Talabani blows "the speech"

A few of the more pugnacious editors of Oldtownreview have been firing heated e-mails back at forth as to the wisdom of Jalal Talabani’s appointment as the new President of Iraq. The polarization tends to run from Morgan, who as a serial idolator believes that Talabani can do no wrong, to myself, who as hardened iconoclast harbors some deep concerns that Talabani is more loyal to the Kurdish cause then that of a unified Iraq. Stefany has chimed in with her own unease that, ultimately, Talabani is “out for an independent Kurdish state,” but she hopes that his appointment will show the benefits of political participation for the Kurdish cause.

What seems readily apparent to everyone but Morgan is that Talabani must reach out and reaffirm his commitment to the state of Iraq en toto. In accepting the role as President of Iraq he needed to give “the speech.” I think you know what the speech needed to be: think Martin Luther King to Rodney King, a rousing call to put aside differences and ethnic divisions so all the citizens of Iraq could live in peace, prosperity, harmony, etc. This was Talabani’s chance to rise above his political base and act the statesman for the new state of Iraq. Indeed, he did go out and deliver the proper platitudes, but then, immediately after, Talabani just couldn’t help himself:

"We will carry out our goals without any sectarian or racial differences," Mr. Talabani said today in his speech.

But in a news conference with reporters afterward, he vehemently defended the Kurds' claims to the city of Kirkuk, the right to keep the pesh merga and other demands.

"The Kurdish demands are in the proper place, and all the Iraqi opposition groups agreed to them in the opposition conferences held in New York, London and Salahuddin," Mr. Talabani said. He was referring to meetings during the Hussein era attended by himself and Shiite Arab and Sunni Arab leaders working to overthrow Mr. Hussein.

Talabani here, in a very ugly display of his real loyalties, is still playing exile politics: divvying up the spoils of Iraq in foreign conferences that occurred years ago. Why should any single ethnicity lay claim to the city of Kirkuk? Isn’t Iraq to be a multi-ethnic state with equal rights guaranteed to all? Why keep a separate militia (the Kurdish pesh merga) when the army and national guard are to maintain order? Do SCIRI, Moqtada al-Sadr and some assorted Sunni tribesmen get to keep their own militias? Of course not, which is why the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) prohibited the maintenance of all such militias. At some point soon they must be disbanded for the unity of Iraq. Now, Morgan can step up. Is he for TAL or Talabani?

What Talabani at his frequent worst represents is the ethnic patronage politics of an invidious type that has long bedeviled Iraqi parliaments. Charles Tripp, a London historian, has noted in a Christian Science Monitor article that the carving up of Iraqi bureaucracies is already under way:

Mr. Tripp says the treatment of cabinet posts as patronage tools was a factor behind the failure of Iraq's parliament under a constitutional monarch, and the 1958 coup that overthrew the monarchy. He also worries that ethnic and religious divisions will dog efforts to write the constitution, because at the moment there seems to be little common ground.

Worst of all, a failure to restore security or improve the economy quickly could damage average Iraqis' support for the system, as happened before 1958.

"The pattern of the possible unraveling of parliamentary democracy in the face of the security problem is all there,'' says Tripp. "Can people avoid it? I'm a great believer that no one is condemned by the past, but it's going to take incredible vision from Iraq's new leaders."

When “incredible vision” is required from Iraq’s leaders, the narrow, corrupt, scope of Jalal Talabani will not cut it. He needs to transcend his sectarianism and speak for Iraq as a whole, not just Kurdistan. . . . . and do so consistently. His ethnocentric tantrum right after delivering his first Presidential address was graceless and troubling. I’m sure Morgan will join me in condemning him for it.