This is probably this first time in my life where I have been 100% behind the Republicans on an issue. I am ashamed of the Democrats’ efforts to prevent Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki from addressing Congress.
House Democrats on Monday crafted a letter to Hastert urging him to cancel the speech by al-Maliki to the chamber. The letter, which was being circulated for signatures, argues that if the Iraqi leader’s positions are at odds with U.S. foreign policy goals then he should not be given the honor of giving an address from the speaker’s podium.
“In recent months there have been extensive reports indicating that al-Maliki and many in the Iraqi leadership are increasingly influenced by the government in Iran. Further, they have expressed support of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the latter of which was responsible for the death of 241 United States Marines in Beirut. The House should not allow an address from any world leader who has taken such action,” the letter reads.
“We are unaware of any prior instance where a world leader who actively worked against the interests of the United States was afforded such an honor. We urge you to cancel the address,” the letter concludes.
Nancy Pelosi was more to the point:
“Unless Mr. Maliki disavows his critical comments of Israel and condemns terrorism, it is inappropriate to honor him with a joint meeting of Congress,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said.
This is now a game of proving who is a better friend to Israel. I think Hastert’s response was spot on.
Hastert, R-Ill., told reporters that even if al-Maliki doesn’t apologize for earlier comments condemning Israel for its assault on Hezbollah terrorist targets in Lebanon, the prime minister “should address Congress. … The U.S. has 130,000 troops [in Iraq]” and Washington must maintain a dialogue with the Iraqi government.
Al-Maliki’s comments will “be part of that dialogue … and we should all, on a bipartisan basis, be there to engage him.”
James Zogby, of the Arab-American Institute, also stated the obvious.
“It is in the interest of the United States to have a leader in Iraq who will have standing among his people, and asking al-Maliki to repudiate his comments seriously erodes his ability to lead Iraq during these difficult times,” Zogby said. “Canceling al-Maliki’s speech would be seen as an insult in Iraq with potentially grave consequences. We should not be playing politics with 130,000 US troops at risk.”
That is exactly what the Democrats are doing. There are playing politics and trying to outflank the Republicans by appearing to be tougher on terrorism and stronger supporters of Israel. With a foreign head of state in Washington, a man whose government is at grave risk of collapsing, a man who represents our only hope for leaving Iraq anytime soon with anything resembling some dignity, the Democrats choose to bully him around and score some points. It’s utterly reprehensible. And it’s also wrong on the issues. With the whole world crying out for Israel to use some restraint in Lebanon, now is not the time to demand an Arab leader to swear fealty to Israel. (Is there ever a time?)
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was joined by Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin Tuesday in revealing a letter to al-Maliki asking him to denounce Hezbollah.
“Your statements are very troubling. Your failure to condemn Hezbollah’s aggression and recognize Israel’s right to defend itself raise serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East,” the letter reads. “It is imperative that the U.S. Congress and the world know immediately whether you support or condemn Hezbollah’s acts of terrorism.”
“Addressing a joint session of Congress and standing at the speaker’s podium is a high honor. It has been bestowed upon those who have embraced fundamental values of liberty and freedom,” Reid said.
Schumer and Durbin stopped short of saying they would boycott the joint address to Congress, indicated they would strongly consider not attending.
Here’s a message to Schumer, Reid, and Durbin. Forget politics for a second, you idiots. What good does it do to make al-Maliki, a devout Shi’ite Muslim, condemn the Shi’ite militia that is currently at war with Israel? All that does it is reduce his credibility within Iraq and make the government there less popular. It’s not like al-Maliki is going to change anyone’s mind about Hezbollah. Threatening to boycott his speech is not only rude, but stupid, and it does undermine our country’s, admittedly disastrous, foreign policy. And it does it in a wholly unconstructive way.
The Democrats should look at what al-Maliki said more recently:
“What we’re trying to do is to stop the killing and destruction and then we leave the room and the way for the international and diplomatic efforts and international organizations to play the role to be there.
“I’m talking here about the approach that should be used in order to stop this process of promoting hatred. There has to be superior decisions coming from above in order to protect these experiments, particularly democratic experiments, that should be protected by those who are trying to oppose it,” he added.
The decision to attack al-Maliki for his failure to condemn Hezbollah and his criticism of Israel (a criticism, btw, that is not at all out of the mainstream of world opinion) is not a ‘superior’ decision. It’s harebrained.
It’s the exact kind of tactic that has been used over and over again by the Bush administration to erase nuance, cloud over difficult issues and decisions, and lead our country astray.
I completely repudiate the Democratic leadership’s decision to make this political fight. It lacks any sense of statesmanship, any strategic thinking, any class, and any common sense. We will not advance the foreign policy debate in this country by engaging in a fight to see who can be more uncritically supportive of Israel, when Israel is taking highly risky, and highly dubious actions that do not at all dovetail with what our foreign policy goals should be.
