Maliki's Gone. Will Iraq Get Worse?

The resignation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has led critics of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy to insist that there is no longer any reason to withhold military assistance from Baghdad in its struggle against the jihadist group Islamic State. This blast from an editorial in this morning’s Wall Street Journal is typical: “With Mr. Maliki gone, so too goes Mr. Obama’s alibi for unseriousness.”

But this argument rests on the claim that the obstacle to successful multi-ethnic government in Iraq was Maliki himself -- not either the State of Law party he led, or the larger problem of ethnic separatism in a country invented by the U.K. between the wars.