Iraq's New Crisis

FrontPage Magazine ^ | January 22, 2010 | Ryan Mauro

[TDCAnalyst]

Iraq has steadily improved since the U.S. launched the “surge” of 2007. Security has increased, the economy has grown, democracy is taking hold, and cross-sectarian reconciliation is underway. All that could change, however, with the Iraqi government’s decision, supported by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, to ban 500 politicians for allegedly having ties to the outlawed Baath Party of the late Saddam Hussein.

On January 14, the Iraqi government’s Independent High Election Commission sided with the Justice and Accountability Commission in its decision to ban over 500 politicians for allegedly having ties to the Baath Party. The earliest reporting said that these were nearly all Sunni politicians, indicating that the Shiite government was trying to minimize the strength of its sectarian rival ahead of the parliamentary elections on March 7, but Reuters received a copy of the list and found that two-thirds of those banned were Shiites. Many observers forget that, as Prime Minister Maliki has pointed out since the crisis began, 70 percent of the Baath Party membership was Shiite.

However, the effect is the greatest on the Sunnis, as some of their most prominent leaders have been kicked out of the political process without a public hearing. Among those banned are Defense Minister Abdulqadir al-Obeidi and Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni leader who left the Baath Party in 1977 but has opposed the decision to ban the party. Mutlaq is far from a pro-American liberal. He has long demanded a U.S. withdrawal, courts Baath supporters, and has criticized America for branding “honorable national resistance movements” as terrorists. Still, Sunnis will interpret a ban on him as an act of Shiite-orchestrated oppression against them....

[Wiz]

I think this could be couter productive, resulting in unrest and power struggles that may challenge the democracy, and letting the ex-baathist Sunni to be more violent rather than compromising to share the value of democracy, and forgiving the past for the unity of all Iraqis.

[LZ_Bayonet]

This is ABSOLUTELY NO SURPRISE to anyone who has followed the Iraq situation. Obama knew this would happen. This is happening because Obama engineered it to happen via his quick withdrawal.

Obama wants the US to eventually lose in Iraq because Obama once stated we would lose - and Obama, even beyond his anti-American ideology, is a narcissist.