The New SADDAM

M. Issandr El Amrani begins well

"the haphazard collection of ideological fads that passes as Middle East policy in Washington these days"

and especially

"Saddam invaded Iran without provocation, sparking an eight-year-long war that was one of the 20th century’s deadliest".

It must be as least as hard to find a Sunni Arab as a Reagan-Bush Republican who perceives the Ba‘thi aggression against Iran for what it plainly was. To get past the automatic inclination of ‘asabiyya or Party spirit to deny that anybody one already dislikes for other reasons might be an innocent victim is admirable. Unfortunately, though, being able to think such out-of-step thoughts tends to make one the familiar sort of rootless cosmopolitan intellectual that nobody normal would ever pay any attention to. "Fancy him worrying more about what actually happened than which side he's on! What's wrong with the lad?"

An excellent start, and the Middle East part of the remainder is pretty good also, in my judgment:

[Gen. Mubárak & Co. are trying] to convince their populations . . . that Iran is the real enemy . . . , the SADDAM regimes are engaging in anti-Shia hate-mongering. State-backed clerics and journalists are recuperating the poisonous anti-Shia language typically heard from Iraqi jihadists to lure public support away from Iran and its allies (notably Hezbollah and Hamas, which are widely admired for their resistance to Israel occupation and aggression) . . . .

Still, I had to weed out some not so good stuff there. M. Amrani's whole paragraph actually reads

The new anti-Iranian alliance with SADDAM appears to be deliberately reviving an old divide in the Islamic world between Sunni and Shia Muslims. To convince their populations, which are generally aghast at U.S. policy in Iraq and Palestine, that Iran is the real enemy (although, unlike say Israel, it has never in modern history been the first to attack an Arab country or threatened to use nuclear weapons against them), the SADDAM regimes are engaging in anti-Shia hate-mongering. State-backed clerics and journalists are recuperating the poisonous anti-Shia language typically heard from Iraqi jihadists to lure public support away from Iran and its allies (notably Hezbollah and Hamas, which are widely admired for their resistance to Israel occupation and aggression) and prepare the ground for a confrontation with Tehran.

He sees what is happening pretty clearly, and he also sees why it is advantageous to the Arab Palaces to help it happen, namely that "SADDAM" allows the magnificos to be more or less genuinely in line with what the Arab "street" thinks, or can feasibly be brought to think, for a change. The way General Sadát behaved may recommend itself to those who admire Bismarck and Richelieu and other hard-nosed Realpolitiker, but there was no popular constituency for it when he did it, and none has emerged since. General Mubárak must feel at least slightly lonely at times, pursuing policies that only a tiny percentage of his subjects understand or approve of. SADDAM is a twofer: not only does it get rid of ignorant and irresponsible nagging from Crawford about democracy, it actually offers a chance to build some real domestic support for the Egyptian Palace.

M. El Amrani observes, very justly, that it as a deplorable type of support, xenophobic, chauvinistic, postively "poisonous." Yes, indeed. He might have added that Gen. Mubárak is a paragon of insincerity for seeking such support, since he and the westoxicated elite on whose behalf he rules can't possibly give a hoot about the Egyptian street's reasons for disliking Safavids and Qommies. Still, support is support, and wretched morality can be excellent policy at times -- and there is one point M. El Amrani that seems to miss. He doesn't appreciate how excellent the SADDAM policy must look to the Arab Palace folks, which in turn means that he takes for granted that the militant GOP must be manipulating them and does not entertain the possibility that the real state of affairs may be vice versa.

Crawfordology, and US politics generally, is M. El Amrani's weakest flank. It is natural that this should be so, but also regrettable, because even if Godzilla is not altogether making a Lone Cowboy Middle East policy any longer, everything still depends on her. By itself, a GCC plus twenty-two -- the whole Arab League plus toss in most of the OIC -- could accomplish litle or nothing. Whereas if they can somehow take over Bush's brain, grand vistas open up at once. (Some of the vistas are delusive, I fear, and especially the one about finally solving the Palestine puzzle on terms acceptable to the Arab Palace people, but until they have tried it with the hyperpower of Godzilla behind them, sort of, and then failed, there is some excuse for their not realizing as much.)

M. El Amrani is not entirely wrong about extremist Republicans: "haphazard" and "fads" in my first quotation is very much to the point, although not easy to reconcile with "ideological." It is tolerably clear that the Crawfordites don't give a fig for ideology, an attitude which some of their tank-thinker fans at AEI and Heritage and Hoover occasionally notice and find alarming. All they ever wanted down at the ranch was Success and Victory, and they've never been too picky about what sort. The whole fiasco could perhaps had been minimized if only Saddam had actually possessed some terror weapons for them to find and feel vindicated about. Maybe they would have left it at that. To be sure, maybe they would not have; they might have figured that one good cakewalk deserves another and kept at it until they hit the inevitable stone wall somewhere else. All the same, "cakewalkism," Godzilla demonstrating that she really can stomp on Bambi, is only a tasteless joke considered as ideology.

Unfortunately M. El Amrani does not really believe in "haphazard" and "fads," despite mentioning them himself. He thinks there is a method underlying the Crawfordite madnesses, and it is, sigh, the same old thing, "a new regional security arrangement with the Jewish state firmly as its center." That is to say, there is no hope of the Sunni International taking over Bush's brain, because that vast emptiness is already a wholly owned subsidiary of AIPAC and the Tel Aviv régime. This dissenter may disagree with the vast majority of Arabs about Saddam attacking the Islamic Republic, but when it comes to the "center," the very heart of darkness, he is perfectly orthodox, except insofar as he takes the street Arab view and deplores the alleged centrality of Zion in Uncle Sam's regional policy, rather than the Arab Palace view that tries rather to exploit it. And so, logically enough given the premises, we get boilerplate neocon-cabal stuff and "Otherwise, why would Elliott Abrams still have his job?"

The writer also grossly overrates the militant Republicans' IQ. Look at the passage that begins "By forming SADDAM, the Bush administration hopes to do several things" and judge for yourselves, my fellow Americans, whether the stumblebums are that smart. (Why is it that so many people insist on turning their opponents into subtle Machiavellis when there is no reliable evidence that they are anything more than commonplace klutzes?)

I might, of course, be mistaken. Crawfordology is not an easy science. In a sense M. El Amrani and I could be accused of playing the same gambit, but with colors reversed. He'd like SADDAM to be imposed on the Arab Palace by a GOP ruled by fiendishly clever neocons, because that makes the Arab Palace look worse. I'd like to suppose that the Sunni International has begun to help an otherwise clueless Dubya decide what to do next in quest of Success and Victory to adorn his legacy and enhance the glory of his Party, because that makes Dubya and the Party look even worse than the bushogenic quagmire already has.

Naturally I think I'm right and the honorable gentleman wrong even after noticing that such an analogy might be drawn. In defense of my claim, there is the probability that an American would have a better feel for what the militant GOP is up to -- judge for yourselves! -- and also the fact that my theory does not require us to suppose any exceptional degree of cleverness at Cairo and ‘Ammán and Riyádh and Kuwait and all down the west side of the Gulf of Petroleum: what's in SADDAM for them seems obvious enough, almost blatantly obvious.

But I don't insist. God knows best.