Right Side of the Rainbow

Ralph Peters explains well the nature of the American dilemma in Iraq:

The administration and Congress have to face a fundamental question: Which result is more important — preserving Iraq as a unified state with a facade of democratic government, or protecting our own national security interests?

The two priorities now conflict. Really taking on our enemies — not least Moqtada al-Sadr and his legion of thugs — would require us to defy the elected Baghdad government we sponsored. To kill those who need killing to pacify Iraq and re-establish our ascendancy would mean that we would again become an outright occupying power.

Not that it really matters, but doing what it would take to win would also tear up our permission slip from the United Nations.

On the other hand, the prospect of endlessly shoring up a corrupt, divided Iraqi government unwilling to protect its own citizens, and to do so at a cost in American blood, would be a far more immoral course than ordering our troops to kill the butchers who’ve been assassinating them and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Let’s hope that President Bush will make it hurt-so-bad-he-can’t-sit-down clear to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at their meeting in Jordan today that Allah helps those who help themselves. Our soldiers and Marines can’t continue to serve as human shields for a corrupt, feckless government. [Emphasis added.]

So did the president make that clear to al-Maliki? MSNBC:

Bush pledged Thursday that U.S. troops will remain in Iraq to strengthen the authority of [the] embattled prime minister and said the two agreed to speed a turnover of security responsibility to Iraqi forces.

“One of his frustrations with me is that he believes that we’ve been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people,” Bush said. “Today we had a meeting that will accelerate the capacity for the prime minister to do the hard work necessary to help stop this violence.”

The two also agreed in high-stakes talks here Thursday that Iraq should not be partitioned into separate, semiautonomous zones.

“The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence,” Bush said after he and the Iraqi prime minister met for nearly two and a half hours.

“I agree,” Bush said. [Emphasis added.]

So, unless I’m missing something, the president just committed us to support 1) a unified Iraq, which seems … unlikely and 2) Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government, which is beholden to Muqtada al-Sadr, who is the leading instigator of the sectarian violence in Iraq.

I suppose the plan is to get al-Maliki in a position, eventually, to confront al-Sadr and others. al-Maliki himself says his forces will be ready to assume responsibility for Iraq’s security by June 2007. Does anybody believe that?

The consequences of American failure in Iraq would be profound, even catastrophic. And yet, it seems the president is still flailing about.

Technorati tags: Iraq, war+in+Iraq, al-Maliki