I've been reading a biography of Nikita Kruschev, a man that American statesmen of his era were prone to underestimate. Kruschev was indeed a rough character who was easily mistaken for a country bumpkin. He received only a rudimentary education in the Ukraine and spent his youth as a sheep herder, farmer and coal miner, following in a family tradition. After the Revolution he became active in Communist politics and moved quickly up the party ranks. While never a sociopathic killer like his mentor, Josef Stalin, he understood that when dirty work had to be done, you did it. Such was the world he lived in. In the Patriotic War, what we in the West call World War II, Kruschev was instrumental in the defeat of the Germans, playing strategic roles in both the battles of Kiev and Stalingrad, where, in the fateful winter of 1942-43, the Nazis lost the war. When Stalin died, Kruschev outmaneuvered Lavrenti Beria in a high-stakes power struggle (Loser Dies) and became head of state.
I find tales of political intrigue in less "civilized" societies fascinating, because it's a world so alien from our own. If John McCain peddles a lot of bullshit about Barack Obama's service for an education foundation set up by a friend of Ronald Reagan, on a board of directors with a "domestic terrorist" who was also asked to serve by the same foundation, millions of gallons of ink are spilled talking about this non-event, as Americans go into hysterics about how "rough" American politics has become. As if. In Kruschev's power play against Beria, Stalin's head of the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB), Nikita had his rival arrested, tried before a tribunal for "crimes against Soviet citizens" (in many of which Kruschev was complicit), and shot the same day the inevitable sentence was handed down. Now that's playing political hardball. By comparison, McCain is just an old grumpy man mumbling irrelevancies into the wind.
Americans think all this stuff is a big deal because, let's face it, we're softies. We're the one major nation on Earth whose civilization was not destroyed by either of the two World Wars. We have no collective memory of what it means to live in smoking rubble, with all conveniences and sanitation gone, with rampant disease, starving to death in a cold climate. Great Britain, France, Italy, Central Europe, and most especially the Soviet Union, bore the brunt of the horror. Millions of Americans, mostly men, fought in World War II, and a small cohort of these brave souls still live among us. They know what the horror of a full-scale modern war is. But beyond them, 99% of Americans think an intolerable burden is a line for gasoline longer than two cars, or an interruption in cell phone service.
It doesn't stop us from thinking we're tough guys, though, or from thinking that Ivy League credentials are more important than street-smarts in the rough-and-tumble of international intrigue. Which brings me back, as usual, to the Ungrateful Nouri al-Maliki. We have always parried the game-playing of the Iraqis, who have used us more or less remorselessly since we went broke liberating them, with guys like J. Paul Bremer, he of the Brooks Brothers suits and construction boots (darling!). Or General Petraeus, the Princeton PhD who has never seen a day of actual combat. Our guys are clean-cut, straight-talking, ultra-civilized products of the best American institutions of higher learning (beginning with prep school on the East Coast). Iraq has Nouri, on whose head Saddam Hussein placed a death sentence in 1980, forcing Maliki to continue his underground resistance against Saddam from the relative safety of Iran and Syria.
And how's that working for us? Maliki continues to drag out the negotiations for the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in spite of the now-very-near expiration of the UN Mandate on December 31. Nouri has already told the British contingent of 4,000 soldiers that they're free to go home now. With respect to the American liberators, Maliki hedges his bets a little. He keeps saying that after December 31, the United States "will lose its legal cover." Is it just me, or is that an odd choice of words for a grateful client state to be using in negotiating an agreement whereby, at no cost to the Iraqis, America agrees to spend $10 billion a month and maintain a force of 150,000 soldiers in Iraq to secure the place?
Lose its legal cover? Who is Nouri's audience for such language? Well, for one ayatollah I could name, al-Sistani, the chief poobah of Shia Iraq. Nouri has been conferring with him and the Main Muslim is saying Yanqui Go Home. Iran thinks that America has outlived its usefulness in the Middle East as well, and that's another important Nouri constituent. Muqtada al-Sadr -- you have to ask? So in this game of asymmetrical negotiating power, Nouri is playing it both ways. To the local Shia, Nouri's power base, who want us gone so they can more obviously resist all this nonsense about "assimilating" the Sunnis into the power structure. Assimilating Sunnis is just to make us feel better, so John McCain can say we "won." And to the Americans, because things are still a little dicey over there and Maliki could use the help. He just doesn't want to guarantee the Americans they can stay till 2011, which is the way we want it, for reasons best known to George W. Bush.
Maliki has hung the negotiations up on the question of immunity for off-duty misbehavior by American GIs and contractors. Generally speaking, American GIs are subject to local law under our standard SOFA pacts for crimes committed in other than a military capacity. The Pentagon is not that big on subjecting Americans to the Draconian whims of a court run by mullahs. You know, hands chopped off for petty theft. No one even wants to think about the punishment for a rape. So Nouri knows he's got a deal-breaker because he knows how squeamish Americans are about any situation where we don't have overwhelming superiority, or where we don't control the outcome. He also knows that a SOFA is the only way for America to stay in Iraq, because the other route, an extension of the UN Mandate by Security Council, has one major obstacle. All this stupid Red-baiting we've been engaging in, especially that mouthed by Dumb and Dumber (Bush & McCain), has succeeded in completely pissing off Russia, and they hold veto power over any such resolution. Vlad Putin is going to do us a favor now? (And what, exactly, did we get out of taunting the Bear? A chance for McCain to relive the glory days of his virulent anti-Commie past?)
So what Maliki will likely get is an open-ended commitment from the U.S. to stay as long as Maliki feels like having us, but without America's "legal cover" for setting the terms of the occupation. Pretty rico soave, huh? How the frick did he pull that one off? Well, it's not anything he learned at Yale. He just read his opponent better than we did. He knew Bush couldn't leave Iraq precipitously because then Bush would have to say he "lost." Ditto McCain, who needs the Iraq war for his campaign. Barack Obama won't be in power till after the UN Mandate runs out. I imagine that when Nouri eases back at the end of the day with a glass of mint tea and a lamb shawarma, he marvels at the box he's put the Americans in. They spend all the money, their soldiers die, and they don't even get our oil. And we tell them how long they're going to keep putting up with this. People this dumb, he thinks, deserve nothing better.
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