One can agree or disagree with that orthodox reading of the Iraqi constitution, but in itself it is nothing new and the court was merely repeating itself rather than responding to some sort of Maliki concoction authored as an ad hoc measure after the law on term limits appeared.
Yet another theme that seemed biased in Khedery’s account concerns Sunni-secular representation in the Maliki government that was eventually formed in December 2010. Khedery describes this as “impressive sounding posts with little authority”.
Well, those posts included some rather weighty ministries such as finance! In order to make sense of his own narrative, Khedery then conveniently flashes forward to the threatened arrest of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi right after the US withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, and then jumps further to the targeting of Rafi al-Eisawi, the finance minister, in late 2012.
Between those events, however, there were junctures where things could have gone very differently in Iraqi politics if the US government had had the acumen to act in a more balanced way – between unlimited support for Maliki on the one hand and unrestrained kowtowing to the most radical voices among his enemies on the other.
Then, as if there is a need to amplify his story beyond empirical facts – and as if he doesn’t himself fully trust the persuasiveness of his own narrative – Khedery brings in some rather dubious expert witnesses whose presence in the story actually has the net effect of reducing Khedery’s own credibility as an objective chronicler.
Why not publishing the Khedery article from New York Times instead of commenting the article? Once the article from the New York Times is published then everybody can comment on what he is saying.
Otherwise, the risk for media manipulation is too obvious
@Whistle blower: a link to the article refered to in the Washington Post (not NY Times) has been added.
We have not have rights to re-publish it.
- Editor.
I sent this letter to the Washington Post but it was not published:
Dear Letters' Editor,
Ali Khedery, "Why we stuck with Maliki — and lost Iraq", July 3rd, does not as he claims inform us why the US stuck with Maliki, only who said what. He presents a picture only of conjecture and short-term political considerations. If this were the case, there would not have been an invasion in the first place.
The writer had served the US occupation project for ten years and admits to having brokered the Exxon-KRG oil deal which undermines the integrity of Iraq. Yet, what he finds wrong with US policy was its support for Maliki in 2010, not the occupation. There is no mention of any of the major US decisions undermining the state and paralysing it, and none of Negroponte and the Salvador Option, of the training of torture and murder teams, of the brute force of the US military and mercenaries, and no mention of a flawed constitution and policies driving a wedge between Iraqis.
It is a picture of US innocence, and of Iraqi violence, mistrust and proclivity to dictatorship, symbolised by Maliki; a picture that satisfies an innate imperial urge to blame the native. Khedery even says Maliki destroyed the Iraqi state, implying that the US had built and sustained it. We are invited to believe that Bush invaded Iraq for freedom and democracy, and that the Biden plan was a mere passing thought, not a reality unfolding before us on a sea of blood with oil interests well protected.
Iraqis now find their country a playground for external powers, and themselves sandwiched between a corrupt, sectarian and repressive government, and an opposition that is in collusion with a barbarian gang. But Iraqis are also aware that their current suffering is a legacy of the US invasion and occupation, and US intervention is no more welcome now than it was before.
Dr Kamil Mahdi