William K. Wolfrum Chronicles

It is becoming more apparent that Iraqi leaders, tired of micromanaging a civil war and waiting on an artificial timetable, are about ready to call it a day.

Iraqi politicians — frustrated by violence throughout the country and the glacial pace of parliamentary lawmaking — say the nearly one-year-old government is failing.
Iraqi lawmakers told CNN the government’s impotence and inability to bring peace to the chaotic environment is basically structural, and not the product of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator, was quoted in the USA Today newspaper as describing al-Maliki as weak, but in an interview with CNN, he said, “It’s not Maliki, it’s the whole government.”

That government, he said, is failing on many fronts, such as providing security, fostering reconciliation and offering public services.

“The president has a choice to make in the coming days: Cling to the discredited policies that have led our troops further into an intractable civil war or work with a bipartisan majority of Congress to make us more secure,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

Sadly, that choice has been made. With the Iraqi government in its final throes, as it were, President George W. Bush has made up his mind, and his mind doesn’t get changed regardless of silly things like facts or reality - he’s following the Pre-9/11 PNAC dream of American world domination to the very end. Of course, that just means the end to the lives of more American troops, and countless more Iraqis. All the while creating more terrorists and making the “Greatest Nation on Earth” look more and more foolish, arrogant and dangerous.

The plan is “not working,” according to Maysoon al-Damalouji, a secular Sunni lawmaker.

She said many people believed that services would be restored to neighborhoods “cleansed” by U.S. and Iraqi troops. However, once troops leave a cleansed region, militias move back in and take revenge on people who have cooperated with the troops.

Al-Damalouji believes that the essential problem is the division of parties by sectarian affiliation.

Such talk of sects and such doesn’t fly in American political discourse, however.

“The minute you start listing the circumstances under which you’re going to pull out you start talking about defeat,” Rudy Giuliani said. “What we have to achieve in Iraq is a government and a situation that acts as a bulwark against terrorism rather than as an encouragement for them — and then you’ve got to figure out the strategies to get you there and make them work.”

With that government apparently on its way out, the last “bulwark” against the tactic of terrorism is to continually send Americans into the meat grinder in some delusional battle on the frontline of Iraq.

So while the Democratic Party steadfastly attempts to put an end to this war of self-defeat, it’s obvious that circumstances on the ground are completely meaningless. Bush and his PNAC brain trust want a “clean bill” to stay in Iraq as long as possible. And as the Iraqi government steps down, that could be a very, very long time if the neocons continue to run things.

–WKW

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 5:26 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.