Maliki to Clinton: This Ain't Your Village

Hillary Clinton may think it takes a village to raise a child, but Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki is not interested in being part of one of Clinton's villages:

Iraq's beleaguered prime minister on Sunday lashed out at American critics who have called for his ouster, saying Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Carl Levin need to "come to their senses."

Nouri al-Maliki, who is fighting to hold his government together, issued a series of stinging ripostes against a variety of foreign officials who recently have spoken negatively about his leadership. But those directed at Democrats Clinton, of New York, and Levin, of Michigan, were the most strident.

"There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin. They should come to their senses," al-Maliki said at a news conference. ....

The Shiite prime minister said a negative report by Petraeus would not cause him to change course, although he said he expected that the U.S. general would "be supportive of the government and will disappoint the politicians who are relying on it" to be negative.

I don't know whether his choice of the word "village" was intentional, but it was a masterpiece either way. The Iraqis are going to go their own way, as they should, with or without the approval of people like Clinton or Levin. Democrats, who have shown recently that they can't run Congress or even their own party, certainly shouldn't be dictating terms to a sovereign nation, even if that nation exists because of our country's efforts.