I go out of town for the weekend, before I leave I put my Sunday post (about how news in July doesn’t matter) in the hopper to be automatically posted. Then something that might actually matter, Nouri al-Maliki all but endorsing Barack Obama’s Iraq plan, happens on Saturday, when I’m unable to follow it. Ah well, coincidences are fun.
I could back off my point from Sunday, or I could declare this the exception that proves the rule, but I’m not going to. For while Maliki’s statement certainly qualifies as news I don’t think it’s going to have much bearing on the politics or the outcome of the election. (dday over a Hullabaloo wrote a good blow-by-blow recount of the initial dispute and eventual confirmation of the statement.) Every single story or development this time of year is viewed through the lens of “McCain vs Obama” (who does it help/who does it hurt?), in this case the obvious winner would seem to be Obama, but the fact that we can draw a conclusion about which campaign is helped doesn’t make the help significant.
First, let’s remove the blinders of the American election and consider the statement on its own. Maliki is an Iraqi; he doesn’t understand American politics anymore than other foreigners understand Iraqi politics. I don’t presume to speak for Maliki, but clearly he recognizes the fact that our election is going to have a real impact on his country and he wants to minimize the effects. He has no interest in trusting the future of his country (i.e. American involvement in Iraq) to the whim of American voters, and why should he? His pro-timetable statement was a way to hedge his bets by trying to take Iraq policy off the table as a campaign issue.
Imagine what this looks like from Maliki’s position. He’s got his own election to worry about and he cannot keep his fractions coalition together if he’s seen as kowtowing to an open ended American presence. He doesn’t want to risk his future on a foreign election occurring in a foreign country and being played by foreign rules. That’s a perfectly understandable position and when he endorses a timetable for withdrawal he’s getting it out there that it doesn’t matter to him who the next occupant of 1600 is because he is the man who gets to decide when American involvement is no longer appreciated.
Maliki is, in effect, preemptively calling the bluff of a McCain Administration. If there is any truth at all to Iraqi sovereignty, and both Bush and McCain have at least said that there is, then the continued presence of American troops in Iraq has to be agreed upon by both sides. Fresh off of what must have been frustrating negotiations with the Bush Administration over the future of America’s role in Iraq, Maliki has no desire to repeat the process with McCain. The Bush Administration, which will be out of power in less than six months, was treating Maliki like a disobedient vassal; he doesn’t want to get into a similar situation with a McCain Administration that would be in office for four years.
The McCain campaign, incompetent as ever, doesn’t seem to understand this. They’re caught between the rhetorical nonsense of time “tables” and time “horizons”. What they ought to be calling it is “victory”. Maliki has declared victory for us. The stated goal of this war, a stable and democratic Iraq, will have been achieved if an elected Iraqi government can ask us to leave.
McCain’s problem is that the stated goal is not the real goal. The real goal is, and always has been, a pliant Iraq; “stable” and “democratic” are nice things to talk about, but they are secondary objectives. McCain is being handed his own stated goals for victory by Maliki, all he has to do is say yes, but he can’t because it would mean abandoning Iraq as an American base and that is something near and dear to him.
Maliki isn’t willing to be the damsel in distress, waiting for his two suitors to fight their duel so he can get fucked by the winner. He likely cares very little whether McCain or Obama wins; he does care - a lot - about assuring Iraqi sovereignty and that means being able to tell the Americans to get out. That Maliki is now on record as preferring a timetable adds to Obama’s Iraq arguments, but since most of the weight is already on his side anyway the difference between the world before the statement and after isn’t very great. It makes the Republican position on Iraq a little less coherent, but as it was already a messy tangle of contradictions the actual effect is probably negligible.
Ultimately, Maliki’s statement won’t matter for the simple reason that no one really gives a shit what the Iraqis think. Neither McCain nor Obama has any doubts about his ability to pursue his preferred Iraq policy regardless of Iraqi concerns. Candidate McCain certainly believes that President McCain would be able to strong arm the Iraqis into accepting a longer term commitment from the US just as Candidate Obama certainly believes that President Obama would be able to withdraw troops over any Iraqi objections.
The Obama campaign can certainly make some political hay out of this, but since the war is already massively unpopular, what difference does it make? Are there a lot of truly undecided voters out there who were waiting for an Iraqi point of view? Are there voters out there who think American imposed timetables are unacceptable but Iraqi imposed timetables are just fine? Please. If Obama loses the debate about the war it won’t be because of anything Maliki says or does, it will be because of things Obama says or does.
