A New Foreign Policy

The U.S. leadership should not continue to blame the Iraqis for not stepping up to control the out of control violence that is occurring in their country. They continue to hold the Iraqis responsible for not producing a political solution to the crisis in their country as if the U.S. did not greatly contribute to the situation if not solely responsible. Every time U.S. leadership proclaims it is the Iraqis responsibility to get control of their security situation U.S. leadership speaks as if it is blameless. It is very duplicitous of the U.S. leadership to take the position that Iraq is not doing its part. If the voices that tried to repeatedly say there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the voices that said there is no link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda had been heeded none of this would be happening today.

The fact of the matter is we entered Iraq without a true cause. When the U.S. entered Iraq and changed the regime it destabilized that country. By not having in place a solid transition government to replace the fallen regime in Iraq prior to the invasion a vacuum was created. There should be no surprise that PM al-Maliki is frustrated and trying to distance himself from the U.S. leadership. He is undoubtedly under tremendous pressure from both his Shiite allegiance and U.S. demands that he take steps toward a political solution that will solve the crisis in his country for which U.S. foreign policy is largely responsible.

When U.S. leadership takes responsibility of the part they played to contributed to the chaos in Iraq via bad foreign policy then the argument can be made that Iraqis need to step up to the plate and control the crisis in their country. U.S. leadership should send a formal envoy to Iraq to attempt to negotiate a cease fire between the Shiite and Sunni insurgents. All parties should be invited to come express their concerns and negotiate what they desire to see happen in their country, how they want to develop their government and how they want their country to evolve. These would be positive steps to bring stabilization to the Iraqis. U.S foreign policy will suffer a major blow over the chaos in Iraq if U.S. leadership does not involve itself more intimately with the political solution for Iraq.