The Nouri Chronicles: Let's Take the Sofa & Go Home

An international diplomat once described concluding a deal with the Russians as "first signing the agreement, then beginning negotiations."  There are always, of course, cultural differences about the art of the deal.  We tend to borrow British ideas, whether we always realize it or not.  That stiff upper lip, honorable forthrightness, blah blah.  We assume that's how everyone either does it or should do it.  Not really so.  

 So the U.S. is deadlocked in its back-and-forth with the Iraqi government over the Status of Forces Agreement, a continuing drama which I find peculiarly fascinating, probably because I've spent most of my professional life cutting deals of one kind or another.  I've thought from the beginning that the American team was in over its head.  Only recently have they begun to play hardball with the Iraqis -- sign or we pull out and leave you to your fate.  

 Of course, that's the last thing the Bush Administration really wants to do.  They've been forced into it because they've been outmaneuvered by the Iraqis.  The Iraqi negotiating team kept a close eye on the leverage points.  They knew that Bush would see a pullout from Iraq as an ignominious defeat, especially because of the relevance of the UN Mandate.  When the Mandate expires on December 31, an extension would have to be approved by Vladimir Putin, and Bush is not going to go hat-in-hand to Pooty-Poot and ask for a favor.  They also know Bush has virtually no credibility at home - even with this anemic Congress, his ranting and raving is not going to get him anywhere with an unpopular war, the way it used to do.  The clock favors the Iraqis in myriad ways: the UN Mandate runs out, Bush's tenure in office runs out.  Where's the rush?  

 

"We obviously want to be helpful and constructive without undermining basic principles," Bush said in the Oval Office during a meeting with Massoud Barzani, president of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. "I remain very open and confident that the SOFA will get passed," he added, using the acronym for Status of Forces Agreement...Dabbagh said other amendments sought by the Iraqis include a clear definition of "off-duty" when cases arise involving crimes committed away from U.S. bases. The Iraqis also want to inspect all U.S. military shipments entering or leaving Iraq.

That's the kind of word usage I'm going to miss so much when Bush is gone.  He remains "very open and confident" about the SOFA.  What does it mean to be "open and confident?"  "Open" in that sentence doesn't really mean anything, does it?  And yet there the word is, a completely meaningless word uttered by the President of the United States of America about his signature project while in office.  Did he hear "hopeful" in his head and it came out "open?"  Did Bush realize that saying one is "hopeful and confident" sounds a little internally inconsistent and thus switched to a meaningless word at the last second to avoid saying something that would have sounded even sillier?  Like so much Bush has said over the years, it really doesn't matter at this point. He just uses words very strangely.

Meanwhile, there are those crafty Iraqis again, drilling in on this "off duty" idea.  When is a U.S. GI really "off duty" so the mullahs can try him for a "serious crime?"  Look, Condi: will you get serious for a minute?  Let's not sign a deal with the Iraqis which exposes American soldiers to the whims of Shariya law, okay?  This whole dumb idea has gone on long enough.  We have asked enough of these men and women stranded in the desert so far from home.  They are not going to be tried in an Iraqi court for anything, and if that means we start packing up now so we're out by December 31, so be it.  Use that as an exit line.  We invaded, according to you, Ms. Rice, so Saddam's imminent threat to America would not "come in the form of a mushroom cloud."  Remember that one?  Okay, we've accomplished all that.  No Saddam and no mushroom clouds.  Now don't compound this original, enormous, virtually unbelievable error in judgment by insisting that we stay in Iraq under a SOFA which involves the certainty that American soldiers will be subjected to Medieval notions of trial and retribution by a government where the major party is named the "Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq," and where it is most likely that all of their legal procedures and punishments will be modeled on Iranian concepts.

The bad joke's over.  Get all of those soldiers home.

 

The Ungrateful Nouri: Rope-A-Dope

I was startled last Wednesday night when John McCain stated confidently, at one moment in the debate, that the United States was “close to” a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq.  Further, Barack Obama said nothing to the contrary.  Now don’t get me wrong, of course.  Pride in my “reading” of Nouri’s game-playing must take a back seat to the diplomatic advantage of…keeping our military in Iraq for another three years?  Okay, it’s not clear whether we should be rooting for the “sovereign” government of Iraq or for our own feckless ambassadors, who appear to be in over their heads.  I was virtually certain that John McCain’s opinion meant nothing, whatever else might be said.  He’s still wondering whether that Prague Spring thing has worked in Czechoslovakia.

