While Washington watched as President Obama decided to end his Afghanistan “surge,” the Iraq of anyone’s lingering “surge” dreams vanished. Dream Iraq — the “ally in the war on terror,” the veritable Switzerland of Sunni-Shiite cooperation surge-improved security was supposed to enable — completely disappeared (if it was ever there) in the hardened, U.S.-won corridors of Iraq’s ruling institutions.
As the 2011 deadline for the departure of 50,000 American troops in Iraq approaches, the United States has been heavy-breathing with the desperation of a discarded mistress that we might be prevailed upon to stay, just for the asking.
Why? Probably to postpone the total unraveling of Iraq during Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. This political ruse is strenuously supported by Iraq hawks of the neoconservative persuasion who want to postpone that unraveling indefinitely, even if it means turning the U.S. military into a foreign legion to do so.
Against this backdrop, the following, symbolically momentous but barely noticed events took place.
First, the government of Iraq actually asked a delegation of six U.S. congressman to leave Iraq! This took place on June 11 after Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., suggested to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki that Iraq repay the United States for war and reconstruction expenditures — something, don’t forget, the Bush administration promised us way back when.
Historical precedent set from Finland to Great Britain to Kuwait overwhelmingly favors reimbursement; the United States itself eventually managed to repay France after the American Revolution.
Rohrabacher may have dubbed Iraq’s angry exit-invitation “unofficial,” but Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh left no room for doubt:
“We as a government reject such statements, and we have informed the American embassy that these congressmen are not welcome in Iraq.”
Second, Iranian pawn Moqtada al-Sadr claimed to have polled Iraqi religious authorities about U.S. troops remaining in Iraq and received unanimous disapproval.
This is no surprise, but there is a slap in the face in the fatwa that Iran’s Fars News Service reports was issued by senior Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Kazzem al-Hosseini al-Haeri:
“The extended mission of the infidel occupiers in Iraq even for one single day after the [deadline] is haram.” “Haram” means against Islam.
Third, the Iraqi parliament accuses the United States of looting $17 billion from Iraq. The speaker of the Iraqi parliament traveled to Washington this week partly to make this charge to Vice President Biden.
Last month, The Australian newspaper reports, the Iraqi parliament’s “anti-graft committee” sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council openly accusing “U.S. institutions” of “stealing the money.”
“The issue is not about returning the money, Iraqi lawmaker Jawad al-Shehaili said. “It’s about revealing that the U.S. side did nothing for Iraq. It gave from the right hand and stole from the left.”
How rancorous can a country — for whom more than 4,000 Americans died — get?
As recently as 2007, the Bush Iraq Strategy Review predicted Iraq would be “an ally in the war on terror.” In December 2008, Charles Krauthammer saw in Iraq “our best hope for the kind of fundamental political-cultural change in the Arab sphere that alone will bring about the defeat of Islamic extremism.”
Last year, John McCain burbled on about an Iraq that “over time will be a beacon, a model to other nations.” Beacon of American hostility, he should have said.
The dream is over, and what a nightmare — and that includes the demonstrably failed strategic effect of the surge. Bizarrely, the surge still enjoys golden status.
After all, Obama not only replicated it in Afghanistan, he tapped its leading practitioner as CIA director.
When do we get to wake up?
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
