How to Get Out of Iraq by Juan Cole

We can not rudely ignore a whole new Panacea of the Month revealed from Ann Arbour, Mr. Bones, but it is not worth copying out the whole screed. In any case, the first half is devoted to listing the blunders of the Crawfordites, which is all very well in its way, but has not the slightest tendency to help get the extremist GOP out of "Iraq." The second half is scarcely a plan or a policy either, it is only a scattershot wish list.

The only demands made on the actual perps is that they must (1) vaguely announce an eventual withdrawal, and (2) comply with the CFR/ISG gentry's wish to negotiate directly with Syria and the mad mullahs. After that, all sorts of amazing things are required to happen before it would be safe to have the paleface invasionites actually go away, but none of these things are to be done by, or in the name of, Uncle Sam. Prof. Cole has in mind to dictate to, let's see, the United Nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, "Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait." Plus needless to say, he dictates to our hapless neo-Iraqi subjects most of all. There is quite an elaborate series of hoops for them to jump through. The theory of the pudding is apparently that everybody is so eager to see the backs of the militant GOP that they'll do everything Juan Cole tells them to. He thinks he has a reasonable supply of carrots to distribute amongst the trained animals so that the performance he envisions can come off without any resort to sticks. Nothing less likely. Since Prof. Cole wields no sticks of his own, we need not go into that side of the matter, except to remark that if he wants President Bush to do the necessary poking and prodding for him, he should say so expressly. If he spelled that point out, however, he might see how unlikely the whole scenario is.

The Panacea itself, the gimmick du jour, is a two step process: (1) "The first step in Iraq must therefore be holding provincial elections," and then, hey, presto! (2) "A newly elected provincial Sunni Arab political class could stand in for the guerrilla groups in talks." The possibility that (2) might perhaps not result from (1) is not considered at all. If it had been, our Rube Goldberg might have gone back to his drawing board before offering his latest gizmo to the world at large. I can't see myself how anybody's sticks or carrots could make (2) happen, so presumably it is to be accomplished by sorcery or divine intervention. That is, I cannot imagine (2) really happening, the sudden production of an authentic and effective (and of course "moderate") leadership for the Arab Sunni theocommunity out of the present total disarray. That's a bit too much like Mr. Hoyle's 747 produced by a tornado passing through a junk yard for my taste. Evidently Prof. Cole is not impressed with the quality of the existing Sunni collaborationist politicians. That is reasonable enough, if we grade them absolutely, but if we grade on a curve taking account of their Free Kurd and Twelver counterparts, they are no worse than anybody else. Political talent is thin on the ground in neo-Iraq, for fairly obvious historical reasons.

Local elections in the governates are not a bad idea, and indeed, I believe Khalílzád Pasha's "constitution" calls for them, should anybody suppose that sort of thing to matter. Nevertheless, the chances that local elections would suddenly undo the disintegration of the former Sunni Ascendancy are nil A slight reduction in paranoia about the "Safavids" at New Baghdad might reasonably be hoped for, but perhaps even that would not happen, because the GZ police and secret police and army, as well as the Republican Party invaders, would still be able to run around anywhere they like, unchecked by local authority. The Arab Sunnis are in a curious ideological position here, because nobody wants centralization and loathes any hint of cantonization or so-called "federalism" than they do. The existing "national" police and secret police and army are just what they ought to be, except that unfortunately they happen to be in the wrong hands.

I digress, for Dr. Cole does not propose to dictate that local authorities should have additional powers, only that elections for them must produce a responsible Sunni Arab political class ex nihilo. He does not quite put all his eggs in that one basket, however: "Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has credibility with Iraq's Sunnis, especially now that he has denounced the US occupation as illegitimate. They could trust his representations . . . ." Well I daresay they could, but would they? Those who consider the Islamic Emirate or the Ba‘th as the legitimate rulers of "Iraq" are not likely to take that view, and probably not all the GZ collaborationists or neuters are particularly fond of Sa‘údiyya either. And in any case, are His Petrolæus Majesty's representations to direct the government of "Iraq"? How will that arrangement work, exactly?

Don Juan has an answer prepared for that question, however: "The Saudi government should then be invited to reprise the role it played in brokering an end to the Lebanese civil war at Taif in 1989, at which communal leaders hammered out a new national compact, which involved political power-sharing and demobilization of most militias." The analogy is at least a little less dotty and irrelevant than dragging in Northern Ireland, but if Taif is the Colean idea of political success, perhaps failure is to be preferred. Had the militant GOP been occupying Lebanon in 1989 on the understanding that as soon as the Taif schemes were completely implemented, they would condescend to go away, they'd be there still.

