Posted on 07/03/2014 8:34:30 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
To understand why Iraq is imploding, you must understand Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — and why the United States has supported him since 2006.
I have known Maliki, or Abu Isra, as he is known to people close to him, for more than a decade. I have traveled across three continents with him. I know his family and his inner circle. When Maliki was an obscure member of parliament, I was among the very few Americans in Baghdad who took his phone calls. In 2006, I helped introduce him to the U.S. ambassador, recommending him as a promising option for prime minister. In 2008, I organized his medevac when he fell ill, and I accompanied him for treatment in London, spending 18 hours a day with him at Wellington Hospital. In 2009, I lobbied skeptical regional royals to support Maliki’s government.
By 2010, however, I was urging the vice president of the United States and the White House senior staff to withdraw their support for Maliki. I had come to realize that if he remained in office, he would create a divisive, despotic and sectarian government that would rip the country apart and devastate American interests.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Amazing article, even if only half of it is true.
What should have happened is that American governors should have been installed in Baghdad, Damascus, Riyadh, and Islamabad, to protect the waves of Christian missionaries who would by now have educated the entire under age 15 population.
Playing “good Muslim vs. bad Muslim” was a fool’s errand from the start.
You’re half right.
You cannot liberate peoples in the grip of Islam by using “Freedom of Religion”. Their choice of religion must be, precisely, not free - because Islam can’t be on the menu.
"In short, Maliki’s one-man, one-Dawa-party Iraq looks a lot like Hussein’s one-man, one-Baath Party Iraq. But at least Hussein helped contain a strategic American enemy: Iran. And Washington didn’t spend $1 trillion propping him up. There is not much “democracy” left if one man and one party with close links to Iran control the judiciary, police, army, intelligence services, oil revenue, treasury and the central bank. Under these circumstances, renewed ethno-sectarian civil war in Iraq was not a possibility. It was a certainty."
Really? I thought by far he reserved his harshest criticism for Biden.
Bush the elder stopped the Gulf War short of Baghdad and left Saddam in power. What if we had done the same after 9/11?
Democracy in the Middle East seems sadly un-importable.
I don’t fault George W. Bush. We had to react after 9/11. Perhaps the USSR model of installing puppet regimes like Ceausescu and Honecker might have been the better option.
Some say the Shah of Iran was an American puppet, and that worked till Carter abandoned him.
Kill or send Saddam’s sons to Gitmo (to let him know we mean business), and prop up Saddam to keep the factions in line and pay him for his troubles. But never let him forget he’s just a puppet. And just keep the oil flowing.
"After helping to bring him to power in 2006, I argued in 2010 that Maliki had to go. I felt guilty lobbying against my friend Abu Isra, but this was not personal. Vital U.S. interests were on the line. Thousands of American and Iraqi lives had been lost and trillions of dollars had been spent to help advance our national security, not the ambitions of one man or one party."
Let's see, who was President in 2010? Who ignored our national interests in Iraq? Who blew it on safeguarding the hard won peace?
Gee, out the obscure State Senator who voted "present" all the time, it actually turns out that that voting present was an excellent indicator for how Obama acts in office.
Obama voted present on Iraq. However, he was very active in 2010 in attacking the Tea Party by weaponizing the IRS, OSHA, EPA and FBI.
Maliki is just being Maliki. Predictable? Of course. Is it predictable that a lion will eat you if you are caught by it? Of course, the lion is just being a lion.
This Ali guy is a gofer. He relishes in having been among the players but has no clue as to how and why the cards were played. Obama wanted out of Iraq because his Leftist masters wanted out of it to diminish US power and influence, all in the Left’s playbook. You can take it to the bank the Leftist puppet masters had side deals on the outcome worth hundreds of millions. It did not matter that it would leave Iran calling the shots.
Biden said he would bet his VP that Maliki would renew SOFA meaning keep US forces in Iraq. But you see, politicians lie....duh. Biden knew this gofer would tell it to the grapevine that Biden was saying he would be gone if Malikturd did not renew SOFA. And Maliki being Maliki thought that’s just grand, no more Americaslams to think they can boss me around.
