Maliki, said during a visit to Abu Dhabi on Monday that he wants to set a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, the strongest sign yet of an increasingly tense relationship between the elected leader of the country the US illegally invaded and occupied in 2003 and the US. The statement was made during a meeting with Arab ambassadors during a two-day visit to the UAE and was aired on Al Iraquiya, the official Iraqi television station. It is good to hear that Maliki is developing some backbone and is being forceful about the continued presence of foreign troops on his country's soil. He rightly believes that the departure of American troops would lend real credence to the concept of Iraqi sovereignty, especially given that no one implored or even invited the US to invade the country. They came in not to support any faction within the country but to create their own faction that they could then manipulate. Failure was the obvious and inevitable result. The US, unsurprisingly, had a lukewarm reaction to Maliki's statement, calling timelines “artificial” and contending that “it's usually best to look at these things based on conditions on the ground.” And, right now, the US is riding a high based on the perceived success of “the surge” and Bush administration (and John McCain's) thinking is that the surge is the panacea for calming Iraq. Iraq, under one name or another, has been around for thousands of years and that kind of history affects the way that people think. The country may be relatively quiet right now, but that is more than likely because those wanting to stir up trouble are simply biding their time, waiting for the next logical and available set of circumstances to evolve for their next attack. If you put more policemen on the street, crime is likely to go down. But that doesn't solve the underlying reasons for crime. The same can be said of Iraq. The US can occupy the country even more completely, but that does not solve the underlying problems of ethnic and sectarian conflict. Just as chaos exploded once Saddam was removed from the top of the pressure cooker, the same could conceivably happen were a precipitous withdrawal of US troops to take place. Maliki is right to want the Americans out. But he had better make sure that safeguards for the survival of the country are well in place before he decides that he is adequately in control of a country that is far from pacified. __
