Let's start with the view proper, the status of the occupation of "Iraq" as GOP extremism officially conceives it:
| . . . Mr. Gates disagreed with recent assessments by Democratic Party leaders in Washington, who said that senior American officers had not accurately described the true, and chaotic, state of affairs in Iraq. Mr. Gates said the generals he met “have been very realistic,” and he characterized Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, as one who “has not pulled his punches” and has the “ability and willingness to call it like he sees it.” |
Well, actually, Neocomrade Gates does not disclose the official Party view, does he? He lets "chaotic" pass uncontradicted, no more than that. We are informed yet again what a genius their Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton is, and now we learn that he is Honest Abe as well, but unfortunately "chaotic" comes from somebody else's honesty than Abe's.
But what did you expect? The authentic Petraean Blick ins Chaos comes with TOP SECRET stamped at the top and bottom of every page, and so it does not come to us humble at all. We know that the sage in armour considers in the abstract that neocolonialism ("counterinsurgency") requires full and accurate information ("intelligence") about its patients, so we presume the Prof. Gen. is trying to collect it as best he can amidst conditions of (alleged) chaos, but to be allowed to visit the Wunderkammer? Naturally not. Despite all their shared Honest Abery, the chickenhawk Big Manager from Crawford Enterprises Inc. may not have seen the full collection either.
However we have already learned that this Big Management crew doesn't mind workin' blind, and there they appear to be goin' again:
| Although Mr. Gates described his goal as encouraging efforts by the Maliki government in Baghdad, he also expressed a desire to increase cooperation with provincial political leaders and local tribal sheiks. He said that “perhaps we have gotten too focused on the central government, and not enough on the provinces, and on the tribes and what is happening in those areas.” He said he hoped to spark greater attention to this “ground-up effort.” |
The public prints are adequate background for this latest BigManagerial swerve, no matter what may be locked up in the Petreaean curiosity cabinet. It's not exactly a question of "focus," though, for focus implies nonblindness. Surely the case is rather that Boy and Party have lately found it more rewardin' to buy up Bedouin retail than to keep on with their wholesale bullyin' of poor M. al-Málikí, and now that that trend has been in existence for thirty minutes straight, why of course it was what they oughta been doin' all along! Ah, Ground-Up Effort, why didn't Honest Abery think of it sooner?
(If you remember back enough thrilling chapters, perhaps Honest Abery once did think of it: before the actual aggression there were a number of attempts to get the future neoliberateds to remove Saddam and destroy all the forty-five-minute terror-tipped specials and thus presumably obviate the necessity of the aggression altogether. However since one would have had to be an indig major, at least, to effect a coup, and probably an indig colonel or a general, "ground-up" may be a bit misleading description. On the other hand, one is to recall that Big Management's executive suite is located so far up the skyscraper that its denizens may pardonably be rather vague at times on exactly where the ground is located. And even now, it is of course sheikhs and tribes that they want to buy, not individual enemy combatants.)
Militant GOP gentry like this R. Gates specimen probably think poor M. al-Málikí is no brighter than they are, and indeed, perhaps he is not, generally speaking. However in this case he is hardly to be bluffed with instant paleface neobaloney like "We don't need you and your 'sky down' Green Zone any more, little man, not when we've got all the 'ground up' sheiks and tribes that taxpayers' money can buy!" Poor M. al-Málikí may presume a bit too much on how badly the big foreign friends that first created him need him still, but he has a great deal of neoimperialist capital to draw on all the same. The threat of an ‘Alláwí Restoration at New Baghdad Centre might be really fearsome to Núrí Kamál Jawád, but "perhaps we have gotten too focused on the central government, and not enough on the provinces, and on the tribes and what is happening in those areas" is transparently mere tripe and baloney. The object of any sane invasion strategy and occupation policy must be that all the outlying yokels shall tremble at and, trembling, OBEY New Baghdad Centre. To provide the Party's neoliberated yokels with independent means of support that are potentially independent of NBC is mere quackery that West Point and the Harvard Victory School would blush to be associated with. Poor M. al-Málikí is far from safe absolutely, but he is safe from that.
