| Anticipation for the Warner-Lugar plan had been quietly building all week, particularly among the Republicans who have called for a new course in Iraq. The senators said lawmakers from both parties had expressed an interest in endorsing the plan, although it remained an open question whether it went far enough for Democratic critics of the war. The proposal would require Mr. Bush to present to Congress by Oct. 16 contingency plans to switch to a narrower mission in Iraq, including the protection of Iraqi borders, training Iraqi forces, protecting American military personnel and going after terrorists. The senators said the plan should begin by Dec. 31. |
Why should donkeys and journalists and educationists have all the fun nowadays, why can't elected pols from the Big Management Party become paleface planmongers too?
Little Brother and Oilslick Dick no doubt sincerely consider that the Ollie North Constitution grants them exclusive powers of superlegal invasion and semiconquest and occupation and Petraeo-MacNamaran counterinsurgency, yet why do they have to insist on their special privileges so brattily and so relentlessly? The rest of the OnePercenter political class might be induced to go along with all Uncle Sam's belligent powers remainin' vaguely in the hands of respectable "people like us," credentialled HVS MBA CEO GOP bigmanagers with a track record of success, people who actually know what it takes to meet a payroll (&c. &c.), whereas askin' 'em to take political risks for the Cheney-Bush Aggression Trust without even bein' put on its board of directors ornamentally is a bit steep. If the Big Management movement can't hang together more successfully than than Mr. Zeleny reports in this mornings New York Times , why, possibly Dr. Marx will have the last laugh after all!
To some slight extent the above questions are real as well as rhetorical. Unfortunately the Executive and its Boy are not on the same wavelength even strictly as a gruesome twosome: while Mr. Cheney tries to erect pseudoconstitutional ramparts around Master Bush's sole discretion, the latter keeps on talkin' as if he had surrendered the said discretion to the Big Party's violence professionals lock, stock and barrel. Little Brother does not, of course, mean what he says along those lines; the Big Party's generals and colonels remain mere hired hands, not significant decision-makers. (If Rear-Col. Freddy and the rest of the Bani Kagan think otherwise, they'll be in for a rude awakenin' even if the ever-victorious Surge of '07™ in some sense "works.")
I wonder whether the Lugars and Warners call that silly bluff when they conspire with the perps in private? The idea of runnin' the New Baghdad Railroad Company on the basis of advice from the cleanin' crew or the programmin' staff must offend them doubly, both as US Senators and, more importantly, as private-sectorian BigManagers. Once Master Bush had explained to them that he's only pretendin' to let Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and Freddy of AEI and so on be his brain, pretendin' so as to stall for more time for Stay-the-Course to begin to take effect, as who can doubt that it soon will?, the Lugars and Warners must have fallen back on their own private judgments of the true prospects for Stay-the-Course. It appears that that judgment is negative.
It is not, however, extremely negative. Conventional wisdom supposes that Little Brother and the Big Party will only be permitted to futz around and micawberize as usual in the former Iraq until the middle of September. Warner and Lugar would generously spot the Leader of their Party three-and-a-half additional months for stallin' and futzin': "the [new, improved] plan should begin by Dec. 31." Master Bush and Mr. Cheney may find such generosity inadequate as well as uppity, when the really critical deadline to be stalled through falls in early November of next year. (That's how I'd guess they perceive the true state of their aggression, anyway.) However a series of different stalls glued together will do the trick for them quite as well as one sudden outbreak of total national masochism -- "patience" -- would, and Mr. Cheney, at least, ought to be able to see the point.
Cassandra and I are inclined to think it a waste of time to pick on the Warner-Lugar paleface planmongerin' in any detail at this point in time. Most likely it won't be approved by Congress at all. Next most likely, it will be approved but then Little Brother will veto it, regardless of who may sponsor it. If it survives those two obstacles, it won't go into effect on New Year's Day 2008 in any case, because by then the executive GOP geniuses will have come up with some other way of stallin', which they will simply proclaim to be perfectly consistent with the Warlugar Resolution "as they understand it." [1]
On the other hand, something not unlike the Warlugar Resolution may arrive eventually, though it be under "President Clinton" in February 2009 and no earlier. So let's have a quick look at it: "switch to a narrower mission in Iraq, including the protection of Iraqi borders, training Iraqi forces, protecting American military personnel and going after terrorists." So what's "narrower" about that, eh?
Not a hard question: the narrowness of it can only have been conceived by the Warlugar faction as a matter of ditchin' poor M. al-Málikí's quasigovernment, or whatever additional GZ neorégime may have replaced it by the time the proposed narrowin' takes effect. Unfortunately even that little is not perfectly certain, considering that we are not told exactly what those "Iraqi forces" are to be trained for. Will they, too, only attempt to secure the "their" country's borders, or will they, perchance, be tryin' to put some collaborationist neorégime in effective control of "its own" territory? That seems not unlikely.
The only residual minimum of narrowin' that cannot simply evaporate (without undue twistification) would seem to be that Warlugar invasionites, as opposed to Cheney-Petraeus invasionites, will give up carin' about the exact nature of their collaborationist neorégime. Being me, I phrase the crucial-seeming points my way. Presumably the Warlugarites' own language runs more like "Above all, let's make sure we stay out of the natives' [exp. del.] civil war!" Their account of what the native auxiliaries are bein' trained for might be "to enforce law and order," which certainly sounds high-minded enough to be gettin' on with, does it not? [2]
Of course the whole mess of pottage has been concocted to appeal at Kansas City rather than Sadr City, so it's a bit beside the point to wonder what would happen to the neoliberateds if Warlugarism is ever actually imposed upon them. If you're eccentric enough to care about such trifles, yourr judgment will probably depend on vicarious partisanship in favour of some neoliberateds at the expense of others. Unlike most vicarious partisanisers know to me, I am predisposed in favor of poor M. al-Málikí and the UIA, or, at any rate, decidedly predisposed against all the countless TwentyPercenter factions and factionoids and factionettes, whether Ba‘thí or faith-crazed or only (?) yearning to restore the good old days of Sunni Ascendancy, without which no proper "Iraq" is possible at all, as every schoolboy knows.
