3 Responses to “How Maliki Won”

1. nrmurra, on April 29th, 2009 at 1:05 pm Said:

   Im currently stationed in Baghdad, and although my view of the situation is a narrow and limited one, it still conforms to that offered by Rosen.

   Iraq is an absolutely devastated country. Garbage is everywhere. Groups of men sit shiftlessly on the street. Squatters live in landfills or abandoned buildings. There is little enthusiasm or energy for civil war.

   But I think there will be some scattered, low-level violence for some time. The United States is no longer paying the SOI salary, and the Government of Iraq, feeling the squeeze of a gobal recession, cannot pay everyone. You gotta make choices and play favorites, and the Shi’ia dominated GOI is not going to worry about taking care of those who it views as suspect.

   The chief problem for us is that this sectarianism was always seen as a “problem, which, in the vernacular of can-do America, essentially beckons for a solution. I remember back a few years ago when we were talking about partition. Its best to look at Iraq as a Lebanon or Algeria: where factional tensions are a more or less everlasting reality to be managed (best by the locals themselves) rather than some pre-history to be conquered by enlightened foreigners.

2. Kelley Vlahos, on April 29th, 2009 at 1:23 pm Said:

   So, we used the Sunnis and now we’re throwing them away — all to save face and give Iraq an “authoritarian prime minister.” Sort of makes you feel all warm and mushy inside.

3. Thomas O. Meehan, on May 2nd, 2009 at 4:42 pm Said:

   The British press is running with stories today about how the Sunni militias are rejoining the insurgency now that they are no longer being paid. If so, it seems we can’t even betray people in an timely manner. The decision to cut these people from the payroll before we have left is a blunder. And this one is on Obama’s watch.

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