqi Prime Minister, expressed “a certain level of frustration with the leadership.” \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maliki, having just returned\u00c2\u00a0from a trip to\u00c2\u00a0Tehran, where he held hands with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad<\/font>, is now in Syria, where he was quoted<\/a> as saying:<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/em><\/p>\n

This is bound to give Maliki added street cred<\/a>, and, ironically, help dispel his image as a weak leader. Or could that have been the idea all along?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As I said in my Monday column<\/a>, it’s all about what Seymour Hersh calls “the redirection<\/a>.” 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<\/a> in Washington, is congruent with Hillary Clinton’s recent\u00c2\u00a0statement<\/a> endorsing the alliance with Sunni insurgents in Anbar and Diyala provinces, and averring that “We have to be preparing to fight the new war.”<\/p>\n

Ah yes, the new war. That’s what the people voted for<\/a> in the last congressional elections — or is my memory playing tricks on me?<\/p>\n

At any rate, I’ve blogged on this topic over at Taki’s Top Drawer<\/em>, where an energetic discussion is taking place in the comments. Go on over there<\/a> and join in the conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How’s that for timeliness? This morning all the major media outlets were talking up Bush’s\u00c2\u00a0“distancing” himself from\u00c2\u00a0Iraqi Prime Minister\u00c2\u00a0Nouri al-Maliki, while averring that he didn’t go as far as Senator Carl\u00c2\u00a0Levin, 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3817"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}