shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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 Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 8:41 pm Post subject: Could a New Strongman Help? |
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This is interesting.
Could a coup be what the Baker Commission is looking at? A Parliamentary coup. Is that the reason for Bates, an old spymaster, as Sec/Def?
IMHO, it has some merit. I have had it with Maliki, he is weak and I see him as the sock-puppet of Sadr. Sadr demands release of one of his clerics being held by US troops. Maliki makes U.S. release him.
Maliki orders U.S. checkpoints be removed from Sadr City and we must comply. Sadr appears to run the show.
I would love to see Sadr and his gang eliminated. Just a little error- an errant bomb or whatever. And a Parliamentary coup to bring back Allawias Prime minister.
That man has the cahones to lead, and he had a very good relationship with Sistani (who Sadr shunted aside). Together they could rein in the Shia violence if Sadr out of the way.
Whaddaya think? Too far-fetched?
| Quote: | November 12, 2006
Stability vs. Democracy
Could a New Strongman Help?
By JOHN F. BURNS
BAGHDAD
Excerpt:
Now the divides are wider than ever, entrenched by Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads that are locked in a sectarian nightmare of suicide bombings, kidnappings and mass executions. America’s 150,000 troops are caught in the middle, hunting killers on both sides, but finding little partnership from the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
After pledging from the outset of his tenure six months ago to act decisively against the militias that spawn the death squads, Mr. Maliki has so far resisted any concrete actions to disarm or demobilize them. Instead, he bows to Shiite leaders in the coalition who control the two most powerful militias, the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization.
If anything, Mr. Maliki’s standing, outside the Shiite religious constituency he represents, is lower now than that of his predecessor as prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whose year at the head of the transitional government was notable, American officials say, for its lethargy and corruption.
So plainly disaffected have the Americans become with Mr. Maliki that he used a telephone call with Mr. Bush last month to ask if the White House planned to unseat him. Aides to the prime minister said he sought and received Mr. Bush’s reassurance after picking up rumors in the Green Zone government compound that American officials were feeling out Iraqi politicians on the possibility of replacing the Maliki administration with a “national salvation government” to be headed by an unnamed “Shiite strongman.”....
~Snip~
But even if President Bush were convinced that Mr. Maliki should go, it is far from clear that the Americans would have the means to get rid of him.
The mechanism for any such move could hardly be so crude as the American-backed overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam in 1963; he ended up dead, a bullet in his head, in the rear of an American-made armored personal carrier outside Saigon’s presidential palace. The obvious route in Baghdad would lie through the Iraqi Parliament, where the ruling Shiites, bitterly divided among themselves, control the government through a shaky alliance with Kurdish parties.
A parliamentary coup might unseat Mr. Maliki personally, but it would be much tougher to shake power loose from the Shiite religious groups. Those parties have been held together by the overarching influence of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.....
Cont'd at: NY TIMES |
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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