Decius wrote:

adam wrote:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday ordered the lifting of joint U.S.-Iraqi military checkpoints around the Shiite militant stronghold of Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad -- another apparent move to assert his authority with the Americans and appeal to his Shiite support base.

*raised eyebrows*
ungrateful is as ungrateful does

I think he has to assert his independence or the Iraqis will not take him seriously. The Iraqi government ought to be a voice that Americans hear, and that occaisonally disagrees with Americans. If not, it is irrelevant.

I agree he has to assert his independance but I think this is just a demonstration that he is a figurehead and, almost but not quite, a mouthpiece of Muqtada al-Sadr rather than a figure able or seeking to unify the country as a democratic and tolerant of diversity society. My objection was not that he chooses rightly from the point of view of Iraqi domestic opinion to assert his independance but his choice of issues upon which to push.
I do think he is ungrateful to the west and I think if he believed in western values he would support a more vigorous approach to the Mahdi Army militia and other Shia militia. I am not remotely convinced the Iraqis do take him seriously because he is not his own man. He's not pro-Western enough to introduce real change nor partisan enough to satisfy Muqtada al-Sadr. His government is propped up by principally American and some British lives and body parts. When Western troops leave, as seeems inevitable, all vestiges - the thin charade of an Iraqi political center - will collapse and al-Maliki will go with it.
The article recently on Fake News and Iraqi satire on TV reminded me mostly of people like Brecht and Weill and the last days of the Weimar republic.
My remarks were born of bitterness. I read articles about the troops like the Doonesbury one or by Bob Herbert and al-Maliki's attitude seemed at that moment, by not supporting the search for that US soldier, an act of betrayal. Part of me wants to say to all Iraqis who don't want peace "a plague on both your houses". I think we have to leave and I think in a few years we'll have to go back in to start picking up the pieces and I hate the loss of lives and the destruction of able bodies that is happening now and will happen when we're forced to go back in. We will leave and there will be al'Qaeda training camps. There will be chaos and our hand will be forced. I am angry that no one has stepped forward with the desire and ability to hold Iraq together. After the years of suffering under Saadam Iraq is spiralling into violence and chaos and we are powerless to prevent it.
The stupidity of it sickens me. I don't ask that al-Maliki is grateful to the American government or the American people. I expect him to be grateful to the GIs - as you would be to a fireman pulling you out of a burning building.

RE: U.S. Obeys Order to Abandon Checkpoints - New York Times