The Daily Background

After Hillary Clinton echoed Carl Levin’s call for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to leave office, I wrote the following:

I believe she’s the first 2008 hopeful to do so, and she may be doing it in reaction to the recent swatch of criticism she’s gotten for saying about Bush’s escalation “It’s working. We’re just years too late changing our tactics.” Clinton said in her statement Wednesday “I share Senator Levin’s hope that the Iraqi Parliament will replace Prime Minister Maliki with a less divisive and more unifying figure when it returns in a few weeks.”

I’m not sure I’d call al-Maliki divisive- he’s a pretty uninspiring guy, and more incompetent and stubborn than divisive per say. But she’s right; Iraq would certainly benefit from a more able leader who is interested in and able to engage the Sunnis in the political process. Let’s see if any other Democrats agree with her, and more importantly, if any agree with her and are willing to step it up to the next level and do so on camera (or if she reiterates it on camera).

Well, she hasn’t. And neither has anybody else. But in light of Minipundit’s post (which had a… slightly different take) in reaction to the same news, I want to emphasize that I certainly wasn’t advocating a US-supported coup, or really any coup at all, or any US involvement with a change of Iraqi government (other than vocal involvement). I really do think Maliki is a totally ineffective leader who has proven himself to be incompetent, but a coup (whether US-supported or not) is hardly the solution to that.

Whatever happened to that vote of no confidence that was supposed to happen in Iraqi Parliament that was supposed to force Maliki to resign?

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