U.S. needs to stop meddling in Iraqi politics

I read in an article in The New York Times by David Sanger and Edward Wong entitled "Bush to Meet With Head of Iraq Shiite Party", about efforts by the Bush administration to reach out to another Iraqi political leader as part of an approach to "bolstering the fragile Iraqi government." Although it is tempting to give the administration credit for at least trying to fix the mess that they created, it is far more important to urge the administration to simply refrain from meddling in Iraqi politics any further at all. Of course, they most certainly won't follow my advice since they feel a desperate urge to "shape" Iraqi politics before U.S. military forces depart within a year, but any such efforts really will be seen and felt by the Iraqis as meddling and will be very unlikely to have a lasting positive effect on the outcome of the Iraqi political process and in fact may have the opposite effect to that which was desired. The U.S. has done all of the positive good things that it can do for Iraq and now should do the right thing and let the Iraqis reassume control over their own political fate.

-- Jack Krupansky