Max Boot: Maliki's Actions, and Obama's Inaction, Threaten an Iraq Democracy
[Max Boot is a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to Opinion.]
Since the success of the 2007 surge in Iraq, violent attacks have fallen more than 90% and Iraqis have been making steady progress toward stability and democracy. That momentum is now threatened by the actions of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri Maliki, and by the inaction of the Obama administration.
Maliki, whom I met a week ago as part of a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations, is refusing to accept the results of the March 7 elections. They are not to his liking. His aides had told him that his State of Law slate could expect to win 110 seats in the Council of Representatives. Instead, he won only 89 seats, finishing behind Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya coalition, which emerged in first place with 91 seats. Independent observers agreed that there had been little fraud in the contest — certainly nothing like the massive vote stealing that marred Afghanistan's 2009 presidential election.
But Maliki, a sectarian Shiite, won't accept the possibility that Allawi, a secular Shiite who enjoys overwhelming support among Sunnis, could displace him as prime minister. To prevent this from happening, Maliki is making common cause with the Iraqi National Alliance, a group of religious Shiites close to Iran that includes his archenemies, the followers of Muqtada Sadr....
Senior officials in the Obama administration are reportedly becoming more involved behind the scenes to avert...a disaster, but so far they have made limited progress despite a visit to Baghdad earlier this year by Vice President Joe Biden, the administration's point man on Iraq. Diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad put the emphasis on "transition" and "drawdown" rather than on ensuring the long-term success of Iraqi "democracy" (a word avoided by the administration).
That should be no surprise considering that President bama's overriding objective is to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. The Iraqi-American security accord negotiated by the George W. Bush administration called for the departure of all our soldiers by the end of 2011. Obama added a new twist by ordering that troop strength be cut from the current 95,000 to 50,000 by September....
Read entire article at LA Times
Since the success of the 2007 surge in Iraq, violent attacks have fallen more than 90% and Iraqis have been making steady progress toward stability and democracy. That momentum is now threatened by the actions of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri Maliki, and by the inaction of the Obama administration.
Maliki, whom I met a week ago as part of a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations, is refusing to accept the results of the March 7 elections. They are not to his liking. His aides had told him that his State of Law slate could expect to win 110 seats in the Council of Representatives. Instead, he won only 89 seats, finishing behind Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya coalition, which emerged in first place with 91 seats. Independent observers agreed that there had been little fraud in the contest — certainly nothing like the massive vote stealing that marred Afghanistan's 2009 presidential election.
But Maliki, a sectarian Shiite, won't accept the possibility that Allawi, a secular Shiite who enjoys overwhelming support among Sunnis, could displace him as prime minister. To prevent this from happening, Maliki is making common cause with the Iraqi National Alliance, a group of religious Shiites close to Iran that includes his archenemies, the followers of Muqtada Sadr....
Senior officials in the Obama administration are reportedly becoming more involved behind the scenes to avert...a disaster, but so far they have made limited progress despite a visit to Baghdad earlier this year by Vice President Joe Biden, the administration's point man on Iraq. Diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad put the emphasis on "transition" and "drawdown" rather than on ensuring the long-term success of Iraqi "democracy" (a word avoided by the administration).
That should be no surprise considering that President bama's overriding objective is to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. The Iraqi-American security accord negotiated by the George W. Bush administration called for the departure of all our soldiers by the end of 2011. Obama added a new twist by ordering that troop strength be cut from the current 95,000 to 50,000 by September....