In Defense of Nouri Maliki

By Nicholas M. Guariglia
July 29, 2006

                Sometimes the political atmosphere in Washington becomes so repulsive it not only drags the country down, but results in needless invectives for non-Americans whose only crime was needing American help.  Although it was before my time, others may be able to remember Soviet seizures of Polish dissidents early on in the Reagan administration.  The revolutionary Solidarity Movement had caused a wonderful ruckus, bringing the Papacy on their side, demanding rights and freedom.  As a result, most of its leaders were rounded up and tossed into gulags.
In some of the weirder circles of our government these Polish freedom fighters were seen not as allies, but rather as obstacles to stability.  They were, after all, upsetting the status quo with Moscow and undermining our hallowed non-policy of détente with the Russians.  Charles Percy, a Republican who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at the time concluded on national television, “Yes, they (Solidarity) just went too far.”
And here we are again today, except this time the adversary is not the false romance of a Marxist worker’s paradise, but a seventh-century sultanate; our allies not Eastern Europeans, but quiet and relatively unseen Arab democrats.  Considering this, you would think that the first democratically elected premier in Iraqi history, on his first trip to Washington, would have received a warmer welcome by Senate Democrats and peace activists, which claim to hold Iraq’s interests in their hearts.
Think again.  Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was greeted with boycotts, demands for apology, and charges of racism and support for terrorism.  Why, you may ask?  For uttering the same thing almost every other head-of-state has expressed in the past few weeks: condemnation of Israel in the recent Mideast war.  Mr. Maliki, like the presidents and prime ministers of allied European democracies, criticized the Israelis for aggressive tactics taken inside Lebanese territory.  However much I may disagree with his stance, does he not have a right –– as other democratically elected leaders have –– to form an opinion about a war, that does not directly involve his or our own country, without being castigated as an enemy of the state?

The first injustice here would be playing politics with someone who, until recently, was not able to play politics under a dictatorial government.  The fact that Mr. Maliki, an elected Shi’ite Arab ruling a largely Shi’ite Arab country, is having a hard time publicly basking in glee over an Israeli war with Shi’ite jihadists in Lebanon should be unsurprising to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about the Middle East.  Travel to a Cairo, a Riyadh, or a Baghdad and ask ten good men in café houses their position on the Israeli-Hezbollah war, and you may find a loathing for Hezbollah, but you will most certainly not find admiration for the Jewish state.  Does this make them terrorists or racists, necessarily?  No, it just makes them mistaken –– depending on your own view of the conflict.
The fact that Maliki kept his promise and traveled to the United States, shook hands with President Bush, met with and thanked American soldiers, and delivered a speech to Congress (with Iraqis at home watching on their televisions), at a time when the widely unpopular Israel, correctly supported by the United States, was decimating Muslim militants in the Bekaa Valley (and politicians in Iraq calling for his boycott of the trip altogether), says something positive about the prime minister’s character in and of itself. 
While some here grandstanded him, stupidly wondering if he was a true ally, his fellow parliamentarians back in Baghdad chastised him as an American puppet.  He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.  For our sake, to thank the administration, U.S. soldiers, and our Congress –– which approved the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 and authorized Hussein’s removal in 2002 –– he did come, and was wrongly damned for it.
Jordanian kings, Saudi princes, and Egyptian dictators do not have to answer to their subjects.  Maliki does.  This fact alone is a beautiful manifestation of our far more ethical policy of promoting democratization.  Sure, we appreciate whatever Arab unity against Hezbollah we can muster (however self-serving their purposes are).  But we must understand that Arab parliamentarians up for reelection –– a rarity only achieved due to U.S. initiative and much bloodletting –– are not going to succeed in any election where their platform is pro-Israel.
This issue is moot anyway, because even after all of this, we were in fact granted with a condemnation of Hezbollah not by the prime minister but by the Iraqi government as a whole.  Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, confirmed to Senator Harry Reid that Iraq, like other Arab states, would officially condemn Hezbollah for its initial attacks on Israel.  Mr. Reid received the clarification he demanded and therefore was not able to politicize the issue, although his buddies shamelessly plugged along.

To date, only the United States, Canada, Israel, and Australia officially consider Hezbollah to be a “terrorist organization.”  Unfortunately, this says a lot about the countries of the world and their rather lapse attitude on Islamic militancy.  Hezbollah has conducted deliberate attacks on civilians all over the planet.  Who would truly suggest that the assault on the AMIA building in Argentina, or the torture and death of, say, William R. Higgins, is not blatant terrorism?
Nevertheless, the European Union does not list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization (which I mistakenly claimed in a previous article).  Our most treasured ally, the United Kingdom, does not consider Hezbollah to be a terrorist group (although the Brits contend there is a “terrorist wing” of the Hezbollah militia).  Are we to cut off all diplomatic dialogue with Tony Blair?  Why were we ever worried that Mr. Chirac would not send French forces into Iraq when he himself condemns Israel and fails to acknowledge Hezbollah as a primary terror network?  And how are French soldiers going to take part in a NATO stabilization force that does not distinguish a moral difference between Hezbollah and its victims? 
In addition, what are we to make of the more “pro-American” Iraqi dissidents that cynics thought we’d “install” to power, only to see us allow legitimate elections, and then chastise our idealism for allowing consensual government in a land where we’re highly unpopular?  Does anyone truly think Mr. Iyad Allawi –– the former interim premier –– or the famed Ahmed Chalabi would be singing Israel’s praises had they been the leader of Iraq?  Does anyone really think they’d verbally support Hezbollah’s destruction, reject an Israeli ceasefire, and then, in the mother of all political suicides, immediately recognize the state of Israel? 
Mithal al Alusi, a rare Iraqi dissident, might have.  He traveled to Israel in 2004 and as a result was expelled from Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress –– the same Chalabi that antiwar activists called a “Zionist neocon stooge,” and the same Congress of dissidents that we supported to overthrow Saddam Hussein for years.  Nouri Maliki is not an aberration inside Iraq.  Even the most Western-minded, secular and liberal Iraqis in the new government reject immediately recognizing Israel, and would have had a hard time, considering their constituencies, in supporting an Israeli war against a group of Muslims (no matter how devious).  

