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Reasons Behind Maliki’s Timetable Request
There are three possible interpretations of Maliki’s insistence for a timetable for withdrawal of some U.S. troops from Iraq. These are based on how one sees Maliki’s position:
He is :
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a puppet of the U.S. government
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a puppet of the Iranian government
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a self nationalistic politician vowing the electorate of Iraq for the upcoming elections
If Maliki gets his orders from the U.S. than the whole timeline issue is a U.S. election ploy. McCain and Bush will accept, reluctantly, the ‘Iraqi wish’ for a timetable. Obama will have lost his most important argument that he is the only one who will end the occupation in Iraq.
If this interpretation is correct the timetable than will be worded in a way that will allow for many troops to stay into the far future and on U.S. conditions.
This is indeed what seems to be going on:
Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite lawmaker and a prominent official in the prime minister’s party, told The Associated Press that Iraq was linking the timetable proposal to the ongoing handover of various provinces to Iraqi control.
The Iraqi proposal stipulates that, once Iraqi forces have resumed security responsibility in all 18 of Iraq’s provinces, U.S.-led forces would then withdraw from all cities in the country.
After that, the country’s security situation would be reviewed every six months, for three to five years, to decide when U.S.-led troops would pull out entirely, al-Adeeb said.
So far, the United States has handed control of nine of 18 provinces to Iraqi officials.
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The proposal, as outlined by al-Adeeb, is phrased in a way that would allow Iraqi officials to tell the Iraqi public that it includes a specific timetable and dates for a U.S. withdrawal.
However, it also would provide the United States some flexibility on timing because the dates of the provincial handovers are not set.
The second interpretation would be consistent with Maliki’s recent trip to Iran after which he insisted on some issues that are against U.S. interest. He for example demanded to throw the anti-Iranian MEK-cult out of Iraq. The 3,000 or so cult members are currently under U.S. supervision and used for clandestine terror acts in Iran. Maliki also vehemently insisted on no U.S. attacks on Iran from Iraqi soil.
A sign that there might be a real conflict between Maliki and the U.S. came as a threat issued by the White House yesterday:
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said specific withdrawal dates are not part of the talks. He added: "We have great confidence that the political leadership in Iraq would not take an action that would destabilize the country.
Fratto directly threatens to revive the Salvadorian option, i.e. to reignite a civil war in Iraq.
The third interpretation is based on Maliki’s internal political position. While he has had some recent successes in lowering the level of conflict in Iraq he also has only little support in the parliament. A major part of his own Dawa party has split away from him. The timetable for a U.S. retreat is a main demand of the Sadr movement and by picking up on this demand Maliki may try to position himself and his party for the provincial elections as a more secular alternative to as-Sadr. Pat Lang sees such general nationalistic issues as a major force in Maliki’s move.
In reality the three motives above are not inherently incompatible with each other. The Republicans have some interest to move away from McCain’s ‘hundred years in Iraq’ and free some troops for Afghanistan, Iran might want to lower the profile of U.S. troops in Iraq to replace their influence and Maliki might want to present himself as a nationalist not under U.S. control.
We will only be able to judge what motives are really behind this when the results of the negotiations will be announced. If the timetable is very flexible, allows the U.S. to influence it on the go and includes a big residual force, point one is more likely. If the timetable is very strict and allows for no residual force, the Iran point would be the case. A strict timetable with a big residual U.S. force in long term remote bases would fit the Maliki angle as it would give him continued backing against militias as well as make the electorate happy.
Well, pat, I can always start by coming through (or starting to come through) with that promised comment about living in France. Well, not exactly France–remembereringgiap asks if it’s Paris or France that we’re talking about. Mostly Paris, in fact, and I certainly agree with our dear colleague that the two are not the same.
But Paris can be very French, if you let the process unfold (by being patient, by learning to speak decent French, by figuring out how to work with the banks, the post-office, the medical system, the landlords, plumbers, electricians, waiters, professors, editors, and strikers of all kinds). Not very different, then, from Bogotá or Washington D.C., I’d imagine.
