Senators Levin and Warner are back from Baghdad, and McClatchy, NYT, WaPo, the Boston Globe, and WSJ bear bad tidings for Nouri al-Maliki.
Continuing its tradition of paying closer attention to ground truth than do its competitors, McClatchy ledes with Iraqi rather than DC context: the second roadside-bombing death of a southern provincial governor in as many weeks (yesterday it was Muthanna province’s Mohammed Ali al Hassani; on August 11, the governor of Diwaniyah, Khalil Jalil Hamza). As Juan Cole explains:
In both Muthanna and Qadisiya, the site of the other assassination, the Badr Corps paramilitary of SIIC has been locked in power struggle with the Mahdi Army of the Sadr Movement, loyal to young Shiite nationalist, Muqtada al-Sadr. SIIC and Badr are very close to Tehran, and some southern Shiites see them as unpatriotic. The Sadrists have complained that the provincial government of Muthanna is corrupt and has not delivered necessary services to the people. Since some observers don’t get this right, I just want to underline that these assassinations have been strikes against Iranian influence in Iraq, by nativists probably at least loosely connected to the Sadr Movement. Likewise, if an EFP was used in the bombing, it is unlikely to have come from Iran, since Tehran has no interest in knocking off its own clients (SIIC and Badr), and, indeed, would go out of its way to protect them.
The killing of a second governor in the Shiite south is very bad news. This is the sort of thing that used to happen in al-Anbar Province. It is a sign of an increasingly virulent Shiite on Shiite power struggle between SIIC and the Sadrists, between the Badr Corps and the Mahdi Army. It is also a bad sign that the Sadrists have managed to get hold of increasingly effective roadside bombs.
And so
Maliki issued a statement [reports McClatchy] condemning Hassani’s killing and promising justice.
“Once again, the criminals have committed a new ugly crime to disturb the stability in southern Iraq,” Maliki said. “Those who stand behind this ugly crime want to flood the governorate with chaos and insecurity to carry out an agenda of hatred.”
Coalition forces turned security of Muthanna province over to Iraqi forces earlier this year, military spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Garver said. Asked whether the Iraqis are prepared to maintain calm in that region, he said only that some violence is to be expected.
“When an area is turned over, it means the provincial government can reasonably handle most issues — it doesn’t mean it’s going to be violence-free,” Garver said. “That’s not a realistic goal.”
He said the Iraqis now face a test: They must ensure that there are no reprisal killings in the wake of the governor’s assassination, and they must be able to conduct an investigation that will bring the attackers to justice.
The slim chance that Garver kept his face straight while saying this explains what else we read today: that Levin, Warner, and some US generals too believe Maliki has to go — though only Levin puts it in that many words, and Condi’s minions disagree. NYT:
Mr. Levin said that in his view, the political stalemate in Iraq could be attributed to Mr. Maliki and other senior Iraqi officials who were unable to operate independently of religious and sectarian leaders.
"I’ve concluded that this is a government which cannot, is unable to, achieve a political settlement, " Mr. Levin said. "It is too bound to its own sectarian roots, and it is too tied to forces in Iraq which do not yield themselves to compromise. "
In a conference call with reporters from Tel Aviv, Mr. Levin called on the Iraqi Parliament to vote the Maliki government from power because it had "totally and utterly failed " to reach a political settlement, and to replace it with a team better able to forge national unity.
In a joint statement that NYT calls “only slightly more temperate than Mr. Levin’s remarks,” Warner agreed that, "While we believe that the "surge’ is having measurable results, and has provided a degree of "breathing space’ for Iraqi politicians to make the political compromises which are essential for a political solution in Iraq, we are not optimistic about the prospects for those compromises. "
The statement warned that recent meetings among Iraqi political leaders "could be the last chance for this government to solve the Iraqi political crisis. " Should that effort fail, the senators wrote, "we believe the Iraqi Council of Representatives and the Iraqi people need to judge the government of Iraq’s record and determine what actions should be taken — consistent with the Iraqi Constitution — to form a true unity government to meet those responsibilities. "
What to make of Should that effort fail here, since we knew immediately, days ago, that it HAS failed? Hmm. NYT slips in word that Bush and Congress received their copies of the new N.I.E. yesterday, so let’s hide ‘n’ watch to see who mushmouths that one how.
