…has an excellent column, this time critiquing the contempt felt for Iraqi exiles by lefty intellectuals, and our own State Department:
“Day after day, administration spokesmen make it clear the White House is being told — and is agreeing — that it must not trust the Iraqis whom U.S. forces fought to liberate. Some officials trash the Governing Council that the administration put in place, evidently to avoid having to give it real power anytime soon.
“The Governing Council is not seen as legitimate by the Iraqi people. They’re not ready to take power,” according to an unnamed senior official quoted by the State Department correspondent of the New York Times earlier this month.
Talk about disloyal leaks from the upper echelons. How would you like to be dodging bombs in Baghdad while trying to write a constitution so that Colin Powell’s people can deliberately undermine you in complete anonymity?
The reasons for this distrust are varied. But much of it stems from the prominent role that Iraqi exiles such as Ayad Alawi, Ahmed Chalabi, Adnan Pachachi and Abdul Aziz Hakim play on the Governing Council. Bitter foes as they fought for scarce external support while they were living abroad, they have forged a relatively good working relationship since they came home. But a lingering prejudice in Iraq against political exiles blocks significant recognition of this positive development….”