From The Seattle Times
By Jere L. Bacharach

The perspective from Cairo on the Bush-Cheney plans for Iraq is that they have no relation with the reality of the Middle East. The overwhelming consensus is that they are doomed from the start.

Assuming that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the head of a coalition government, is going to be able to deliver on verbal promises to take military action against the same factions that keep him in power is naïve, at best. Al-Maliki’s goal is to stay in office and he will not seriously attack his base of power.

For Middle Easterners, al-Maliki’s position parallels that of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who also runs a coalition government. Olmert may promise Washington that there will be no Israeli expansion of the settlements on the West Bank, but in order to retain power, Olmert has no intention of alienating key partners in his coalition by implementing those promises.

Another explosive idea circulating in the region is that the U.S. wants to move Kurdish troops from Northern Iraq to Baghdad to help stabilize the situation in the city. Both Sunni and Shiite Arabs in Baghdad will see the premise of Kurdish forces as a vehicle for Kurds to seek revenge for Saddam Hussein’s policies against Kurds. Rather than being welcomed, the Kurds will quickly become a target for attacks by both Sunni and Shiite Arabs and a very bad situation will be worse.

A bolder U.S. plan would be to begin serious planning for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, including the abandonment of all our military bases in Iraq. As long as we attempt to keep a military presence in Iraq, it will be used by all parties opposed to U.S. policies in the region as a symbol of our continuing occupation of Iraq.

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