Château Kennebunkport, maybe even Castle Cheney, have been reduced to pretendin' that now at last they are goin'ta let the violence professionals make their aggression and occupation policies for them. They back off from their inveterate Bourbonism a little, having noticed that a Petraeus Plan has certain political advantages that a Gates Gimmick would lack, especially marketin'wise. In a sense this is logical enough from a depraved GOP point of view: they've long since given up carin' what kind of Success and Victory they obtain from wreckin' the former Iraq, PetraeoSuccess and PetraeoVictory would do as well as anythin' else, so far as regards their actual substance, provided, of course, that Congress and Televisionland can be persuaded that these products are the real thing and not just cheap fakes. The real difficulty, should PetraeoVictory improbably eventuate, would be the embarrassment to Big Management involved in the lowly hired hands actually accomplishin' what the executive OnePercenters spent years failin' at ignominiously. Possibly in that case the perps will admit the laurel-freighted Dr. Gen. into their executive suite, even without an MBA from the Harvard Victory School. After all, nobody who seriously disliked the extremist GOP would have taken the job that the Dr. Gen. took, fourth start or no fourth star. Over on the braniac side, the prospective Saviour of their Party does not seem to be quite in the Douglas MacArthur class, although it's not so clear that he realizes as much. There have been certain slight signs that the Dr. Gen. is already runnin' for the Republican presidential nomination, although to be fair, perhaps he has to talk that way just to keep Congress from pullin' the plug on all his paths of glory.
In any case, it will be obvious that I take the Dr. Gen. to be essentially a Party animal, whereas Rear-Colonel Kaplan evaluates him as a hired hand, by purely meritocratic and technocratic criteria, exactly as Château Kennebunkport wishes everybody to do. Kaplan's bottom line is curious, though scarcely Panglossian:
| If the United States pulls out, Iraq's sectarian warfare would probably intensify. If the United States stays in and the surge continues, Iraqi violence might be contained, but 700 to 1,000 more American soldiers will probably die each year—and there will be only a one in 10 chance that the strategy will succeed (by rather minimal standards of success). So, this is the question: Is the price worth the gamble? Bush has put more chips on the table, fully aware of the odds. Will the members of Congress keep bankrolling him? How risk-prone are they? And, ultimately, how much risk will the American voters feel like swallowing when they go to the polls next fall? |
Kaplan mostly borrows his non-verdict from a certain Neocomrade S. Biddle, one of the more rightist CFR gentry, whom Kaplan takes to be a sort of brain behind Dr. Gen. Braniac. Indeed, Biddle's brainstorms, as described, accord better with what the Dr. Gen. is actually doin' with all those chips than textbook MacNamario-Petraean neocounterinsurgency does. Perhaps we ought to have the neocomrade's own estimate of his ingenuities, which FK conveniently provides:
| It is worth noting that Biddle himself has serious doubts about the whole notion. In his interview with Gwertzman, he said the odds that the surge and the new strategy might work—that is, that they might produce "something like stability and security in Iraq"—are "maybe one in 10." Whether those odds are worth gambling on, he said, depends on whether you're averse or prone to risk. Biddle described himself as risk-averse. Therefore, if the decision was up to him, he'd pull the troops out. President Bush, he said, "is clearly very tolerant of risk." And so he's pouring more in. |
Here again I suspect that we are not dealing with pure hired-handedness, though Kaplan takes it all at face value. "I wouldn't bet at odds of ten-to-one," whispers the tipster, "but then I happen to be risk-averse." Could he perhaps anticipate that every red-blooded Greater Texan lad will despise such craven prudence and rush to make the bet in order to express his despite? If that's the Biddle diddle, it didn't work on stolid Fred Kaplan. But then FK obviously did not approach the analyst or con man with a completely open mind, having turned "something like stability and security in Iraq" into his own "succeed (by rather minimal standards of success)" without explaining what's so minimal about stability and security. [1]
Whatever editor headlined the piece "Interesting, But Doomed? Why Petraeus' intriguing new Iraq strategy will probably fail" may or may not have been putting even more risk-averse words into Rear-Colonel Kaplan's mouth than belong there. One chance in ten is perhaps not quite as bleak as "doomed," is it?
