The time to stop bankrolling the Iraqi military is now

Iraq just voted into power a former enemy of the United States. Isn’t this when Trump should stop cutting blank checks?

Now that Washington’s long-time nemesis Muqtada al-Sadr appears to have scored a surprising victory in this week’s national elections in Iraq, it is unclear how that will square with the Pentagon’s seemingly open-ended commitment to keeping that country’s military afloat.

Shiite cleric al-Sadr was not on the ballot, but his coalition (consisting of his own Sadrist Movement and Iraq’s Communist Party), is poised to win 54 out 329 seats in the Iraqi Parliament. Most Americans will remember him as having spent the better part of the Iraq war leading the Mahdi Army against the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. He has, according to reports, refashioned himself as a populist and a nationalist and has distanced himself from neighboring Shiite Iran.