by Frank James
Morning news reports contained plenty speculation that President Bush was distancing himself from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki since the president announced frustration yesterday with the Iraqi government’s failure to be further along.
But in today’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars today, the president sought to squelch that speculation.
Said Bush:
Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him. And it’s not up to politicians in Washington, D.C. to say whether he will remain in his position — that is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy, and not a dictatorship.
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That was a presidential shot at Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who on his return from Iraq earlier this week, called for Iraqis to replace Maliki who many in Washington view as ineffectual.Brigadier Gen. John Johns (ret.) wasn’t impressed by the president’s restated commitment to Maliki. Johns was one of several military experts brought together by the progressive National Security Network to critique Bush’s speech.
“… The president is good about praising someone right before he fires them so I would say this is not really going to make any difference,” Johns said.
“Maliki could end up like Rumsfeld, huh?” said Lawrence Korb, a former Reagan era Assistant Defense Secretary who was also on the call. It was a reference to Bush’s public support for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld right before he was shown the door following last November’s elections
“That’s right,” Johns said.
Or like former FEMA director Michael “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie” Brown, someone could have added.
Johns’s larger point was that Bush’s support wouldn’t make a difference because the Iraqi government was handed an impossible mission by the U.S. in his view, that of creating a functional, self-sustaining government. That’s impossible because of the real sectarian fissures in Iraq, he said.
“The fact of the matter is Iraq is ungovernable. It is impossible for any government to hold that together. That should be readily apparent to anyone who seriously looks at” the situation.
(Photo by Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images)