Donuts And Politics

Ah, now that primary season is over, there really hasn’t been much happening. Sure, you have the daily yapping between the campaigns, but in the dog days of summer, you can see my blogging has become a bit sparse. I am also facing deadlines with my current curriculum job and the distinct possibility of moving soon (still working that out). But, I had to post this today, from an article on Slate:

The stab from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki turned into a comedy routine. Maliki stated this week that he would not sign any treaty allowing U.S. armed forces to remain on his nation’s soil—the current accord, known as a Status of Forces Agreement, expires at the end of this month—unless it includes a timetable for their withdrawal.

 

Obama has called for just such a timetable. McCain has opposed one, famously saying that a substantial number of U.S. combat troops might need to stay in Iraq for another 100 years.

 

When asked about Maliki’s statement, McCain told reporters that it had been mistranslated—to which Maliki responded that, no, the English version was correct. At that point, some of McCain’s supporters said that the prime minister wasn’t serious, that he’d been forced by political constituencies to demand a timetable. Maliki again insisted that he meant what he’d said. (Even if he was caving to political pressures, one could infer that this suggests a majority of Iraqis and their major parties want us to commit to getting out in the not-too-distant future.)

 

It’s a rather awkward situation for McCain, who did publicly say four years ago at the Council on Foreign Relations that if an elected government of Iraq asked us to leave, “I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave,” adding, “I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.”

 

Obama also got a boost this week from reports in the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz that Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told top officials of the Israeli Defense Forces that the United States would not give them a “green light” to launch airstrikes on Iran.

 

Obama has said that the situation in Iran—the continued enrichment of uranium, the recent test-firing of missiles, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s persistently belligerent rhetoric—calls for a full-court diplomatic press. This means economic pressure but also direct talks. Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have said much the same thing in public, noting that an attack would merely delay, not halt, Iran’s nuclear program and that Iranian retaliation to an airstrike could do far greater damage—especially economic—to the United States and its allies.