Iran wins again

Gene Lyons
Posted on Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Maybe it’s too bad that Baghdad isn’t actually a part of the United States, like, say, New Orleans. Bush administration loyalists would be arguing that its make-believe “Green Zone” government had become the ultimate welfare state and needed to be cut loose of its dependency on U. S. dollars and military might lest it remain permanently crippled. What’s more, they’d be right. Instead, the al-Maliki government’s ill-advised attempt to overthrow its rivals’ control over the Iraqi port city of Basra saw American soldiers enlisted as partisan fighters in what is essentially a domestic quarrel. Why should we care which Iranian-backed Shiite political party prevails there ? With one crucial exception, the differences among the three main parties concern Iraqi civil and religious issues of no importance to Americans. How many Americans should die over whether or not Iraqi women are forced to wear veils ? Don’t look to our own peerless leader for an answer. As usual, President Bush limned the conflict in cartoonish goodguy-vs.-bad-guy terms. He described the fighting in Basra and elsewhere as “a bold decision” by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and predicted “a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.”