From time to time I will complain, that I am tired of choosing leaders for other nations.
I get this responsibility, which I do not want, from being American. Very often, Americans decide who will lead other nations, rather than the people of those nations choosing leaders for themselves.
My recent experience in the other direction, of having someone in another nation choose a leader for me, just strengthens my feeling that complicated arrangements where people in one nation choose leaders for another, are a very bad idea.
I have been especially tired of choosing leaders for Iraq. Over the years, I have chosen so many of them. There was a time, back in 2003 and 2004, when I would regularly select a new leader for the place, on the first of every month. You might think that I exaggerate, here, for rhetorical effect. That a leader of the month cannot be true.
But, no. On the first of every month (using the calendar of Pope Gregory the Thirteenth) I would rotate in a new leader for the nation of Iraq, from some faction or other there.
That was a very tiring schedule. I knew nowhere near enough Iraqi politicians, to be able to come up with one new leader for January, another for February, another for March, and so on. My knowledge of the factions in Iraq is not very deep.
In 2005, Zalmay Khalilzad, Qasem Soleimani, and I decided that Nouri al-Maliki should lead Iraq. My memory of those negotiations is pretty hazy, to be honest. But Wikipedia reminds me of what I did back then.
In 2010, I decided for Iraq that it should have an election. Iraqis would cast votes. And then I would choose who I wanted to be their leader instead. By the election results, Ayad Allawi should have been the leader of a coalition government. But I vetoed the idea that a coalition government of Iraq could include Sadrists, and was very persistent in sticking to that veto. It took me nine months of insistence, from March to November, but Iraq eventually gave in and made Nouri al-Maliki leader again, which is what I wanted in the first place.
Then in 2014, I decided that Nouri al-Maliki, who I had made leader of Iraq, should not be leader of Iraq anymore. So I asked around, and came up with the name of Haider al-Abadi to replace him. I sacked al-Maliki by getting a negative article about him printed in the New York Times. (When you need to choose the leader of another nation, having the Times on your side helps).
Now, Iraq has held another election. It looks like the Sadrists have won. These are the Iraqis I wouldn’t let help run Iraq, back in 2010.
From what a Reuters article tells me about it, though, it looks like I won’t have to exercise my veto power over Iraqi election winners.
Before the election, Iran publicly stated it would not allow Sadr’s bloc to govern.
Instead of me selecting the leader of Iraq, Iranians will try to select one instead.