Then this news last weekend:

BAGHDAD — Hopes that a security agreement between Iraq and the United States could be concluded swiftly receded Sunday as several of the leading Iraqi political parties, including some that had negotiated the agreement, appeared to back away from quick approval.

In a public statement posted on semiofficial government Web sites, the United Iraqi Alliance, which represents several powerful Shiite parties that back the government, said it could not endorse the pact as written and wanted amendments. It formed a committee on Saturday to survey alliance member opinions.

More details emerged on Tuesday, October 21:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq demanded changes to a draft security pact with the United States Tuesday after it failed to win the support of its political leaders despite months of painstaking negotiations with Washington.

The announcement effectively reopens negotiations which had led last week to the unveiling of a draft that would require U.S. forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. The objections appear to be about details rather than the broad thrust of the pact.

Those details?  Well, it’s that jurisdictional thing: can the Iraqis try American soldiers for “serious crimes” committed in off-duty hours?  I’m sorry that I didn’t add the word “brave” as an adjective in the last sentence, as is always done in the House of Memes & Tropes, so let me amend that: can the Iraqis try our Brave American Soldiers® in Iraqi courts?

How significant a provision is this?  Very, as it turns out.  While American news outlets go light on the coverage, we’ve been having a helluva time in Okinawa over the last decade or so.  Take this story from February, 2008, concerning another SOFA agreement covering that Japanese island which does provide for local jurisdiction:

“Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, apologised yesterday for a string of crimes involving American troops based in Japan, amid warnings that failure to improve discipline risked damaging relations between Washington and one of its closest allies.

"Resentment towards the US military presence erupted this month following the arrest of a marine for the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl on the island of Okinawa, home to more than half of the 50,000 US troops in Japan.

"Since then, US soldiers on the island have been arrested for trespassing and drink driving, and another is being questioned about the alleged rape of a Filipino woman in a hotel room.

"The rape allegation has echoes of the 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen, which brought 85,000 people on to the streets in protest and international attention to the US base…The Japanese prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, called the alleged rape "unforgivable" and Shigeru Ishiba, the defence minister, warned that it could "shake the foundations" of the Japan-US alliance just as the two countries were cooperating to try to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

"In an attempt to limit the diplomatic fallout, US military authorities imposed a 24-hour, indefinite curfew on 45,000 military personnel and their families, including the 10,000 who live off-base. They also agreed to review anti-sexual assault guidelines and improve education programmes for newly arrived service personnel…Critics said previous attempts to improve conduct had failed.”

That story was carried by the London-based Telegraph last February.  You may have missed it.  In Okinawa, the presence of the U.S. garrison is an ongoing crisis; yet compared to Iraq, the situation for the Brave American Soldiers® is considerably more “normal;” note the quarantine of the military and confinement to bases along with their “families.”  In Iraq, by contrast, the situation for the troops is a great deal weirder, with soldiers stranded for years on end in repeated deployments, away from home, away from normal female companionship.  We must add to this toxic mix the fact that the U.S., in order to meet recruitment goals for a worn-out army, has lowered its standards to include a small but significant fraction of soldiers with criminal records.

Thus, all the pieces are in place for a true international nightmare: a sociopathic Brave American Soldier®, with a violent history of assault, rapes and kills an Iraqi woman in Baghdad after getting roaring drunk in a local bar.  He’s arrested by Iraqi police under the SOFA provision for “serious crimes” committed intentionally.  Now what?  The fate of this soldier would be seen as the final, intolerable indignity visited upon the American “liberating” force.  This story would make the nightly news and inundate the Internet.  In general, the American public, recalling the kangaroo proceedings for Saddam Hussein, would be absolutely outraged and up in arms.  Mitigating factors (the sex was consensual, it was a trap, etc.) would be discovered or manufactured.  The idea of an armed invasion of the prison or court to free the soldier would be debated and maybe set in motion.

