Mr. Bush needs to make clear that Americans? patience has all but run out and that he will start bringing the troops home unless Mr. Maliki moves to rein in sectarian bloodletting and Iraqi troops start shouldering more of the burden. Mr. Maliki needs to make Mr. Bush understand Iraq?s full desperation ? and his own desperate political weakness. So long as Baghdad remains in chaos ? and militias are better armed and more motivated than the Iraqi Army ? he has no chance of ending the blood feuds or breaking the cycle of retribution.
This paragraph is itself proof that the Times also does not understand the Facts of Life.
Neither man is in control of anything. Neither man is brutal dictator, which is the only means to seek (and perhaps obtain) such control. Both are dependent upon the cooperation of others, and both have so failed in their tasks that such cooperation has no chance of appearing. They do not deserve cooperation, have not truly sought it, nor done those things that would lead to it.
Maliki owes his power to manipulations by the American government, and is not legitimately an elected official of the Iraqi people. There is, in point of fact, no Iraqi people in the first place, a myth that anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows. You can't form a rational policy based upon such an egregious fiction in any event.
Bush owes his power to heavily manipulated elections in America, including lies about his real character. If the truth about his National Guard duties, and his drug use, had become proper campaign issues (a failure of the Press, including the Times itself), he would have never been elected in the first place.
For the Times to expect either of these men to be capable of leading in the situation that now exists in Iraqi, is to live in fantasy land. As to what can and should be done there, I'll write of that later.
