Iraq and the Iowa primary

Preachers including those representing the Ayatollah Sistani warned in their Friday sermons yesterday against foreign interventions aimed at breaking up Iraq, implicitly and sometimes explicitly denouncing the Biden plan. But at the same time, a spokesman for the major Sistani client SIIC said the mention of federalism in the "National Pact" announced last week by Tareq al-Hashemi was a positive step and one that should be subject to further inter-party discussions and elaboration. In other words: The three-part federalism scheme is alive and well as a GreenZone collaboration, with the new, tentative, involvement of Hashemi and his Islamic Party (Sunni). But the foreign trumpeting of such a scheme is denounced as a scheme for partition. The apparent contradiction is easily understood. It isn't that anyone has ever doubted American influence on the Green Zone politicians like Hakim and Hashemi. What is new with Biden is the blatant nature of the foreign pressure for a dismemberment of the country. His scheme is seen as the extended middle finger to Iraq and Iraqis.

Which brings us back to the question: Why was the "Biden plan" trumpeted in this way, and why now?

The only available explanation in Washington is that the event--touted as showing Biden's bipartisan skills-- must have been part of his strategy for the Iowa primary. Political junkie Marc Ambinder quotes Biden's Iowa state director Danny O'Brien to the effect Biden is throwing everything into Iowa, featuring a push for endorsements from state legislators, including this: "Third, he’s stress[ing] his Iraq message – “a broader policy offering than they normally expected,” O’Brien says." And when the Biden-Iraq measure passed the Senate on Thursday, Matt Yglesias ran a picture of Biden, with a puff on his Iowa prospects--"Iowa Democrats buzzing about a coming Biden surge"--ostentatiously leaving out any actual mention of the Iraq amendment. It was about Iowa. Iraq as an actual country was beneath anyone's notice.

So the Iraqi perception of this as another screw-you message from America--bipartisan America this time--was no doubt the correct one. One of the Baghdad preachers yesterday put it this way (according to Al-Hayat):

[The preacher] denounced the decision of the American Congress with respect to partitioning Iraq, and warned that this will serve to "promote the process of tearing-apart and internecine fighting in the country", and he asked Iraqis to come to their senses and rise to the level of the responsibilities that have been placed on their shoulders, and he called America the Pharaoh of our modern age, striving for the partitioning of the Iraqi people by faction and by sect and by race.

"America the Pharaoh of the modern age" used to be a signature line of AlQaeda, but the idea is clearly gaining ground. And the primaries haven't even started yet.