From Now on, According to Americans, Everything "Is the Iraqis' Fault"
    By Guillemette Faure
    Rue 89

    Wednesday 06 June 2007

    "The Iraqis did not seize the opportunity they were presented." That's what Hillary Clinton said Sunday night during the Democratic debate. She explained that the American troops had fulfilled their mission. "They've overthrown Saddam and given them elections." And look what the Iraqis did with that ...

    This is not the first time that Hillary has made the Iraqis responsible for the debacle in Iraq. Last summer at a conference at the Council of Foreign Relations, she accused the Iraqi government of "holding American credibility hostage." According to her, it was time to explain that, "American forces would not always be there to accommodate their refusal."

    Has Hillary got chutzpah? She's not alone. To be able to justify a withdrawal without having to acknowledge an American defeat, Democrats and Republicans are now in agreement to blame the Iraqis. This way, the Republicans emphasize that it's not their policy that's in question; the Democrats avoid bearing the bad news of an American defeat and looking like a party of losers by demanding a departure from Iraq. And for Democrats who - like Senator Clinton - voted in favor of the war, the maneuver allows them not to have to reconsider their vote.

    The tendency can be observed across the complete political spectrum from President Bush, who first mentioned that "[his] patience has limits" to Barbara Boxer, the very progressive senator from California who declared in November: "We've given the Iraqis freedom and what do they do with it? They kill each other ..." This type of discourse describes the Iraqis as adapting rather well to the present situation, as when Donald Rumsfeld wrote in a memo to the president before his resignation that a slight American military disengagement would push the Iraqis "to pull their socks up."

    In the Senate, when Congress tried to obtain a schedule of withdrawal from Iraq, Democrat Carl Levin explained that it was, "time for Congress to explain to Iraqis that it's their country." A schedule of departure from Iraq would send "a good dose of reality to Iraqi leaders." So on what cloud are they living then, these Iraqis ...

    Listen to the discourse of all the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates and you'll hear the same thing: we did what we could in Iraq, but the Iraqis are not good enough. "Enough coddling! Enough vacillating!" even expostulated Barack Obama last year.

    It was even, indirectly, the exit strategy proposed by the nonetheless celebrated Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group: to condition American aid on goals the Iraqi government is supposed to reach, which, assuming that the goals would be unattainable, would then allow the Americans to leave with their heads held high. A strategy Zbigniew Bzrezinski has summarized as "blame and leave."

    Democrats and Republicans should have read what well-known military analyst Anthony Cordesman explained as early as last November to Time magazine as he felt this tendency rising: "When someone lets an elephant loose in a china shop, you don't blame the china shop for the broken dishes."