"Stop the bullshit":Someone...should have told McCain to do the same thing

[dajoki]

Slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2142638/?nav=fo

Advice and Dissent
U.S. pols need to get real about Iraq's problems.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, May 30, 2006, at 6:21 PM ET

A couple of weeks ago, according to the New York Observer, Sen. John McCain stood in a small back room of Manhattan's Regency Hotel and told a group of wealthy political donors, "One of the things I would do if I were president would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit.' "

Someone in the room should have told McCain to do the same thing.

Then again, McCain isn't so different from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who made a special trip to Baghdad last month with Britain's then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for the purpose of telling the members of Iraq's fractured leadership, "Start governing." She made a similar plea on a second trip, a few weeks later, this time with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "The key now is to get the government up and running … and then go about the work of dealing with the security situation, dealing with the economic situation."

<<snip>>

Does McCain really think that the disputes between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis—a complex of historical, social, tribal, cultural, religious, and economic fissures—amount to nothing deeper than "bullshit" that can be swept away by a session of sit-down and straight-talking?

Did Rice really think she'd make sparks fly by going to Baghdad, wagging her finger, and telling the leaders to start leading? In her case, a sub-agenda was to convince Ibrahim Jafari to step down as prime minister, and, through whatever manipulations, whether Rice set them in motion or not, he eventually did. To what end, though, is as unclear as ever. "The key," as she put it, is indeed "dealing with the security situation, dealing with the economic situation." But she made the point as if she were offering a sage solution, not restating the obvious problem.

<<snip>>

Certainly, somewhere beneath her steady pose, Rice must know all this. After all, she has a doctorate in international relations, a field where such observations are carved into basic principles. And her essays, at least those written before she joined George W. Bush's administration, reflect those principles.

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. Its my understanding that

even though Ibrahim Jafari stepped down as prime minister, he is still in a position of power.

[The Magistrate]

2. Of Course He Is, Sir

In that league, more power can often be exercised while out of office through proxies bound by blood and discipleship.

The most important point is that the two posts as yet unfilled in this "government" are those that offer firect control of armed man. They remain unfilled because whoever holds them will be the real power in the government, whatever its nominal structure may be....

[Dunvegan]

3. Quite right, OwnedByFerrets...

...Jafari is still "a bit of a puppet master"...but he's learned quite a bit having been a recent puppet himself.

Welcome to DU, OBF! - :hi:

[dajoki]

4. kick