In January, 2005, 8.4 million Iraqis voted for an assembly to draft a constitution. In October, 9.8 million voted in the election that ratified that constitution. In December, over 12 million voted in the first parliamentary elections held under the new constitution. Nearly six months of politicking later, Iraq almost has a government. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has yet to present his choices for the important Interior and Defense ministries.

Is the new government of Iraq an American puppet regime? Vladimir has said so, early, and often. A lot of other folks here agree, including CruisingRam, TedN5, and Victoria Silverwolf. On the other hand, Middle East expert Juan Cole confidently tells us that the new Iraqi government is an Iranian puppet. He's been saying this for quite a while, as well. Iran and the U.S. aren't exactly allies. They can't both be masters of the same puppet.

Is the Iraqi government a puppet regime?

If so, who controls the puppet?

Edit: typos.

Since I have been mentioned by name, allow me to clarify my position a bit. I'll quote myself from the link provided.




I was trying (by the use of wishy-washy qualifiers like "in some sense" and "a sort of") to convey my sense that the United States will have an important influence on any sort of government which Iraq is going to have for some time. This does not mean that the Iraqi government is not going to have a degree of independence.

What concerns me, in fact, is that this independence will take Iraq in the terrible direction of being a fundamentalist Islamist state, similar to Iran. It would be better for the people of Iraq to continue living under a secular, representative government as a semi-independent "protectorate" (or some such status) than for it to devolve into this kind of autocratic regime.

So, to answer the questions for debate, Iraq isn't really a puppet government in the most literal sense, but a newborn (or even unborn) government which is very heavily influenced by the USA. My fear is that the fetus will grow into an adult which looks like Iran.

Thanks for the clarification, Victoria. Had I read your original post carefully, I probably wouldn't have included you in that list*. You might guess that I got the list by doing an search on "puppet," and you'd be right. Something about that word has been bugging me, so I decided to call people out. By name. Not in an ad hominem way. Not, as it turns out, in a completely accurate way. But I did hope that the people I called out would reply, so thank you.

*The list of posters who allegedly agreed with Vladimir. I should have learned my lesson after the TruthMarch thing.

The Iraqi government is not a puppet regime. Those involved have risked too much to be insulted like that.

The Iraqi people are going to control their government via free and open elections based on a constitutional system.

All that's missing is the rule of law. And that's something that we're trying to help them get off the ground.

Iran certainly wants to influence this government. So does the US.

That doesn't make them a "puppet" state.

It is very clearly a puppet regime to me for one reason:

The goverment can be changed at US will. They are completely beholden to US money and security to survive. If the US were to pull out tomorow- there would be a new goverment the next day.

That is the very definition of a puppet, someone stronger than the puppet, pulling the strings, making the real decisions, even if the puppet looks like it is doing the stuff on it's own. Pull away those strings, and the puppet falls, and is powerless- just like the Iraqi goverment today.

No I don't think Iraq is a puppet regime. But I do feel both the US and Iran are pursuing ties with the Iraqi government but each does so very differently so it would be easy for each to do so and to exist as such simultaneously. But this obviously does not bode well for Iraq's full and peaceful democratic union.

Iran has long exploited it's Shia ties in the region, one only has to look to Lebanon to understand how and why the Mullahs do this. Most often it is done to destabilize, fracture and prevent full democratic rule and normalization of the state and it's foreign relations. Not to mention their favored means of using other faces to fight their wars.

I think right now the Lebanese civil war is a very good indicator of what is likely to happen to Iraq if the US was to withdraw too early (again) and remove her political support and encouragement in the region.

So I guess basically my argument is that America has to retain strong ties, support, encouragement, guidance and defense of the Iraqi political system because if we do not Iran's will only increase and the Iraqi nation will not become a "puppet regime" of Iran but instead a fractured, ethnic, religiously divided mess and internal conflict will only intensify.

Thankfully more and more in the region are starting to realize that Iran's interest for the Shia of the ME is equivalent to the middle age's ideas on serfdom. And that such political "guidance" from Tehran is archaic, violent and leads only to a state of poverty.

So be it, let America play a role that borders on puppeteering the political process in Iraq, they need our guidance and support as our shared desires for a democratic state in the region have never fully been realized before. We puppet a new way of political thought, movement and process for Iraq.

To clarify then bucket: What seperates the "puppet" former eastern bloc regimes with the "non-puppet" scenario you described? I would say, for instance, the former Yugoslavia was less of a puppet regime than Iraq is today.

