The Lessons of History

The Times is a purveyor of bullshit much of the time these days:

Challenge for a New Iraqi Leader

Published: April 30, 2006

A great deal now depends on the wisdom and skills of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the man who emerged from relative political obscurity last weekend to become Iraq's prime minister-designate. His actions over the next weeks will determine whether Iraq can reverse the drift toward sectarian civil war and build a national government. If it can, the more than 130,000 American troops now in Iraq will have a definable mission to achieve and a definable exit strategy. If not, America's predicament in Iraq will very likely only grow worse.

That's why Washington was right to use all the leverage it had to encourage the disastrous former prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to withdraw his candidacy for a second term. Mr. Maliki comes from the same Shiite fundamentalist milieu as Mr. Jaafari. But there are at least some reasons to hope he can be a more effective leader.

His single biggest challenge will be to break the power of the Shiite party militias operating inside and outside the official security forces. These have terrorized Sunni neighborhoods and tortured Sunni detainees with impunity for much of the past year.

Mr. Maliki has won praise for pledging that only government forces will be allowed to carry arms. But that will do little good if he merely merges militia units into the Iraqi army and police forces as he suggested Thursday in deference to a crucial political ally, Moktada al-Sadr, who happens to head one of the deadliest Shiite militias. If that turns out to be Mr. Maliki's plan, there can be little hope of avoiding civil war.

It seems unlikely that the Sunni and Kurdish parties that welcomed Mr. Maliki's nomination as part of a larger power-sharing arrangement would settle for such an unsatisfactory non-solution to the country's most dangerous problem. The commitments and compromises that lubricated that deal should become clearer when Mr. Maliki unveils his new cabinet, which he now says will be done as soon as next week. It is now more than four months since Iraqis voted for a new government, and while the politicians dickered, the country has been falling apart. Mr. Maliki needs to choose both quickly and wisely.

Let's see: this is an militarily occupied country with an active insurrection going on and the Times buys the Bush bullshit that it can govern itself? Jeebus, did they critique the democratic process in Algeria in 1956?

Americans are notoriously ahistorical. I expected better from the Times.