Warlugarism might not be all bad, therefore. Assuming that armed forces responsible to the militant Republican extremists actually manage to seal the borders of "Iraq" even-handedly, the existing neorégime of majoritarian underdogs and unnatural masters could probably manage to hang on. If it did once start to totter, the evil Qommies could not march in to prop it up, but it is more important that without external intervention from the Sunnintern, there is no very urgent reason why it should start tottering in the first place [3] -- which is not to expect it will actually control much of the former Iraq any time soon, though.
Warlugarism remains very bad on balance all the same. It's no more than Responsible Nonwithdrawal, detestable political spinach as regards its objectives, and not impressive as strategy and tactics either. How should it be? The Warlugarites are only tryin' to please Peoria and don't even pretend to be doin' much more than that. Are there no intelligent adults in the ranks of the Kiddie Krusaders at all, then, able to recur to first principles and decide how to do this narrowing process -- which undoubtedly does need to be done, if they are to have themselves any Long War at all -- in a manner less unworthy of a Harvard Victory School master of business administration? Can't some of their Party tank-think señoritos reconsider why they aggressed their way into the former Iraq in the first place and work out a sensible minimum program of nondefeat that would be sustainable?
It should not be difficult to come up with a better product than "protection of Iraqi borders, training Iraqi forces, protecting American military personnel and going after terrorists," in which only the last item makes any sense at all as an ultimate target.[4] The other three items taken together only add up to it somehow being necessary for the Big Management Party to stay in "Iraq" because they, somehow, happen to find themselves in "Iraq" at the moment. Whatever Peoria makes of such authentic or feigned amnesia here and now, it is unlikely to recommend itself to Princess Posterity after a century or so. Be their act what it may, and whether or not they want to talk to America about what act it is, 'twould do nobody any harm at all if they'd please try to get it together a little more rigorously.
____
[1] Outside the ranks of the history-is-bunk Party, it will be recalled that Chancellor Michaelis, speaking for the General Staff, found the treaties of Brest-Litovsk entirely compatible with the Reichstag's famous Peace Resolution, "as he understood" the latter. One cannot expect Harvard Victory School MBA's to have casestudied that particular case, but they do seem to have independently reinvented this particular stick to shove into somebody else's wheels. Should the Warlugar Resolution survive the Legislative and go unvetoed by the Executive, doubtless Little Brother will attach one of his Ollie North Constitution "signin' statements" to it so as to reserve himself all the wiggle-room in the world. Poor Dr. Michaelis doubtless wasted his university years on Greek and Latin and jurisprudence instead of bigmanagerial techniques, but he didn't do so badly with what was in fact available in 1917-18.
In 2007-08, it won't take much twistification of "the protection of Iraqi borders" or "going after terrorists" to give the Kiddie Krusaders whatever they want to grab. One test of the sincerity of the Warlugar faction will be whether they stick in lots of hard numbers about warm bodies and almighty dollars that would be much harder to artfully dodge. On the other hand, the more of that devilish sort of detail gets included, the fewer Senators and Representatives from the OnePercenter classes will vote for the bill, and the more likely it is to be just plain vetoed.
[2] Despite over four years of Big Management under GOP auspices, there is a remarkable amount of ignorance about the happy Land of Peace and Freedom, not least in Party circles. A good many Warlugarites may simply not be aware how out of place "only to enforce law and order" is in the really existing bushogenic quagmire, as if they, or anybody else, could discuss that matter without first decidin' exactly WHOSE Rulalaw is to be imposed. Others of them, though, are bound to be cynics who in cold blood care nothin' for anybody's Rulalaw except the GOP's, which Senators Lugar and Warner have provided for carefully under the rubric of "going after terrorists."
[3] Ms. Conventional Wisdom and I disagree about the current occupation policy on at least one significant question. She takes it for granted, as much at Ann Arbor as at Rancho Crawford, that imposing ferocious Affirmative Action measures for the allegedly oppressed TwentyPercenters would tend to stabilize the collaborationist neorégime, maybe even pacify the whole colonial shebang. I begin by thinking the contrary, so adoption of a Warlugarite occupation policy seems likely to produce unanticipated consequences that for once would be mildly beneficial, actually strengthening that neorégime that the Big Management Party might superficially appear to be tossin' off the sledge to the wolves. A good stumble by the inveterate stumblebums for once, think of that! (Once it's put like that, though, it seems a sure thing that Oilslick Dick and George XLIII will fight tooth and nail to make sure it never happens. But that's only what I already told you is likeliest to happen.)
[4] The Democrats might notice this point also and try to use it against the aggressionites, saying perhaps "Since all that you folks ultimately care about is fightin' Globoterror, why don't we all just write off your irrelevant doo-doo in the former Iraq and start seriously fighting Globoterror?"
Such a challenge won't actually make any impression on the Party perps, who in fact have a number of other things on their minds over and above Globoterror, but all the same, this Warlugar bluff demands to be called. Let's find out whether they they can be compelled to mention what GOP invasionism really wants out loud, with no silly attempts to euphemize about "stability" or the like. Even if they don't answer at all, as probably they will not, they might get some of those AEIdeologue and Hoovervillian señoritos of theirs to think about it and report back secretly to Party Central. Even if their true goals are so abominable as to be unmentionable, it would be, as M. Pascal and I consider, a good thing if they could think better about them rather than worse.
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