Flippity Floppity

Jason Zengerle gets even-handed:

There's no denying that liberals who once derided Maliki as a Bush administration stooge are now touting him as the authentic and sovereign voice of the Iraqi people; but conservatives are doing their own flip-flop as well.

I think that's wrong in a whole bunch of ways. For one thing, it's not some kind of crazy inconsistency to deride someone as a stooge while he's being a stooge, and then to stop deriding him when he stops being a stooge. I don't think anyone can deny that over the past couple of months Maliki has moved to a position more independent from the Bush administration. Meanwhile, nobody's "touting" Maliki as the "sovereign voice of the Iraqi people" but he is in fact the Prime Minister of the sovereign government of Iraq just as Hu Jintao is President of China whether or not he's also the voice of the people. Last, the one thing everyone, right and left, agrees on about this is that Maliki is taking this position in part for political purposes. In other words, his position (and Obama's) is popular among the Iraqi people.

Maliki is still Maliki -- a fairly weak leader trying to hold onto power by hook or by crook. The significance of his government's pro-timetable position has nothing to do with turning him into some kind of folk hero.

Comments

al-Maliki obviously has to suffer an unfortunate accident sometime soon. Failing that someone in the U.S. clandestine intelligence services is not doing their job.

Posted by steve duncan | July 22, 2008 12:50 PM

Simpler reply to Zengerle:

When even your own stooges are telling you it is time to move on, it is time to move on.

Posted by DTM | July 22, 2008 12:55 PM

The 'authentic and sovereign voice' line is just a bullshit strawman from Zengerle. What liberals are saying is that 'just for domestic political advantage' is a rationale that actually matters, since any policy regarding the US military presence that doesn't have electoral support is straight-up crazy.

Again: who rules Iraq?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 22, 2008 12:56 PM

as always yglesias you cut right through the bullshit.

what will we do without you here?

Posted by jack | July 22, 2008 12:59 PM

Exactly. I don't give a crap about Maliki--it's a coup for withdrawal proponents because it was a Bush Administration talking point that the Iraqi government wants us in Iraq indefinitely. That talking point has now been spectacularly destroyed. That's all.

Posted by Jake H. | July 22, 2008 1:05 PM

And remember, Maliki isn't the only gov't official calling for plans towards withdrawal. Actually, I've heard of no bloc of gov't officials calling for the U.S. to stay without discussions of withdrawal.

I think Bush is highly conflicted right now. His neocon dream was to have a permanent presence, but with Obama leading in the polls and the Iraqi gov't saying "no", it looks like that won't happen. If Obama gets in office with the current status quo intact in Iraq, he gets the credit for cleaning up Bush's mess when we withdraw. I think Bush is so concerned with his legacy, he's considering starting withdrawal prior to Jan. 20 so he can share some of the credit. He may be trying to hold out doing anything before the election, though, so that he doesn't crush McCain. Decisions, decisions.

As dumb as Bush is, even he has to understand that leaving two unfinished wars, each longer than WW-II, is gonna' make his legacy look like a s**t sandwich.

Posted by LFC | July 22, 2008 1:06 PM

Last, the one thing everyone, right and left, agrees on about this is that Maliki is taking this position in part for political purposes. In other words, his position (and Obama's) is popular among the Iraqi people.

Yes, his statements are really only significant insofar as they are an indirect reflection of the opinion of those he governs. The idiosyncracies of Maliki are almost neither here nor there. It's simply underscoring how Obama has plans in Iraq that seem preferable to people in Iraq, at least relative to the McCain "victory" plan. But there I go considering other countries' actual opinions again.

Now if Obama had plans for Iraq that were blatantly convergent with polls showing Iraqis' preferences, and Maliki clearly endorsed those plans, then one might make the argument that Maliki is still just being a tool because he's betting on the favorite to win the US presidency... and wants to be cozy with whoever's in charge over here. But that's not the case, and Matt's perception of Maliki through the power/politics prism seems much more insightful than exclusively judging whether or not Maliki is an idiot.

Posted by Brent | July 22, 2008 1:09 PM

By the way, this is part of why I think this was one of the most revealing passages in the Der Spiegel interview:

"Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems."

This isn't so much Maliki waiving the flag of Iraqi sovereignty. He is just pleading with his supporters in the U.S. to get real.

Posted by DTM | July 22, 2008 1:13 PM

But Matt, he wrote: "There's no denying..."

