Blame Al-Malaki? No.

So,the Iraq war is not going so well. The root cause, of course, is that there is no political settlement in the aftermath of our invasion. All the other ills of Iraq stem from this one problem. Warring factions who can't agree on a future for Iraq are keeping the country in chaos, each faction holding out for a settlement on their own terms. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has failed miserably, and now is the time when this failure is being explained to Americans.

The administration and several republican senators are floating the proposition that the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, is responsible for the failure of our war effort. Al-Maliki, they say, has been incompetent in getting the factions to agree on a political settlement. He's ruined our government's brilliant idea of Iraqi democracy through his ineffectiveness. He's the problem, they now say.

It's unfair and wrong to make Al-Maliki a scapegoat for our failure in Iraq. Everyone with any understanding of the situation there knows that Iraq never was a "country" in the traditional sense. It was simply a geographic area set up by occupiers and ruled by a succession of tyrants who kept the factions at bay by brutal means. Nobody stated this case better than Dick Cheney in his 1994 interview, which was right on the money. Al-Maliki has simply inherited an intractable mess.

Who is to blame for the Iraq debacle? It's clear that the Bush administration's decision to oust Saddam Hussein rather than keep him in an ever-tightening box was the direct cause of the current situation. This decision was supported and constantly ratified by the republican-led congress. They "own" Iraq.

The campaigns for the 2008 elections will be filled with rhetoric about why our Iraq adventure failed. Pay no attention to attempts to divert blame to anyone other than Bush and his neocon/oil pals and their supporters in congress. They marched in where even angels would fear to tread, and now they must be held accountable for their hubris. A political price needs to be paid, but it's the republicans and not Al-Maliki who should pay it.