With our apparent support, Maliki will be lawfully eased from office (via Instapundit):
Iraqi lawmakers have told reporters that they are ready to oust Maliki over his utter failure to deal with Iraq's continuing security crisis. Under Iraqi law, they could do so with a majority vote in parliament. Indeed, Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish and secular MPs have been gradually shaping a parliamentary majority that specifically excludes followers of Al Sadr. This new emerging majority bloc would be headed by the Shiite leader Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, who met with President Bush in Washington earlier this month. Hakim is well known to be close to Iran, but he doesn't want to be prime minister, and it is doubtful that anyone else wants him to be PM, either. Instead, Hakim backs Adel Abdul Mahdi.
Abdul Mahdi is an interesting figure. Though he, like Hakim, is a member of the Iran-leaning SCIRI party, he is not typical of its membership. (He spent his years of Baathist exile in France.) He is a pragmatic man, a smart man, and, I have reason to believe, a capable man. He has been a frequent visitor to Washington for some time, though his meetings with officials have remained private. He nearly emerged as prime minister in the last round of parliamentary wrangles in Baghdad, and this renewed effort to make him PM is not yet a done deal, either.
Maliki is maneuvering to hold his job, of course. If the main Iraqi groups lobby for votes, we are seeing major progress in Iraqi politics even in this unsettled time. I'm assuming that Sadr was involved in the attack noted in the first post cited above and not the other parties involved in the negotiating. Though I could assume too much, I suppose.
More than any planned surge into Iraq by our forces, drawing a significant portion of the Iraqi Sunnis of central Iraqi into the government could finally break support for the Sunni-based insurgencies.
If the Iraqis can form a government with broad enough support to make the hard decisions to nail Sadr and his militias, and reverse the budding trend of Sunni Arabs seeking safety from Shia militias with Sunni terrorists, this will be significant progress toward killing the Sunni-based insurgency, forestalling an Iranian-backed Shia fanatic threat, and unifying Sunnis (Arabs and Kurds) and Shias to fight side-by-side (hopefully in integrated army units) against the foreign jihadi invaders and their local allies.
And this is something that our Army can't do--no matter how many troops we put into Iraq.
UPDATE: British Prime Minister Blair met with Prime Minister Maliki in a surprise visit to Iraq. They discussed the situation in the south where Britain's 7,000 troops are deployed:
Blair's official spokesman said the leader also wanted to show his support for al-Maliki's government, and for the process of reconciliation in Iraq, which is wracked by escalating violence between rival Sunni and Shiite groups.
Presdient Bush has met with the rumored replacement for Maliki. Perhaps Bush and Blair are doing a little good cop/bad cop to make sure the winner of the parliamentary maneuvering has a friend in the main coalition (Britain and America) supporting Iraq. Plus perhaps a reminder that the struggle must remain within the constitution and involve no gunfire.
