Maliki and Iraq’s Disaster
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 14th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Maliki and Iraq’s Disaster
David Ignatius, RealClearPolitics
WASHINGTON — The stunning gains this week by Iraq’s Sunni insurgents carry a crucial political message: Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite prime minister of Iraq, is a polarizing sectarian politician who has lost the confidence of his army and nation. He cannot put a splintered Iraq together again, no matter how many weapons the Obama administration sends him. Maliki’s failure has been increasingly obvious since the elections of 2010, when the Iraqi people in their wisdom elected a broader, less-sectarian coalition. But the Obama administration, bizarrely working in tandem with Iran, brokered a…
Our Polarized Democracy
Ruth Marcus, RealClearPolitics
WASHINGTON — “Congressional Democrats were ecstatic,” The New York Times reported the morning after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s unexpected trouncing in his Republican primary. “An informal dinner party at the Georgetown apartment of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, turned into a celebration.” On one level, this reaction is entirely understandable. Cantor’s political shape-shifting and overweening ambition earned him few friends in either party. His cynical willingness to torpedo deals worked out between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner…
