'Rebutting the Myth of “Inclusion” as Panacea for Iraq!'

"... Regarding Iraq,  Hillary takes issue with the conventional Washington wisdom—espoused with particular fervor among Democrats—that the current crisis is all the fault of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki:“This is an excuse.  This is a bipartisan failure of catastrophic proportions for the United States—first with Republicans in invading Iraq, and now with the Democrats essentially blaming it on Maliki.  The idea that Maliki can be more ‘inclusive’ and bring in foreign fighters—one of the key leaders in this is Chechen, for Russia—the idea that that can become a more inclusive government is snake oil and should be seen for what it is.Maliki won the last election, it’s a parliamentary democracy.  He is now going to go about the very messy process—like he did last time—of assembling a coalition in a state that is majority Shi’a.  So surprise, surprise, the majority government is going to be Shi’a.  The Sunnis have never accepted this, they’ve never accepted to live under a Shi’a-dominated political order, and they have very powerful patrons outside the country—like the Saudis, like the Qataris—that have armed, funded, and trained this to the hilt, and now we have a disaster on our hands.”           Hillary also disputed the accumulating collection of overly facile demands from Washington elites that the United States micromanage some new and, at least from an American perspective, “superior” political reality in Iraq:  “We shouldn’t be in there manipulating political outcomes to our favor.  People don’t want to live in a militarily dominated, U.S. political order in the Middle East.  We need to pull back and rethink this policy.”Yes, but old habits die hard in official Washington."