Uppity Iraq
The Iraqi government is sticking to its story on the whole sovereign-nation thing. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had this to say during his meeting with Arab ambassadors in Abu Dhabi:
…I told you that we today search for the need to end foreign presence on Iraqi territory, restore full sovereignty, and get rid of all the international resolutions and sanctions imposed on us based on Chapter VII. Therefore, the idea, as announced in August, was an agreement on a declaration of principles and intents, which stipulated that the agreement between the two states should be based on full sovereignty, that this year will witness the last extension of the mandate of the international forces on Iraqi territory, and that Iraq should be liberated from the mandate of Chapter VII.
(Emphasis added.) So the Bush administration, which has said time and again that we’ll leave Iraq when the sovereign Iraqi government says they don’t need us, has two embarrassing turds in its punchbowl.
First, the Iraqis’ nominally elected government wants us out by a date certain, and Washington is in the awkward position of having to refuse to leave. The White House even fell back on denying the multiple press accounts of al-Maliki’s comments and suggesting there had been an error in translation.
Second, al-Maliki has talked about Iraqi sovereignty as if it were not something the Iraqis have, but rather something Iraqis hope to restore through negotiations with the U.S. This sovereignty is what the U.S. claims to have bestowed on Iraq by invading their country in the first place. Bush’s response is going to have a pretty package, but it’s going to boil down to “We gotcher sovereignty right here, pal.“