Griper News: Retired CIA Expert: Maliki's 'the Mayor of the Green Zone

A retired CIA 'political Islam expert', Dr. Emile A. Nakleh, spoke with Ken Silverstein of Harper's Magazine about the situation in Iraq and the best course of action there. Go read the whole thing, but this bit jumped out at me.

"As a prime minister," said Nakhleh, "al-Maliki is a figment of our imagination and our own creation. Some people call [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai the 'Mayor of Kabul,' but al-Maliki is not even the mayor of Baghdad. He's the mayor of the Green Zone - at best." Echoing comments I've heard from Americans who have recently traveled to Iraq, Nakhleh said the idea of a functioning Iraqi government is fiction. "We're seeing the emergence of fiefdoms and strongmen," he said. "Ministers can make decisions, but they can't implement them."

The American military presence in Iraq is increasingly "irrelevant" to the country's unrelenting violence, Nakhleh said, and the security situation is unlikely to improve over the next year, "whether we have 10,000 or 150,000 troops stationed there." Even so, he continued, the occupation remains a magnet for attacks against Iraqis, and of course, against coalition forces.

"The violence has taken on a life of its own,"said Nakhleh. "It may get worse after we withdraw but it won't necessarily get worse because we withdraw. Given the situation, why continue to lose soldiers and kill Iraqis? It makes no sense. I'm not saying that we need to leave this minute, but we need an exit strategy. Iraqis will ultimately be the ones who decide whether their country is going to break apart or not."

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In other words, coalition forces have become completely ineffective. Like I've said before, the coalition military is just another militia now. This whole thing's gotten away from us and, if we can't be effective, we should just get the hell out.