But they have no problem urging the removal of an elected prime minister of an important ally:
Get rid of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. That's what Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee urged the Iraqi parliament to do yesterday saying "I hope [they] will have the wisdom to replace [the Maliki government] with a less sectarian and more unifying prime minister and government". That's Maliki golden for another year then.
Break it and we own it. We should not be in the business of choosing Iraqi leaders. The process is important. Voting and elections and rule of law should be what we support even if a particular Iraqi leader doesn't measure up to some of our standards. Let the Iraqis decide who should lead them.
Neo-colonialists show up in the most interesting places.
UPDATE: Maliki reminds us that Iraq is a democracy and will select their rulers under their constitution:
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the U.S. presidential campaign for the recent tough words from the Bush administration and from other American politicians.
"No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people," he said at a news conference in Damascus at the end of a three-day visit to Syria.
And President Bush backtracks from the impact of his words:
National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the president's words were not intended to signal a withdrawal of support for al-Maliki. As a result of the heavy media coverage of his remarks at the North American summit in Canada, Bush will insert a direct line of support for al-Maliki in his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference, Johndroe said.
I'm not a particular defender of Maliki, but I am a defender of their consitutional form of government which has the advantage of being an actual democracy freely elected by the people of Iraq.
UPDATE: The coalition of the willing forms ...
