Which presidents? Why those in Iraq and the US of A, naturally. One is Jalal Talabani, the President of Iraq, who went to Teheran yesterday with hat in hand begging for help:
TEHRAN — Iraqi President Jalal Talabani arrived Monday for two days of talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, admitting that Iraq was “desperately in need of help” to quell escalating insurgent attacks.
Talabani’s trip had been delayed for three days because the Baghdad airport was closed in the wake of the bombings in the capital on Thursday
It must be tough when you can’t get a flight out of Baghdad for three days, even when you are the titular head of its sovereign government, because you’re afraid of flying in the middle of a combat zone.
As for that other desperate president, Mr. Bush has been making appeals to his Arab friends (bet you can’t guess who those might be) for assistance with regards to the “Civil War that Must Not be Named”:
(cont.)
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are traveling to Jordan this week for talks that are to include Iraq’s prime minister and a number of Sunni Arab leaders but exclude the Iranians and Syrians, despite the influence they wield in Iraq and Lebanon.
So what exactly is Bush asking his “Arab friends” (make that “Sunni Arab friends”) to do with regard to the disaster he created in Iraq? Only the impossible, it seems. He wants them to separate a Shi’ite political leader from his base of supporters:
When Bush and Rice arrive in Amman on Wednesday, they will try to enlist help from Sunni Arab leaders to try to rein in the violence in Iraq by putting pressure on Sunni insurgents. That was part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s message to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during a brief visit on Saturday, administration officials said, and Bush will repeat that entreaty with King Abdullah II of Jordan, as will Rice when she meets for talks with Persian Gulf foreign ministers at the Dead Sea on Thursday and Friday.
Specifically, the United States wants Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt to work to drive a wedge between the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has been behind many of the Shiite reprisal attacks in Iraq, a senior administration official said. That would require getting the predominantly Sunni Arab nations to work to get moderate Sunni Iraqis to support Maliki, a Shiite. That would theoretically give Maliki the political strength necessary to take on Sadr’s Shiite militias.
I suppose this must be one of Condoleezza Rice’s brilliant ideas, because it sure doesn’t sound like one of Cheney’s. He’s far more likely to advocate nuking Baghdad (low yield tactical nukes only, of course) than he is to come up with a strategy whereby we ask our friends to bail us out of trouble.
And let’s be clear about what Rice is asking/begging the Kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan to do on our behalf. She wants them to influence moderate Sunnis in Iraq to support Prime Minister Maliki so that he can then stand up to his largest and most powerful supporter, Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia, the Mahdi Army. She (and Bush I suppose) apparently believe these moderate Sunni leaders, merely by swearing allegiance to Maliki, will somehow magically convince him to abandon the people who put him in power.
That she believes any Iraqi Sunni politician in his right mind would consider such a proposal is beyond me. Lately the few Sunni political leaders who have joined Maliki’s “government” (and I use that term very loosely) are running away from him as fast as they can. In the wake of the ever escalating violence, in which Sunni insurgents attack Shi’ites and Shi’a militias retaliate against Sunnis, can anyone blame them? Maliki’s government cannot prevent the Sunni insurgents from killing Shi’ites, and he can’t (or won’t) rein in the Mahdi army from killing Sunnis.
Maliki is essentially a puppet, with little power to affect the situation in Iraq. He retains his position solely because the American government wishes to maintain the fiction of an independent, democratically elected government in Iraq. Without our troops in Baghdad what little authority he can assert would vanish. To believe that a few Sunni “moderates” publicly acclaiming their support for his government would permit him to challenge the power of the Shi’a militias is ludicrous on its face. Maliki will not abandon Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia unless he suddenly develops a desire to commit suicide.
But Rice is just as deluded if she believes that Saudi Arabia and Jordan would agree to sign on to such a preposterous plan. Oh, they might make some conciliatory public gestures on Bush’s behalf, calling on the parties to put aside their differences and unite behind the Iraqi government, but I seriously doubt their support would amount to anything more than that. What little influence they might be able to exert on Iraq’s Sunni political leadership is unlikely to be employed to bail out Maliki.
Which leads me to this question: Is the Bush administration so out of touch that they can’t realize that this is an utterly moronic strategy for effecting change in Iraq, or are they merely cynical, going through the motions merely to appear to be doing something — anything — to stem the violence in Iraq? Or are they both delusional and cynical?
In any event, Iran’s power and influence in Iraq will only continue to grow in the face of the feckless and intransigent ineptitude which is the sum total of Bush’s strategery for that beleaguered country.
“We have no limits in offering our help to our brothers in Iraq, the Iraqi nation and the Iraqi government,” Ahmadinejad told the news media. “If there is peace and stability in Iraq, there is peace and stability in Iran, and there would be peace and stability in the region.”
Talabani responded: “Iraq is in need of any kind of help that is offered by Iran to fight terrorism and to restore security. We are desperately in need of help from our neighbors and brothers in Iran. We would like to expand our relations in every field with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Talabani’s delegation included Iraq’s foreign minister, oil minister, education minister, science and technology minister and industry minister.