It would have been unconventional already to dispatch one of the military hired hands to intimidate a political associate like poor M. al-Málikí. "Ambassador" R. Crocker must seem considerably less lordly and proconsular and cowboy-connected than Khalílzád Pasha used to, and so perhaps the new operative really does need to bring along an enforcer when he tries to collect debts to Boy and Party. Unlike the former "Zal," this Crocker person is by way of being only a hired hand himself. There is no possibility whatever that this guy makes the Party's occupation policy for it the way His Excellency of AEI used to.
Personalities apart, and categorically considered as hired hands, violence pros are much more congenial to extremist GOP circles than career diplomats. The former recommend themselves ideologically, if that's the proper word, because Force looks like Big Management in action, whereas negotiation looks as if the omnipotent executive were seriously considering sharing its potency, in patent violation of the Harvard Victory School guidelines for MBA's.[1] Violence pro hired hands recommend themselves more practically to Big Management as well, being a good deal more likely to shut up and do what they are told, however dumb and dubious: "Into the valley of death rode the six hundred . . . ." Whereas "arguing back" is almost the definition of what diplomacy pro hired hands do to earn their wages from the ever-august Meeters of Payrolls. (At a less exalted level of Parteigeistlichkeit, the Rio Limbaugh level, admirals are presumed to be heroes and ambassadors only wimps.)
Nevertheless, it is not customary, even in the Party of Lee Atwater, to deal with one's political friends by bringing big Bruno along to conferences in order to maybe break an arm or a leg or two, lest friendship waver. Probably it happens, but when it does, it happens in secrecy. The great oddity here is that perps have dispensed with secrecy, they clearly want the whole world to know that poor M. al-Málikí is potential Bruno-fodder, and accordingly they brought along Mr. Michael R. Gordon, an employee of the New York Times Company, as well:
| This reporter, who is accompanying Admiral Fallon on his trip to Iraq, was allowed into the meeting. It was only at the end of the meeting that American officials agreed that it could be on the record. |
Mr. Gordon presumably means us to understand that if the encounter had gone less satisfactorily from the Boy-'n'-Party standpoint, we consumers of the New York Times would not be reading about it this morning. That raises the material question of why Big Management should find the meeting particularly successful. What did poor M. al-Málikí say that especially pleased them? Alternatively, what might the little foreign friend of GOP invasionism have said different that would have caused a blackout to be imposed?
These are not easy questions, at least for one who does not instinctively sympathize with Big Management. There does not seem to be anything outstanding here. It is only a curiosity, at best, that Bruno should ignorantly lecture the patient about native politics:
| “You have the power,” Admiral Fallon said. “You should take the initiative.” |
Needless to say, Khalílzád Pasha's "constitution" has made quite sure that poor M. al-Málikí does not have any such power as the enforcer speaks of. The patient responds as he can scarcely avoid:
| "The admiral’s appeal . . . elicited an assurance from Mr. Maliki that he hoped to make some progress over the coming weeks. But he also offered a lengthy account of all the tribulations facing the Iraqi government, including tenuous security, distrustful neighboring Sunni states and a complex legal agenda. “There are lots of difficulties that are not well understood from outside,” Mr. Maliki said. “Still, we’re trying hard.” |
What could be less remarkable than that? Poor M. al-Málikí did not rudely reply that his buddies of the militant GOP must be the world champion misunderstanders from the outside. Compliant Mr. Gordon does not bore NYTC customers with any details of the patient's "lengthy account" of his latest symptoms, and especially not of any "complex legal agenda." It sounds as if there might be something interesting lurking in that second thicket, but probably there is not: the indig pol will have only been alluding, as delicately as possible, to obstacles imposed by the Khalílzád Konstitution, without having developed any particular "agenda" of his own to work around them.
The closest the worm comes to actually turning is as follows:
| The instability the Iranian arms shipments are fueling, Admiral Fallon said, is diverting American forces from vital security tasks. That prompted Mr. Maliki to ask what the Americans were doing to persuade Syria to stop the flow of foreign fighters, which have included suicide bombers, across the border. Ambassador Crocker said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had raised the matter with her Syrian counterpart. But so far there has been no resolution. “We need the cooperation of Iran and Syria,” Mr. Maliki said. Sunni Arab states, he added, needed to be reassured that a Shiite-dominated Iraq would not be a threat. “We won’t allow the Iranians in,” he said. “Nor will we allow it to become a safe haven for terrorists.” |
Surely that is not very close? Poor M. al-Málikí did not dispute Bruno the enforcer's Party excuse-mongering about supposed interferences by (non-Crawfordite) foreigners , he only tried to play the same card a little bit for himself. And he did not try very hard. The most notable thing about this tepid non-clash is how wimpy Neocomrade R. Crocker ends up looking, and that subtle shading must be due rather to Mr. Gordon's reportorial pencil than to any mischievous intent on the part of the Chairman of the Council of Quasiministers.
