Politics & Power Quote by Iyad Allawi

The genius - and the danger - of Iyad Allawi's line is how little it actually commits to. "We are succeeding in Iraq" is a verdict delivered in the present tense, engineered to sound like a settled fact rather than a contested claim. In 2004-2005, when Allawi emerged as Iraq's interim prime minister amid insurgency, bombings, and the messy handoff from occupation to nominal sovereignty, certainty was a political technology. If the ground reality wouldn't cooperate, the rhetoric had to.

The subtext is triangulation. The "we" is deliberately elastic: it can mean Iraqis rebuilding a state, a transitional government asserting legitimacy, or the U.S.-led coalition trying to justify its costs. That ambiguity is the point. It lets Allawi borrow American confidence without explicitly surrendering Iraqi agency - a tightrope act for a leader who needed U.S. backing while trying not to look like Washington's proxy.

Then comes the clincher: "Thank you, America". It's gratitude as diplomacy, yes, but also a performance aimed at multiple audiences. To Americans, it's reassurance that sacrifice has produced progress and that Iraq is not just consuming blood and treasure. To Iraqis and regional observers, it signals where power still resides and who must be appeased, a reminder that sovereignty is being spoken into existence while dependence remains.

The line works because it's compact propaganda dressed as civility: optimism packaged in two sentences, sturdy enough for a soundbite, slippery enough to survive the next headline.