| Nell said... (1) Execution of Saddam in a way to heighten sect-hatred So who was really responsible for that, in your estimation? I ask because I was critical recently of a TomDispatch by Dilip Hiro in which he repeatedly describes Sistani as a nationalist. Yet he also says that the timing of Saddam's execution happened over U.S. objections, and was given the decisive push by Sistani. It's an odd sort of 'nationalist' (unless 'nation' is defined as 'Shia dictatorship') who would press to inflame sectarian feelings in such a way. I was also unwilling to let the U.S. decision-makers off the hook so easily. Why would they have given in to demands for Saddam's handover in such a hurried and designed-to-inflame way if they were serious about minimizing sectarian conflict? There was some excuse-making afterwards about concern about violent efforts to free Saddam, but I didn't give those much credibility. |
Whatever twistifiers and dupes of the Sunni International or the extremist GOP may make of him, Sayyid ‘Alí himself knows where he stands, nationalismwise: "Look, Mr. Bremer, Iraq is not your country and it is not my country either. Why don't we leave their politics up to them?" (To quote from memory.)
In the local palaver, to talk about "nationalism" is a bit tricky, to be sure. His Eminence was advising Sultan Jerry that he is not into wataniyya, nationalism for "Iraq," the "nation" state that he has never become a subject of, despite many decades of residence. He is not into qawmiyya, nationalism for pan-Arabia, either. As Sayyid Muqtadá used to like to point out back when he was young and reckless, His Eminence still speaks with a Persian accent. Pan-Arabia being -- sigh -- what it is, that mob passion is ruled out theologically as well as ethnographically for somebody who takes his theology as seriously as Sayyid ‘Alí does.
The Rev. Señorito al-Sadr has dabbled in qawmiyya to a certain extent, and of course wataniyya is part of the official ideology of the Sadr tendency, to the extent such a thing exists. Neither the Arab Palace sector of the Sunnintern nor his fellow neo-Iraqi subjects of the majority "sect" have responded to Sayyid Muqtadá's overtures with the cordiality that he presumably anticipated. Quite the contrary, the poor lad has been ruthlessly and shamefully cartoonized as Mr. Death Squads. He's a mental light-weight, no doubt, and no doubt he could not administer his way out of a paper bag, which means that "rogue elements" are only what is to be expected. Nevertheless, even as Crawfordite incompetence in practice is logically only an accident, not a refutation of the dogma of Preemptive Retaliation, so it would be premature to conclude that the Hawzat al-Nátiqa paradigm can never amount to anything politically respectable in more skillful hands.
At the moment, though, who can deny that al-Hawzat al-Sámita leads by several lengths? Silence may not be absolutely better than articulation, but it sure beats hollering stuff that does not work. Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses!
A few operatives of both the Sunnintern and the militant Republicans have noticed this effectiveness gap of late and begun to change their tune, which used to be that His Eminence of Najaf was a nice old "quietist" who was going to fall in with their own pet schemes, or at least keep the native heretics from interfering with those schemes, or, at the very worst, be only a zero. Some clown in the GOP e-gutter referred to Sayyid al-Sístání as capo de tutti capi the other day, and here we have "Nell" from Badgerton. Well, at least they are beginning to realize what they are up against. Better late than never. (?)
"Shia dictatorship" is a bit alarmist. What has the wretch actually done to make the Sunnintern moan and wail? or Rancho Crawford either? It appears that His Eminence has advised the "sovereign" and "independent" and "democratic" and "constitutional" neo-régime on two points, recommending a swift execution of the late President of the Republic, and advising against "de-de-Baathification." That appears to be the whole case for the prosecution, and a flimsy case it is. In both cases the Áyatalláh was in favor doing what at least eighty percent of the eighty percent of neo-Iraqi subjects who are either heretics or hillbillies wanted done, therefore perhaps two-thirds of the colony's whole population. Perhaps one could actually be a Sulla or a Stalin on behalf of so broad a base, but why one would think it necessary I can not imagine. This abominable "dictatorship" will become a good deal more apparent when His Eminence starts somehow compelling the GZ collaborationist pols to act against their own will. I do not expect to see it happen, but I have been known to be wrong about politics before.
