Deep irony that the Obama administration can correctly claim that Iraq is a shining policy success for POTUS, who took time this news cycle to remind his fervent supporters among the progressives that he is continuing to withdraw American combat troops from the theater. John Fund observed Sunday 7 that Iraq is a credit to the continuity of the Bush/Obama policy. John Avlon observed that foreign policy wins POTUS high marks from the critical independent voters. Still, it is unlikely that POTUS will travel to Iraq to celebrate this administration's deserved credit -- under a banner that dryly reads, "Mission accomplished."
Were it that easy; to simply write a wish list and consider it done. Bush had the chance to wash his hands. Saddam Hussein was toppled. “Mission Accomplished.” Yet, he did not walk away. Saddam Hussein Obama (if we can take his word) will walk away after - what? After the stars have aligned in a certain way? Just before U.S. presidential elections? After Iraqi election results have managed to establish some sort of pecking order in the new kleptocracy?
Eighty parties, each one sporting a fax machine; six thousand candidates? We have enough on our plates with only two and six. And even in the relative simplicity of our own civic exercise we have been getting it wrong.
I see no reason for hope in Iraq. The election process there could have been simplified by handing out blindfolds and darts. The name of the game is ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey”. Children can do it. Anyone can win. The result is never merit based.
I attended a concert by the middle schoolers of a prestigious private academy at one of our local churches last week. It featured a boys’ choir, a girls’ choir and string ensemble. What struck me was that 80% of the of the string ensemble was comprised of Asians. They were also very good. The choirs were only fair to middlin’, made up of what you’d expect: white, upper middle class kids. They sang without enthusiasm. They seemed strictly ‘affirmative action’.
I took note that Iraq’s affirmative action candidates wore (what Indians would refer to as) their ‘monkey suits’ as targets. Has anyone ever noticed that Ahmadinejad never wears a tie?
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
More Hotel Homicides
(pk: the iranian revolution ostentatiously rejects ties as a sign of western servitude.)
on another related note I quote a september 20th posting from [http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/] omar which is a most curious accompaniment to the tale of death in dubai- making dubai seem an afterthought.
"Thirty Mahdi Army commanders assasinated in Damascus
Unknown gunmen assassinated 30 Mahdi Army commanders in the Syrian capital Damascus. The killings, made in the past few weeks, were all made "quietly, inside the victims apartments", said an unnamed source in the Sadr movement. The source added that among those assassinated was Laith al-Ka'bi, who commanded the Mahdi Army in the Palestine Street neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The report adds that large numbers of Mahdi Army operatives left to Iran out of fear the assassinations wave could expand to target them."
Maliki is mad at syria and has been for a while. do the mahdi army types need gunrunner intermediaries with their presumably iranian suppliers? damascus also hides the real baathist deadenders.
one of the important paradoxes of iraq is this:
if it had worked the way we wanted it would not have worked.
Unless the iraq-acracy evolves on its own path it will not be seen as authentically iraqi. if it is not seen broadly as authentically iraqi the virus of liberty will die. if it is seen as authentic there is a chance it will mutate and infect other hosts - syri-acracy? egypt-acracy? saudi-acracy? iran-acracy?
can an -acracy state sustain a government hostile to the outside world? Gazapolis? Hezboullahstan? through how many election cycles?
To restate the obvious, "Mission Accomplished" refers to the mission of the carrier he spoke from at the time on 5/1/2003.
The assertion that President Bush was declaring Iraq as a done deal is preposterous.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/01/bush.transcript/
Iran also has their hands full right now, making nuk-a-lar materials, keeping the people's desire for freedom squelched, and supporting global jihadism can take quite a toll.