Al-Maliki's Rhetoric

"'While Israel has stated its military objective is to hit Hezbollah's infrastructure and physical strength, it has, in the words of the Lebanese prime minister, torn the country to shreds.'

"In fairness to al-Maliki, we should note that he didn't say all these things. Only the first and third quotes are from him; the second and fourth are from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. We'll agree with Reid, Schumer and Durbin, then, that al-Maliki is as bad as Annan, and we look forward to their condemnation of Annan."

Tricky but effective.

DLCer Marshall Wittmann uses his Bull Moose column for a little history lesson:

"Some Members of Congress have protested Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki's address to a joint session of Congress because he criticized Israel and refused to condemn Hezbollah. The Moose shares their frustration, but notes that it is better that this Iraqi leader is hurling verbal missiles instead of real ones.

"A recent Iraqi leader launched real, deadly missiles against Israel. An earlier ruler of Iraq paid the families of suicide bombers a princely sum after their relatives strapped explosives to their bodies and killed and mutilated Israelis. Perhaps, these Congressmen who lament the words of the new Iraqi leader, will now celebrate the fact that Saddam is behind bars instead of issuing verbal orders to kill Israelis and slaughter his own people.

"The Moose harbors no illusions about a dramatic transformation of Muslim attitudes toward the Jewish state. But, it is a dramatic improvement when words cannot kill."

In Slate, Fred Kaplan objects to the PM's rhetoric on very different grounds:

"The unabashedly cynical move was Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's address before a joint session of Congress. Either the address was written by White House handlers (as was a similar oration two years ago by his predecessor, Iyad Allawi) or Maliki has hired speechwriters who know exactly how to say what American legislators want to hear...

"First, Maliki's speech, which he must have read half-ashamed, half-relieved that almost nobody back home would be listening. It was a speech right out of George W. Bush's playbook. It painted the war in Iraq as a struggle between democracy and terrorism. "Iraq is free," he said, 'and the terrorists cannot stand this.' Those who killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11 are 'the same terrorists' as those killing innocent Iraqis today. 'Iraqis are your allies in the war on terror,' and Iraq is this war's 'front line' . . .

"He described Iraq as a country where people 'rely on dialogue to resolve their differences,' where 'women are equal to men' (in the constitution anyway), and where he plans very soon to establish a free-market economy and to loosen restrictions on foreign investment. These fairy tales, too, triggered what the transcripts of speeches before the Soviet Union's Central Committee used to call 'stormy applause.'

"Maliki gave not a hint that most of the violence gripping Iraq these days has nothing to do with al-Qaida-type terrorism--and everything to do with sectarian conflicts, if not outright civil war, between and among the native Sunni and Shiite Arabs.