Quite a revealing interview by Robert Pollock in today’s WSJ. I hope Pollock is correct that “Maliki has been highly underrated”:
What about Iraq’s neighbors? Are they helpful?
“No, actually,” he admits. “At the beginning it wasn’t an issue of getting more support but suffering from their negative interventions and their breaking of the principles of good neighbors.” But he says things have started to change for the better because the surrounding countries now worry that troubles in Iraq could spread. They have “started a dialogue” with us, he says, adding “it is the duty of the entire world to work with Iraq.”
Throughout the course of our discussion I emphasize that he should regard this as an opportunity to speak his mind, not a “gotcha” game. He tells me that the overriding message he aims to deliver in New York this week is that the world must form a “united front that supports democracy and confronts terror. There is no country that can say that terrorism has nothing to do with me.”
And he thanks The Wall Street Journal for what he calls balanced coverage of Iraq–”we don’t want news organizations to do propaganda for us.”
Flattery aside, I come away with the reinforced impression that Prime Minister Maliki has been highly underrated. Sure, it might be nice to have an Iraqi prime minister with a ready smile, flawless English and the unquestioned loyalty of all the country’s people. But given the fractured nature of the country we found, and our many missteps–particularly the “proportional representation” electoral system, which encouraged sectarian politics–we should be thanking our lucky stars we ended up with Mr. Maliki. He is decent, thoughtful and courageous. He deserves our support, and patience.
“In the 1860s, your country fought a great struggle of its own”–Mr. Maliki reminded the world in an article for The Wall Street Journal in June (yes, he really did draft it himself)–”a civil war that took hundreds of thousands of lives but ended in the triumph of freedom and the birth of a great power.”
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