Last week during Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Alawi's visit to Washington, presidential candidate John Kerry's advisor derided the Prime Minister's office, questioning his credibility with Iraqis and the west. Having now declaimed the legitimacy of the first post-Saddam government in Iraq, the Kerry campaign must now propose who they would support. This week's national security debate should be most telling.
Joe Lockhart, Mr. Kerry's campaign advisor, said of the visiting Prime Minister: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips." Add to Lockhart's philippic Kerry's Iraq strategy gobbledygook, and it appears that a president Kerry would not support the Prime Minister who has put his life on the line to promote democracy in Iraq. Will Kerry instead propose an Iraqi government staffed with UN-supported bureaucrats?
Imagine relations between Alawi and a president Kerry after his campaign's questioning of the Prime Minister's legitimacy. Alawi must be praying for a Bush victory harder than anyone. Kerry appears to have already started the mental process of a pullout, even before he's elected president. Many liberals have made it clear that the man they prefer at the helm in Iraq is Saddam Hussein. Short of reinstalling him, who could they possibly consider as the legitimate leader of New Iraq?
Anticipations of Mr. Kerry's Iraq plan are welcome.
Would the Kerry people at least offer to support the Iraqi government that will take power after the elections? In spite of their advertised contempt for the elections?
Not that this will make any difference, but it would spare us the embarrassment of having a major American presidential candidate who is openly rooting for the forces of chaos.
Chalabi? :-)
Short of reinstalling him, who could they possibly consider as the legitimate leader of New Iraq?
The more interesting question is how one would determine legitimacy in the first place. After all, if legitimacy is created via a national election, then clearly Alawi is not a "legitimate" leader right now.
Hello.. Lockhart is a political operative.
No, not quite on the level of the Speaker of the House or the Vice President of the United States.
You guys fawn contempt over this statement which basically says that Alawi is here on a campaign swing, and no, not his own.
Give me a break. I don't hear anyone claiming this was anything other than a campaign event.
Davebo -
Interesting that Alawi is a US puppet ("the last thing you want to be seen as" according to Lockhart - worse than being a cannibal, a pedophile, or even a neoconservative) but Lockhart, a top advisor to the Kerry campaign, is an independent person who is merely expressing his own opinion.
But never mind that - why don't you address Cicero's question? If you insist that Alawi is not legitimate, then who is?
If you like Allawi so much, why don't you spell his name right?
As for this bit of inflammatory tripe, which hardly deserves comment:
"Short of reinstalling [Saddam], who could they possibly consider as the legitimate leader of New Iraq?"
The legitimate leader of the new Iraq would be a prime minister representing the lead party of the governing coalition, whatever that ends up being. If you like democracy so much, you should agree that even if the Iraqis choose the Communists, the leader of that group is the person the United States should support. For more on this fascinating subject, click here.
praktike,
Hey, I was just going with the spelling in the original write-up. :)
Glen Wishard,
If you insist that Alawi is not legitimate, then who is?
In order to answer that question, you would first have to determine what it means to be legitimate. And I would imagine that question has several different reasonable answers.
Hello, praktike. How was Egypt?
praktike:
Thanks for your condescending link to the dictionary. Allow me to return the favor: Alawi is a transliteration (look the damn word up yourself) from the Arabic alphabet, and any phonetic spelling is as correct as any other.
And, praktike, there is as yet no universally accepted standard for the Romanization of Arabic names. An interesting case in point comes from the Wikipedia. Scroll down to the section on Spelling.
Duly chastised, as I ought to have anticipated. However, there is something to be said for agreeing on a standard transliteration and sticking with it. As it happens, "Alawi" more often refers to a member of the strange Alawi sect, of which Syrian dictator Assad (or Asad, if you wish) is a prominent member.
