Maliki gets the Boot

Bad news for Max Boot: the new neoconservative line on Maliki is already getting kind of old.

There is some irony in the fact that Democrats, after years of deriding Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a hopeless bungler and conniving Shiite sectarian, are now treating as sacrosanct his suggestion that Iraq will be ready to assume responsibility for its own security by 2010. Naturally this is because his position seems to support that of Barack Obama.

Boot then goes on to list a bunch of possible motives for why Maliki would endorse Obama’s withdrawal plan, none of which provide a single compelling reason for why we should continue to occupy a country against the wishes of its chief executive. Maybe that’s coming in part two?

If I were Boot, I would just give up on this whole plan of attack and try what they’re doing elsewhere on the WaPo editorial page: Pretending that Maliki never said anything in the first place. Somehow, that actually seems slightly more intellectually honest.