Doesn't that trump any attempts to question his logic?

http://strategy08.wordpress.com

Posted by Dan | July 22, 2008 1:21 PM

Here's what I'd like to see Barack Obama say:

"I believe we should have American troops out of Iraq by the end of 2010, and Prime Minister Maliki agrees. John McCain believes that setting a timetable for troop withdrawals is irresponsible. But in 2010 Prime Minister Maliki, not John McCain, is going to be living in Iraq, and if Prime Minister Maliki believes that removing American troops by that time is the best way to ensure the security of his country, I believe we should trust his judgment."

Posted by Milk for Free | July 22, 2008 1:23 PM

"Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems."

Interesting. One of McCain's many ever-shifting positions was, at one time, that we couldn't stay in Iraq because our continuing presence would cause problems. To quote from Jan. 2005:

"I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence. And I don't pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be."

But now he wants to stay for 100 years in permanent bases. This is one of those "gaffes" that is highly substantive. It shows an inability to keep his positions straight.

Pathetic.

Posted by LFC | July 22, 2008 1:29 PM

There's no denying that liberals who once derided Maliki as a Bush administration stooge are now touting him as the authentic and sovereign voice of the Iraqi people

This is a perfect example of how you can say the same thing with a completely different connotation. What if the above were reported along the lines of "even the liberal New Republic was in favor of the Iraq war"? Viz., "even Bush admin stooge Maliki wants the US out".

Alternatively, "there's no deying that conservatives, who oft deride the media as having a liberal bias, touted the media's continued embrace of war mongers such as John McCain as evidence that the war in Iraq has a broad, popular mandate"

Posted by DAS | July 22, 2008 1:35 PM

I have to disagree with Matt. What Zengerle is showing is why we shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place - we don't understand Iraq or its leaders even on a basic level. We read them, instead, through a grid that is wholly foreign to them - the grid of American interests and norms.

Anybody who thought Maliki was a Bush stooge was uninformed about Maliki, and generally holds to an unrealistic view of the world in which big nations have "proxies" and "puppets" that do their bidding. Even the most bribed ruler of X is still going to be more X-ian than American. And will view America through the filter of his contacts, who are very very unrepresentative of America - usually rightwing military leaders and diplomats, plus a smattering of oil men. It is that and Dallas and Pamela Anderson that make up the picture.

It is crazy to me that anybody would think an alliance between a fundamentalist Christian administration and the Da'awa and SCIRI parties would go off without a hitch. The liberal point is that the mission in Iraq is fucked by the very nature of the situation - that our mission can't be to convert the Iraqis, as that is crazy. What, do the conservatives still believe they are getting an ally of Israel and an enemy of Iran in Iraq? Well - they are that stupid. No matter what Maliki says and does, that goal is impossible. So what is the mission? Since, given the U.S. is there, we do like to pretend there is a salvageable mission. Obama has just revealed it. It ain't Christmas, but it is what you get.

I definitely hope liberals aren't going to start making Maliki to be some authentic hero of the Iraqi people, for they are sure to be disappointed. What we can achieve is some protocol for coexistence with a predominantly Shi'ite power - and hell, we can extend that to coexisting with Iran. That's about it, though. And maybe we have some leverage to head off the war, about five years from now, that is coming up between Iraq and Kurdistan.

Posted by roger | July 22, 2008 1:43 PM

Oh, and before you leave the Atlantic, Matt - you have to take a few more potshots at the ever comical Marty Peretz! Just so he'll learn that whippersnapper's name. A good one is Marty pretending to sobriety as the "consensus" for bombing Iran gets ever closer that is, in his brain cells.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/
archive/2008/07/20/
israel-s-growing-consensus-bomb-iran.aspx

Posted by roger | July 22, 2008 1:52 PM

Ironically, Zengerle's observation only strengthens Obama's position. Whether we consider Maliki to be an full-on stooge or not is pretty irrelevant. But we do know that his personal security and political power is guaranteed by the US military, which is currently controlled by a Republican. If we believe Maliki is influenced by this reality (and was probably supported for the very reason that he was agreeable to Republican interests), then it is even more consequential that he is willing to rebuff McCain in the way that he has. We know what the Iraqi people profess to believe. Now we know that the Bush supported Prime Minister finds it in his political interest to disagree with Bush on his policy in favor of Obama's despite the obvious motivations for not doing so. That just tells you that wielding political power in Iraq without a timetable for American troop withdrawal is pretty much impossible.

