| And so it begins: the NYT now works to give Bambi the cover he needs to be the 'victor' of Iraq. This is the first of what will be many efforts to rewrite history. |
| That'll be funny, in a tragic sort of way, when Qaeda, sensing the return of Jimmy Carter, sets up shop again. A couple Golden Domes blown and then Tater-flavored Shiites will be hunting Sunnis, who'll soon be back to chopping people's heads off on video for fun and glory. And that will be Bush's fault, since B.O. tried to make peace and Bush didn't leave the genuine conditions necessary for it. |
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Here's a story you don't see very often. Iraq's highest court told the Iraqi Parliament last Monday that it had no right to strip one of its members of immunity so he could be prosecuted for an alleged crime: visiting Israel for a seminar on counterterrorism. The Iraqi justices said the Sunni lawmaker, Mithal al-Alusi, had committed no crime and told the Parliament to back off.
That's not all. The Iraqi newspaper Al-Umma al-Iraqiyya carried an open letter signed by 400 Iraqi intellectuals, both Kurdish and Arab, defending Alusi. That takes a lot of courage and a lot of press freedom.
| The sort of freedom the NYT doesn't honor here at home. |
I can't imagine any other Arab country today where independent judges would tell the government it could not prosecute a parliamentarian for visiting Israel -- and intellectuals would openly defend him in the press.
| Wonder if this sort of thing would have happened if Saddam were still around and in charge ... |
In the case of Iraq, though, the federal high court, in a unanimous decision, vacated the Parliament's rescinding of Alusi's immunity, with the decision delivered personally by Chief Justice Medhat al-Mahmoud. The decision explained that although a 1950s-era law made traveling to Israel a crime punishable by death, Iraq's new Constitution establishes freedom to travel. Therefore the Parliament's move was "illegal and unconstitutional because the current Constitution does not prevent citizens from traveling to any country in the world," Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, spokesman for the court, told The Associated Press. The judgment even made the Parliament speaker responsible for the expenses of the court and the defense counsel!
I don't think it's reasonable to expect Iraq to have relations with Israel anytime soon, but the fact that it may be developing an independent judiciary is good news. It's a reminder of the most important reason for the Iraq war: to try to collaborate with Iraqis to build progressive politics and rule of law in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, a region that stands out for its lack of consensual politics and independent judiciaries. And it's a reminder that a decent outcome may still be possible in Iraq, especially now that the Parliament has endorsed the U.S.-Iraqi plan for a 2011 withdrawal of American troops.
| Brought to you by the faith of George Bush and the American soldiers. Let's acknowledge that up-front, since Tom Friedman certainly won't. |
Al Qaeda has not been fully defeated in Iraq; suicide bombings are still an almost daily reality. But it has been dealt a severe blow, which I believe is one reason the Muslim jihadists -- those brave warriors who specialize in killing women and children and defenseless tourists -- have turned their attention to softer targets like India. Just as they tried to stoke a Shiite-Sunni civil war in Iraq, and failed, they are now trying to stoke a Hindu-Muslim civil war in India.
| If we believe that al-Qaeda, L-e-T, etc are all one organization, loosely tied but cooperating where possible, that would be true. Who's been taking them on all these years, Tom? Who's been going after them? The Spanish? The Germans? The Belgians, those master arbiters of universal jurisdiction for 'crimes against humanity'? The mighty Uruguayans? |
If Iraq can keep improving -- still uncertain -- and become a place where Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites can write their own social contract and live together with a modicum of stability, it could one day become a strategic asset for the United States in the post-9/11 effort to promote different politics in the Arab-Muslim world.
How so? Iraq is a geopolitical space that for the last three decades of the 20th century was dominated by a Baathist dictatorship, which, though it provided a bulwark against Iranian expansion, did so at the cost of a regime that murdered tens of thousands of its own people and attacked three of its neighbors.
| So in other words, Tom Friedman is a neo-con ... |
In 2003, the United States, under President Bush, invaded Iraq to change the regime.
| Remember why? Not just to remove an odious regime but to prevent that regime from using its money, power and influence to push yet more terrorism on the civilized world. |
Terrible postwar execution and unrelenting attempts by Al Qaeda to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war turned the Iraqi geopolitical space into a different problem -- a maelstrom of violence for four years, with U.S. troops caught in the middle. A huge price was paid by Iraqis and Americans. This was the Iraq that Barack Obama ran against.
| Not exactly: Barack Obama didn't complain much at all about the 'unrelenting attempts by Al Qaeda to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war'. He didn't even complain about our 'terrible postwar execution'. Even if we had done everything right in 2004 and 2005, and even if al-Qaeda had been even more the monsters they have certainly been, Obama would have wanted us out of Iraq. He still wants us out of Iraq, and he's going to remove us whether or not Iraq is ready. All the 'realism' that Friedman offers, and that the center and center-left in this country will editorialize over, won't change that. Bambi needs to have a quick withdrawal to give the hard-left in this country something. And to be clear, it's what he believes. |
In the last year, though, the U.S. troop surge and the backlash from moderate Iraqi Sunnis against Al Qaeda and Iraqi Shiites against pro-Iranian extremists have brought a new measure of stability to Iraq.
| Don't forget the counter-insurgency strategy, the new leadership, and the resolute stand by George Bush. |
There is now, for the first time, a chance -- still only a chance -- that a reasonably stable democratizing government, though no doubt corrupt in places, can take root in the Iraqi political space.
| That's pretty much a given now. The Sunnis have to cooperate or be completely marginalized, the Kurds have to cooperate or be left to the tender mercies of the Turks, and the Shi'a have to cooperate or be left unstable and ripe for the picking by Iran (or Saudi Arabia). So they'll work together in a more or less stable government. Obama doesn't have to do anything to get there, this is what he's being given. |
That is the Iraq that Obama is inheriting. It is an Iraq where we have to begin drawing down our troops -- because the occupation has gone on too long and because we have now committed to do so by treaty -- but it is also an Iraq that has the potential to eventually tilt the Arab-Muslim world in a different direction.
| The difference, of course, is that when we withdraw over the next couple of years, we'll be doing so having completed our mission (assuming Bambi doesn't totally screw it up). That's the important point that folks like Friedman don't seem to get. |
I'm sure that Obama, whatever he said during the campaign, will play this smart.
| I wouldn't be sure of that at all. He was perfectly willing to pull our troops out before when it meant genocide and a victory for both al-Qaeda and Iran. There's no reason at all for anyone to think that Bambi will play it 'smart' now. |
He has to avoid giving Iraqi leaders the feeling that Bush did -- that he'll wait forever for them to sort out their politics -- while also not suggesting that he is leaving tomorrow, so they all start stockpiling weapons.
If he can pull this off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and the Democrats could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it. Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic Party's national security credentials than that.
| Let's remember that the Democratic Party -- the House, the Senate, the MSM, the true believers, and the Kos Kiddies, all of them -- pushed defeat. They wanted us to lose. They did everything they could to make us lose. A less resolute president would have knuckled under. The Democrats deserve no credit whatsoever for the coming victory, and it is necessary for the public to be reminded of that. |
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