During last night’s debate, a woman asked the candidates, “[W]hat are we going to do to make sure they have a government in place before we do pull our troops out and they’re able to help themselves?”
It was hardly an unreasonable question (though none of the candidates really answered it). The White House, if given a chance, would probably express some kind of vague support for the Maliki administration.
But the reality is, as this excellent LA Times story explained, is that the Iraqi government is “teetering on the edge.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and Tariq Hashimi, the country’s Sunni vice president, faced each other across the room as the latter spoke angrily of the bad blood between Sunni and Shiite officials.
A hush fell over the room as Hashimi demanded to know whether the prime minister had been accusing his political bloc of being infiltrated by terrorists.
“Are you talking about us? If you are … we would ask for proof,” said Hashimi, according to his account of a recent closed-door meeting of Iraq’s top political and national security officials. “I am treated as an opponent,” he said, his voice rising. “If you continue treating me like this, it is better for me to quit.”
Maliki sat in silence.
Iraq’s government is teetering on the edge. Maliki’s Cabinet is filled with officials who are deeply estranged from one another and more loyal to their parties than to the government as a whole. Some are jostling to unseat the prime minister. Few, if any, have accepted the basic premise of a government whose power is shared among each of Iraq’s warring sects and ethnic groups.
Top Iraqi government officials perceive Maliki as sectarian and inept. They’re right. Even Maliki’s top political advisor doesn’t expect the Iraqi government to pass any of the legislation the Bush administration wants to see enacted, including an oil-revenue sharing plan.
What’s more, any notion of benchmarks, like those the president outlined earlier this year, are not only a fleeting memory — they’re also a joke. Spencer Ackerman explained:
Deadlines for most of the “benchmarks” have come and gone. On January 31, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote to Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) to clarify what the benchmarks Bush referred to actually are, and some of their deadlines were already obsolete: the Iraqi parliament was supposed to have completed its review of possible constitutional changes by January. Instead, due to ongoing sectarian rancor, May 15 became the new date by which the committee needed to assemble proposed changes to Iraq’s constitution. It didn’t happen. Similarly, May 31 was the date by which Iraq needed to pass a law clarifying how Baghdad will distribute oil revenue. That didn’t happen, either.
On January 10, President Bush said, “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.” Ribaki’s statement to the Los Angeles Times’s Ned Parker creates pressure on Bush to explain whether there will be any penalty for not meeting the benchmarks.
Take a wild guess if the administration is even going to try to explain its failure.