President Obama's Shoes

Responding to the instantly famous "shoe attack" Bush quipped, "That’s what happens in free societies – people try to bring attention to themselves.”

No, Mr. Bush, that's what oppressed people do when their lives are being destroyed and people like you aren't listening.

"In Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City, thousands rallied to demand the reporter's release: "Bush, Bush, listen well: Two shoes on your head." They called the reporter a "hero."

"I’m sure many Iraqis want to do what Muntazer did. Muntazer used to say all the orphans whose father were killed are because of Bush," his brother, Udai al-Zaidi, told Reuters Television.

Dividing the Spoils

Joe Biden's proposition in 2006 to divide Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions arrived in Baghdad virtually DOA after having won hands-down support in the U.S. Senate. As Biden laid out in an Op-Ed to the NYTimes, the notion that the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites would each be responsible for their own laws, administration and security was hardly radical, after all, the Iraqi Constitution already provided for a federal structure in which "the provinces combine to form regional governments."

His argument ran thus: [Iraq] was already heading toward partition:"The Sunnis, who until recently believed they would retake power in Iraq, are beginning to recognize that they won't and don't want to live in a Shiite-controlled, highly centralized state with laws enforced by sectarian militias. The Shiites know they can dominate the government, but they can't defeat a Sunni insurrection. The Kurds will not give up their 15-year-old autonomy."

Ironically, there are many in Iraq who believe that the Senate's approval of the Biden proposal actually helped to quell the sectarian violence that had been rising exponentially, as more and more tribes and neighborhood gangs sought revenge. Even the Kurds who already enjoy de facto autonomy were said to "oppose" the “Biden plan”.

“We don’t support establishing federal regions on a sectarian basis. For example our region is not ethnic, it contains Kurds and non-Kurds. The regions should be established on a geographic basis,” said Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman.

Ezzet al-Shabender, a member of parliament from the secularist Iraqi List of former prime minister Ayad Allawi, credited the broad-based disgust triggered by Biden’s proposal for helping Iraqi politicians bury their differences.

“His project was the reason behind the unity of many political blocs that once differed in viewpoints,” he said, comparing it to the Balfour Declaration, a 1917 British note that backed the creation of Israel andis regarded across the Arab world as the ultimate colonial injustice.

Indeed one wonders, now that Obama has Biden as his chief-counselor, whether the original neocon plan to divide up Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, is to be continued under a Democratic face. It certainly seems that way to the Iraqis, most of whom viewed the Senate resolution with near-apoplectic outrage.

"The Iraqi government categorically rejects the resolution. Iraq is not a US property," said a spokesman for the Sunni-led National Dialogue Front. The Association of Muslim Scholars, which calls itself the political arm of the Iraqi armed resistance, stated, "The Senate's adoption of [the] resolution…is not shocking, because [partitioning the country] was one of the objectives behind the invasion of Iraq."

Indeed, from Richard Perle to David Wurmser, who recently resigned as Vice President Cheney's chief Middle East adviser, the neoconservatives who pushed for the war eagerly embraced the notion of redrawing the map of the region, and it didn't stop at Iraq's borders.

Map of an imaginary reconstituted Iraq, published by the Goals For Americans Foundation. Note the placement of Mosul, the biggest city of north-western Iraq, in the middle of the “Kurdish Republic”. Another version is available here, with Najaf located approximately in the marshlands north of Basra instead of in central Iraq

The wild-card in all this remains Iran which has gained the most from Bush's poorly planned invasion. There is little doubt that if such a partition were put into effect the Shia region would be Iran's closest ally and Iraq would cease to exist as an Arab state. Stranded without direct access to the country's oil one need not be a pessimist to see the Sunnis, sandwiched between Kurds and Shia, becoming like the Tamil Tigers , prompting more chaos. In fact a mere cursory reading of Sri Lankan history suggests that all the ingredients: regional, religious and ethnic division are there waiting to be exacerbated. This is the heavy price of "divide and conquer". Replace Iraq for "Sri Lanka" and Sunni and Shia for "Buddhist and Hindu" or "Sinhalese and Tamil" you have a tendentious state where the region's powerbrokers depend on constant turmoil.

"The Tigers need a ‘Sinhala Sri Lanka’ (as opposed to a pluralist Sri Lanka) to justify the creation of Tiger Eelam; the Southern extremists need Tigers and their quest for Tiger Eelam to justify ‘Sinhala/Buddhist Sri Lanka’. Co-existing side by side these two opposing but mutually dependent extremisms endeavour to expand themselves and wipe out the middle ground, thereby destroying the environment necessary for the survival of the democratic Tamils and the centrist Sinhalese."

Which is why for all the bloviating in the Western press about Iraq "descending into violence" once the U.S. army leaves we rarely hear from Iraqis themselves. If Obama wants to escape the indignity of being beaned with a pair of dirty shoes I "hope" that for a "change" the new president will listen to patriotic Iraqi voices such as these:

Haytham Hashim: “[Any] Iraqi federal system should be demarcated in a spirit free from racism and sectarianism..."

Nuha Zaki: “I think the concept of regions is a bad idea, especially in the current situation ... we should do our utmost to combat sectarianism and make Iraq return to its past as a unified country and a unified people from north to south. The establishment of regions will lead to barriers that will have consequences for such areas as the economy and trade,”

Abu Usama: “Iraq, the Land of the Two Rivers, was from the days of the monarchy a centralised state from north to south, and when the republic was declared, the late leader Abd al-Karim Qasim held on to every square inch (dharra, literally, “atom” or “tiny particle”) of our dear fatherland of Iraq. But today we live under fire of the loathsome occupation which is aimed at splitting Iraq into races and sects… Not everything that is workable in the West may be in harmony with Arab and Muslim Iraq.”

But then, bringing hope and democracy to Iraq was never why we went there.