Puppet. There is a wonderful simplicity to that word, especially as it pertains to our sophomoric efforts at imperialism in Iraq. It’s a word which tells you everything you need to know: that there is a local government, headed by a local guy, but we’re paying all the bills and doing most of the fighting. Naturally we feel entitled to a say in how things are run, but like all the imperial powers that have gone before us our idea of how big our “say” should be is a lot more expansive than the locals’.
Nouri al-Maliki is an American puppet. He was not the first choice but he was selected by the United States government. The government he putatively leads is paid for by U.S. taxpayers and is based on a constitution which was drafted by Americans. The walled compound in which his government primarily exists, the embarrassingly named Green Zone, is defended by American troops. His position in the government, his very station in life, is dependent on Americans; in normal circumstances that might lead him to give us a great deal of deference, but these are not normal days. Instead, in the last few days, he told our government to go fuck itself.
The key issue is an artfully named Status Of Forces Agreement, or SOFA. “Sofa” is an absolutely fantastic term to use when inviting oneself over to somebody else’s country. Reportedly, the United States was asking for fifty-eight permanent military bases (oxymoronically they wouldn’t be truly permanent, just permanently rented), extraterritoriality (which we’ll get to in a moment), and the right to decide whether or not another country (e.g. the Islamic Republic of Iran) had attacked Iraq. It was an offer that implied childlike irresponsibility on the part of the Iraqis and, not surprisingly, they balked.
As often as possible I try to think about the Iraq war from an Iraqi perspective. As someone who has never been there, does not speak the native language, and has only the most cursory of understanding of their history I am inherently crippled on that score. But try I do and in this case I got to wondering, why in the world would Maliki agree to any of this? He isn’t stupid; he knows that there’s an election coming up in the US and that one way or another Bush the Younger is on his way out. (He has his own election to worry about as well but it’s on a much less rigid timeline.) Why would he agree to anything that, for all practical purposes, will cease to operate around 11:30 pm Eastern Time on the fourth of November?
Patrick Cockburn, who is basically Our Man in Baghdad, first reported these idiotic negotiations. Over at Hullabaloo, dday was justifiably thinking that this agreement was primarily a tool for Bush the Younger to bind his successor (whoever that may be) to a deep presence in Iraq by raising the political cost of withdrawal. Instead, the Iraqis rejected our outrageous demands and Bush the Younger was once again humiliated, this time by a puppet government of his own choosing. The ways in which this man has been shamed are almost uncountable.
Bush has said that he’s hopeful the negotiations will restart but at the center of all this is a fact which can be camouflaged and distorted but never fully hidden: the American presence in Iraq is harmful and destructive for all involved. Our demands in the negotiations for the status of forces agreement were merely a naked grasp for legitimacy. The welfare and well being of the Iraqis is barely considered. Our demand for extraterritoriality, in essence immunity from Iraqi courts for American troops and mercenaries, gives away the whole lie. The current Administration just wants to be in Iraq, it gives no thought to the human costs of being there and as a result is clueless enough to expect carte blanche.
There will almost certainly be some kind of an agreement, but it’s going to be a lot different that what the Administration originally wanted. Bush’s leverage over Maliki, already at its lowest point, grows weaker as each new day brings the U.S. election closer. Maliki knows that any agreement with Bush won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on in six months time. He has no incentive to give away anything he doesn’t want and he knows it. Bush is trying to commit his successor to his policies in Iraq but he isn’t going succeed in that effort any more than he’s succeeded at anything else in that country.