Posted by mpowell | July 22, 2008 2:01 PM

Well, or Maliki is a shrewd player of the US political scene. And, when he's sucking up to Bush, that makes him a stooge. And when he's reading the tea leaves and sucking up to Obama he's still a stooge. I don't discount that it's very, very interesting that he's more interested in sucking up to Obama than McCain and that he's at least willing to pay the price of saying, now, that he likes troop withdrawls over a 16 month timeframe (although it's not clear to me exactly what it costs him to change his mind), but I think Zengerle has it right here.

Posted by Sanjay | July 22, 2008 2:04 PM

Zengerle responded:

Well, sure, Maliki's support for the surge was, in Yglesias's eyes, the act of a Bush stooge--because Yglesias opposed the surge. Just like Maliki's support for Obama's withdrawal timetable is, in Fred Kagan's eyes, the act of an Iranian stooge--because Kagan opposes that timetable. One man's stooge is another man's independent leader.

The truth is that Maliki is clearly a savvy politician who's doing everything he can to stay in power--and he'll make whatever alliances he needs to make in order to do so. It's obviously a very big deal that Maliki now deems it in his self-interest to stiff Bush (and McCain) in favor of Obama. But I don't think that makes Maliki any more--or less--of a stooge than he was a few months ago, no matter what Yglesias and Kagan say.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I don't really feel qualified to pronounce upon Maliki's independence and integrity (the guy has a pretty tough job). The point I would make is that it doesn't matter. For a long long time, everyone in politics from McCain and W and Rich Lowry on over to the Democrats' side agreed that if the sovereign Iraqi government asked us to leave, we would be duty bound to get the fuck out. Now the sovereign Iraqi government has asked us.

Moreover, in doing so, the Iraqi government subscribed to an idea one of our presidential candidates was already proposing and put themselves at great variance with the ideas of another presidential candidate. I don't think any of that requires me to hold up Nouri Al-Maliki as a moral paragon; I simply have to recognize that he leads the sovereign Iraqi government.

Posted by southpaw | July 22, 2008 2:22 PM

For one thing, it's not some kind of crazy inconsistency to deride someone as a stooge while he's being a stooge, and then to stop deriding him when he stops being a stooge.

Well sure. As long as you are the one defining what a "stooge" is.

I guess all those times Maliki told the military to back off combat in civilian areas, he was being one kind of stooge (I'll let you pick). And all those times he defied the administration when the Bushies were pushing for more reconciliation or less contact with Iran, or sending more troops to Baghdad in the summer of 2006, or hiring more Sunnis, or any of a host of things Maliki refused to do then he was being some other kind of stooge.

The fact is, Maliki is a stooge when he refuses to act in a way you wish him to act and he is the head of a sovereign country when he agrees with you.

This is not complicated children. It is shameless, dishonest, and a cheap political trick.

But it isn't complicated.

Posted by Rick Moran | July 22, 2008 2:58 PM

This is not complicated children. It is shameless, dishonest, and a cheap political trick.

The gall... man, you are pathetic.

Posted by mpowell | July 22, 2008 3:04 PM

significance might be that, first, he wants to survive American's departure, and perhaps, keep power?

Posted by zic | July 22, 2008 3:16 PM

significance might be that, first, he wants to survive American's departure, and perhaps, keep power?

Posted by zic | July 22, 2008 3:16 PM

significance might be that, first, he wants to survive American's departure, and perhaps, keep power?

Posted by zic | July 22, 2008 3:16 PM

Bush&company have strong armed Maliki since day one. Each time Maliki strays from the talking point du'jour immediately the WH forces him to make a retraction. Except this time, to Bush's consternation, Maliki stuck to his timeline meme.

About a year or more ago, and again recently, more than half of the Iraqi Parliament voted for a timetable and sent a letter to Congress requesting it. I do not know if they ever received an answer though?

Aside from political expediency, Maliki sees an opportunity to get out from under the WH dictates and is taking it. With Obama calling for a timetable, Maliki has political cover to publicly call for the US troop withdrawal without [too much] retribution from the Bush administration. That became obvious when Maliki issued a somewhat convoluted statement without retracting his original one.

The Iraqi people do not consider their government legitimate. They call Maliki "America's puppet." So the further he distances himself from Washington the better it is for him. For years Maliki has done what Bush told him to do. Thus serving the best interests of energy conglomerates and foreign interests at the expense of Iraq and the Iraqi people makes it unlikely he will be able to overcome that image.

However as long as Maliki does not back down from the timetable meme and starts improving people's lives (i.e. restores electricity, water and sewage services) that would go a lot further to improve his standing among the Iraqi public. Maliki was "elected" to serve Iraq not Washington.

