Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Last throes

Did Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki just hand George Bush a reason to "cut and run"?
American soldiers rolled up their barbed-wire barricades and lifted a near siege of the largest Shiite Muslim enclave in Baghdad on Tuesday, heeding the orders of a Shiite-led Iraqi government whose assertion of sovereignty had Shiites celebrating in the streets.

The order by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to lift the week-old blockade of Sadr City was one of the most overt expressions of self-determination by Iraqi leaders in the 3 1/2 -year-old U.S. occupation. It followed two weeks of increasingly pointed exchanges between Iraqi and U.S. officials, as well as a video conference between Maliki and President Bush on Saturday.
The prime minister of Iraq is playing a dangerous game. On one hand, he admits that his country will slide into anarchy 2.0 if US troops leave. On the other hand, he objects to an imposed sense of urgency in quelling the violence that is keeping US troops in his country. Now Maliki is telling US troops they can't set up checkpoints to find a kidnapped US soldier, and US generals acquiesce.

The US military has ceded control to the prime minister of Iraq. Where is the right's outrage? Why is it easier to get worked up over Kerry's botched joke than foreign command of US troops? Malaki is obviously in bed with the same Shiite militias that are killing troops, and all Limbaugh can talk about is Michael J. Fox?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Where is the right's outrage? Good question. And while we're at it, where is the left's?