I agree with just about everything you wrote, bucket, and appreciate your attempt to rescue the term "puppet" here. But I can't avoid the fact that "puppet" is generally used as an insult. It's insulting to the bravery of the Iraqis who voted, and to the even greater bravery of those Iraqis who are trying to build a decent government. It's an insult that denies the representative nature of that government, and presumably prefers the "insurgents" as the authentic voice of the Iraqi people.

This is madness. There is no Iraqi nationalist insurgency worthy of the name. There are Shiite militias, Sunni militias, Kurdish militias, and assorted jihadist terror cells.



Oh really? Where would this new government come from? Iran might like to install one in their own image, but there are a few million Sunnis, many of them in Baghdad, who wouldn't submit to that without a fight. Instead of a new government the next day, there would likely be years of civil war.

If you're going to characterize what I post, I wish you would do so accurately. You used the following snippet to misconstrue my position.



This comment was made in an entirely different context and was referring to the US government's attempt to first install Ahmad Chalibi as the leader of Iraq, then to deny early elections and rule by fiat under Paul Bremmer, and then to try to install the former CIA asset, Alawi, in as leader of "democratic" Iraq. The US only agreed to hold Iraqi elections at all because of massive Shia demonstrations inspired by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. I have never referred to the elected government as a "puppet" although it has been heavily manipulated by US pressure. What would you call the day to day involvement of the American ambassador in the rejection of one Prime Minister and the selection of an alternative.

To indicate that I somehow have a contradictory opinion to that of Juan Cole is also false. (You also mis-charactized his position, which is that Iran has lots of influence with several of the main Iraqi Shia parties but not that the government is an Iranian puppet). I have followed Juan Cole's blog since before the invasion. (He is another one of those people that has been an inconvenience to "true believer" by being right in advance of events). In most cases I have agreed with him but didn't share his position on maintaining American forces in Iraq because the alternatives were worse.

I did agree with Cole about the outcome of the last election being a disaster with Iran the main winner because the electorate voted almost entirely sectarian lines and Shia parties nearly won total control of the legislative assembly.

No, Iraq is no puppet. It may ultimately be a state closely allied with Iran, a failed state, or 3 separate states. All of these would be a threat to regional stability. None of these possiblilities is in our interest and certainly none is worth the lives killed and maimed nor the treasure expended to say nothing of the Iraqi dead, wounded, and malnourished.

Cruising Ram:

The difference between the "eastern bloc", or if one prefers, the Warsaw Pact nations other than the USSR, and the current Iraqi regime, is simply that while we rolled the tanks on in to remove Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, we haven't yet rolled in the tanks on the new government. In contrast, the Soviets rolled the tanks, well, as the late Chaim Herzog told the Soviet ambassador to the UN in 1976, during the course of proceedings before the UN Security Council shortly after Operation Jonathan:

"The representative of the Soviet Union talked about aggression and the inviolability of territorial integrity and national sovereignty. On these subjects I defer to him, considering the Soviet Union's very considerable record in these respects in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia and in other countries in Eastern Europe. My colleague from China could doubtless elaborate on this subject.

Let me assure the representative of the Soviet Union that the people of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 would have been only too delighted if the Soviet intervention had been to save a hundred hostages and had been of a duration not exceeding fifty-three minutes, as was the case at Entebbe. At that time the Soviet Union went to great pains to explain its position. Sergei Kovalev, in "Sovereignty and the International Duties of Socialist Countries," published in Pravda on September 26, 1968, explained the Soviet Union's justifications of such actions as follows: "Those who talk about the 'illegal' actions of the allied socialist countries in Czechoslovakia forget that in a class society there is not and cannot be law that is independent of class." In a civilized society there is not and cannot be law that is independent of the loftiest principles of man—namely, freedom and dignity of man. That, my colleague from the Soviet Union, was the principle that Israel was defending at Entebbe."

So they may be dependent on us now, but we are not at the point or circumstance where, unless we get what we want, when we want, the tanks will roll and so we'll see another Hungary in '56 and Czechoslovakia in '68.

And do you really think that we want the elected representatives to take this long to form a government? And if we are puppet masters, then why that result?

Sorry, CR, but the "puppet" claim has always been used by those who would seek to destroy us. They said the same about Diem, Thieu, and all of the generals who also held the office in question. But, yet, there's the late Dave Hackworth reporting about how a certain Hanh did everything possible to alienate the people whose hearts and minds we had to win in order to prevail [foot mobile peasants had to be constantly on the watch for Hanh's motorized convoy lest they be crushed like grapes, or so Hackworth reports]. As Hack also mentioned, kind of hard for him and us to otherwise get rid of the worthless Hanh given that he had to be somebody of import to the current regime to have even obtained his position in the first instance. And so, as Hack further mentioned, once Hanh's relief was eventually accomplished, and it took much longer than it should have were we puppet masters pulling the strings, no surprise that Hanh wound up with some other cushy gig [as it were].