The fact of the matter is, the spread of constitutional order, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law helps not only the United States but Israel as well –– in the long run.  In the short-term, we may see Islamists do well in elections (Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood), constitutions that flirt with Islamic law (Afghanistan), and democracies unable and unwilling to disarm jihadists inside their country (Lebanon).
But Mr. Maliki traveled to the United States under homegrown pressure not to do so.  He warmly thanked American soldiers, and American citizens, for the liberation of his country in an otherwise overlooked, but eloquent, speech to Congress.  His government has condemned Hezbollah, as other Arab states like Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have done.  He has made it clear that he opposes what Israel is doing, much like most Europeans.  He may be wrong on the issue of Lebanon, but he has done absolutely nothing unexpected, and certainly nothing that deserves boycotts, charges that he is a “supporter of Hezbollah” (Rep. Nita Lowey), and is an “anti-Semite” (Howard Dean).
Chairmen Dean is becoming a caricature of himself.  Referring to the new Iraqi leader as an anti-Semite is akin to calling Lech Wałęsa a “Leninist” if he opposed our support for the Contras in Nicaragua, or Iranian dissident Reza Pahlavi II a “theocrat” if he opposed an American effort to place sanctions on Syria, or Bernard Montgomery a “Nazi” if he publicly condemned the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; completely unrelated, not to mention inappropriate, crass, and rude.  It should come as no surprise that, like Senator Kerry’s take on Iyad Allawi in 2004, some politicians here at home seem to have saved their scorn for the new Iraqi representatives, when far more of that verbal viciousness could have instead been used in the prewar period against the old Ba’athist clique. 
But it is surprising, however, that this anti-Maliki baloney comes from those whose criticism is the utmost hypocritical.  Would Howard Dean suggest that the seven Democrats who refused to vote in support of Israel are anti-Semitic, as well?  Is Mr. Dean himself a hater of Jews because he once legitimized Hamas terrorists by referring to them as “soldiers” –– and then defended that characterization?  Will he and Ms. Lowey boycott the United Nations due to Kofi Annan’s premature judgment of the “apparently deliberate” Israeli killing of U.N. peacekeepers?  Why does infamous CODEPINK peacenik Medea Benjamin feel inclined to rudely interrupt and protest Maliki’s speech to Congress –– and who let her in the building in the first place?  Did she not have such a yearning for activism when Yasser Arafat, pistol at his hip, ranted and raved at the U.N. in Manhattan?  Is her contempt only for elected Arab officials that fight terrorists, and not for unelected Arabs that subsidize them?

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is a rare Arab ally-in-arms.  Iraqis have suffered more fatalities at the hands of al Qaida than any other people in the world –– including our own.  The newly concocted Iraqi military has suffered more casualties than any other military –– including our own –– in the war against Islamic jihadists.  Much like Solidarity two decades ago, this embryonic Iraqi democracy is a partner in peace and a warrior in opposition to totalitarianism.  Give me one Nouri Maliki over ten Chiracs, one Jalal Talabani or fifteen Annans, and one U.S.-trained Iraqi soldier over fifty French berets and U.N. blue helmets any day of the week.     
Mr. Maliki may disagree with Israel’s efforts, he may have initially opposed a U.S. incursion into Iraq, and he may yet again one day “shock” us by being critical of a hypothetical move against Iran, but he nonetheless is a rare freedom fighter, like Wałęsa, in a region that needs more men like him.  In this effort, like Solidarity, he cannot go “too far” for his people’s freedom, to quote the shameful words of Charles Percy.
One of the most telling things Maliki said in his speech to Congress was not just repeating the Bush echo that Iraq is the central front in the war against terrorism –– and it is –– but his reference to Sept. 11, his characterization of the hijackers as enemies of true Islam, and his pleas for continued American assistance in stabilizing his homeland.  He does not wish to see us revert back to our isolationist impulses, which resulted in his death sentence and exile, the Saddam-approved execution of over five-dozen members of his family, and a crushed uprising –– and crushed hopes –– in the aftermath of the first war with Iraq fifteen years ago.
His people were told to rise up by this Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush.  And they did.  They were told to revolt, and they did.  They were told we would stand with them, and they believed us.  To their annihilation, we did not stand with them, and their rebellion in the name of freedom and ousting their slave master fell short.  Maliki gave Congress a chilling reminder: “Let us not allow what happened in 1991 to repeat itself, because if it does history will not be merciful to any one of us.”
You wouldn’t have known it by watching how our Democratic hosts treated this honored Iraqi guest, but truer words have never been spoken.  His war is ours.  His success is ours.  Nouri Maliki is a democratic ally, and a good man, worth listening to and worth standing with.