| US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates revealed on Sunday that the surge of US troops into Iraq and the new security plan are designed to give the Iraqi government time to seek national reconciliation. That is a worthy goal, but if it is the reason for the escalation in the number of US troops in Iraq, then that lays an especially heavy burden on the al-Maliki government to accelerate efforts at national reconciliation. I don't see any particular evidence that it is doing so. Nor can I see any signs that the government is able to act at faster than a glacial pace. It had long ago been announced that al-Maliki would reshuffle his cabinet. But now it appears that this step, intended to streamline the government and punish cabinet ministers linked to sectarian violence, will be substantially postponed and implemented gradually. Al-Maliki, having just lost a member of his coalition-- the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila-- 15 seats), appears to have thought better of just firing large numbers of ministers from parties whose support he needs. But now he has gone back to playing consensual politics negotiated with excruciating slowness. If it takes him months to so much as decide who his minister of health is, when is he going to be up to the challenge of finding a way to make peace with the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement (which he dismisses as Saddamis and 'excommunicators'-- i.e. hard line Sunnis who say Shiites are not Muslims). |
Mr. Badger's contempt for such tertiary-educational spinelessness might seem à propos, Mr. Bones, except that he supposes Ann Arbour has now sold out to exotic SCIRI rather than to the same old, same old GOP much closer to home. And even on those terms, Mr. Bones, Ann Arbour would appear to have sold itself out to friends and allies whose real purposes the Glorious Guru cannot even begin to gauge. "Gone back to playing consensual politics negotiated with excruciating slowness," forsooth! What donkey can ever be impressed by that militant baloney, unasssociated with any organized political party as we and Will Rogers are? Khalílzád Pasha's Boy-'n'-Party and AEIdeological "constitution" may have facilitated the sluggishness of poor M. al-Málikí, and in part facilitated it inadvertently, but gridlock remains as Madisonian as apple pie all the same, and so who the bumph are WE to complain?
Like all the rest of the first-order planmongers, alas!, Glorious Guru itches to impose. Like them, he fails to notice that the imposition of Wisdom and Justice and Moderation upon backward natives remains imposition still, as long as "we" have to do if for them when they refuse to do it for themselves. Khalílzád Pasha has wrecked not only Crawford's happy day, but Ann Arbour's as well, by setting up a "constitutional" framework inside which the wretched indigs simply cannot be externally pressured into doing anything at all, because nobody at all can ever do much of anything. The GOP clowns are seriously disaccommodated by what appears "their own" nifty Party cleverness in this matter. Surely they should have arranged and locked in all the details about fossil fuels, at very least, before pulling Khalílzád Pasha's TOTAL HALT switch? "We can always neo-impose somethin' different afterwards," the gridlock perps will presumably have thought to themselves, but in fact they can not, not without knockin' down "their own" house of GZ cards.
Poor M. al-Málikí is not really all that "poor" as long as he sticks to the defensive and doesn't try to become uppity and anti-Crawford. He is perhaps not ideally cut out for his present quasi-office, he vaguely perceives that invasive AEIdeologues have put him nominally "in charge" of all sorts of things that he can't ever possibly hope to do anything about, crippled by the Khalílzád Konstitution and by the Crawfordite Occupation both. If some oddball donkey from Ann Arbour urgently wants him to exhibit a more non-glacial pace and "streamline the government and punish cabinet ministers linked to sectarian violence," poor M. al-Málikí may take refuge in a familiar refugium and simply claim that he can have no duty to work utterly impossible works, not even at a peremptory demand from Ann Arbour, "greatly though he esteems" &c. &c.
As long as M. al-Málikí sticks to self-defense, very narrowly conceived, he's perhaps as safe as everbody else is nowadays. (Hath not the God Party of Lebanon established that proposition, quite apart from Khalílzad Pasha?)
I daresay "self-defense" for the GZ collaborationist pols might seem a bit lacking at the moment. To actually want to control the other ninety-odd percent of the GOP's neocolony for themselves is new business for the GZ collaborationists, not simply a proper enforcement of any status quo ante.
This Universal Triumph of the Defensive might as easily benefit the GOP bozos as embarrass them, perhaps. If they would only dig in at Forward Base Laura and Forward Base Barney and Forward Base Jesus Christ and so on, a stable Boy-'n'-Party presence in their militant Party's neo-Iraq could rather easily be rendered inexpugnable, at least from the client side. If poor M. al-Málikí had relied strictly upon his own merits, Saddám would be in charge still. No doubt about it. "How come he isn't more grateful to Wunnerful US?," the Big Management Party's base-and-vile complain!
That seems a childish or churlish or 566/640 Yalie consideration to me, that one should ever expect any gratitude in politics. the real question is why poor (?) M. al-Málikí does not blackmail the blackguards of Crawford and the Cloudcuckoolanders of Ann Arbour right back into their own faces immediately, saying "I'm the quasipremier of neo-Iraq, thanks to your kind Yank invasionism. Your Boy and your Boy's Party have set me up, and I don't dream of denying it, but now that I am set up, I possess the prerogatives of that ofice up to which I have been exalted for narrow selfish reasons of your folks' own, and I mean to take full advantage. It's no doubt only a sad joke to you, my masters, that I should insist upon the Four Pillars of Invasionite Mendacity, that your Republican Party neo-Iraq is "sovereign" and "independent" and "constitutional" and even, God help us!, "democratic." To me all that claptrap is very sad, but very far from funny. To you neo-clowns it's all a joke, but ex officio I must insist upon it."
And so here we are, with utterly no end of nifty ignorant Yank planmongers, but also with a "sovereign" and "indendent" and "constitutional" and "democratic" neo-Iraq than presumably ought to be able to planmonger for itself. Ah, "to seek national reconciliation"! Did you never even think of that plan for yourself, O quasipremier al-Málikí, before some trashy Boy-'n'-Party Gatesian Revelation neo-revealed it?
Come along, M. al-Malikí, what you ought to do as against the militant GOP and the Cloudcookooland Ann Arbour is simply to dig in where you are and then hold that position. Dig in and HOLD, sir! Only insist that the invasion-based shudder-quotes around "independent" and "sovereign" and "constitutional" and "democratic" must be banished forever! Be emboldened to affirm that nobody ever again is simply to IMPOSE! Kick all their teams' favourite hostile sound bites right back into their teeth! Never agress, never try to positively controvert Coleites or Crawfordites, only patiently try to explain why Sovereign Iraq is, and must be, sovereign, and then that Sovereign Iraq takes such-and-such a view about this or that matter due to that or this. Take full possession of whatever the Wingnut City or the Rio Limbaugh or the Ann Arbourite ideologues allow you, twistify it for yourselves and then ask for even more and even better than your twistification. Stand up for your full 100 percent in agitprop and "in principle," of course, whatever deals you make in private. Make the most of what you have, M. al-Málikí, and, if you can get away with it, try to make even more of it than that!! Think like a Republican!
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