Iraqi Sunnis: “We Quit”
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, IraqApparently they won’t a longer vacation?
BAGHDAD – Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab political bloc announced its withdrawal from the government Wednesday, undermining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s efforts to seek reconciliation among the country’s rival factions. [...]Rafaa al-Issawi, a leading member of the Front, said at a news conference in the capital that the bloc’s six Cabinet ministers would submit their resignations later in the day.
Al-Issawi said the decision to pull out from the government followed what he called al-Maliki’s failure to respond to a set of demands put forward by the Accordance Front last week, when it gave the prime minister seven days to meet its demands. The ultimatum expired Wednesday.
Among the demands: a pardon for security detainees not charged with specific crimes, the disbanding of militias and the participation of all groups represented in the government in dealing with security issues.
How big is this faction? Well, it’s the Accordance Front, and they apparently have 44 of the 275 seats in Parliament, so this is a BIG deal since that represents more than 15% saying “buh-bye.”
Folks, they’re done. It doesn’t matter if we’re making gains on the ground. If the government can’t get their act together, there’s really no point beyond making us feel better about being over there.
Key quote…
“We had hoped that the government would respond to these demands or at least acknowledge the failure of its policies, which led Iraq to a level of misery it had not seen in modern history. But its stand did not surprise us at all,” he said, reading from a prepared statement.
Indeed.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 1st, 2007 at 4:01 pm
“Folks, they’re done. It doesn’t matter if we’re making gains on the ground. If the government can’t get their act together, there’s really no point beyond making us feel better about being over there.”
I’m torn on this matter. I would like to see funding completely cut on the war entirely. But like any American I know that by completely cutting funds to the war we would be putting our soldiers in danger, but then again, they are already in danger.
The way I see it–America is not going to “win” this war. The idea that we even use the word “win” in situations like this is disturbing to say the least.
On the other hand, I can understand the difficulty Iraqis are having in forming a “democracy.” We must remember our own democracy and how long and hard it was to create. It took many years and a great deal of bloodshed. Expecting a society that has
a completely different culture and priorities than that of our own to cobble together a “working” democracy in the middle of hell isn’t very fair.
This is why “preemptive” wars aren’t wise. We have a hell of a mess on our hands. Just wait and see the historian account of this war 20 years from now, with hindsight I guarantee Bush’s cute little war is going to be viewed in anything but a derisive lens. But then again, you still have “muddy boot SOldiers” to this day that claim Vietnam was the “good fight” and an admirable cause, if we would have only stuck it out a little bit longer, we could have beat them communist and “saved” our South Vietnamese freedom loving brethren from themselves. Unfortunately, we only had to kill 2 million of them to “save” them.
And today? We are trading with them. Remember? the enemy? I guess they weren’t the “devils” we made them out to be, after all, they are good enough to trade with right? LOL! can you sense the logic? It’s overwhelming.
August 1st, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Correction. I meant to say this current Iraq war [will] be viewed through a derisive lens.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
A parliamentary system is somewhat foreign to most americans and tends to lead to overreaction when disturbances that come naturally in that form of government happen. The fact that the government may have to be reorganized isn’t particularly good but is certainly not the end of the world. Iraq has currently had fewer governments fall than the post WW II Italian average, for example. More recently, Romania has had several reshuffles of governing coalitions during a particular mandate without the world coming to an end.
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
TM,
The difference is that Italy, although in the 60’s and 70’s dealt with terrorism, did not have 20 to 30 percent of its population in open insurrection against it. In Iraq, not only is the insurgency pretty large, and competent, but that government also has to deal with violent disputes between al Sadr’s Mahdi army and the badr Organization. Add to that, the Kurds in the north, who have recently openly stated that they are growing weary with the impasse in Baghdad and will not long pursue to retake Kirkuk through a peaceful political process and you have far more than just a political problem in a parliamentary system.
Justin is right,
Unless this changes, and rapidly (unlikely given the month-long recess the Iraqi parliament just took), any gains our military gains on the ground and pays for in blood, will not matter. I’m not saying withdraw now, but we should begin thinking of a new strategy given the lack of commitment we’ve received from the Iraqis.