{"id":315,"date":"2007-07-13T10:20:27","date_gmt":"2007-07-13T14:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=315"},"modified":"2007-07-13T10:20:27","modified_gmt":"2007-07-13T14:20:27","slug":"the-limits-of-grassroots-reconciliation-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=315","title":{"rendered":"The Limits of Grassroots Reconciliation In Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Language\" content=\"en-us\" \/> <meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=windows-1252\" \/><title>Notwithstanding some rumbling am<\/title>Notwithstanding some rumbling among Republican critics of Bush administration  policy about the failure of the surge, plenty of folks on the Right now share  Bush&#8217;s enthusiasm for the surge-linked &#8220;Anbar Model.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/07\/12\/AR2007071200937_pf.html\"> July 12, 2007 White House press conference<\/a>, Bush referred to this as  &#8220;political reconciliation from the bottom up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=310\">a recent post<\/a>, I  suggested that<em> politically<\/em>,<em> <\/em>the Anbar Model was accomplishing much  that &#8220;top-down&#8221; political reconciliation had failed to achieve.<\/p>\n<p>Charles Krauthammer makes a similar point in his most recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/07\/12\/AR2007071201619.html\"> <em>Washington Post<\/em> column<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A year ago, it appeared that the only way to <strong>win back the Sunnis<\/strong>  \tand neutralize the extremists was with great national compacts about oil and  \tpower sharing. But Anbar has unexpectedly shown that even without these  \tconstitutional settlements, the insurgency can be neutralized and al-Qaeda  \tdefeated at the local and provincial levels&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In some ways, the so-called &#8220;grassroots&#8221; reconciliation is a substitute for  &#8220;top down&#8221; reconciliation.<\/p>\n<p>Note well, the reconciliation is between <em>US forces<\/em> and the Sunnis, <em> not<\/em> between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.cz\/article\/idUSCOL75103720070617\">the Shiite-led  Iraqi government<\/a> has expressed grave concern about the drift Bush&#8217;s &#8220;bottom  up&#8221; reconciliation.<\/p>\n<p>Between Krauthammer, the White House and Bush&#8217;s Republican critics in the  Senate there is no real disagreement on the issue of &#8220;political reconciliation  from the bottom up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The disagreement centers on the Maliki government and its commitment to  &#8220;top-down&#8221; reconciliation.\u00c2\u00a0 Bush&#8217;s Republican critics in the Senate want  Bush to dump Maliki because he and his governing coalition continue to resist  efforts to hand power to the Sunni Arab minority.<\/p>\n<p>The <em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/07\/12\/AR2007071202307_pf.html\"> Washington Post<\/a><\/em> quotes Haider al-Ebaidi, a Shiite politician from  Maliki&#8217;s Dawa party:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ebaidi said many Shiites view reconciling with former Baathists as  \t&#8220;rewarding those people who have been responsible for torturing and  \tkilling&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The moment they push these things through,&#8221; he said, &#8220;they will divide the  \tgovernment more.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It is far from certain that Bush will, in fact, abandon Maliki.<\/p>\n<p>But it is also unclear whether Senate Republicans think there is a viable <em> parliamentary<\/em> alternative to Maliki.<\/p>\n<p>We may find out this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in July, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2007\/07\/07\/eveningnews\/printable3027794.shtml\"> <em>CBS News<\/em> reported<\/a> that Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi  (sometimes transliterated as Tariq al-Hashemi) was assembling the votes for a  parliamentary no-confidence vote to topple the Maliki government.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>CBS News has learned that on July 15, [senior Iraqi leaders] plan to ask  \tfor a no-confidence vote in the Iraqi parliament as the first step to  \tbringing down the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The no-confidence vote will be requested by the largest block of Sunni  \tpoliticians, who are part of a broad political alliance called the Iraq  \tProject. What they want is a new government run by ministers who are  \tappointed for their expertise, not their party loyalty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>[The <em>CBS<\/em> report suggested that the no-confidence vote had the support  of Vice President Cheney, an claim recently echoed in the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/world\/africa\/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9475875\"> <em>Economist<\/em><\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the most <a href=\"http:\/\/robertdreyfuss.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/july_15_double_whammy_on_iraq.html\"> ardent US supporters<\/a> of such a no-confidence vote remain skeptical that  Cheney would support the move.]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.juancole.com\/2007\/07\/al-maliki-to-face-no-confidence-vote-as.html\"> Juan Cole<\/a> does some nose counting and seems to doubt Hashimi will be able to  get the votes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There are three Sunni Arab parties in the 275-member parliament. The  \tlargest, with 44 seats, is the Iraqi Accord Front. The National Dialogue  \tFront of Salih al-Mutlak has 11 seats. The small Liberation and  \tReconciliation Party has 3 seats (its founder, Mishaan al-Jibouri has had to  \tflee the country because a warrant was issued for his arrest last fall).  \tAccording to the Iraqi constitution, any 50 members of parliament can call a  \tvote of no confidence, so the Sunni Arab parties can certainly initiate the  \tprocess.<\/p>\n<p>They would need 138 seats to unseat al-Maliki, however, and it is not clear  \tthat they would have them. The 58 Kurdish deputies will vote for al-Maliki,  \tand he would only need 80 Shiite votes to win the vote. Even with the  \tdefection from his alliance of 32 Sadrist MPs and 15 from the Islamic Virtue  \tParty (Fadhila), al-Maliki probably still has 80 Shiite MPs behind him  \t(before the defections he had about 130 in his United Iraqi Alliance, so the  \tdefections should have left him with 88). It is also not clear that the  \tSadrist and Islamic Virtue MPs will actually vote with Sunni fundamentalist  \tparties to unseat a Shiite prime minister.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Maliki <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/worldlatest\/story\/0,,-6774591,00.html\"> retains the confidence<\/a> of his key ally, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme  Islamic Council of Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>But the <em>CBS<\/em> report suggested that the no-confidence vote was merely  &#8220;the first step&#8221; to bringing down the government.<\/p>\n<p>Other steps would presumably require &#8220;<em>extra-parliamentary<\/em>&#8221; action.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, Hashimi and his political allies might abandon the &#8220;political  process&#8221; altogether and launch the <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=314\">long-awaited anti-Shiite  coup<\/a> that would finally silence Maliki&#8217;s Right Arabist critics (even as it  might unleash the fury of Iraqi Shiites).<\/p>\n<p>At present, there is nothing in the news that would suggest the White House  has given up on the Maliki government <em>or<\/em> the Iraqi parliamentary process.<\/p>\n<p>Until he does, however, there will be no political reconciliation between  Bush and his Right Arabist critics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Notwithstanding some rumbling amNotwithstanding some rumbling among Republican critics of Bush administration policy about the failure of the surge, plenty of folks on the Right now share Bush&#8217;s enthusiasm for the surge-linked &#8220;Anbar Model.&#8221; In his July 12, 2007 White House press conference, Bush referred to this as &#8220;political reconciliation from the bottom up.&#8221; In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}