My guess is that the Ungrateful Nouri has already “priced in” all these considerations, as they say about the stock market.  It’s a No Go Zone for the Department of Defense; not even Bush’s delicate ego justifies running this kind of risk.  A Japanese court seems sort of civilized and Western; a court run by mullahs reminds Americans too much of “Midnight Express.” And so Nouri, keenly discerning the discomfort level of the American negotiatiors about conceding this jurisdictional point (routinely done in other SOFA arrangements) when dealing with this partiuclar Muslim nation, lets the clock keep running toward December 31, when our "legal cover," as he calls it, is blown.  A ragged, fitting denouement to a misbegotten war.

 

The Ungrateful Nouri Runs the Clock

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.

The Ungrateful Nouri Pulls a Fast One

I think it would be quite possible to go broke underestimating the intelligence of Nouri al-Maliki. Let's just say if we were trading camels, Nouri would probably walk away with all of my animals and I would hitch a ride home in my boxer shorts.  The buttoned-up fashion plates in the White House, like Bush with his new-suit-a-day program, always wearing the chic new colors in men's neckties, probably think of Nouri as an Arab rube, what with his shlumpy attire and Nixonian five o'clock shadow.  Should be a pushover.  We're the mighty United States, with our giant red-white-and-blue foam finger thrust high into the Baghdad sky.  We stormed into Iraq, kicked ass and took names.  We're Number One!

So why's Maliki cleaning Condi Rice's clock in these 11th hour negotiation games?  Hmm?  I keep coming back to the idea this scruffy dude was schooled in a different milieu, to speak in French, the language of international diplomacy.  Nouri's a master at the asymmetrical power game.  When he was causing trouble for Saddam in his old dissident days, first in Iraq and then when the heat got too hot, in Iran and Syria, he had mainly his wits and his gift for organization. And up against this guy who literally learned cloak-and-dagger as on the job training, who played life and death games for a living, we've got a bunch of effete spoiled brats like the ex-preppie cheerleader turned faux cowboy, George W. Bush, and his anvil-haired Girl Friday, the wiz from the University of Denver who plays the piano and ice skates.  

Why did we think we had a chance?  George Bush has been sooo played by this dude.  If we were still capable of embarrassment, and I don't see how we could be, this would be humiliating. Look at the Brink's job Maliki has pulled off.  All of the money we spent to liberate Iraq, to cashier the hateful Saddam, was strictly on our tab.  Iraq has been socking money away, $79 billion at last count.  We've got 130,000 soldiers and just as many contractors there, we've spent a fortune on "permanent installations," forts and such, we're still spending $10 billion a month there even though we're going broke at home, and what does Maliki say?  "It's been real, Yanks.  Can't tell you how much we appreciate it.  Now get the hell out of here."

The United Nations mandate deadline is coming up on December 31, only about three months away.  After that, we have no legal authority to remain in Iraq.  The cocky numbskull Bush, with his usual completely unwarranted confidence, thought we could have it all.  First dibs on the oil fields, permanent bases, a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which would allow our soldiers and contractors to carry on in the scofflaw way that has made the American military so popular in places like Okinawa.  So Nouri, for just a little while, just long enough to lull us into complacency and to stop watching the clock, made a few tentative agreements with American oil companies for development (but not those profit sharing agreements we lusted after) and one or two other concessions. Which he's now pulled the plug on. As to the SOFA, Nouri and his team negotiated.  And negotiated.  And negotiated.  Until finally even Clueless-in-Chief began to smell the camel droppings.  Something just wasn't right. Nouri kind of tipped his hand a little while back when he altered his starting lineup on the negotiating team, purging the pro-American Iraqis and installing hardliners.

Condi, doing what she does best, pronouncing painfully obvious and utterly empty conclusions with her trademark self-importance, told us "we would have an agreement when we agree," which, frankly, did not surprise me to learn.  Nouri picked the immunity provision as his line in the sand, but it could have been any of a number of terms of disagreement.  I think he settled on immunity because he knew how much it would bug Bush -- the idea that an American soldier caught in some impropriety in Iraq could wind up in one of those scary court rooms of the kind that Saddam was "tried" in.

