The Unreliable Puppet

It looks more and more likely that the Iraqi government has decided it will do better with an Obama Administration than it is doing with its current US partners.

As many speculated last week, it seems the Iraqis have decided there’s more to gain by stretching out currently stalled negotiations over long-term U.S. troop postings in Iraq than by signing a pact now. The Iraqis probably hope for better bargaining with a President Obama in 2009 (or that this position enhances Iraqi strength at the table now). Accepting U.S. carte blanche on a Status of Forces Agreement the Bush regime has been pushing on them is becoming politically distasteful within Iraq and throughout the Middle East and Persia, even to a puppet regime.

Maliki’s resistance must be a tremendous slap to our President. However, there’s zero likelihood that Bush will allow things in Iraq to devolve militarily during the remaining months before the election (except through massive incompetence, which is always a possibility with his crowd), even if the al-Maliki regime provokes him tremendously. Bush’s main goal still has to be making Iraq look stable for the electorate back home, no matter how angry the Iraqis make him.

So when the Iraqi Prime Minister gives a nod to candidate Obama’s U.S. troop withdrawal timetable in his Der Spiegel interview— and then only weakly denies the translation— we can assume he hopes the U.S. electoral fallout will help him at home. He’s not playing the reliable puppet right now.

This could get interesting— and become a complex game— if Maliki keeps calling Bush's bluff.