Israel just invaded Lebanon with no plan for retreat other than demanding an international force to bail them out. They essentially created an intractable and destabilizing situation and are trying to force the international community to save them from their recklessness. If we cannot be critical of that decision, then we can’t be critical of Israel at all, and we will be led wherever they want to take us. That’s not leadership. It’s not wise. The Dems should be ashamed of themselves.
This plain makes me sick.
Reprehensible doesn’t begin to describe this.
It is more proof of our so called “leaders” valuimg their own privileged political asses over the lives of countless innocent human beings, period.
I once wrote Durbin a letter asking why he appeared at a Pro-Israel event. He wrote me back that although he feels the Palestinian pain, there was no need to appear evenhanded since the U.S. is a special friend to Israel or words to that effect.
As for this latest move all I can say is: Pander Pander bo bander fee fi fo fander, PANDER
Once again, these pathetic creatures at the top of the Democratic Party are poised to “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” come the November elections.
This more then anything else gave me a thrill of fear in the pit of my stomach… our Democrat leaders don’t have a freakin’ clue to reality. Oh, let’s berate the leader of the puppet government for having an opinion contrary to ours. This is what we’re supposed to hang our hopes for the country on? There’s not a statesman among them. God help us, because the Democrats won’t.
I know the Republicans in Congress have a habit of following Hastert in the public eye, but I wonder how many of them either feel or have voiced comments similar to those of Reid, Pelosi, and Schumer.
This AIPAC shit is getting to be too much, anyway. If the Republicans were doing their job on foreign policy, Lebanon wouldn’t even be in flames right now.
But no, they’ve pushed “might makes right” diplomacy, and the Israeli and Lebanese people are suffering the same fate as the Afghani and Iraqi civilians.
When big money energy lobbyists and bomb makers rule the US, the innocent poor and working people of the world suffer en masse.
The character of our leadership is becoming all too plain to anyone who is willing to judge us by our actions.
We’ve destroyed Iraq, threatened Iran, and let the Palestinian conflicts smolder. Ka-boom.
Why? Cui bonem?
We need publicly financed elections and a return to a labor-organized Congress so we can start cooperating with human beings here and in other countries again. Our government leaders have proven beyond all doubt that they are incapable of protecting the interests of ordinary people anywhere in the world.
Spot on, Booman.
I’m hard pressed to know which is more depressing, the immorality or the stupidity. This is so transparent, so mistakenly self serving, so REPUBLICAN.
I see. So playing the Israel card for political fun and profit is OK when the Republicans do it (and they do it all the fucking time these days) but a mortal sin when the Democrats indulge.
I say Mazaltov to Reid and Pelosi for getting in touch with their inner Machiavellis. They’re acting like they actually want to win in November. And as pathetic as the Dems are — particularly on foreign policy — putting some kind of check and balance on the maniacs in the Executive Branch is hell of a lot more important than making nice with Bush’s Iraqi puppet.
I have to say, this holier-than-thou attitude from the purist left is getting awfully old.
I was meaning to ask you about your linkage yesterday. I wasn’t sure why you chose that article to make your point. I didn’t see the connection, exactly.
In any case, I don’t think Durbin and Pelosi are fooling anyone. They’re acting stupidly. Being stupid AND lacking principle AND being wrong are not Macchiavellian traits unless the get you something that you want. All this gets is contempt and abuse.
al-Maliki doesn’t need a lecture from Dick Durbin about terrorism.
Maybe, just maybe, this is why the Democrats should be grandstanding. It underlines the point I tried to make above.
the Dawa Party is a lot more complicated than that would lead you to believe. Besides, he’s the elected leader of the government.
So?
Juan Cole, someone who’s more sympathetic to your argument says this:
The members of Congress also don’t seem to realize that the Iraqi Dawa helped to form the Lebanese Hizbullah back in the early 1980s. The Dawa was in exile in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut and it formed a shadowy terror wing called, generically, Islamic Jihad. The IJ cell of the Dawa attacked the US and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983, in an operation probably directed by the Tehran branch, which was close to Khomeini.
My understanding is that Nuri al-Maliki was the bureau chief of the Dawa cell in Damascus in the 1980s. He must have been closely involved with the Iraqi Dawa in Beirut, which in turn was intimately involved in Hizbullah. I am not saying he himself did anything wrong. I don’t know what he was doing in specific, other than trying to overthrow Saddam, which was heroic. But, did they really think he was going to condemn Hizbullah and take Israel’s side?
Cole is being right on the facts, but completely blind on the politics. Of course the Democrats know that he wasn’t going to condemn Hizbullah. You know it. I know it. Cole is oblivious.
But he unwittingly gives a really, really good reason why the Democrats should have played it that way, yes, even to ‘an elected world leader’.
Dawa may be ‘more complicated’. But this guy was there at the birth of Hizbullah. If the Democrats come out and say this, it’s easy enough for the Bush acolytes to muddy the waters, say the D’s are defeatists, et al, they’d counter that Bush’s great friend was ‘democratically elected’. And then they’d face charges that they were pro-Saddam or something.
