Al‑Zaidi and the age of the unqualified politician

The age of the unqualified politician is not a rhetorical flourish; it is a reality that becomes painfully visible every time a press conference turns into a stage for intellectual shallowness. The remarks made by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al‑Zaidi during his visit to Berlin were not a slip of the tongue. They were a concentrated example of a deeper structural defect within Iraq’s governing class. Standing in one of Europe’s most important capitals, al‑Zaidi struggled to articulate a single coherent political sentence—offering instead a clumsy assertion that “the world is heading toward stability, and only a little time remains,” likening global politics to the simple transition from night to day. This is not the language of a statesman; it […]