My Dog Ate My Car Bomb

Nouri al-Maliki, no doubt, is a man under a lot of pressure. Nevertheless, he has a job, presumably a well-paying one, and in today's Iraq that must be a great consolation. I assume he lives and works in the Green Zone in Baghdad, which insulates him from most of the mayhem, save for the occasional mortar round lobbed in from the surrounding neighborhoods. Under the conditions of contemporary Iraq, I doubt that Nouri really worries all that much about the fine points of representative democracy, which must, in any event, be foreign concepts to him and most of the Shiites with whom he spends his time. After all, the Iraq he has known all his life has either been a police state run by the opposing sect or the current state of anarchy reminiscent of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Either deplorable condition would leave one with the depressing sense that life is uncertain and insecure, but at least now Maliki controls things in a way that the Shia never controlled before. Maliki would be, I presume, extremely reluctant to yield power to anyone else, and most particularly to any coalition of Sunni politicians who might resurrect the apparatus of oppression which held sway over his early life.

Viewed from this perspective, the current manufactured controversy over whether Maliki's no-show at the meet-and-greet with Bush in Amman, Jordan was or was not a "snub" fades into insignificance. One can say two things about his decision. First, it was deliberate, and the post hoc ergo propter hoc justifications for his nonappearance (it turned out a 3 way with the King and Bush wasn't "necessary" or a "productive use of time") are patent nonsense. The head of government installed by American contrivance doesn't blow off a long-planned "summit" with his benefactor because he decides, without consulting Bush, that their meeting would be a "waste of time." This is no rationale, especially when talking about Bush. All meetings with Bush are by definition a waste of time, as he proves over and over again. The purpose of his frequent international trips is to give him something to do, which in his case is to travel the world spreading ill will. It makes him look sort of like a president as he's filmed climbing on and off planes, saluting and waving, having his picture taken with heads of state.

Second, Maliki's lame excuse was deliberately transparent. It was contrived to mollify the "firebrand" cleric Muktada al-Sadr, head of the Mighty Mahdis, who had insisted that Maliki skip the meeting altogether. That was clearly too much. As pointless as the meeting was, you can't just give Bush the finger. So, as a giraffe is a horse designed by a committee, the half-snub was the compromise worked out by Maliki, al-Sadr, and, we suspect here at the Pond, the Bush Administration. Everybody looks pretty good. Maliki makes the point of his "independence." Al-Sadr looks powerful. Bush appears, as always, smilingly irrelevant and ineffective.

Next will come the news reports on "developments" in the "substantive" meeting which Bush and Maliki will hold today in Jordan. You don't need to be Merlin the Magician to predict those. Maliki will "redouble" his resolve to bring Baghdad under control. Bush will pledge U.S. support for his efforts and resist a "time table."

On Friday, another 100 Iraqis will be tortured, killed, dismembered and dumped around Iraq. Another few American GIs will die. The U.S. will add another $2 billion to the national debt. Bush will head to Camp David and Maliki will sneak back into the Green Zone under cover of darkness.