Of all the coverage of the president’s “new” policy in Iraq, this may be the most helpful in understanding Bush’s perspective.
As part of a campaign to market the new strategy, Mr. Bush’s aides insisted that the plan was largely created by the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
Yet Mr. Bush sounded less than certain of his support for the prime minister, who many in the White House and the military fear may be intending to extend Shiite power over the Sunnis, or could prove incapable of making good on his promises. “If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people,” Mr. Bush declared.
He put it far more bluntly when leaders of Congress visited the White House earlier on Wednesday. “I said to Maliki this has to work or you’re out,” the president told the Congressional leaders, according to two officials who were in the room. Pressed on why he thought this strategy would succeed where previous efforts had failed, Mr. Bush shot back: “Because it has to.”
“Because it has to” work. Of course. Why hadn’t we thought of that before? If we will something to happen, because we really truly think it should, then even the most far-fetched plans deserve to be taken seriously, right?
That Bush told Maliki that “this has to work or you’re out” is just as startling. Even if we put aside the notion that the president believes he can shift the burden of responsibility away from the Oval Office, what, exactly, makes Bush believe the Prime Minister of Iraq serves at his pleasure? What about all the talk about Iraq being a “sovereign nation”?
Indeed, given another NYT report this morning, Paul Kiel asks if “Iraqi sovereignty” is an oxymoron.
The New York Times reports that the president’s plan to embed American troops with Iraqi units will provide the twin benefit of providing support to the Iraqis while keeping them on a short leash:
“American generals have acknowledged that the twinning of American and Iraqi units, and the sharp increase in American advisers, will serve the dual purpose of stiffening Iraqi combat performance and providing American commanders with early warning of any Iraqi operations that run counter to American objectives. In effect, the advisers will serve as canaries in Mr. Maliki’s mine, ensuring the American command will get early notice if Iraqi operations threaten to abandon the equal pursuit of Sunni and Shiite extremists in favor of a more sectarian emphasis on going after Sunnis alone.”
There’s a similar tension with regard to Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who, since he’s being given more authority, can’t be left without babysitters:
“The arrangements appeared to suggest that Mr. Maliki would have the power to halt any push into Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold that American commanders have been saying for months will have to be swept of extremist militia elements if there is to be any lasting turn toward stability in Baghdad. But along with more authority for Mr. Maliki, the American plan appeared to have countervailing safeguards to prevent sectarian agendas from gaining the upper hand. Bush administration officials said that Americans would be present in the commander in chief’s office and that an American Army battalion — 400 to 600 soldiers — would be stationed in each of the nine Baghdad military districts.”
If I didn’t know better, I might start to wonder if perhaps the Maliki government is some kind of feckless shell, dependent on the U.S. for practically everything, and that maybe, just maybe, basing the “new way forward” on Maliki’s ability to govern effectively is dubious.