Posted by serena1313 | July 22, 2008 3:46 PM

Are we really being graced with the presence of one of the original idiots who supported this bloodbath? Really? The Rick Moran who imagined that the known yellow-cake in Iraq justified the lies about getting it from Niger? The same nitwit who, five years later, still thinks that 9/11 justified the wholesale slaughter of Iraqis?

And this clod, this dimwitted buffoon, this apologist for war-crimes has the nerve to call anyone a "child."

Wow.

Posted by Not As Stupid As Rick Moran | July 22, 2008 4:41 PM

Matt, Zengerle's reply is even more shameless. It is an extension of the journalist fantasy world, where everything is Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, before it is true or false, to the real world. It is the replacement of policy by gotcha moments. It is stupid beyond belief, and the reason foreign policy has been a debacle for eight years.

Zengerle simply doesn't get it: get that, for instance, Iraq's culture is different than America's; that the interests of the poor loom a lot more over the Iraqi landscape because there are so many poor; that the interests of the middle class and professionals are divided because perhaps the majority of the middle class and professionals, who made their way to their positions in Saddam's time, are either in exile or internal exile. He doesn't get that the "pulse of Iraqi opinion" we commonly get in the MSM is of a laughably small group of Iraqis, composed for the most part of those American reporters feel comfortable with, coming from the new class of the Shi'a elite or from the new Sunni elite in Anbar who represent a very tiny portion of the Iraqi population, perhaps equal to the portion represented, in the U.S., by those eagerly following Kucinich's effort to impeach Bush. If an Iraqi paper simply interviewed that latter sector of Americans, it would present a skewed pic of America, I think we can all agree - even those of us, like me, who'd love to see Bush impeached. But these inconvenient sociological facts don't figure for an ideological TNR stooge - no, it is all Meet the Press all the time. Tee hee, aren't the liberals and the conservatives hypocrites!

It is this endemic rottenness, this ineradicable stupidity of the sycophants who do presswork for the American oligarchy, that is alarming and depressing. An earlier generation was, perhaps, better educated. This one makes the one-dimensional man look like the Renaissance man - incapable of analysis, incapable of imaging any Other more exotic than one of the Sex in the City characters, raised on thinking of the press as an elaborate spin machine, and taking pride in being spun. These are the undertakers of American democracy, giggling on the way to the funeral.

Posted by roger | July 22, 2008 5:00 PM

The point isn't that Maliki is no longer a stooge, it's that the supporters of the Iraq War are between the horns of a dilemma. If he isn't a stooge, then his support of Obama's policy is a stunning repudiation of Bush and his heir apparent. But if he is a stooge (as the National Review's John Derbyshire and others have fumed), then democracy in Iraq is a big fraud not remotely worth the blood and treasure paid for it.

Oh, and Rick Moran's post proves (again) that it's a wonder he remembers how to breathe.

Posted by kth | July 22, 2008 11:39 PM

Rick Moran's post is precisely accurate.

The singularly lame attempts to refute it without addressing any actual facts, points, or issues aside from the typical boorish adolescent name-calling and frantic pants-wetting that will not doubt also follow my post, is proof that the only "stooges" around here are those who are still carrying on Howard Dean's zombie campaign of 2004 by means of behaving like sanctimonious morons.

Maliki is the leader of the most representative and legitimate government in the Arab world, if not Arab history. The stooges who screamed "puppets" in spite of the Iraqis' determined assertions of independence, from the time Sistani insisted upon and got elections in the first place, through their insistence on defining their own relationship with Iran, to the present "endorsement" of Obama, have now reversed themselves in an astonishing display of unexamined bias. Maliki is not now and has never been anybody's stooge, and saying so is an insult to the millions of Iraqis who risked their lives to vote in his government.

Posted by robert powell | July 23, 2008 8:14 AM

roger--
Your post strikes me as confused. Zengerle is exactly saying that some things are right or wrong before they are Republican or Democrat, left or right. That's a point many posters here would do well to ponder. It seems to me that most Americans, who don't identify themselves with either party, tend to be skeptical about both, if on different issues. This seems eminently sensible to me.

The rest of your post has a lot of truth in it, although the implication that while the MSM "doesn't get it", lefties automatically do, doesn't wash.

For what it's worth, the most recent polling from ABC/BBC shows the Maliki government with 55% support--in Sadr City! This after the government whacked Moqtada's forces in Basra. That's about double the support afforded the President of the US, who himself has significantly more support than the Democrat-controlled Congress. Who's a puppet here?

Posted by robert powell | July 23, 2008 9:20 AM