Richard WarnickIraq: ‘The government is unable to govern’
Shh. This is a secret. The Iraqi government is dysfunctional, and hasn’t been able to govern. The country is in the hands of sectarian militias. You didn’t hear this from me, I’ll deny it.
From Bob Woodward in the Washington Post: on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a conference table in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, and heard CIA Director Michael V. Hayden deliver the following assessment of the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki:
Hayden said “the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible,” adding that he could not “point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around,” according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.
“The government is unable to govern,” Hayden concluded. “We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function.”
“The levers of power are not connected to anything,” he said, adding: “We have placed all of our energies in creating the center, and the center cannot accomplish anything.”
“Our leaving Iraq would make the situation worse,” Hayden said. “Our staying in Iraq may not make it better. Our current approach without modification will not make it better.”
This is what our national leaders know and are being careful not to tell us. But reports from Iraq are clear: there is no functioning central government. Look at the example of Basra, Iraq’s second city. Or Kurdistan, which is functionally an independent nation and about to fight a war with Turkey.
It’s not possible to have a legitimate government under foreign occupation. In fact, Iraq is number two on the list of failed states, right behind Sudan and just ahead of Somalia.
UPDATE: From Talking Points Memo– Senator Joe Biden, responding to the latest faith-based platitudes from inside the Bush Bubble (emphasis added):
“This progress report is like the guy who’s falling from a 100-story building and says half-way down that ‘everything’s fine.’ If we continue the way we’re going, with President’s failed strategy in Iraq – we’re headed for a crash landing.”
“The total lack of progress on the political benchmarks makes it clear yet again, that the entire premise of the President’s Iraq policy is fatally flawed. The President says we are surging forces in Iraq to buy time for the Maliki government to get its act together and win the trust of all Iraqis. That will not happen. Absent an occupation – which we cannot sustain; or the return of a dictator—which we cannot support; Iraq cannot be governed from the center.”
UPDATE: Over on IraqSlogger, Ambassador Chas Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, offers another dose of reality:
The benchmarks …are merely the latest manifestation of wishful thinking from Washington.
The reality is that the United States has unmatched military power in Iraq but no political authority. (Indeed, the presence of U.S.forces in Iraq is regarded as illegitimate by most of the world, including Iraqis, making resistance to our forces legitimate in their eyes.) There is still no Iraqi state and an alien occupation exercises the monopoly of force that would be a principal attribute of any Iraqi state.
…The more the current Iraqi regime is seen to depend on our military power, the less legitimacy and authority it enjoys. We cannot transfer the authority we do not have to a regime that lacks both the power and the authority to receive it.