“Even if we ask for an extension, then we will ask for it according to our terms and we will attach conditions and the U.S. side will refuse,” he said in an interview on Wednesday with the directors of Iraqi satellite television channels. “U.S. forces would be without legal cover and will have no choice but to pull out from Iraq or stay and be in contravention of international law.”  New York Times, September 18, 2008.

What Nouri is talking about there is that beyond December 31, 2008, sans accord, the United States military can no longer occupy Iraq with any international legitimacy.  He's kind of rubbing our noses in it, isn't he?  Is that really very subtle?  Nouri and his "negotiating team" are dreaming up conditions to an extension of the 12/31 drop-dead date which they know we can't accept.  I can't wait to hear about those.  "Provided, that the extension of the UN Mandate beyond December 31, 2008, is expressly predicated and conditioned upon the agreement of Heidi Klum to a two-week vacation in Cannes with the Prime Minister, all expenses to be paid personally by the President of the United States with transportation aboard Air Force One." They're going to have fun with their sham caveats, all right.

Has the United States reached a point where we're like that obnoxious clown poised above a barrel of cold water who hurls insults at passersby, daring them to hit the target and dowse him? Does the world look at this madhouse, with the government now buying up all the investment banks and insurance companies, and running the Treasury's printing press till the currency catches fire, and think:  WTF?  Do they see that one of the major candidates for President is a guy who just announced that he thinks that Spain must be an enemy because its President has an Hispanic name, just like Hugo Chavez, and makes errors of comparable magnitude every five minutes because he's lost his marbles?  

Maybe Maliki just wants America as far from Baghdad as humanly possible.  The Arabs will take it from here.  No hard feelings.  Here, take some of this hummus with you - on the house.

The Ungrateful Nouri: Return of the Sultan

This guy is really starting to piss George off. He doesn't understand how the game is played with The Decider. Kind of like Mo Green in "The Godfather:" "You don't buy me out. I buy you out." Check out the latest token of Nouri al-Maliki's epic ingratitude:

"BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. They came a day after Iraq's prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the United States to have some type of timetable for withdrawal. President Bush has said he opposes a timetable. The White House said Monday it did not believe Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was proposing a rigid timeline for U.S. troop withdrawals."

My favorite part, of course, is where President Bush "opposes a timetable." He's always opposed a timetable. It's worked with that group of Scyphozoa of the phylum Cnidaria (you know them as jellyfish) otherwise known as the Democratic majority in Congress, Man O' War Harry Reid, and Steny "the Stomolophus meleagris " Hoyer and the other invertebrates who keep caving into Bush. They timidly tried suggesting timetables in funding legislation but Bush told them to stop it. "Take 'em out!" he snarled, and they quickly did so, expelling water from their combination mouth/anus to propel themselves away to safety (Cnidaria have incomplete digestive systems so that one orifice does double duty - you know, they really should run for Congress).

Of course, Nouri's just being political. Provincial elections are coming up in the fall and he knows that the overwhelming majority of everyday Iraqis want Americans out of their country. On the order of two-thirds, and they've felt that way for a long time. As wonderful as we've been, they can't seem to wait till we're gone. The party that delivers on ousting the foreign occupiers has the inside track on loading up the local governing councils with their sectarian cronies.

Meanwhile, Bush is finding this whole thing a revoltin' development. The oil deals, at long last, were beginning to fall into place, just ahead of the United Nations eviction notice on December 31, 2008. We lose our legal cover for occupying Iraq after that, and you know what a stickler Bush is for doing things legally. And you probably also appreciate why this thing is such an 11th hour rush job; it's a quality shared by many alcoholics. He procrastinates and just can't seem to get things done. Look around the country and the world and see all the stuff he's left undone, things he started work on seven years ago and then put aside. Two-state solution for Israel/Palestine? He's workin' on it. Rebuilding New Orleans? Remember the Big Speech in Jackson Square? Ummmm.... I was just about to do that! Balance the budget? 30% of the national debt accumulated in the history of the country has accrued under Bush's "stewardship." Capture Osama bin Laden? Bring a single prisoner to trial in Guantanamo after he rushed through that Military Commissions Act in the fall of 2006? Look, I meant to tell you, I was going to do that next week...The one thing the dude's good at is getting Congress to pass bills exonerating him from past criminal conduct. I'll give him that. He spends an inordinate amount of time doing it, and I don't why Congress keeps complying...well, I do actually. Note that "Godfather" reference. Cheney must have watched that a hundred times, I'll betcha. The idea is you make everybody (or key players in the leadership, like Nancy Pelosi and Jane Harman) into "made men." Brief them on illegal wiretapping, spell out the torture techniques years before anyone else knows, and then you've got them. What are they gonna do? They have to let you off the hook.

