Still no US-Iraq security agreement (yawn)
Alert readers of JWN will have noticed that I haven't posted much recently. A number of reasons for that, among them the desire to sit around with the spouse watching the Olympics many evenings. But also, heck, I so much called it on the US's waning ability to impose its terms on Iraq in the all-important 'security' sphere-- ever since back in early June, and most recently here-- that the subsequent development of the story kind of lost its interest for me.
Apart from the still-horrendous living conditions being endured by Iraq's remarkably hardy people. Suicide bomber story here. Nearly 3,000 cases of measles story here. Nearly a billion litres of raw sewage still-- 65 months after the US invasion-- being pumped into Iraq's waterways: lengthy and well reported story here.
That degree of human misery is only to be expected in a river-system country in which the central mechanisms of regulation and public order have broken down-- or, as in Iraq's case, been wilfully destroyed by a foreign occupying power. In this respect, Iraq is very different from a mountain-dominated country like, say, Lebanon or Georgia. In those countries, people can get along more or less okay without a functioning central government, since they have many more of the inputs for basic self-sufficiency and are not reliant on orderly administration of vulnerable central water systems.
Anyway, in Iraq, it looks as if the national population is already adjusting itself to a very imminent (or, actually, already underway) retraction of US power.
Which, as I've noted elsewhere, is being fueled primarily by Washington's own very urgent force-planning considerations.
I've been trying to ponder why it is has proved to be the case in Iraq that the standard kinds of US blandishments and bribes seem not to have "worked" by persuading PM Maliki and his coterie of close advisers to sign off on the US-proposed security agreements. I've come up with a number of possible hypotheses. One is that the stand blandishments and bribes-- such as promises of large amounts of money deposited in foreign banks, sweetheart business deals for close relatives, or "scholarships" for numerous children and relatives at nice US universities-- may somehow not have the appeal for these people that they would have for, say, an Ahmed Chalabi or a Mohamed Dahlan. Another might be that the Iranians could actually outbid the Americans in terms of blandishments and bribes that would actually be valued by Maliki and his circle. Another might be that these men are true Iraqi patriots. These three explanations are not mutually exclusive, at all.
Also, though I've written about "bribes and blandishments", obviously these are part of a broader spectrum of activities that outside powers might engage in, which could be broadly described as "structuring the incentives" for these men. That would include threats as well as bribes. The US, at an earlier point in the negotiations was "threatening" to hold onto a large chunk of Iraq's oil revenue unless it could get the security agreement it wanted out of Maliki. But even that threat appeared not to work.
An interesting world we live in.
Excellent. Your diversions made you even sharper. And all of our fruitless clicks on an unchanging JWT still go your bottom line (ha).
As for why Maliki and the parliament have not been bought off, you should factor into your thinking the fact that Iraq has something not found in most of the West--a moral authority. His name is Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini al-Sistani. Moqtada al-Sadr serves somewhat the same function and is studying in Iran to boost his credentials. My guess is that Iraq's politicians are as corrupt as any, but on the big issues such as sovereignty and oil wealth, they must heed the religious authorities. Frankly, I'm pretty amazed, because I have not seen anything like it elsewhere in the Arab world. Of course, Sunnis don't have anyone with the religious stature of a Grand Ayatollah. It's a fundamental difference between Shi'a and Sunni.
Now compare that to the United States, where a widely known religious leader like Pat Robertson can cynically call for the assassination of the freely elected President of Venezuela, who happens standing in the way of oil companies' profits. Though there are many highly ethical religious leaders in the United States, many of those with the widest following also seem to be the most corrput.