Maine Owl

Politics-charged announcement follows summer filled with assertion of Iraqi government power

By any stretch, 8,000 is a modest draw down:

President Bush: Here is the bottom line: While the enemy in Iraq is still dangerous, we have seized the offensive, and Iraqi forces are becoming increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight. As a result, we have been able to carry out a policy of "return on success" ? reducing American combat forces in Iraq as conditions on the ground continue to improve.

Predictably, both McCain and Obama think their own ideas about Iraq are vindicated. The design, however, clearly is for Bush to help McCain get the upper hand because the announcement reinforces his "maverick" image in being an early "surge" promoter.

But the "surge" is far from the only or even any reason at all it looks like Iraq is quieter, for now. Patrick Cockburn offered in a short piece last week parts of the story missing from all the American political narratives:

How the Bush Administration is Helping McCain:
The Fake U.S. Victory in Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN

Much of what the White House is now doing is done to help the Republicans in the presidential election. The aim is to give the impression that Iraq has finally come right for the US and victory is finally in its grasp. The surge is promoted as the strategy by which the tide was turned and it is true that the Sunni uprising against the US occupation has largely ended.

But it has done so for reasons that have little to do with the surge or American actions of any kind. Crucial to the success of the government against the Mahdi Army has been the support of Iran. It is they who arranged for the Shia militiamen to go home.

Obama, for his part, pointed out today the money sink-hole the "wrong" war in Iraq will continue to be:

Obama: We will continue to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq while the Iraqi government sits on a $79 billion surplus. In the absence of a timetable to remove our combat brigades, we will continue to give Iraq's leaders a blank check instead of pressing them to reconcile their differences. So the President's talk of "return on success" is a new name for continuing the same strategic mistakes that have dominated our foreign policy for over 5 years.

I find it unseemly for Obama (and other politicians like both Susan Collins and Tom Allen) to take the handy course of whipping the Iraqis over their treasury, seeing how U.S.-run contractors and quislings have stolen Iraq blind over those five years. I'd be more more impressed if he acknowledged the death, destruction, and displacement the Iraqi people have suffered over these years and promised that his administration would get the American boot off of Iraq's neck.

Note & update: Earlier in the summer I had been concerned about the onerous so-called "Status of Forces" agreement and colonial oil proposal the Bush Administration had been attempting to impose on Iraq. An excellent piece describing what had ensued over the summer to cause the Bush Administration to back off is HERE:

Is the Maliki Government Jumping Off
the American Ship of State?
Michael Schwartz , TomDispatch.com , Sep 8, 2008

In the past few weeks, the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made it all too clear that, in the long run, it has little inclination to remain "aligned with U.S. interests" in the region. In fact, we may be witnessing a classic "tipping point," a moment when Washington's efforts to dominate the Middle East are definitively deep-sixed.

The client state that the Bush administration has spent so many years and hundreds of billions of dollars creating, nurturing, and defending has shown increasing disloyalty and lack of gratitude, as well as an ever stronger urge to go its own way. Under the pressure of Iraqi politics, Maliki has moved strongly in the direction of a nationalist position on two key issues: the continuing American occupation of the country and the future of Iraqi oil. In the process, he has sought to distance his government from the Bush administration and to establish congenial relationships, if not an outright alliance, with Washington's international adversaries, including the Bush administration's mortal enemy, Iran.

Hmmm. The ungrateful wretches. It won't be easy for them under either McCain or Obama, but it may not be long before the Iraqis themselves cast off that American boot.