"Intriguing" is more interesting than "doomed," though. The Petraus Procedure or Biddle Diddle is indeed a "policy of intrigue," there is no doubt about that, but as to being particularly spell-bound by it, well, count me out. First, though, we need the latest news on what chips our betters are gamin' with here:
| BAGHDAD, July 27 -- The U.S. military in Iraq is expanding its efforts to recruit and fund armed Sunni residents as local protection forces in order to improve security and promote reconciliation at the neighborhood level, according to senior U.S. commanders. Within the past month, the U.S. military command in charge of day-to-day operations in Iraq ordered subordinate units to step up creation of the local forces, authorizing commanders to pay the fighters with U.S. emergency funds, reward payments and other monies. The initiative, which extends to all Iraqis, represents at least a temporary departure from the established U.S. policy of building formally trained security forces under the control of the Iraqi government. It also provokes fears within the Shiite-led government that the new Sunni groups will use their arms against it, commanders said. The goal is to put the new, irregular forces in place quickly -- hiring them on contracts and providing them with uniforms without waiting for access to lengthy police and army training programs. The initiative arises out of efforts underway by some U.S. military units to enlist forces from local tribes as well as insurgent groups in different neighborhoods, most of which have been predominantly Sunni. |
I.e., "If you can't lick 'em, bribe 'em!" All bribery is intrigue, I daresay, yet not all bribe schemes are "intriguing" in the cant journalistic sense. This sort of thing has happened far too often in American history for it to be pulse-stirring. Bribery schemes have even become a bit tiresome as regards the militant GOP's invasion and occupation policy for the former Iraq. It's even been around since before day one of the current caper, in the sense that certain statespersons who should have known better seem to have been talked into the Wolfowitzian fantasy that this aggression would be self-financin': not only would the jubilant neo-liberateds throw flowers at the armed Republican palefaces as soon as they showed up, they'd pump zillions of barrels of complimentary crude oil for them as well. It now appears that the real world does not work quite like that. ("O God, O Bernie Lewis, what went wrong?")
Even a comparative or former good guy like Prof. Dr. Juan Cole succumbed to visions of bribery inspired by all that oil that is allegedly their own to bribe the restless natives with. Just give the TwentyPercenters (whose lands are dry) a double share, and, hey presto! "security and stability." Politically absurd and probably illegal as well, to the extent there remains any legality in Peaceful Freedumbia, but even mere morality might ask questions about planmongering like that. However this is the USA, where pretty well everybody agrees that foreigners can always be bought.
Petraeus and Biddle at least abstain from buyin' natives with what they pick from the same natives' pockets. Exactly where their slush funds come from is not altogether clear: "U.S. emergency funds, reward payments and other monies"? Who is that pays the extremist GOP "reward money" for all its mischievements in the former Iraq? Or perhaps somebody pays up to prevent future mischievements undesirable to themselves? And "other monies," for Pete's sake! That's a blank check waved in the face of Congressional oversight like a red flag before a bull. Have Biddle and Petraeus been attendin' the Oliver North Academy of Creative Finance, perhaps? The ONACF MBA is not quite as prestigious as one from the Harvard Victory School, to be sure, but maybe sometimes more down-to-earth.
Still, we are assured it's all to be only a short-term expedient. Presumably Congress will swoon at the wonders achieved by the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™ and vote the Crawfordites immunity and a ticker-tape parade retrospectively, on the model of Otto von Bismarck and the Prussian Landestag. Or so one presumes ten percent of the time with Neocomrade S. Biddle.
Not all intrigue is bribery, naturally. There's another species of it as well, one that poor M. al-Málikí seems alarmed about, "It also provokes fears within the Shiite-led government that the new Sunni groups will use their arms against it, commanders said." One would like to know which commanders said so to the Washington Post, whether from the narrower PetraeoCrockerian clique or the broader consensus at the Green Zone Officers Mess. The latter seem to be of the same opinion still as last fall, when they leaked relentlessly and shamelessly to create the impression that poor M. al-Málikí is one of the principal obstacles that requires to be surged at.[2] That has not happened, and it cannot be expected to happen in the short term remaining to the Dr. Gen. before accountability sets in.