But Nouri is from, shall we say, a different tradition. Worked in the anti-Saddam Shiite underground, a very dangerous line of work, with a .000000000000000000000000000000001% margin of error, the penalty being a sulfuric acid transfusion. Nouri's were not the kind of mean streets where Steny and Nancy and Harry made their bones. A little more real, shall we say. Grittier. A desperate situation for Nancy Pelosi would be the discovery of a phylloxera infestation at one of her vineyard properties up in the wine country. Nouri, on the other hand, probably knows more about hardball than even L'il George himself, whose knowledge of the subject is typified by his decision to trade Sammy Sosa. So if we want to stay in Iraq under the terms of a Status of Forces Agreement after January 1, 2009, it's going to be on Nouri's terms, and I think The Decider will find that his veto power does not extend too far out into the Atlantic, and certainly not across the Tigris & Euphrates. There may be a phased withdrawal, it may take a few years, but I think Nouri is going to get us out of there unless we can get Nouri out of there first and replace him with someone a little more malleable, a more Chalabi-esque Arab perhaps.

But here's a bet: I think ol' Nouri can see that one coming. He survived by staying one step ahead of the occupiers for a long time, after all. He's working on his home turf, and I doubt that those elections in the fall are going to be tabulated on Diebold machines.

Our Man in Baghdad

I think the popular myth is that Nouri al-Maliki is an American puppet installed by the Bush Administration because of Nouri's amenable, toadyist nature, and that he is simply no match for George W. Bush's artful manipulations. I wondered about this, since I am immediately suspicious of any argument that proceeds from the premise that Bush is outsmarting anyone. One would have to concede that the U.S.A. certainly has much more in the way of resources, beginning with our incomparable military ("the world's finest") which, while it has fallen into a sad state of depletion thanks to the reckless ministrations of the current Commander-in-Chief, still is the finest fighting force on earth, as its main public relations arm, the United States Congress, never fails to remind us. But men and materiel aren't everything, nor is our good credit rating, which allows us to finance our wars by borrowing from the Chinese, Japanese and Saudis.

An earlier brain-belch here at the Pond suggested that Nouri was a kind of "lunch pail" working stiff, glad to have a job and willing to play ball to keep it. But this was before I adopted the practice of actually looking stuff up before writing this thing. This has made a world of difference, I think. In the first place, I hadn't actually figured out whether Iraqis even use lunch pails. I did, as a kid, so maybe my assumption was a matter of projection. My favorite contained a picture of Kit Carson on the lid. On a gentle slope in the foreground, Kit sat on a pinto horse, and in the distance was a tableau of frontier mayhem, Indians riding around Conestoga wagons, a few saguaro cacti, mesas looming up into a blue sky. Inside the pail was a chrome rack with two semi-circular hoops which could be snapped into place to hold a thermos. The whole thing was cheap and light, and maybe cost a buck. Could Nouri have had such a pail, growing up in a small village between Najaf and Hilla in southern Iraq? I don't think so. I doubt that Kit Carson was part of Shiite iconography. Simply beyond the pail.

So maybe W was Nouri's first cowboy. My sense is that al-Maliki, far from quaking in fear at the sound of Bush's name, probably sees W as one of the simplest problems he's ever had to solve. When he sees Bush getting off Air Force One out there at Baghdad Int'l, he thinks, "Here comes easy money."

