Who influences whose elections?
In 2004, when the US occupation authorities in Iraq went along with Ayatollah Sistani's insistence that his country be allowed to elect its new leaders, the assumption among the Bushists was that they could hope to pretty easily sway the results of those elections. In the event, after the final round of "purple finger moments" was held in December 2005, it took the ouccpiers a long time to be able to find the one person capable of filling their specs for the job of PM, namely that he be (a) pliable enough to go along with most of their demands, but also (b) representative enough of the Daawa-Sadrist majority that had emerged from the election that his leadership was not immediately called into question.
Eventually, after many months of searching, they found their man. Nouri (Kamal) al-Maliki.
Now, the tables have turned. Maliki has told Der Spiegel outright that his strong preference is for Barack Obama's fixed-term plan for a US withdrawal from Iraq.
The Spiegel account said,
- When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned." He then continued: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."
Okay, I know Obama's position on withdrawal is not yet good or complete enough, as I wrote here just last week. But still, Maliki's statement is another item of good news for Obama's campaign.
As for Obama himself, he is now in Afghanistan, where he's visiting as part of a "congressional delegation", along with Sens/ Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed.
"Barack Obama's fixed-term plan for a US withdrawal from Iraq."
Helena, as you know, Obama's plan is not for a withdrawal, but for a downsizing of the occupation. Calling it a withdrawal is misleading. The occupation will continue under Obama's plan.
... the assumption among the Bushists was that they could hope to pretty easily sway the results of those elections ...
The hostile writer is already halfway down the treacherous slope towards "¡Bush Lied!" with that inaccuracy.
In fact the Occupyin’ Party made no such assumption. They never thought far enough ahead to hope that swayin’ would prove unnecessary, let alone that it would be necessary but not difficult. One cannot be said to ‘hope’ for a thing that one blithely takes for granted.
The assumption was that the Party's subjects in the former Iraq would vote right automatically if left to themselves. "Think of President Saddám Hussein and the Ba‘th, O you inky-fingered neo-liberateds! Then think of Sultan Jerry Bremer and George XLIII, then vote!" -- something like that, it musta been, more or less. As if New Baghdád were still Cakewalk City, don't you know? True, the inhabitants had not turned out spontaneously on V-IQ Day to pelt the troops of AEI and GOP and DoD with kisses and chrysanthemums, yet surely if they scheduled a specific day for the electoral demonstration of gratitude, that deficiency would be remedied at last? [*]
(How could so very simple a non-plan possibly miscarry? Perhaps Prof. B. Lewis might explain what went wrong?)
Happy days.
___
[*] I hold what might be called a Sweet Puppy Theory of AEI and GOP. (DoD is rather different.)
To this day, Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology "know in their hearts" that inhabitants of the former Iraq ought to love their neoliberators a good deal more than most appear to.
How are Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology to be rewarded for all their heroic and disinterested sacrifices? With Premier Maliki unterstützt Obamas Abzugsplan? Egad!
Naturally their feelin’s are hurt, just a little.