Me, my wife and a dog have lived in Paris off and on for the past three years. Logistical problems arise, because we have friends and family to care for back in the States (as I write this, I’m actually sitting in upstate New York. It’s back to Paris next month.)
The French are kind, that’s the first and most important point. And hospitable. And also curious: they tend to worry about their ignorance of the United States, for example.
I hole up in Paris, where I write (not for money) and translate (for very little money). The one spectacular thing these days? Watching the dollar evaporate before your very own eyes. For example, the dead-tree daily International Herald Tribune currently costs about $4.50. If you aren’t paying attention, a cup of coffee can set you back $8. Museums and concerts are terrifying to contemplate, but watching the Seine doesn’t cost a dime, and I love to watch the Seine.
I have long and passionate discussions of politics and history with the man who runs the neighborhood newspaper kiosk. He reads all the time; sometimes I think he’s read everything. He has a keen dialectical mind, and ought to be teaching philosophy… Which is exactly what he does, come to think of it. Therefore, on a cold, rainy miserable afternoon in January, I can walk up to him with a smile, and announce that this is the most beautiful, the most astonishing, day I’ve ever seen. He shoots a quizzical look, then smiles back, quotes a few lines from Nietzsche, and the discussion takes off from there….
Paris is consoling (hell, all of France is consoling!). The French been through a lot, they’re going through a lot, and they don’t expect their problems to vanish overnight. And they don’t expect our problems to vanish overnight, either. They’d like to understand us, and so, indeed, would I.
And the coolest thing of all? You don’t have to be a millionaire to be a fully enfranchised citizen in France. They don’t have credit cards (debit cards only, so far as I can tell), and it’s okay not to own a MacMansion.
The one distressing thing? The French think their language is dying, and, for all I know, they might be right about that….
That’s enough for now… More anon….
Posted by: alabama | Jul 11 2008 1:20 utc | 9
That sounds right to me, plushtown.
I’ve never been in a position to make anything happen, except, on happy (if fleeting) occasions, my own sanity. And though I’ve never thought of sanity as patriotic, I do try to figure out the ways in which being patriotic can avoid the pitfalls of insanity. This, as you’ve certainly noticed, calls for a measure of elasticity in one’s thinking.
It’s always been that way. Hence that the mighty Rousseau elaborated his categorical distinction between the individual person, on the one hand, and the citizen, on the other. When sharing my thoughts about Iraq at MOA, I try to think as a citizen. When burning with lust for that woman across the room, I do so as an individual person (I oversimplify just a bit).
At the end of his life, Kant wrote a wonderful essay on “the right to lie”. No such right exists, Kant argues (adopting, so to speak, the very categories of “citizen” and “person” to be found in Rousseau). A consequence of this logic? If I harbor a person being pursued by the authorities, and the authorities ask me if I’m harboring that particular person, then I have to tell them that I am (since to do otherwise would be lying, and the citizen has no “right to lie”). The point at question is not whether Kant was a cruel, cold-hearted authority-freak (sometimes he certainly was, but he also had a weird knack for tying authorities into knots, and did so with gleeful relish). The point at question is where the logic of “citizenship” was likely to lead the thinking of Kant the philosopher (hardly an easy path to follow).
When I think of the possible outcomes in Iraq, I quickly see how hard it is to respect the problem’s logic. But a logic there certainly is, and whether we know it or not, we work within that logic. Which is what’s so enraging about the neocons, posturing as responsible citizens. Given the way they happily trash the logic at every opportunity, their claims are shamefully false, or comically pretentious. Wolfowitz (at the World Bank, for example), is the canonical instance of a philosophical disaster (and of other disasters as well).
(This does not apply to the much-maligned Leo Strauss, who tried to show, philosophically, that theology could and should, on philosophical grounds, govern the rules of philosophy–an honest, if rather weird, project, giving rise to some curious thinking. It makes for a challenging read, but doesn’t go far as philosophy.)
Posted by: alabama | Jul 11 2008 3:18 utc | 13
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