MB Civic

Among the more frequent criticisms of President George W. Bush is that he is — in times of crisis — a suspect judge of competence.

Amid the despair in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, he turned to Michael Brown, the simpering FEMA director, and said, “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.”

He awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Tenet, the former CIA director. who infamously advised it was a “slam dunk” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Now he is betting the future of Iraq — and the future of the troops he has sent there–on the leadership abilities of Nouri al- Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister.

At its heart, Bush’s forthcoming announcement of a U.S. troop surge in Iraq is designed to give Maliki’s struggling government a final chance to demonstrate leadership.

If only the security situation improved, goes the thinking inside the Oval Office, Maliki would crack down on radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, start delivering basic services to Iraqis and begin a campaign for national reconciliation between the country’s warring sects.

“If you show the will, we will help you,” Bush said he told Maliki during a two-hour phone conversation this week. “I believe Prime Minister Maliki has the will necessary to make the tough decisions.”

Outside the White House, it is difficult to find a soul in the U.S. defence and foreign policy establishment who thinks this is a winning bet.

“Maliki is in way over his head,” says Wayne White, the principal Iraq analyst in the State Department’s intelligence bureau in 2002-05.

“Iraqi governance beyond the Green Zone [in Baghdad] is paper-thin. It is corrupt. It is dysfunctional. His ability to deliver on almost anything is highly questionable.”

In the past week, evidence of Maliki’s impotence became startlingly clear with two events — one highly publicized, the other hardly noticed.

First, the botched execution of Saddam Hussein.

This was Maliki’s show from start to finish. He signed the death warrant.

He told U.S. officials to fly a kite when they wanted to delay until after the Eid al-Adha holiday and he was responsible for security.

The result was a revenge killing that conjured images of the Salem witch trials, not a government with a functioning justice system.

The guards who shouted “Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada” were not only taunting Saddam but making it evident that the cleric Sadr — not Maliki — holds the real power in Iraq.

The second, somewhat overlooked, event was an interview this week with The Wall Street Journal.

In it, the Iraqi Prime Minister gave the impression of a beaten down politician too exhausted for the enormous task of fixing his broken nation.

“I didn’t want to take this position … and I will not accept it

again,” he said. “I wish I could be done with it even before the end of this term.”

It was hardly the expression of resolve Bush needs, especially as he prepares to send more troops into harm’s way on Maliki’s behalf.

But none of this should come as a surprise.

Maliki’s harshest critics accuse his government of laying the groundwork for civil war since the Sunni insurgents’ attack on the Golden Mosque last year.

He has balked at most U.S. requests to confront Sadr’s Mahdi army, the illegal Shiite death squads responsible for much of the worsening violence in Baghdad.

His government has been unable to forge a deal on sharing Iraq’s oil revenues with Sunnis, an agreement believed vital to a lasting peace, and has failed to pay the salaries of civil servants in Sunni-dominated Anbar province.

Moreover, the Iraqi PM clashed repeatedly with Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, reportedly because the envoy pushed too hard for the Shiite leaders to include more Sunnis in government.

“One of the major hurdles this government has to get over in order to give this country a chance for success is meaningful reconciliation with the Sunni Arab community,” says White, who was an expert advisor to James Baker’s Iraq Study Group.

“It doesn’t look like this government has much interest in that kind of reconciliation.”

The White House certainly knows of these concerns.

In a confidential memo leaked in November, Bush’s national security advisor raised doubts about Maliki’s ability to tackle the escalating violence.

Military leaders in Iraq are increasingly finding it difficult to express even modest praise for his government.

“I’ll only say that we’ve got to give this government the benefit of the doubt at the moment,” said British Major-General Simon Mayall, deputy commander of multinational troops in Iraq, when asked about Maliki’s commitment to ending Sunni-Shiite strife.

“I think in 2007 we really are in an interesting time, in which we hope to see the government understanding its responsibilities.”

When Bush traveled to Baghdad last June, he looked Maliki “in the eye” and concluded the Iraqi leader was up to the job of leading his country. The evidence to date says otherwise.

George Jonas, A16

Salberts@nationalpost.com