Yesterday, I posted this in response to Hillary calling for Maliki's ouster.

The short version: I think her position is straight politicking, and it's complete bullshit. What seems obvious to me is that the Iraqi central government has no control outside of Baghdad anyway, but even if it did, Maliki isn't some firebrand dragging a unified government towards sectarianism: he's the natural product of an underlying sectarian dynamic. Maliki, like Jaafari before him, simply is ruling exactly the way we should expect anyone picked by Dawa or the SIIC would rule. Telling the Iraqi Parliament to replace him is like (in the words of another) impeaching George Bush in the hopes that Dick Cheney will restore order to the White House.

Basically, Hillary either has not yet grasped the underlying political dynamic in Iraq which is that very same dynamic that made the invasion such a bad idea in the first place...OR...she thinks the American people don't get it and can be easily distracted by some political stunt, this charade where we depose of Maliki, replace him with the same politician (with a different face), and say we need to give this new PM time to guide the government.

Neither options is flattering.

I ended the post with the following:

I certainly hope one of Obama/Edwards has the balls to point out these obvious truths.

Well, this evening, Obama did, and in so doing, reaffirmed for me why I like him so damn much.

Per CNN

I think this is a distraction — this whole notion of 'is Maliki the right guy?' We can replace Maliki with four, five other guys, but if the underlying political dynamic is not changing, then we will not see progress in Iraq.

And that's it, in a nutshell. I'd like to see him be more aggressive in pushing this issue, like "failing to understand the strength of this sectarianism is precisely what lead to this disastrous invasion" or something like that...tie the posturing about Maliki to bad judgment about the war from the start, and tie his dismissal of this as an issue to his war opposition. However, I'm just happy to see a politician who's not insulting my intelligence, and who is being honest about the situation. For a change.

Because Iraq is not a political football. This isn't some fucking flag burning amendment in the Senate, or a show of hands in some podunk "debate" about whether or not English should be the national language. 1,500 Iraqi civilians are dying every month. We've wrecked havoc on this country and have the blood of tens of thousands of innocents on our hands. That's simply not something to be opportunistically leveraged for political points. It's not. It's serious, it's real, and it should be treated as such.

The fact that Levin and Clinton seem intent on making the war into political game-playing disgusts me. It's offensive. I'm glad not every politician is interested in playing that game.

Edited for grammar/clarity