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Thomas Friedman Can Sue For Copyright Infringement!

Iraq’s prime minister said on Thursday he could get violence under control in six months, half the time U.S. generals say they need, provided Washington gave him more weaponry and more say over his own forces. ~Reuters As many will recall, Thomas Friedman became particularly well-known for his tendency to keep putting off judgement on […]

Iraq’s prime minister said on Thursday he could get violence under control in six months, half the time U.S. generals say they need, provided Washington gave him more weaponry and more say over his own forces. ~Reuters

As many will recall, Thomas Friedman became particularly well-known for his tendency to keep putting off judgement on the state of Iraq in six-month increments, documented here.  Though Friedman no longer indulges in these fantasies, I think he must have some kind of proprietary rights over the use of the six-month estimate by now.

Why is it always six months with these estimates, and not five or seven?  How about a nice, Biblical-sounding 40 weeks?  Isn’t  the six-month estimate just a nice unit of time that sounds plausibly long enough to expect to see real changes without being too long to instill a certain indifference or weariness?  One does wonder how Maliki thinks that the mighty forces of the Iraqi army and the Iraqi government, compromised as the latter certainly is by its Sadrite wing and the Sadrites’ ties to death squads, are going to bring peace from chaos in half a year.  This appears to be a bid to play the role of the nationalist strongman who dictates to the foreigners how things will be and who will supposedly show them up at their own game of military power.  This is a belated ploy to show that he is his own man.  Besides destroying a lot of goodwill with an administration that has defended Maliki’s ineffectual government against all and sundry, Maliki has also set himself up for a fall by confirming that his “solution” to the security problems of his country is mostly bluster.  But then democratic government encourages windy promises and a lot of empty bluster, so I suppose we could consider this a sign of progress in the growth of Iraqi democracy if we really wanted to. 

I suspect that he is taking this unrealistic hard-line approach at least partly because he fears that the rumours of his impending overthrow are based in a real plot to topple his government, and he is calling for more weaponry from the U.S. possibly more as a way to bribe army commanders into staying loyal than as part of a plan to restore order.  If he can deliver the goods in terms of military hardware (which could, in a pinch, at least be sold on the black market for a nice amount of money), perhaps he thinks he can stave off an attempted coup.  Perhaps that reads too much into it, but this announcement doesn’t convey confidence so much as it does a kind of wild-eyed desperation.

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