Dr. Triangle's Iraq

Political insiderdom is a dubious racket in general, and Dr. Triangle in particular has been mostly only a clown since he defected from Bill and Hillary, nevertheless it is kind of nice to read what the clown scribbles about a politician that one has actually voted for:

The left, led by John Edwards, is not about to accept mushy language holding the Iraqi regime accountable for its lack of progress, especially if the provision leaves Bush in charge of assessing what progress is being made. Why, they will ask, did we elect a Democratic Congress if the war is just going to drag on? . . . With the anti-war platform entirely to himself, Edwards could well upend both Obama and Hillary and win the nomination himself. The anti-war movement is growing, not shrinking, as the casualty lists mount and the war seems endless. Edwards could warn that Obama and Hillary are the new Nixons, emulating the original in appearing to oppose the war while running for president only to continue it once elected. With Hillary, identifying diverse military missions that must continue in Iraq after she takes office — including logistical, intelligence, and training support, hunting down al Qaeda in Iraq, and blocking Iranian infiltration — Edwards’s argument would have great credibility.

Doctor Triangle must be reveling in his favorite geometrical figure, for no donkeys other than Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama and Mr. Edwards merit discussion at all chez Dickie. That is a bit unfortunate for the former Iraq, perhaps, when Sen. Biden is the only horse, however dark, that even begins to know enough about the joint to be dangerous. However it would be silly to expect Doctor Triangle to take an interest in neocolonial boondocks and quagmires for their own sake, he is interesting only for his guesses about America’s guesses about that or any other substantive matter. His underlying guess goes like this:

The anti-war movement is growing, not shrinking, as the casualty lists mount and the war seems endless. … The war will continue and get less and less popular with each insurgent bombing.

Those two sentences seem clear enough – Dr. Triangle expects tomorrow to be like today in Televisionland’s notions of Peaceful Freedumbia, only slightly more so. That is almost always a plausible scheme to wager by, not invariably correct, of course, but hardly ever off-the-wall dotty either. But Planet Morris is a bit more complicated than that; the sentences after the one last cited read

By 2008, nobody will mind that Obama voted to end the war. The consequences of having let it continue will be evident. But the possibility that there could have been horrific consequences had Obama’s view prevailed back in 2007 will remain in the realm of speculation and theory.

(I have been summatorializing Dr. Triangle a bit against the grain. He framed his scribble as an unsolicited letter of advice to Obama of Illinois, whom I am not interested in at the moment. Even Mr. Edwards is secondary, and thus “Iraq” is no more than a tertiary or fourth-order concern.)

Not reading every word that this neocomrade writes, I do not know from elsewhere what Dr. Triangle considers that “the consequences of having let it continue” will be like. In isolation, the last passage would suggest that he anticipates glorious successes for the Surge of ‘07. By the time we get to vote for Mr. Bush’s replacement, all danger of “horrific consequences” will be well behind us. I daresay that is the orthodox Boy-‘n’-Party line at the moment, and it would not be at all remarkable to find a Mr. Dick Morris regurgitatin’ it. But on the other hand, this same guy just told us “The war will continue and get less and less popular with each insurgent bombing.” What gives, apart from obviously the mind of the insider is not riveted on the former Iraq?

What one stumbles over here is not a logical contradiction, for one can imagine that on 1 November 2008 (A) the Green Zone collaborationist regime will be as good as unassailable despite the fact that (B) the insurgents / guerillas / terrorists / resisters still keep up their shootings and bombings, to (C) the disgust of Televisionland USA. Indeed, that is pretty much our own view as of 3 May 2007, except for item C. However such is not the view of Ms. Conventional Wisdom, and it is very unlikely to be the view of Dr. Triangle either.

There would be even less of a seeming contradiction if one took “The anti-war movement is growing, not shrinking, as the casualty lists mount and the war seems endless” to be the crux of Dr. Triangle’s position on occupation policy. Quite a number of folks at Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City expect that we surrender monkeys will gibber more vociferously than ever when we behold how well the Surge of ‘07 shall have unfolded itself. That, however, is not what the man says, and “as the casualty lists mount” makes it imprudent to attribute such thoughts to him. He really does seem to be predictin’ the best of times and the worst of times simultaneously and in strictly military and police terms.

Perhaps one might venture to guess that Doctor Triangle rather cloudily supposes that the Petraean wonder drug will either have cured its patients by a year from now, or else everybody who matters for inside-the-Beltway purposes will have agreed to give the militant GOP’s neo-Iraqi subjects up for lost – and it does not much matter which. That would at least make sense as domestic political guesswork, which is the specialty of the house chez Dickie, after all. It seems about the worst possible guess about actual facts on the ground out in the boondocks and quagmires, but so what? Doctor Triangle does not pretend to know or care about that sort of thing.

For that matter, it is not impossible that Televisionland and the 2008 electorate will have shrugged off some murky intermediate state of affairs in Peaceful Freedumbia by election day on more or less Mr. Dick Morris’s terms. Whether or not “horrific consequences” will eventuate in the absence of responsible nonwithdrawal may well have turned into an immense bore by then too. “Che sara, sara and that’s OK too, as long as “we” stop hearing so much chatter about it all the time, thank you very much!”

Not to be starry-eyed about la Democratie en Amerique! It could well be that whichever candidate, elephant or donkey, contrives to say the least about the former Iraq–and perhaps about the Kiddie Krusade more broadly also–will prevail, and prevail eo ipso, quite irrespective of the nature of what little she is compelled to say. In that case, my “she” could prove to be more than the generic pronoun. The silver lining to that cloud is that if Sen. Clinton does pull it off, tricky Dick Morris may decide to slit his wrists in a warm bath.

But we shall see. God knows best.