We don't control the current Iraqi regime any more than we controlled the government of the Republic of Vietnam, which is to say that both governments had/have the freedom to operate in a manner that we would prefer not occur. That is usually not the circumstance with masters and their puppets.

Now, to give you some credit where credit is due, you are correct re Yugoslavia, more specifically, that Yugo was not the puppet that the other regimes in the Warsaw Pact nations were. And that's because Yugo had a Tito while the others did not.

The singularly persuasive difference between Iraq, and Vietnam, and the Warsaw Pact nations other than Tito's Yugo, is simply that in Iraq, we did have open, free, and fair elections. Puppet masters don't normally allow others to decide just who gets to be the puppet, instead they could be expected to rig elections, if they even have them, etc. And we know that because [ http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/cite/czechoslovak1968.htm ]:

"On August 3, representatives from the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia met in Bratislava and signed the Bratislava Declaration. The declaration affirmed unshakable fidelity to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and declared an implacable struggle against "bourgeois" ideology and all "antisocialist" forces. The Soviet Union expressed its intention to intervene in a Warsaw Pact country if a "bourgeois" system--a pluralist system of several political parties--was ever established."

So, the USSR and some others intervened in order to prevent a plural political system from being established, while we went to Iraq to remove a dictator and establish a plural political system. And so we had the elections described in the thread-commencing post.

But so there can be no mistake, at the time, the position was that the U.S.S.R. asserted its right to intervene in any Communist state in order to prevent the success of "counterrevolutionary" elements. We might do the same in Iraq, should circumstances dictate such. But, again, the difference is, just what is or are the "counterrevolutionary elements" that one is trying to combat and/or destroy? I would submit that such makes all the proverbial difference in the world.


Jobius:

You are correct, as the term is a monstrous insult that is designed to degrade and devalue just about everything said by way of that man wheeling grandma to the polling station in his wheelbarrow. Let me leave you with:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2377

And his and our prayer, expressing his and our most fervent desire:

"May God bless and protect Iraq and its people.
Long live Iraq, free, democratic and prosperous.
Aash Al-Iraq Al-Hur, aashet Biladu Al-Rafidayn."

Sorry, one more. Recall again, if you will, my prior comment here at AD about us simply giving the Iraqis the freedom to achieve freedom and that the rest was up to them [by and large]. In that regard, and maybe Cruising Ram ought to read this as well:

"This democratic sovereignty has given Iraqis the very freedom the US sought, but also the freedom to set the terms of success. While the US provided the paint and canvas, Iraq has created its own picture. From here on, the new government can tell the US what to do in its country and tell the world what it stands for. It can restrict democracy, or simply fail.
***
Some may see Iraq's leaders as puppets, unable to rule without American security and thus unable to say no to US demands. Yet many nations rely on US security as well as its economic means while their leaders buck Washington. Iraq's parties took five months to form a government after January's election despite US pressure; more such independence can be expected. The US should encourage that by keeping its distance.
***
A weak, barely unified but democratic Iraq may be just what the world sees for some time. This wobbly regime may at times be split among ministers from different parties who use their posts to benefit supporters and help their militias.

That may not be what the Iraqis wished for. But it is theirs to correct.

The US and its allies have played midwife and lately nanny to a democratic Iraq. Their duties are ending.

Iraq's government, by reaching the age of political maturity, will rise or fall - and be judged - based mainly on its choices."

See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060524/cm_csm/eiraq

You are right altho I was not trying to rescue the term just use words that many here find so compelling, illustrative and appropriate for the situation and use them differently. What some consider puppeteering I would consider, fostering, promoting and encouraging. Which is our more than obvious self proclaimed goal in Iraq..to encourage, foster and promote democracy. I would never use the word outside of the context of trying to convince others or encourage a new view.



Oh oh I know I know, this one is easy...What is totalitarianism?

Maybe you don't feel there is much of a difference between a totalitarian government and democratic one ...but I do.

I also thought Yugoslavia was not a part of the Eastern Bloc. So I am not really getting your comparison.

I apologize for mischaracterizing your position, TedN5. I didn't mean to, but I misread and therefore misstated your position and Victoria Silverwolf's. Sorry.