Posted by
flagwaver on Thursday, August 23, 2007 9:38:14 PM
It has finally happened,
something that I have wanted to see come from the Iraqi government finally
happened this week. In response to a serious pounding that has been handed out
constantly in the American press and coming from American politicians, Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al Maliki finally did what he should have done a long time ago.
He basically told our
politicians to shut up, and it warmed my heart to hear it.
Responding to complaints
about everything from missed benchmarks to the time off the Iraqi legislators
took, Mr. al-Maliki finally told our meddlesome politicians to stick a sock in
it, and it was long overdue. I was starting to wonder if al-Maliki had the
“testicular fortitude” to tell our politicians to back off and let his
government handle its own business, free from the constant harangues coming out
of Washington, D.C.; now I know that he does, and that is encouraging to me.
I see it as encouraging
because it shows me that the Iraqis are serious about governing themselves, and
because it shows an independent streak that is sorely needed by the Iraqi
government. While it is a given that we want a government in Baghdad that is
closely allied with ours, we do not want a puppet government there to do our
bidding. By showing that it would not be intimidated by woofing coming from
Washington about what it should be doing, how often it should be in session, or
how it should work internally, the Iraqi government has shown that it is determined
to be truly sovereign and not be dominated by anyone---including us.
What has bothered me about
this entire process of trying to help the Iraqis establish a functioning
government is the constant criticism coming from the United States; we seem to
be intent on ignoring certain realities in Iraq while we demand that they do
something that they have never done before. We demand that they have a fully
functioning, efficient, unified government up and running in a war zone, while
bullets are still flying, in a short amount of time. These people who have
never governed themselves, have never had a chance to choose their own leaders,
and who have lived in constant fear of a tyrant are being castigated for not
having a constitutional government humming along just a few short years after
the deposing of said tyrant. That type of demand cannot be met in the time that
we seem to think it should be; heck, even we didn’t get things figured out
until 1789---and sometimes it looks like we still are having problems getting
it all figured out.
As frustrating as it may
be to some, we have to have patience in this endeavor. If we do not want Iraq
to fall under the sway of Iran and/or Syria, or to become a breeding ground for
new terrorists, we have to be willing to keep pressing towards the final goal
of a truly free Iraq. It may not come quickly, but it will come if we are willing
to finish the fight. To paraphrase the old spiritual, we need to run on to see
what the end’s going to be.