Frankly, My Dear, ....

That both the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution of Iraq and Sistani appear to be opposed to amnesty for leading Baathists augurs ill for the new government plan. Frankly, it augurs ill for Iraq.

It has been several months since Don Juan Cole engaged in any positive planmongering of his own for the benefit of the militant Republicans' hapless neo-Iraqi subjects, and he is perhaps more formidable when he shoots from the bushes like this, giving no hostages to fortune himself. Still, a double negative makes at least a tentative affirmation, so probably when JC reveals that he does not like the UIA caucus not liking "amnesty for leading Baathists," it must seem rather a good idea at Ann Arbour. One is rather a loss to see that such an amnesty could matter so late in the fiasco from the standpoint of practical occupation management, but perhaps with JC, amnesty is more an educationalist or Sabbath-school matter of desiring that Mercy and Justice should come to proper terms? It rather tends to discredit generic religionism, does it not, that so clerical a political faction is inclined to be relentless and unforgiving.

Nevertheless, JC himself pooh-poohed the likely immediate results just the other day:

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani will put forward new legislation offering an amnesty program for Baath officials. If they come in from the cold within 3 months, they can be restored to high office. The Debaathification Commission, headed by corrupt financier Ahmad Chalabi and on which Nuri al-Maliki played the role of hardliner earlier on, had excluded such figures from a role in public life. The problem is that the mere announcement of a three-month amnesty is highly unlikely to bring in from the cold the people who are now heading the Sunni Arab guerrilla movements. And, at a time when security is so bad that the vice premier is blown up with the connivance of his own security guards (and tribesmen), it can't be a pleasant prospect to be a Baathist branded as collaborator. AP suggests that the real motive for the measure is twofold. First, its announcement may take some pressure off the Iraqi government at this week's Arab League summit, where, as Iraqslogger notes, a draft proposal is said to urge abolition of the 'Debaathification Commission' and disbanding of Shiite militias. Second, rehabilitating the Baathists and being nicer to the Sunni Arabs is the platform on which former appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has been campaigning to form a new political bloc-- a campaign that has been met with some favor in neighboring Sunni Arab states and Egypt.

Ah, Mr. Bones, is the JCIA going all wobbly and TommyFriedmanite on us, then? Has our guru seriously revised his reba‘thification position between Monday evening and Friday evening? Will our acquaintaince Mr. Badger notice this apparent discrepancy and incorporate it in his War Against Juan?

The last contingency is unlikely: Mr. Badger's fantastic general notion of Prof. Cole is quite incompatible with at least the Friday position. Nobody who was seriously shilling for SCIRI would have written the sentence we began with, and certainly JC has not turned his coat altogether in a mere five days. There are some appearances that need to be saved, obviously, especially that mildly sarcastic sounding "being nicer to the Sunni Arabs," but salvage is possible.

My hypothesis is that Ann Arbour has consistently preferred that sort of an occupation policy, but gets a bit distracted and unpredictable whenever it finds somebody else it does not care for in general happens to agree with it about a comparatively minor detail like reba‘thification. Above all, such is the case when Ann Arbour finds itself in agreement with Rancho Crawford. A few days later when it can express disagreement with Cardinal al-Sístání and the abominable SCIRI and not mention the militant Republicans at all, one gets a clearer picture of the real underlying position, which is more or less stable. As you will recall, Mr. Bones, the most striking feature of the last comprehensive Cole Plan mongered was nothing if not nice to Sunni Arabs -- they were to be bribed with a double share of New Baghdad's petroleum revenues! Needless to say, Cardinal al-Sístání and Monsignor al-Hakím would have cared for that nifty idea, had it ever been brought to their attention, even less than they care for reba‘thification.

At the moment, the late Khalílzád Pasha's petroleum bill is quite as controversial in Green Zone collaborationist circles as the amnesty proposals are, with the Sunni Arab pols perhaps thinking at bottom that it is not half nice enough to their own theocommunity, but taking the far more respectable public line that it is a threat to centralized government, a position that the Sadr Tendency can support as well, and indeed, a position that we should support also, had we the misfortune to be neo-Iraqi subjects. As usual, we find ourselves only fellow travelers with the Sadriyya, supporting more or less the same platform planks, but for reasons that would probably not occur to the indigenes. The worst thing wrong with it, from our outlandish point of view, is the sheer Khalílzádianity of it, or call it the pig-in-a-poke aspect. As with the pasha's "constitution," there are so many blanks left to be filled in later, maybe, that anybody prudent should simply refuse to have anything to do with the whole affair. Furthermore the petroleum bill violates the cardinal point of our quasi-Sadrism, namely that everything done under the yoke of Crawford is at very least tentative and provisional, if not illegitimate altogether. As a general rule it would therefore be wise to do as little as possible, so that there shall be that much less that requires to be undone or redone when "Iraq" is a country once again.

