Maliki's Walk Forward

I've got a TAP Online piece about Maliki's bombshell and the election:

"Mr. Obama can't afford to update his Iraq policy," sniffed a July 7 Washington Post editorial that simultaneously accused Obama of changing his position on Iraq and of not changing his position on Iraq enough. By July 15 it was clear that Obama was sticking to his guns, and the Post was mad, sneering that Obama "appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq." Similar sentiments have been echoed on television and, of course, by the McCain campaign which deemed it "remarkable" that Obama "articulated and announced his policies and approach to Iraq before he went, not after."

But a funny thing happened while Obama's plane was en route to its first stop in Afghanistan -- Der Spiegel published an interview with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in which the Iraqi leader took a rather different view. "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months," he observed, "that, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

Read the rest.

Comments

Honestly, MY, I don't understand how you can consider 100 years to be anything equivalent to "permanent." Nor do I understand why you think the Iraqi government has anything to say about this.

Posted by SavageView | July 21, 2008 2:48 PM

Even now WaPo is still pretending there's some sort of gulf between Obama and Maliki on this issue, which is a nice way of saying that the dead-enders have graduated from not being able to read to not being able to count.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | July 21, 2008 2:49 PM

But hey, its translated all wrong don'tcha know! I'm sure Maliki really said "stay the course", right? Right? And permanent bases too!

Posted by freddiemac | July 21, 2008 2:50 PM

It will be interesting to see if the Right finally turns on Maliki. Here's a possible first attack from NRO Corner: "As I've mentioned before, Maliki, of the Shiite Dawa Party which opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place, has long-standing ties to Iran and Syria — and has expressed support for Hezbollah. The only thing that surprises me about this story is that anyone is surprised."

If that's the case, who is the enemy? anyone who might keep US business from oil?

The Bush/neocons publicly would like you to think this is about AQI, which is and has always been a small, albeit with the ability to blow things up occasionally. They need to emphasize AQI to have that 9/11 connection that did not exist before.

Then the "enemy" was Sadr, because he is pro-Iran. Hmmm. They are ALL friendly with Iran. It's like the social conservatives versus the anti-communists in the Republican party.

The Maliki victory is actually a better case scenario than what could have been possible -- we spend $1 trillion or more to remove Iran's ebeny and replace it with a friendly government that might turn out to be democratic ... or maybe only as long as Russia was.

Posted by mike | July 21, 2008 2:59 PM

It will be interesting to see if the Right finally turns on Maliki. Here's a possible first attack from NRO Corner: "As I've mentioned before, Maliki, of the Shiite Dawa Party which opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place, has long-standing ties to Iran and Syria — and has expressed support for Hezbollah. The only thing that surprises me about this story is that anyone is surprised."

If that's the case, who is the enemy? anyone who might keep US business from oil?

The Bush/neocons publicly would like you to think this is about AQI, which is and has always been a small, albeit with the ability to blow things up occasionally. They need to emphasize AQI to have that 9/11 connection that did not exist before.

Then the "enemy" was Sadr, because he is pro-Iran. Hmmm. They are ALL friendly with Iran. It's like the social conservatives versus the anti-communists in the Republican party.

The Maliki victory is actually a better case scenario than what could have been possible -- we spend $1 trillion or more to remove Iran's ebeny and replace it with a friendly government that might turn out to be democratic ... or maybe only as long as Russia was.

Posted by mike | July 21, 2008 3:02 PM

If the reality weren't so grim, the Beetle Juice line about how IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME would be apt.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 21, 2008 8:15 PM