Frankness between him and his Boy-'n'-Party pals is fundamentally impossible, so one cannot judge whether he seriously believes that a Twelver Ascendancy is threatened only the Sunnintern from the outside and not by TwentyPercenters native to the colony as well. The man's plight is pathetic, but naturally it would not follow from that that his judgments must be good, even should one be able to discern with certainty what his judgments are. Only Dr. Chelabí and the Rev. ‘Abd al-‘Azíz al-Hakím have yet evinced any clear signs of what an American would regard as political talent, which means, if you like, that the neoliberateds have no unfair advantage over Rancho Crawford in the brains department.
Perhaps it is as well they do not, because otherwise they'd been even more pitiful, always attempting in vain to get the Big Managers to do something smart that mere natives recommend rather than some comfy HVS MBA stumblebummery of their own. I suspect the only thing worse than hired hands usurping the prerogatives of their Executive betters would be for lowly indigs to do so. (These two cases could be reconciled on the supposition that everything the neoliberateds know about "their" neo-Iraq that Boy and Party are not interested in hearing about is to count as "technical," even though a great deal of it is mere common knowledge out there in the boondocks, obviously.)
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What the Ryan and Bruno Show was really all about is not impossible to guess, but it is disagreeable to talk about a matter that tends to reflect discredit upon the Democratic Party. The perps down at the ranch suppose that being seen to push poor M. al-Málikí around like this will appeal to their domestic opposition, which has been getting uppity of late, and I'm sorry to say they are probably right. Viewed from the perspective of a Karl Rove rather than a Rear-Col. Freddy Kagan, the only slight miscalculation was perhaps to single out the petroleum bill:
| In the meeting, Admiral Fallon focused on Iraq’s oil law, assuming it was closest to completion. “Is it reasonable to expect it to be completed in July?” he asked. “We have to show some progress in July for the upcoming report.” Mr. Maliki said that the Kurds had raised concerns about revenue sharing arrangements, but he indicated that some progress on the oil law would be made. Ambassador Crocker pointed out that it was important that progress include the resolution of that thorny issue. At one point, Mr. Maliki wondered aloud whether Congress would really give the Iraqis credit for tackling tough issues if they completed the oil law. Admiral Fallon reassured him that most Americans wanted the Iraqi government to succeed. |
Bruno's briefers might have reflected that Oil Law Success in particular tends to appeal to only a certain segment of Americans, rather unfortunately that segment which least needs to be persuaded to grant the Big Party a few more decades to muck about in its Peaceful Freedumbia. Actually resolving Kirkuk, for instance, or revision of the Khalílzád Konstitution to include lots of yummy affirmative action for all those oppressed Arab Sunnis are (even) less likely to actually happen, I suppose, but factual improbability is rather beside the immediate point, which is to try to get Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi and their troops to put up with the Crawford stumblebumism as long as possible. (While Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton somehow saves the day, presumably, but that's another story.) For Rovean purposes, a "success" rather more democratic and less capitalistic would have made a more suitable carrot to lure the jackasses with.
Naturally this is only my own view of the case, and I have already admitted that I have no special insight into the secrets of Big Management, being inclined to doubt that such secrets even exist. I therefore do not at all insist on my guesses about what the cowpoker vigilantes are really up to. God knows best about that.
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[1] My comparison assumes that both the Force and the negotiating are technically successful. When they are not, the relationship is perhaps reversed from the congenital HVS point of view, with the bigmanagerial apprentice who can't get her way with Force accounted even klutzier than her colleague who failed to make the diplomacy thing work for him.
However this is a tricky Party-spiritual matter, because under no circumstances that have ever come to my attention was a GOP Big Manager ever admired for diplomatic success in the spirit of a sportsman who takes a large fish with a light line (instead of tossing dynamite into the Tigris à la Saddam Hussein, don't you know?) That is the safer end for the Crawfordologist to begin from, because the imagined show-off's successful angling would undoubtedly a matter of technique, and technicalities are automatically -- axiomatically, even -- the province of mere hired hands, not of Party gentlepersons.
This, too, is one of Mr. Whitehead's "footnotes to Plato." Like their distant and unacknowledged ancestor, Harvard Victory School alumni are in mild perplexity if Socrates pesters them to find out whether "Big Management" is or is not itself the name of a technique. Plato decided that it was not, or at any rate, whoever wrote Epistle VII decided that that was what Plato finally decided. The epigones of Grant's Old Party show no sign of agreeing, for is not Big Management "taught" in "schools," not to mention hawked to the audodidact mob in millions of copies of The Dummies' Guide to Management Secrets? If there can be schools and teaching and (conveyable) secrets of it, how shall Big Management be other than a mere banausic skill or technique?
'Tis basically their class problem, not ours, but probably the explanation is to be sought in history and bunk: until about a century ago, the Big Managers really were only hired hands, owners and shareholders and directors still counted for something more than they did, and that in fact and not in word alone. Our current OnePercenters are thus rather like the ministeriales of mediaeval Germany, except that those neo-gentry never entirely got rid of their former betters. In this light it seems odd that none of the cultivated despisers of the GOP who write political books against the Big Party's "imperial presidency" have distinctly noticed that the executive perps are only trying to treat the United States of America the same way they treated the Ford Motor Company, which was perhaps the last significant fortress of the older economic order that held out against them.
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