Iraqi Insurgents Won't Accept Peace Deal

"This whole so-called reconciliation plan is being exaggerated as a breakthrough to help to promote Maliki and his government as well as to aid the Americans to find a face-saving way out of Iraq."

The US backed Iraqi government, a national government that meets in the United States Green Zone behind walls, barbed wire, and a cordon of U.S. troops, says it wants a timetable for withdrawal of US forces, possibly providing Bush with a way to appear to extract from the mess he's made of Iraq and try to save face at the same time?

Those of us who remember the Vietnam War understand that peace breaks out just before every election. And we are seeing the signs right now.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presented a 28-point reconciliation plan to parliament on Sunday. Al-Hayat reports that Malik views this initiative as a privilege of the executive and that he does not intend to have parliament vote on it. A Shiite parliamentarian said ti was outrageous to by-pass parliament in this way.

...the Bush administration made al-Maliki back off the idea of granting amnesty to guerrillas who had killed US troops. ...if the point of the amnesty is to bring the guerrilla leadership in from the cold, this amnesty is useless. What Sunni Arab guerrillas worth their salt have killed no Iraqis and no US troops? This is like Kissinger saying he would talk to the North Vietnamese but not to any of them who helped the VC kill ARvN and US soldiers. There wouldn't have been any round table talks

Iraq's three main groups -- the Shiite Arabs, the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds -- are killing each other with greater ferocity than ever, and the Americans are playing referee.
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As attractive as the idea of dividing Iraq into sectarian regions sounds, it has one big problem: Especially in Iraq's urban areas, it could be a bloody affair. (Mr. Gelb acknowledges this, but says the risk of violence is no greater than under other solutions proposed for Iraq.)

...resembles liberal critics of Bush in emphasizing that multilateral cooperation will strengthen rather than weaken the United States.
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But there the similarities end. Haass expresses ambivalence about the United Nations and about championing human rights. Instead, his ideal is a kind of Kissingerian order and stability that supposedly prevailed after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the Congress of Berlin in 1878, when the high and mighty carved up the map of Europe. According to Haass, history "is largely determined by the degree to which the major powers of the era can agree on rules of the road -- and impose them on those who reject them." This imposition can take place, Haass suggests, if the United States works harder to bring China and Russia into an international community, and sheds the delusive notion that it can, or should, remain the dominant world power. * ... Haass may be laying the groundwork for a counterrevolution. Just as the neoconservatives spent years churning out manifestoes to make their case for a more assertive foreign policy, so the realists have now become the embattled minority of the Republican Party.

The problem is quite the other way around. The amnesty is not extended to anyone who has "shed Iraqi blood," and the Bush administration made al-Maliki back off the idea of granting amnesty to guerrillas who had killed US troops.

The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said at a news briefing later today that the amnesty, thought to be a key element of the plan, would be "context dependent," and that "a lot of details will need to be worked out." But he said that the amnesty would not give cover to insurgents who had attacked Americans.

The left is ruining the country

Everything from banning the word "God" to higher gas prices

The left effects things every day.