One is tempted to guess that Prof. Cole understands as much and is cynically in favor of the GOP hanging around neo-Iraq indefinitely. Perhaps in the spring of 2009 "President Clinton" can send him out as proconsul to attempt to make sure that his whole laundry list of requirements is met and a physical withdrawal of forces becomes possible without gross irresponsibility?

The suspicion is unjust, and violates our own principle of taking everybody's sincerity and good faith in politics at face value unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Doubtless Don Juan would like to see "Iraq" a nation once again, but he'd like to see all sorts of other things about what sort of a nation it is to be as well. Bundling his whole wish list in one package leaves him in a position that is hard to distinguish from the Crawfordites' own, although doubtless he does not make his demands impossible deliberately in order to avoid any withdrawal worth mentioning. For that matter, though, some of the Crawfordites would really like to withdraw completely, and they, too, do not disingenuously frame their demands so as to make quite sure they can never be met.

JC is dimly aware that outsiders might see a certain convergence between his views and those of the present Administration, but he thinks it sufficient differentiation from the GOP extremists that he really would like a withdrawal, whereas they would not. That is only partially correct as a matter of Crawfordology. At the moment, it is very difficult for a hard-core aggression fan to frankly state her own position and argue, in the face of the opinion polls, that neo-Iraq must be garrisoned forever. At the moment, she has the Surge of '07 to fall back on, which she believes in and Prof. Cole does not. No convergence there. But that show will not last forever. It won't even last through November 2008, and that means that even a "successful" Surge will turn to crunch before the next general election. For the moment, Colean planmongering has simply nothing to do with Realpolitik, none of the people with real sticks and carrots in hand give a hoot what Ann Arbour recommends. When the crunch comes, however, perhaps in ten or twelve months, the aggression faction may take over his method and say "Of course we are for a responsible withdrawal, and by 'responsible' we mean that conditions X and Y and Z must obtain."

Militant Republicans are not likely to care for Prof. Cole's exact X and Y and Z, which are outrageously multilateral from their point of view. The idea that some sort of standing international conference or committee, "Taif II," is to achieve what the Big Management Party has signally failed to achieve by itself is bound to be intolerable to their amour-propre. But they can come up with their own unattainable preconditions for a "responsible" withdrawal easily enough. Thay can appeal to considerations not available to Prof. Cole, perhaps especially those associated with the Party's "global war on terror," but also including decently veiled allusions to the really central American concerns in the Middle East, which center around the Gulf of Petroleum and the Tel Aviv statelet. Probably we shall be warned that a complete military withdrawal from neo-Iraq would be irresponsible as long as we are not absolutely certain that the supply of fossil fuels and the security of Israel -- a very flexible concept -- will not thereby be imperiled. Better safe than sorry, don't you know? Plus they will have some sort of Iran card to play as well, even if it comes to no more than suddenly discovering that they have been at "war" with the Islamic Republic ever since 1979 without noticing it. There will be plenty of material to frame impossible conditions from without bringing in either regional diplomacy or the domestic arrangements inside "Iraq," neither of which topics much interests Televisionland and the electorate. None of this guarantees that the aggression faction will make it safely through the presidential campaign and obtain another four years to muck about freely in Mesopotamia under "President McCain" or the like, but their plight is far from desperate, and they can scarcely fail to get some mileage out of the Colean, or "impossible preconditions," metaplan.

The narrow gimmick about local elections magically creating a responsible and respectable Sunni Arab leadership is of little use to militant Republicans as it stands, but some of their cleverer tank-thinkers may avail themselves of the general idea, pointing out that the broken crockery will not really be fixed until such a leadership emerges somehow, which happy event will of course require a continued Republican Party presence in neo-Iraq. As to actually making the happy event happen, they are nearly as impotent as Ann Arbour and you and I. GOP geniuses can consider the possibilities of a coup d'état, however, as presumably Prof. Cole does not allow himself to do. That would mean throwing down their own political house of cards, to be sure, Khalílzád Konstitution and "democracy" and all, but if that were the only alternative to being ignominiously pushed out of their own neocolony, they would no doubt consider it. No suitable Arab Sunni candidate for the next George Washington of Iraq immediately comes to mind. Dr. ‘Alláwí, whose name always occurs in such speculations, would not do at all, being neither a general nor a Sunnite. Nor, for that matter, politically competent. Still, "Saddam II" might conceivably work, if the right neo-Washington could be found or fabricated, whereas "Taif II" is only moonshine. Rather agreeable moonshine, admittedly, for it would be nice if the world worked more like that than it does, but . . . .