It is unlikely that the PetraeoCrockerians are deliberately settin' out to intimidate poor M. al-Málikí. They do not conceive this nifty scheme of theirs as directed against him, but rather at the fiends of al-Qá‘ida, exactly as they claim. As usual, the best maxim is to assume that politicians, even Big Party invasionists and intriguers, mean what they say and say what they mean unless there is really compelling evidence to the contrary. All but certainly, it is only more collateral damage and stumblebumism that their nifty scheme of bribery should happen to shove poor M. al-Málikí and his alleged "central government" to the side while they surge on to PetraeoVictory without him and it. Probably the "libertarian" strain in the domestic ideology of Grant's Old Party has nothing to do with it either, although to achieve "security and reconciliation at the neighborhood level" (i.e., without any evil Fedguv ever buttin' in!) might seem to appear to devotees of Miss Rand of Petersburg and Mr. Nozick of Harvard. [3]
Can the braniac aggressors in fact bribe their way to "security and reconciliation at the neighborhood level"? Not very likely. As in any such attempt, there is the notorious difficulty of making sure that one's bribees stay bought. An objector might object that the Petraeans propose to rely on bribery for only a short term, so perhaps they can pull it off. I respond, "Look again at their proposed transition to livin' happily ever after":
| "In the long term, commanders say, the goal is to incorporate the units into the Iraqi security forces." |
Now if you was a potential bribee, Mr. Bones, a venal shaykh, or even perhaps a mere venal and crooked pretender to shaykhdom, what would you make of that? I suppose you might decline, but politely praise the honesty of your wannabe corrupters from the Big Management Party, who tell you up front that their bribes won't be coming in for very long and that any armed band you assemble with their bribes is slated to be taken away from your control and handed over to the (Twelver-infested!) Fedguv as soon as possible. Alternatively, you might take their bucks while the taking is good, and try to avoid the rest of it when the time comes as best you can, should God will. And that's about it, as far as I can see.
The only way a genuine PetraeoVictory could emerge from it would be for al-Qá‘ida to be smashed beyond recovery in the short term, and then there turns out to be no urgent need for "Iraqi security forces," because it will have turned out the faith-crazed fiends of M. Bin Ládin were the only thing that kept "security and stability" from breaking out in the former Iraq long since. For purely domestic Boy-'n'-Party reasons, Karl Rove reasons, the chickenhawk Big Managers pretend to believe something of the sort. Congress and Televisionland can still be incited against al-Qá‘ida, perhaps. The rest of the bushogenic quagmire is far over the heads of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh, not to speak of how little interest those who do not still support the aggression take in native squabbles. In the real world, however, the smashing required cannot be accomplished quickly, and if by some fluke it were accomplished, it would be only a sarcasm to call what ensues "stability and security."
So don't bet on it, Mr. Bones.
____
[1] Confronted with 10:1 odds at the Casino of Human Events, I should myself spend more time worrying about what happens after I lose than about exactly what the prize would be if I'm very lucky. Since neither the honourary colonel nor the bipartisan neocomrade says a word about the down side of the wager proposed, further research seems called for. (Needless to add, perhaps, casinos and I do not interact very often.)
[2] They did not, however, leak lawlessly, since our violence pros have never been taught that chickenhawk control of the military applies to foreign chickenhawks. But I'd give you higher odds than Biddle's that "commanders" don't know enough about GZ collaborationist politics to dabble in them to any purpose.
[3] Planet Dilbert and I are scarcely on speaking terms, so I may be mistaken here, with Miss Rand and Mr. Nozick and their dupes preferring to have competitive governments at the neighborhood level. In that case, the present state of the Arab Sunni provinces of the former Iraq is ideal from the Dilbertarian standpoint, and therefore the Dr. Gen. should just leave well enough alone. That seems to be what Neocomrade Congressman R. Paul is aimin' at, although maybe not for exactly these reasons. But God knows best.
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