NYT editorial: The Problem Isn't Maliki: Blaming Maliki rather than Bush is cynical politics

[DeepModem Mom]

Editorial
The Problem Isn’t Mr. Maliki
Published: August 24, 2007

Blaming the prime minister of Iraq, rather than the president of the United States, for the spectacular failure of American policy, is cynical politics, pure and simple. It is neither fair nor helpful in figuring out how to end America’s biggest foreign policy fiasco since Vietnam.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been catastrophic for Iraq ever since he took over from the equally disastrous Ibrahim al-Jaafari more than a year ago. America helped engineer Mr. Jaafari’s removal, only to get Mr. Maliki. That tells you something important about whether this is more than a matter of personalities. Mr. Jaafari, as it happens, was Iraq’s first democratically chosen leader under the American-sponsored constitution.

Continuing in the Jaafari tradition, Mr. Maliki’s government has fashioned Iraqi security forces into an instrument of Shiite domination and revenge, trying to steer American troops away from Shiite militia strongholds and leaving Sunni Arab civilians unprotected from sectarian terrorism. His government’s deep sectarian urges have also been evident in the continuing failure to enact legislation to fairly share oil revenues and the persistence of rules that bar much of the Sunni middle class from professional employment.

Sectarian fracturing even extends to the electricity grid, where armed groups have seized control of key switching stations and refused to share power with Baghdad and other provinces.

The problem is not Mr. Maliki’s narrow-mindedness or incompetence. He is the logical product of the system the United States created, one that deliberately empowered the long-persecuted Shiite majority and deliberately marginalized the long-dominant Sunni Arab minority. It was all but sure to produce someone very like Mr. Maliki, a sectarian Shiite far more interested in settling scores than in reconciling all Iraqis to share power in a unified and peaceful democracy....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/opinion/24fri1.html?hp

[Vincardog]

1. Duh

[The Count]

2. Surprisingly observant for the Ny Times!

[Rageneau]

3. Too bad they can't go back seven years to start telling the truth.

In 2000, had the NYT and WP and major networks told even one-half of the THEN-KNOWN truth about Smirk -- or had they told only one-half as many lies about Gore, our country would not be in the deep, deep ditch it finds itself in today.

Republicans are only half the problem. The rest of it is our predictably pusillanimous media which waits until the barn has burned down before ringing the fire bell.

The media has ALWAYS been conservative-leaning.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Just a note -- I think we should distinguish the NYT's editorial page from its news pages...

and not paint both with the same broad brush. To my knowledge, the editorial page has never supported Bush.

[The Count]

10. True. They are also never on front page - but burried deep inside - like the

paragraphs that tell the truth in articles headlined by BS. I know that there are some good people there (Krugman for one). Unfortunately, the shit envelops it all - making it one pile of murky mud.

[yurbud]

5. they got it half right--but they still claim the Hydrocarbon Law is about dividing oil up fairly

not about giving most of the income to oil companies.

[Zodiak]

6. That was my objection to the article as well

but otherwise it was a fair assessment.

[yurbud]

7. and my objection to Democrats critique of war as well.

[yurbud]

8. this talk of toppling Maliki is part of the pressure to pass the Hydrocarbon Law--do what you are

told or we will throw you over the wall of the Green Zone to your people.

[0007]

9. Egads! This certainly has more authenticity than Judith Miller's B.S.

that the NY Times had no problem laying out!