I remind you of our own stance, Mr. Bones, so as to contrast it with some other products currently available and indicate how isolated we are. To begin with, our stuff can be framed as a direct answer to the question, "Who would you vote for if you were an occupied native?" Not many paleface students can do so, and Prof. Cole least of all, despite Mr. Badger's dotty "narrative" about him. Proving by quotation that JC does not like anybody in neo-Iraq very much would be easy, although perhaps a bit misleading, because he is always likely to dump on anybody the GOP extremists seem to be favoring at the moment with a special vim and vigor that has no bearing on the intrinsic merits of the various neo-Iraqi factions. Nevertheless, outside Free Kurdistan, which JC is not much interested in, ninety percent of the natives are "fundamentalists," to hear Ann Arbour explain it, and the other ten percent are little better. Dr. Chalabí and Dr. ‘Alláwí, the two most prominent individual pols from the rootless cosmopolitan community, have even acquired Homeric epithets from Don Juan, "corrupt financier" and "CIA asset" respectively.

Antecedently one would expect a neo-Orientalist and a social scientizer to align himself with the "secularist" ten-percenters more or less without reserve. Presumably that course is not open to Prof. Cole mainly because it is so plain that the militant GOP likes them best too. As regards American domestic politics, receding as far as possible from the Crawfordite position will bring you 'round right nine times out of ten, but the maxim does not work so reliably out in the boondocks. Part of the trouble is that the cowpokers themselves do not have any really solid druthers about their collaborationist pols: the rootless cosmopolitans would be best ideally, no doubt, since none of the other occupied natives are likely to be interested in AEIdeology and Heritagitarianism, but they are simply too weak a reed. For the moment, at least, the invasionites have decided to stick with poor M. al-Málikí, a choice that can in a pinch be defended as some sort of democracy, although scarcely the best sort by GOP criteria or perhaps any other. Prof. Cole is accordingly repulsed from the UIA caucus, but not in any definite direction. Don Juan is never going to come out against "democracy" in so many words, of course, but he is not sufficiently interested in political structures to work out a coherent anti-majoritarian position either. Today's "frankly" is an interesting straw in the wind, but it does not commit him to anything much. At the slightest sign that the Crawfordites are going to ditch poor M. al-Málikí, and especially if it looks as if a certain CIA asset might be reinstalled in quasi-power, Prof. Cole is bound to shift his position and think more cheerful thoughts about the UIA caucus., though perhaps not about the abominable SCIRI. A reflexive schizophobia, a morbid dread of anything like partition, is as close as JC comes to having an absolutely fixed position about neo-Iraqi native politics. No matter how much the Crawfordites may agree with him about that, he will doubtless not abandon it. But that one rigid fixity doesn't answer the question about how Don Juan would vote if he was under occupation himself, because "for anybody but SCIRI" is not a full and adequate response. In the US, "vote for anybody but the Republicans" is probably in practice sufficient as a rule of thumb, but the internal politics of the GOP neocolony are a good deal more complicated, and something a bit more nuanced is mandatory.

I doubt Don Juan has ever been seriously tempted by anything much like our own position, Mr. Bones. There is quite a lot for the typical practitioner of Area Studies to dislike in the Rev. Señorito Muqtada, even over and above that "fundamentalism" of most of his merry men. From time to time old-fashioned economics-based politics crosses Prof. Cole's mind, but then it goes away as quickly and unexpectedly as it arose. Even when the fit is on him, though, we are much more likely to hear about "War for Oil" in a basically anti-GOP vein than anything directly in favor of the Sadr Current as a "social movement" of the oppressed. He does insist that the Sadriyya is "a social movement" and not a mere (?) "political party," to be sure, but that appears to be a wannabe-objective Soc. Sci. classification and by no means any sort of endorsement.

In any case, when Prof. Cole proposed to dole out double shares of "their own" petroleum money to selected neo-Iraqi subjects, his criterion was strictly sectarian and had nothing to do with need. Furthermore, the Cole scheme would have done nothing for 99% of the Sadrists, presumably. The former Sunni Ascendancy may be as irretrievably shattered as Humpty-Dumpty, but very few of the fragments can have sailed as far from the scene of the smash as to have become political disciples of Sadr Tertius.

But God knows best.