As for my Egypt trip, it was simultaneously exhausting and fascinating. Here's my humble diary on the subject, which I promise to flesh out in the coming days.
praktike,
You ought to read the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. T.E. Lawrence never uses the same spelling twice. :)
T.E. Lawrence also made up a lot of the plot as well as the spellings.
praktike,
T.E. Lawrence a grandstander? You don't say! :)
I'll add that when you combine Kerry's response to Allawi, Lockhart's outburst, and his sister's official work in Australia, the Kerry position comes crystal clear: defeatism and opposition to all governments who have participated in the coalition. This isn't "realism" or honesty or even disagreement re: the conduct of the Iraq campaign - this is something far more directed, and more poisonous. And my tolerance for it is done.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the war to destroy George W. Bush trumps all considerations for Kerry and his party, and that aid and comfort to Islamist terrorists is viewed as justifiable. Ralph Peters, who is appalled by many Bush policies, has a strong fisking - and Ghost of a Flea quotes and links Peters while adding more historical detail.
Dean's pledge re: Kerry is looking less and less supportable. Fortunately, it seems unlikely that it will ever come to that.
Joe Katzman -
I'm not sure if the Flea's comparison of Kerry to McClellan is entirely fair to McClellan. Pompous egomaniac that he was, McClellan really thought he was doing the best thing for his country, and he at least took his horribly misguided position seriously.
Having now declaimed the legitimacy . . .
I think you mean "decried".
. . . the Kerry campaign must now propose who they would support.
According to the current Administration's OWN plan, the Allawi government is soon to hand over power to persons as yet unknown.
Add to Lockhart's philippic . . .
One jibe does not a Philippic make. Cicero illud intelligat.
More substantively:
. . . the Prime Minister who has put his life on the line to promote democracy in Iraq
Of all the words I've read about Allawi, I've seen none to suggest that promoting democracy is a cause that motivates him in the slightest. If you have, please share.
Alawi must be praying for a Bush victory . . .
Oh, so he won't be handing over power to the government to be elected in January? Whether or no, if his best hope is the return of that serial screw-up, he's in a bad way indeed.
You know, there are other people to vote for besides Kerry or Bush and their particular brands of socialism.
Gary Gunnels:
You know, there are other people to vote for besides Kerry or Bush and their particular brands of socialism.
Why, are the libertarians coming out with an exciting new brand of socialism?
Glen Wishard,
I am a capitalist; I perfer not to vote for socialists - be they of the right (Bush) or the left (Kerry). Now I'm not telling you that you should vote for the LP candidate, indeed, I think Badkarik is even more of a bozo than Harry Browne was (we'll leave the issue of whether Harry Browne was corrupt or not aside), but I am telling you that you have a choice beyond Kerry or Bush. I perfer not to pick between the lesser of two evils, because I only contribute to the perpetuation of one or the other of those evils. Hell, if it comes down to the brass tax, I'll vote for myself.
Caveat: About six to seven months ago I considered voting for Kerry (largely due to the Iraq war issue), I even sent his campaign $10, but I've decided to stand on principle instead of voting for someone whose policies I loathe. I thought y'all were all about principle here.
You are correct that Kerry is a defeatist through and through. His actions following his very brief combat experience should tell you this. Imagine how many concessions Kerry would make to Iran, North Korea, and China during his four years in office.
Glen,
I'm sure Kerry takes his misguided position seriously, too. I'll add that he may even believe that he's doing the best thing for his country, though his campaign's recent actions show that to be a bit of a stretch. Still, I'm willing to credit him with some notion of service beyond personal ambition.
That said...
McClelland was wrong, and infamously indecisive, and appeared not to believe all that much in his country's cause. Electing him would have been a huge disaster. Kerry is giving strong indications that he falls into the same categories.
I take it we're not going to get a definition of what a legitimate leadership of Iraq would look like. Or even an anticipation of Kerry's Iraq plan.
Once again I got my hopes up, only to see them cruelly dashed to itsy-bitsies. Sigh.
The Washington Post reports what most of us lefties believed all along: the Bush Administration ghostwrote Allawi's speech. So, guess what, he really is a sock puppet. And his trip to the United States really is a maneuver of the Bush Reelection Crusade. But we can't say so, because that would be disrespectful of our ally. That's oh, so clever, that you can bring this unelected dictator-in-training as your campaign prop and we just have to sit there and applaud His Fraudulency. Make that Fraudulencies.
I'm proud Kerry and Lockhart have been telling it like it is.
Also in that report: since journalists have figured out how bad the situation is in Iraq from USAID data, from now on, they're not revealing the data.