The Gates specimen of extremist GOP Big Management has not lost all its patience quite yet, of course:
| Mr. Gates said he would discuss with the Iraqis how to make certain that the bombing of a revered mosque in Samarra — and a feared round of reprisals — “won’t further disrupt or delay the process” of political reconciliation. He acknowledged that Mr. Maliki and his government were facing “enormous obstacles,” but he said that the prime minister must do more to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that his government would “lay the groundwork for a future Iraqi state in which all of the different elements can live in peace with one another." “I think the prime minister is trying to address that challenge as well as he can, and I think he deserves our support,” Mr. Gates said. |
Does the Gates specimen have either West Point or an HVS MBA on its resumé? Perhaps one individual does not much matter in so great a discrimination of things, however. Elementary MacNamarianity itself has become problematical in neo-Iraq, at this point the imediate reputations of both Big Management and Big Strategy are at risk. Which cause is to triumph in Peaceful Freedumbia, paleface Invasionism or swarthy Chaos? Which crew is to esconce itself in the genuine "Camp Victory" at the end of the day, West Point alumni and Harvard Victory School MBA's, or some pullullatin' mob of trailer-trash local yokels? (Over in the e-gutter with the Bani Horowitz and the jihád careerists, do we not hear this same dichotomy expressly spoken of as if it were Civilisation vs. Barbarism?)
The Gates specimen might perhaps appeal to fas est et ab hoste doceri. "Why should not our sky-down GOP Big Management learn a few peripheral "ground-up" technical lessons from native devotees of Chaos?" Evidently the Doctor General from Princeton thinks so about Big Stategy as well, and doubtless he is more konsequent, as well becomes a violence pro compared to a chickenhawk pol, even if the latter be SECDEF.
The maxim deserves its proverbial standing, I'd say, and yet perhaps it is only secundam quid and not absolutely simpliciter. Obviously if our Sky-Down GOP extremists ever perverted into believers in "ground-up" altogether, that would the last word anybody would hear of them. There is a limit to what the neo-gentry of 2007 can learn from those whom they declare "war" upon, and it is quite a different limit from anything that Rome and Carthage ever had to consider. The palaeo-gentry used to allow that even Carthaginians were more or less human too, sort of, whereas nowadays Boy-'n'-Party Big Management only too obviously wants to be at "war" with mere cockroaches in human form. After they've unilaterally and preëmptively upped the ante like that, fas est et ab hoste doceri probably ought to be revisited. To learn lessons from babykiller Carthaginians may or may not be the same thing as to study with terrorist cockroaches. I shan't pronounce either way, only suggest that the matter merits looking into.
Returning to the individual Gates specimen, "“I think the prime minister is trying to address that challenge as well as he can, and I think he deserves our support." Even a thorough Boy-'n'-Party neocomrade might find that weasel word "support" slightly feeble! Is it to be only "support," then, that poor M. al-Málikí is to be vouchsafed by his Big Paleface Friends? Couldn't the proud possessers of West Point hyperstrategy and the Harvard Victory School 's masterful business administration (plus also in a pinch Princeton University) share at least a little of their Big Managerial and Big Strategic expertise with him also? Did not the Gates specimen itself recognize "enormous obstacles"?
The fate of poor M. al-Málikí is that of Tantalus, ever doomed to these Big Paleface Friends of his who could do everything in "Iraq" for themselves so easily with all their toplofty expertises and all their Sole Remaining Hyperpowers -- except that the BPF refuse to do so many easy-for-them-to-do things, they insist that au contraire it is rather poor M. al-Málikí who must do all the heavy lifting for the extremist GOP, offerrin' no more than this wretched Gatesian "support" of theirs, a "support" evidently consistent with former (and maybe future) ‘Alláwí intrigues, and now with sheikhly tribal intrigues as well.
Tantalus fares better in Hell, where at least there's no question of Father Zeus replacing him and then announcing to a press conference that Tantalus was dismissed because he never tried hard enough.
| [Gates] acknowledged that Mr. Maliki and his government were facing “enormous obstacles,” but he said that the prime minister must do more to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that his government would 'lay the groundwork for a future Iraqi state in which all of the different elements can live in peace with one another.'" |
Here is the crownin' insufferable insolence of militant extremist Boy and Party, as it seems to me: after denyin' poor M. al-Málikí all the top secret or unclassified Big Expertises of West Point and Princeton and the HVS MBA's, after denyin' him most of their more physical Sole Remaining Hyperpowers, after hintin' unmistakably that if the invasionite GOP's ideal Peaceful Freedumbia never does work out as originally expected it will be the fault of indig ratfinks like him, Boy and Party now suggest through the Gates specimen that poor M. al-Málikí's basic problem has nothing at all to do with his Big Paleface Friends at Rancho Crawford, it's only that he has failed "to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that his government would 'lay the groundwork for a future Iraqi state in which all of the different elements can live in peace with one another.'"