WaPo talks up the divisions between not just Levin’s and Warner’s rhetoric but also various Dems’ positions, now that
about two dozen lawmakers are traveling to Iraq during Congress’s August break to glean firsthand assessments. … The tours, carefully conducted by the Defense Department, generally include visits to the Green Zone for consultations with U.S. and Iraqi officials, trips to forward operating bases and joint security stations involved in Petraeus’s new counterinsurgency program, and heavily guarded tours of open markets, often in Anbar province, where a U.S. alliance with Sunni sheiks has calmed the region.
Working like the famous charm, this is, too. Junketeer Brian Baird (D-WA) says he can no longer support binding withdrawal deadlines.
That followed comments by Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) suggesting that his trip to Iraq made him more flexible in his search for a bipartisan accord on the future U.S. role in the conflict. “If anything, I’m more willing to work to find a way forward,” he told reporters late last month.
Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.), who was with McNerney, told his local paper that the troop increase “has really made a difference and really has gotten al-Qaeda on their heels.”
At times, such statements have been clearly taken out of context. When Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) returned from Iraq and said, “We’re making some measurable progress,” the GOP declared that the Democratic leadership had splintered on the war. What Republicans left out was the rest of Durbin’s remarks: “We cannot win this war militarily. We just can’t send enough troops.”
Meanwhile, according to the Globe:
US officials in Baghdad and Washington, under pressure to show political progress in Iraq to an increasingly skeptical Congress, are scrambling to shore up support for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose shaky coalition government has been on the verge of collapse since a rash of Cabinet defections earlier this month, analysts and government officials said yesterday.
At least three separate attempts to unseat Maliki are unfolding in Baghdad — two from within his own Shi’ite coalition. Nearly half of the ministers in his Cabinet have resigned or are boycotting official meetings. The defections have so thinned the ranks of his supporters that some analysts say that Maliki might not be able to survive a vote of no confidence in the Iraqi parliament, if such a vote were called.
“My view is that his government is in essential collapse,” said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress.
In recent weeks, the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and a top White House aide, Meghan O’Sullivan, have held a series of intense, behind-the-scenes meetings with Iraqi politicians. Their goal is to build enough support for Maliki to maintain control of a majority of seats in parliament and push through key pieces of legislation, including a law to regulate the sharing of oil profits and provisions to allow more Sunni Ba’athists to return to government service. …
But while State and the White House may be busting a gut for Maliki, some generals are considerably less inclined to do so, according to WSJ (read the whole thing, it’s free).
BAGHDAD — Senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq are increasingly divided over whether Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his weak coalition are capable of making the necessary compromises that might help end the fighting in the country.
Although some — including the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus — say Mr. Maliki is starting to take small steps needed to build a multisectarian state, or at least should be given more time, a growing number of officers say they are concerned the current U.S. strategy of “surging” troops into Baghdad and its environs won’t produce lasting gains unless he is replaced.
Army Chief of Staff George Casey, who spent several days last week meeting with top U.S. regional commanders here, said he was taken aback by the intensity of anti-Maliki sentiment among senior U.S. officers. “I heard more people talk about Maliki not making it through his full term in two days than I had heard in all of my previous time here,” Gen. Casey said. “There’s a frustration with his inability to be a reconciliation leader, and a fear that the momentum generated by the surge could just be frittered away.” …
“Reconciliation is an action that takes place between former adversaries and not friends,” said Gen. Petraeus, noting that this is neither easy nor quick.
Other U.S. officers offered a bleaker assessment of the Iraqi government’s willingness to reconcile. Gen. Casey, who served as the top U.S commander here in 2005 and 2006, said the U.S. may have erred in believing that Mr. Maliki, with a lifetime of Shiite activism, would be willing or able to make political compromises with the country’s Sunnis.
“It would be a huge shame if after all the military has accomplished with the surge we don’t get a political accommodation,” he said. “But I’m not optimistic.”
It isn’t clear who would replace Mr. Maliki if he were forced out. Nor is it clear that any replacement would be able to do much better. Under the current Iraqi system, the prime minister lacks much power to force compromises or ram through unpopular legislation, senior U.S. officials said.
One coming test of the Maliki government’s intentions will be whether it follows through on promises to hire 5,000 police in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Doura, which had been mixed along sectarian lines and is now predominately Sunni.
“It will show whether the government will hire Sunni officers, which they haven’t done in the past in Baghdad,” said Brig. Gen. John Campbell, a deputy U.S. commander in the capital[.]
Well, I don’t know what Gen. Campbell feels in his heart-of-hearts, but I do know that every time Iraq gets a new government, two or three months of bickering — followed by endless months of worse — ensue, so it just seems to me that Americans’ hanging around, getting blown up and shot while expecting something better, is not the answer. But I’m just a flowah, so what do I know?
lotus