This gambit, however, is a subtle way to put the shiv to the Iraqi Prime Minister and the Bush’s idiotic Iraqi policy. I mean really, aren’t you also against the death of Israeli civilians and Hizbullah’s bombing of Haifa?
Make the fundy Iraqi jump through hoops and defend his background. Make Bush squirm. In both leaders, I hardly see prime examples of the glory of democracy and I think they should both answer to the crimes of their allies.
so undermining the credibility of Maliki in the eyes of Americans is the game? And how, pray tell, is that going to help? By ratcheting up the disillusionment? I suppose that might happen, but there is really no reason to attack Maliki. Let partisans point out the truth, let statesmen be diplomatic and at least defer to the administration on former occasions such as this.
Maliki’s problem isn’t that he’s a terrorist, its that he has too little power. Trying to weaken him is counterintuitive.
Undermining the credibility of the Bush rationale for war is more important for America than worrying about our non-existant ‘statesmanship’ capabilities right now.
Giving the Bush administration any credibility hasn’t paid off in six years and ripping into his proxies can’t possibly make things worse in Iraq. It can only hasten our exit, which should be anyone’s primary concern at the moment. We lost it. We broke it. And a mediocrity like Maliki — who’ll you’ll notice gave a typically duplicitous Bush speech about Iraq turning corners and being Ground Zero for the war on terrorism to Congress yesterday — isn’t going to fix it.
Doesn’t it seem rather obvious that by employing the “central front of the war on terror” rhetoric in his speech to Congress he’s making a blatant power grab that he hopes will give him cover for the upcoming civil war (much like Israel’s fig leaf excuse for blowing the fuck out of Southern Lebanon) because, after all, no matter how much force the Shiite militias unleash on the Sunni population, it’s just to fight ‘terrorists’ after all. It’s what we say when we kill an Iraqi or Afghani family. It’s what Israel says when they raze a Beruit neighborhood. Now it’s what the Dawa can say when they turn their guns on fellow Iraqis and kick off a genocidal campaign — which is seemingly inevitable.
Bush did himself no favors by throwing all of his support behind an Iranian-supporting, revolutionary Shiite Islamicist who isn’t that much difference in background and resume as the current lunatic running Iran.
The Israelis are gruesome too and I wish that there would be someone, somewhere, who could be an honest broker in this. But there’s not.
The ONLY people I’m completely sympathetic to are the ordinary Lebanese who got tired of 25 years of civil war, pasted together a compromise, survived a potentially destabilizing provocation (the assasination of their prime minister) and were trying to rebuild a heterodox country in the Middle East.
Blame the Democrats for calling out the guy, but when you look at who he is and the bullshit he just spat out in front of Congress yesterday, I’d say it isn’t an immoral attack.
I’m with billmon.
1) Democrats risk exactly nothing in this. They’ve been hammered on being called terrorist symps and everything else for the past six years by merely supporting the Constitution and meekly — yet you expect them to have to bend down and kiss the ring of Bush’s puppet too?
Their demands are a red herring. Why?
2) The Iraqi Prime Minister is a member of a proto-Hezbollah, revolutionary Shiite party called Dawa which has long time ties to terrorism. Juan Cole mentions this today while also taking the Democrats to task for the same thing you are — but neither of you are thinking it all the way through.
The Dems know he won’t condemn his brothers-in-arms in Hezbollah, making it clear that Bush’s guy in Iraq also happens to be a terrorist symp without having to say that the Iraqi government is chock full of bad guys and then having to endure charges that they don’t want democracy to succeed in Iraq. See? They are laying bare the abject lie of the entire Bush enterprise in the Middle East — left unsaid: this is the reason we’re in Iraq?
The endgame, ultimately, is getting the hell out of Iraq. If you think the best way to do that is to support the entirely suspect Iraqi government as opposed to making them look like the halfwits, fundies and cynics they are, then you support the guy speaking to Congress.
I’m glad to hear you say this:
I take it as a full retraction of your criticism of me, and also an indication that we are in agreement here.
Frankly, I was confused by your critique, since I thought our posts on this were almost identical.
Looking on the bright side of unintended consequences, if Al Maliki tells the unvarnished truth to Congress, it puts paid to all the blue-fingered propaganda the Rethugs have been feeding the public for the past four years. It will be obvious and unavoidable that we spent a third of a trillion dollars, 2500 soldiers`lives and counting, to put an awoved and documented enemy of Israel in the saddle. While it makes everybody look bad, it makes the Republicans look worse. As to the Dems support of Israel, it`s face saving. The actual course of events will play out on the ground in south Lebanon, and that course is not favorable to Israel.
Did someone say`’firey wreck’?
Well, I caught the last half of his speech. I guess Boo thinks it’s a good thing for Bush’s good little puppy to mouth a speech that was obviously written by the White House. The Dems were clumsy as usual, and their supine and uncritical support for anything Israel does make me sick. But al-Maliki and his Bushie bosses deserve no slack either. There are no good guys in this situation.