"Maliki Must Go"

I have always thought that Obama is a poor liar. I think it has to do with his deeply held belief that he is a good man, which happens to be one of his strongest political assets. Obama has the ability to convince people -- now, after six years of prevarication, a diminishing percentage of the American electorate -- that he is sincere, that he cares about the common folk, that he is a good man.

Thomas Friedman's POTUS interview is worth sitting through (I made it through about 50 of its 59 minutes) if only to witness Obama lying poorly. The topic of course is foreign policy. Thomas Friedman is the Gray Lady's longtime foreign affairs columnist and a chief propagandist of a facile "Gee whiz, isn't American techno-capitalism the best!" school of thought that underlies a lot of elite liberal thinking.

The interview ranges over all the hot spots: Iraq, Syria, Israel and Palestine, Russia and the Ukraine, China (I didn't make it to the part on China). Friedman begins asking about the situation in Iraq with ISIS. In response, Obama sticks to his administration's well-worn explanation, which can be summarized as "It's all Maliki's fault." The argument goes like this: Maliki, the elected parliamentary leader of Iraq and once the U.S. favorite, has ruled in a "maximalist" quasi-authoritarian manner which has alienated the country's main minority groups, the Kurds and Sunnis, driving the latter into the arms of the bloodthirsty, worse-than-Al-Qaeda jihadi organization, Islamic State. Therefore, in order for the United States, with its unsurpassed military power, to assist Iraqis in defending the territorial integrity of their nation against a horde of Wahhabis, Maliki must go.

While Obama was birthing this line of thought to his helpful midwife Friedman, he got tangled in his own nonsense. And, since he sees himself as a good and honest man, he took a little stumble. The snag in the recitation of the same stale talking points for Obama was when he admitted that the ideology of Islamic State does not appeal broadly to the Sunni masses, that it is a violent fringe group with no solution to the basic problems of jobs and growth. Once he proffered this, you could tell that he immediately realized that he had exposed the false nature of his position regarding Maliki and the spread of IS -- because if IS is a fringe group with no appeal, then having more Sunni politicians heading up government ministries is not going to make a difference one way or another as to why the Salafis are running rampant across two sovereign states, decapitating, crucifying, taking hostages, blowing up religious shrines. So the good man president stumbled on his own bullshit.

The good news is that Islamic State has been pushed back somewhat on its heels. Yesterday the Kurds recaptured towns outside of Erbil, Gwer and Mahmour, thanks to American air support. But apparently, there is a power struggle underway in the Green Zone. Alissa Rubin and Michael Gordon report in "Political Crisis in Iraq Deepens as Leadership Deadline Nears" that

The political crisis deepened in Baghdad on Monday as a deadline approached for naming a new prime minister and the current prime minister appeared on the verge of using military force to guarantee his survival. 

As intensive discussions were underway with Fouad Massoum, the Iraqi president charged with naming a new prime minister, the current premier, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, continued to insist he had the right to form the government because he commanded the largest bloc in the Iraqi Parliament. On Sunday, a defiant Mr. Maliki mustered Iraqi forces in Baghdad’s government center, known as the Green Zone, in a show of force meant to intimidate Mr. Massoum and other leading political figures.

***

The most likely outcome in the current crisis, according to a number of Iraqi political leaders, is that Mr. Massoum will appoint someone else in Mr. Maliki’s bloc who could win support from most of the other Shiites in Parliament as well as from Kurds and Sunnis. 

Even many who are opposed to Mr. Maliki’s coalition appeared ready to accept someone else from inside it. “Really at this point, I think it’s anybody but Maliki,” said a Kurdish politician who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation. 

Whether Mr. Maliki will accept someone else from his bloc in the top spot remains unclear. 

“The risk is, if he clings to power, he will control the country by force,” said another senior Iraqi politician. “This would be a military coup.”

Two questions that I have are 1) why doesn't Massoum let Maliki go ahead and try to form a government (my understanding is that there enough Shiites from the Sadrist bloc to prevent that from happening, assuming the Kurds and Sunnis cannot be bought off to support the great demon they are supposedly dead set against)? and 2) why trumpet the threat of the coup when there is obviously no chance of that? Iran is opposed to Maliki staying on and the real battle-hardened Shiite militias could be expected to line up against any fraction of the Iraqi Army that stayed loyal to Maliki.

As Rubin and Gordon go on to explain:

If Mr. Maliki were to call on the Iraqi Army to back his effort to stay in power, he could face resistance from one or several of the many militia groups that have close ties to political parties. 

“We’re all worried about a coup d'état,” said Gen. Halgurd Hikmet, the chief spokesman for the Kurdish pesh merga. “Maliki has to know that we have two major units of our troops guarding the Parliament and the Defense Ministry,” he said referring to the Kurdish division of the Iraqi Army. 

There are also the forces loyal to the influential Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who oppose Mr. Maliki and are numerous in Baghdad. And there are the fighters of the Badr Corps, who are technically part of the Iraqi Army but remain closely tied to Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament with links to Iran. Whether Badr fighters will back Mr. Maliki or will move against him could help determine whether he survives. 

Whether any of these militias would be deployed is not clear, but the potential for fighting among different factions is real, several people said.

Briefly, before signing off, the Gray Lady takes her first lengthy look at the man of the hour, Islamic State's caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Written by Tim Arango and Eric Scmitt, "U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel" cover no new ground, but it is a useful review of what passes for wisdom about ISIS and al-Baghdadi. Eric Schmitt's presence on the byline should give us pause. He is a reliable government gatekeeper. Nothing is said about the role of the Gulf Sheihkdoms other than that below:

In June 2010, Stratfor published a report on the group that considered its prospects in the wake of the killings of the top leadership. The report stated, “the militant organization’s future for success looks bleak.” 

Still, the report said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq, then an alternative name for Al Qaeda in Iraq, “I.S.I.’s intent to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq has not diminished.” 

The Sunni tribes of eastern Syria and Iraq’s Anbar and Nineveh Provinces have long had ties that run deeper than national boundaries, and ISIS was built on those relationships. Accordingly, as the group’s fortunes waned in Iraq, it found a new opportunity in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria. 

As more moderate Syrian rebel groups were beaten down by the Syrian security forces and their allies, ISIS increasingly took control of the fight, in part on the strength of weapons and funding from its operations in Iraq and from jihadist supporters in the Arab world.

That's it. Sort of begs the question how you go from the Stratfor assessment in 2010 to the caliphate rising in 2014, all almost entirely under the radar.