Iraqis do not need need any more 'advice' from Washington

By The Daily Star - Sept 29, 2007

The US Senate resolved this week that Iraq should be reorganized into a loose federation that would limit the role of the central government in Baghdad. The resolution is based on the presidential campaign platform of Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, a Democrat whose last such run ended in a humiliating withdrawal over his plagiarism of speeches by a British politician. More importantly, it illustrates the presumptuousness with which both mainstream parties in America look on the rest of the world.

It is no secret that present-day Iraq was cobbled together in a manner that had nothing to do with local realities (economic, ethnic, political, religious, social or otherwise) and everything to do with maintaining the influence of a foreign power, namely what was then the British Empire). It also true that if and when Iraq regains some degree of stability and its inhabitants are free to discuss and decide their own future absent the coercion of foreign occupation and armed conflict, they might well decide on some form of federal structure - or even on outright partition. It is not the right of any legislative body in any other country, however, to make that decision - least of all one in Washington, whose past and current policies have transformed Iraq from a flawed but functioning state into a failed one.

Other critics have noted the possible pitfalls of Biden's plan, which include wider regional conflagrations involving Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey. They will note, too, that the United States has already done more than enough damage to the Middle East. These are valid observations, but even they are not so pertinent as the principle that has been violated yet again by arrogant and ignorant American political leaders playing to a domestic audience: that of Iraq's sovereignty as an independent nation.

The United States is a veteran in the perilous businesses of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and upsetting regional balances of power. If it will not desist, it should, at the very least, pretend to honor the principles it claims to cherish - and learn something about those parts of the world whose destinies it presumes to determine.