Apologists for the Sunnintern account it dictatorship that their coreligionizers, being twenty percent of the neo-subjects, should get "only" twenty percent of such political clout as the invasionites allow any native to possess. Naturally they do not much care for His Eminence. Dubyapologists are in a different position, for they don't give a hoot about orthodoxy in Islam and neo-Islam, or about pan-Arabia (as such) either. However, Crawford's scheme du jour in occupation policy is to lavish outrageous excesses of Affirmative Action on that twenty percent, while continuing as always to denounce the whole idea of AA as regards the Homeland of Father Zeus. So naturally the Boy-'n'-Party crew do not care much for His Eminence either -- at the moment. Unlike the Sunnintern, the militant Republicans could always reconsider, however, and perhaps conclude that Sayyid ‘Alí is not so bad a guy after all. (Rear-Col. R. M. G. Spook in fact suggests some such swerve of the Party line to his neocomrades in the latest Weekly Standard. That is an interesting scribble that we shall probably discuss separately.)
As political theory, the current Crawfordite position is uninteresting, only another flat denial that neocolonial geese are to be treated the same as heimatländisch ganders like themselves with MBA's from the Harvard Victory School. The Sunnintern's stance is a good deal better than that sheer baloney, if only because its propagandists never, that I know of, preached that Affirmative Action comes straight from Hell. They could borrow their politics (unconsciously) from the late John C. Calhoun without blatant inconsistency and demand that the neo-Iraqi TwentyPercenters be officially enrolled as a "concurrent majority." They could, but probably they will not, because the gentleman from South Carolina would have insisted that the eighty percent be permitted its liberum veto as well. If the Sunnintern and its neo-Iraqi clients agreed to that arrangement, however, they would be in effect endorsing Khalílzád Pasha's "constitution" as it stands. In the real world, they can scarcely abuse that document too much, as every newspaper reader should have noticed by now. Sad to say, Mr. Calhoun was something very like a wicked "federalist," as that term is now misapplied to colonial politics, and therefore his theorizing grants the TwentyPercenters a good deal less than they require. I fear they do not want everybody to be able to throw a monkeywrench into the workings of the Wicked State and bring it to a halt. The TwentyPercenters and their foreign friends want a monkeywrench monopoly for themselves, that is what their present bad attitude seems to amount to -- if it doesn't just amount to wanting the former Sunni Ascendancy restored lock, stock and barrel. It is natural enough, I suppose, mere peccatum originale stuff, that they should want such an arrangement, and certainly they have never rashly commited themselves to any improbable equality of gooses and ganders. 'Tis human enough that they should want the monkeywrench monopoly, but seriously expecting to get it any time soon would cast doubts on their mental balance.
As a practical matter, the extremist GOP could not even give it to them if it resolved to. In the present smash-up of the Arab Sunni "community" in occupied neo-Iraq, there is nobody in particular to pander to. Until the TwentyPercenters get their act together somehow, both the dreams of the Sunnintern and the policies of the cowpokers are thoroughly unreality-based. If His Eminence of Najaf were deliberately attempting to prevent any reconsolidation, fans of both these factions would have presentable reasons to make him out a villain. But I fail to see that Rev. al-Sístání is doing anything of the sort, either in general or as regards the execution of Saddám and the inadvisability of "de-de-Baathification" specifically. In both cases, adopting the opposite policy would probably have been more divisive of the TwentyPercenters still. If the late dictator had been kept alive, presumably he would have been tried for other crimes, meaning continual additional provocation to such shards and fragments of the former Sunni Ascendancy as retain some residual loyalty to the Ba‘th. If an amnesty for Ba‘thí colonels and generals and senior bureaucrats were actually accepted by many people at this very late date, that would only sharpen the line between them and those other TwentyPercenters who cannot imagine anybody decent recognizing the GZ collaborationist régime as legitimate. It is extremely unlikely that the Grand Áyatalláh asked himself "Now what can I do to help advance Sunni unity?" before giving the GZ politicians his opinion on either matter, but if he had, the advice might have been exactly the same.
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