Had sky-downwards Big Management and Big Strategy spoken a bit less imperiously, had they allowed that although BM and BS can pull off many applause-worthy tricks, "to demonstrate to the Iraqi people" happens unfortunately not among them, the insolence would not have become insufferable. And even for shameless sky-downers charitable allowances must be made when possible, although what kind of an allowance is it, really, to grant that exotic invasion-crazed bozos can seriously account themselves more in touch with "the Iraqi people" and "a future Iraqi state" than poor M. al-Málikí is?
The real Gatesian obstacle at the moment seems to be that poor M. al-Málikí innocently or slyly supposes his own neo-régime to be the "future Iraqi state" now already instantiated. No more Karl Rove "milestones," no more Nancy Pelosi "benchmarks," this is IT, guys. We have ARRIVED. Maliki Station, end of the line, everybody out of the bus!
Is not poor M. al-Málikí's "government" to be accounted "sovereign" and "independent" and "democratic" and perhaps even maybe "constitutional"? Well, no, of course it ain't, exactly (?), but Boy-'n'-Party militant Big Management and extremist Big Strategy have fibbed to the contrary so often and so consistently that it's hard to avoid a certain Schadenfreude looking at them in this uncomfy corner they've ingeniously painted themselves into stroke by stroke. Poor M. al-Málikí is more than a Diem to be casually shoved aside by Big Managers and Big Strategists who undoubtedly sympathized far more profoundly with "the Vietnamese people" than any Vietnamese neo-régime ever could have. Maliki is a more serious obtacle than Diem, because Big Management and Big Strategy and GOP genius contributed to set Maliki up in the first place, whereas Diem was basically there already even in advance of the invasionites.
But let's not rush to judgment:
| The defense secretary cautioned that an official assessment on the impact of the troop increase due in September and ordered by Congress might not present a full picture of the situation in Iraq. “There still will be a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “But I think we will have some sense of direction and trends.” (...) He agreed that the security situation is “a very mixed picture.” He urged patience until the fifth and final Army brigade ordered by President Bush to bolster forces in Iraq could begin full operations. That brigade arrived this month. |
Do the Party hopes of the Gates specimen-- SECDEF to USA! -- now hinge on single brigades, then? After we have laughed at that absurdity, we may set it aside and forget it forever, I trust.
"Some sense of directions and trends" would do none of us any harm, but that's rather a vague formulation, and perhaps not Imposition's best guide to Chaos. And what is to be said of a Big Managerial Impositionizer who does not just buy "The Exiled Insider's Guide to Indig Chaos" by Ahmad Chelabi, Ph.D. et al., as a curiosity, but actually attempts to invasionize and occupate other people's countries by a manual like that?
Predictions about the future are almost impossibly difficult, and what prediction I have to offer is the very cheapest and shoddiest: the Big Strategy and Big Managment neo-future is here already, Maliki Station really is the end of your Party line, O Boy-'n'-Party thugs. If you choose not to rally around Maliki Station as the definitive Success and Victory that your Karl Roves have always panted after, that's your affair, but if you seek farther, you'll fare much, much worse and find no better product than this product to rally around at last
In another post I may attempt to explain why poor M. al-Málikí is not really quite as bad as the invasionite neo-gentry despise him, but that explanation is optional and extra. The immediate point is only that all the Big Bignesses should see that he's the best they're likely to get and therefore immediately stop knockin' and start boostin'. And I mean really boostin' and not just some wishy-washy Gates creature's kind of "support." Maliki Station is the end of the line, a veritable terminus. No more casually switchin' trains any time you choose, O gentlecreeps! You must either defend your Maliki Station or abandon it -- weaselin' your way around as usual happens to be impossible. (You can't weasel your way around the end of the line, not on a railroad!)
Let Big Management and Big Strategy now do their utmost for poor M. al-Málikí, always tryin' to uphold the client, never even for an instant doin' anythin' to undermine, never even for an instant flirtin' with the notion that some other client might be better upholdable! Let all the secrets of how Big Management and Big Strategy would solve neo-Iraq be communicated to poor M. al-Málikí forthwith! He's bound to think most of it misguided paleface sky-down rubbish, but perhaps it is not all entirely rubbish, perhaps if it was raked through carefully a gold ring or two might turn up.
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