Why US Criticisms of al-Maliki are pretty well useless

From Sic Semper Tyrannis:

What the clever people in this administration seem to "miss" is that there is no one in Iraq who will do any better at stabilizing the country than Maliki.

We re-made the government on the basis of individual rights and interests but the Iraqis don't function that way. They think of themselves as members of groups, just like the bonzes who burned themselves on the streets of Saigon so long ago.

Maliki knows that his real job is to ensure that the Shia Arabs will be the "overdogs." In his mind he is the defender of Shia rights in Iraq. Someone else would merely be the defender of some other group. There are a few, like Allawi, who think of themselves PRIMARILY as Iraqi, but we saw how well he did at election time. What a disappointment that must have been.

We keep "screwing up" in places like Vietnam and Iraq because we (as a people) do not accept the relevance of history and cultural difference. We insists on believing people are all pretty much the same and that they will behave as we think we would behave. Nonsense. We and another set of peoples have paid the price for that cultural blindness once again.

"Swapping" Maliki for someone else would be pointless. The groups will not share power and wealth amicably. In their minds that is simply arming and equipping one's enemies.

Not to mention that Carl Levin (D-MI) made his comments about the people throwing out Maliki while in Tel Aviv as Juan Cole pointed out. i.e. In the Arab world (American politicians are so f--in dumb) it will be read as the Israeli ("The Jews") are pushing the US to overthrow Maliki.