Here's the question:
Sir, considering that the invasion of Iraq was illegal and unjustified, what is the moral basis for the benchmarks you have specified in your plan for Iraq and that you expect the Iraqi government to meet before the American forces leave?
And if I were asking the question, I'd want to add, "isn't that sort of like a bank robber holding the bank manager hostage until his confederates have secured the loot in the get-away-car"?
And then I'd preempt the inevitable rationalization--that the American forces are just trying to straighten things out and need the help of the Iraqi government to do it--with the observation that it makes no sense to expect the elephant to clean up the china shop.
Before you object that it's "bull in the china shop" let me say I thought of that, but then I read Dahr Jamail's latest dispatch from Najaf which reports:
"They (the United States) were misled, and their last move in Najaf shows how the smart Iranians are leading the Americans deeper into Iraqi sands," Jaafar al-Jawadi, a political analyst from Baghdad told IPS.
"I really admire the way Iranians are dealing with the situation in a professional way while the Americans are walking with their eyes closed. They are losing the last Iraqi fort they were hiding behind, and that was the peaceful way Arab Shias were dealing with occupation."
Jawadi who is also a former Shia politician says he once believed in U.S. promises of liberation for Iraqis, particularly the Shia population. Like many other Iraqis, he now believes that the United States has been used by the pro-Iranian government in Baghdad to carry out attacks against Shia tribes in southern Iraq who have recently become more and more anti-occupation.
"I do not really understand what those Americans are doing because now they are just like an elephant in a china shop, and everything they do is terribly wrong as if they are committing suicide," Talib Ahmad, a lawyer and human rights activist in Najaf told IPS.
Obviously, in that part of the world it's elephants that cause problems, not bulls.
And one more thing. Caught on the fly by the media yesterday, Senator Obama was hear to object that the press is focusing on his swimming trunks and ignoring his policy positions. Having read the speech prepared to be delivered in Springfield, Illinois (because that's where he made his mark as a legislator and where President Lincoln started his run), I think I know why the press is ignoring it. The speech is a mess. If there were room for a kitchen sink, you couldn't find it. Even the transitions from 'I' and 'me' to 'us' and 'we' and then to 'you' and 'they' are dizzying. It's really hard to figure out who's supposed to be doing what. Certainly, there's little hint of what a President Obama, as chief administrator of an organization, is going to do to correct the corruption and mistakes that are all too obvious at present.
Along with other inspiring phrases, every school child is familiar with the Kennedy injunction to "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." It's obviously a favorite of politicians who would prefer not to commit themselves to tasks they might not achieve. But, the way I read it is that no one should have to ask what our country can do for us; it should be obvious to anyone who has eyes to see. And the natural response to such bounty would be, of course, the impulse to give something back.
It is, I think, our great misfortune, that what our country does FOR us is no longer obvious. It is our great misfortune that most of our neighbors on the globe no longer see our country as doing anything FOR them either. And that's not going to be corrected by exhortations to the American people to have more hope. It's time to grab that bull by the horns and get him out of the china shop. So far, there's little evidence that the Senator is up to that.
P.S. This will be the Senator's second mega visit to New Hampshire. Someone really ought to tell him that's not how retail politics in New Hampshire works. Banning signs outside the venue is not going to win him any supporters among free speech advocates either.
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