So then this guy says he ‘resigned’ ...BS. His gambit to blame it on Bush and Maliki in front of the Leftist front left him without a job. Biden got what was wanted, a nonrenewal of SOFA and wham bam Monsieur Ali gettin’ his CV updated. So he finds a gig with WAPO who ensure he crafts a tale of chaos and Bush Fault and diabolical Maliki.
No, I get it, thank you.
Happy Fourth!
bump
“I don’t fault George W. Bush. We had to react after 9/11.”
That would be fine, if Iraq had ANYTHING to do with 9/11. It was (undeclared) war under false pretenses, and those who engineered it are war criminals.
It is common knowledge that Al Qaeda had training camps in Iraq.
Cheney stated that Iraq was harboring Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Yes, I know what the 9/11 Commission concluded.
Who anymore believes government commissions?
How rare is it for a senior advisor to administrations of both parties to admit that his advice was wrong? And to recommend a change of course in our policy when the wrong decision had a chance to be corrected?
This admission alone makes Mr. Khedery article worth reading. The original policy to go into Iraq was supported by most of the politicians of both parties and we have to live with it, not continue to debate it as though history can be changed and blame assessed.
It’s clear to me, as it is detailed by Mr. Khedery, that we made a wrong choice on Maliki and perhaps had a chance to retrieve it before we packed up and left the country, giving up any leverage or influence we might have had.
Well we had McNamara telling all if we kept pouring money and troops into Vietnam, we would win and at the same time claiming we were winning. Later to regret it all. Those who want war find a way to screw the country.
Happy Fourth when leaders put their own life on line.
I don’t see any parallels at all since McNamara didn’t advise a change in policy or change of support of leaders during the period when we had troops there.
However there is a parallel with the withdrawal of troops leading to an invasion of both Iraq and Viet Nam.
Well we thought knocking off Diem as the way of changing leaders. Our policy was constantly changing to keep adding more troops. Bush and Johnson were victims of their own decision to keep at it until we win but without an available way.
Colin Powell told President Bush “we go in Iraq, we break the fine China, we get to keep it”
Saddam Hussein had more to lose to (and was better at dealing with) Islamic terrorism; I know nothing about any 9/11 commission, and I knew on 9/12 that Saddam had nothing to do with this.
I remember all too well when we armed Saddam to fight the Islamic extremists in Iran.
In 2008 Georges Sada came to our church and spoke to the congregation in his capacity for a Christian relief effort for Iraqi and Middle Eastern refugees.
Georges Sada was the #2 official in Saddam’s AF, and was the only Christian general Saddam had. Sada said that as a Christian he was the only general that Saddam actually trusted. Saddam’s kitchen crew were also all Christian as he knew they wouldn’t poison him.
Sada also told us that the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were secreted to Syria in civilian aircraft - 56 flights in total.
I also bought Georges Sada’s book, Saddam’s Secrets. It’s fascinating. He told our congregation about Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Since Sada was not a member of Saddam’s Baath Party (the only Iraqi general who wasn’t ), he was eventually removed from command.
This link doesn’t corroborate what I just said, but it is interesting information about Georges Sada.
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iraqs-wmd-secreted-in-syria-sada-says/26514/
Saddam had a Christian deputy prime minister; he was not an Islamic nut.
I don’t believe Saddam had a single “weapon of mass destruction” that we didn’t give him; his use of gas was A-OK with us when it was used against Iranian teenagers.
“his use of gas was A-OK”
Yes I know, we chose Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War. After the Iranian hostage crisis - the enemy of our enemy was suddenly our “friend.”
And I also find it contemptible the way the USA treated the Kurds again and again. I hope the Kurds keep their oil fields and independence.
But no matter where the WMD came from, Saddam had them and used them, and the whole word knew about it including all the democrats who subsequently dumped on Bush for “lying’ about them. And Georges Sada was there and knew otherwise.
I find it hard to believe that Al Qaeda had encampments all over that region and Asia and Africa, but somehow not a one in Iraq.
We did not lose Iraq because we stuck with Maliki...we lost Iraq because O Drama pulled out almost all the troops and refused to negotiate the agreement for them to stay and be protected if they had to protect themselves from attack. Maliki is terrible, but he wasn’t the one who pulled out the troops and left a vacuum for ISIS.
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