Politics & Power Quote by Jalal Talabani

Gratitude, in Jalal Talabani's mouth, isn’t a Hallmark emotion; it’s a geopolitical instrument meant to be spoken out loud. The line is built around a quiet problem he knows his audience feels: in the Middle East, public thanks to the United States can read as weakness, dependency, even collaboration. So he preemptively reframes the act of saying “thank you” as a matter of dignity rather than deference. The key move is that second clause - “we should never be embarrassed” - which treats embarrassment as the real adversary. Not America.

Talabani, as Iraq’s first Kurdish president after Saddam, lived inside the contradiction of U.S. power: it was both the force that helped remake Iraq’s political landscape and the lightning rod for every grievance that followed occupation, insurgency, and civilian suffering. “American people” is doing careful diplomatic work here, separating citizens from government decisions and giving him a safer target for praise. It’s a way to honor assistance (military, political, humanitarian) while leaving room to contest policy.

The intent is twofold: reassure Washington of Iraq’s reliability while signaling to Iraqis that gratitude doesn’t erase sovereignty. The subtext is that post-2003 Iraq needed allies and legitimacy, and that moral posture matters in statecraft. By making gratitude a public virtue, Talabani tries to normalize an unpopular truth: survival sometimes requires saying the unsayable, without flinching.