Multiplying troubles

 

 

“Based on the lack of political reconciliation at the government level . . . I would be concerned about whether we’d be winning or not.” These prophetic words belong to Admiral Michael Mullen, the White House nominee as military adviser to President George W. Bush. And mind you, Adm. Muller is not talking about the matters in his own country but about Iraq and the growing Shia-Sunni divide in the Iraqi government. What a democracy America has created in Iraq, where the elected representatives of the so-called sovereign land are dictated to pull up their socks by Generals of the imperial army. What more does one expect in a nation where the political communities are vying to outperform each other and sell off their national assets merely to appease their masters from Washington.

FACTFILE

No reconciliation in Iraq worries US military adviser

US now worried over Iraqi fallout on domestic politics

Six iraqi ministers quit the Maliki government

And now, when six Sunni minsters, including the deputy prime minster have tendered their resignation from Al- Maliki’s government, the Bush administration is busy sending out worrying signals, pressuring Maliki to do something lest the American efforts in Iraq look ugly.

Although, the Sunni Vice President, Tariq Hashimi, has not resigned, the Americans obviously are worried not because they care for the Iraqis, but the likely impact of this move on the internal politics in the US and how will they be able to prove their professionalism in taming the Iraqi angst. What Bush is ignoring is the advice of their own former President, George Washington, who once said that the “over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty”.

All that the US has to do to restore some semblance of order in Iraq is to announce an unconditional withdrawal. According to an Oxfam report, over 50% of Iraqis are under nourished and one out of three is literally starving. And about 50% live in abject poverty. Reason for self-rule?