[ForeignPolicy] The United States faces an increasingly urgent set of first-order policy questions in Iraq. Spoiler alert: The answer is not Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, Iraq’s newly designated prime minister. A popular uprising might be.
Allawi’s recent nomination to be Iraq’s next leader is a dead end, for Iraq and the United States alike. He has no chance of resolving the two fundamental crises now plaguing the country: first, the collapse of legitimacy of Iraq’s post-2003 political class, and second, Iraq’s ever-expanding subjugation by Iran and its local Shiite Islamist proxies. The United States would be well advised to keep its distance from Allawi’s candidacy and instead focus its energies on supporting the extraordinary protest movement that has upended Iraq’s politics since late last year, and whose demands for sovereignty, independence, and clean government represent the last best hope for salvaging not just Iraq, but the future of U.S.-Iraqi relations as well.
Gosh, if only every analyst said that overthrowing Saddam would hand the country to Iran. OH WAIT THEY ALL DID.
| No, they all didn’t. A few did, and a few recommended doing absolutely nothing after 9/11 lest those who already hated us might... hate us. It’s all in the explorable Rantburg archives. |
It was the most likely outcome. Now that it's happened, they want to repeat their disastrous regime change that caused the problems in the first place? |