Compare Bush to some of the other hurdles in Nouri's life. He was born in 1950, was educated in local schools in the south, then left for Baghdad, where he obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees, the latter from Baghdad University in Arabic literature. I suspect this was a more demanding course of study than Bush's Harvard Biz School goofoffathon. Nouri's grandfather was a cleric and nationally recognized poet, so Nouri was following in the family trade. No doubt Maliki can write fluent prose, another point of departure from his American counterpart. After graduating, Nouri did some teaching, but his main preoccupation was in Shiite politics, with the Dawa Party. One thing led to another, and this man of letters became, as did Camus in France during World War II, a principal leader in Dawa's armed resistance to the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein. While I'm certain that running oil companies into the ground using money from Daddy's friends (Bush's career track during the same relevant time period) requires a lot of nerve, Nouri was in real, mortal danger. So much so that Hussein put out a death warrant, or fatwa, on Maliki in 1980.

Maliki hit the road, looking for a new sanctuary from which to operate. His path took him initially to Iran, then to Syria, where he carried on his organizational work of supplying guerrillas and militias with arms and materiel to take the fight to the Baathist regime in Baghdad. He stayed in Damascus, as far as we know, until 2003, and was instrumental in forming the Iraqi National Congress, the government-in-exile which stood ready to take over once Saddam was deposed. When that was accomplished (the Mission!), Nouri returned to Iraq, and found his first work with the Provisional Authority in the De-Baathification project, which he must have attacked with relish. One thing led to another, and Nouri, at 56, is the Prime Minister of Iraq. Under the circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that Saddam's dispatch to Paradise was both quick and remorseless. Maliki couldn't wait to get rid of him; he showed admirable restraint in granting Hussein a trial at all, let alone one that consumed months. Had Maliki been brought to "trial" in 1980, the execution might have preceded the admission of evidence.

So that's a helluva resume. It would seem that Maliki is a man of parts, including the balls of a burglar and the aesthetics of Omar Khyyam. How easy to handle must Bush seem to Maliki, after living underground in Iraq in a police state riddled with spies and informers, after leaving his homeland and starting all over in a field removed from his educational background. If you haven't seen "Army of Shadows," the recently re-issued movie about the French Resistance, go see it if you want some sense of the harrowing world of underground resistance to tyranny. Maliki, no doubt, knew that deception and cunning were essential to survival, and sometimes dirty deeds must be done to save your own life and those in your cadre. This was powerful, street-level training in survival in a merciless world. Hazing at Skull&Bones would seem tame in comparison.

The results seem to prove it. While our Spelling Bee Champ, Condi Rice, talks tough to Congressional committees about Maliki living on "borrowed time," the other mouthpieces in the Bush Administration are always quick to assure Maliki that no deadlines will ever be set, no consequences will ever follow the failure to meet the deadlines that are never set, and that America will keep sending its military and all the money we don't have as long he needs it, because he's just that important. Forget the 70+ virgins; Maliki must think he's already died and gone to Paradise. And all he has to do is make a few noises now and then about how he'll be even-handed in "going after" Shiite militias, or that he will "crack down" on Syrians and Iranians, who gave him sanctuary for over twenty years. But our ace diplomats and strategists, Condi, Stephen Hadley, Darth Cheney and L'il Georgie himself -- in their clueless arrogance believe they've got Nouri right where they want him, and if Maliki says he'll pursue the militias of his co-religionists with the same zeal he uses to fight the Sunnis who tried to kill him -- well, that's good enough for our team, who understand absolutely nothing about the real situation they're dealing with. Sure, Maliki will "crack down" on the Shia militias of the exact kind he used to finance, arm and train, and the Bush Administration will cooperate in Nouri's real goal, which is to drive a stake through the heart of the Sunni insurgency once and for all, so there's never a danger the "democracy" will fall victim again to a Sunni despotism.

Once again, Bush is in way over his head. Our Team can't see that Nouri's quietly uttered suggestion that he doesn't really need all those troops -- just send me a lot of those hot helicopter gunships, some of the cherry Humvees with the up-armor, and leave it to me to clean house -- outflanks their "thinking" about the inevitable outcome in Iraq. Nouri is four Parcheesi moves down the board. At some point, Maliki will charm Bush even out of the oil. Another oil deal gone bad. Someone's a puppet, alright, but I don't think it's Our Man in Baghdad.