The Summer of 2009

The first thing to notice about it is that it is manifestly a deliberate official autoleakage, not a reportorial scoop. Mr. Gordon, the NYTC employee, was called in and handed a press release for his corporation to print, perhaps quite literally. Autoleakers cannot, of course, prevent their collaborators from festooning the leakage proper with whatever additional reporting or editorializing they see fit to. In this case, the New York Times Company scarcely sees fit at all. Probably Major Leaker did not himself mention that "the goals in the document appear ambitious" or refer to the Iraq Study Group by name or names, although perhaps he did both. Beyond rewording the hand-out to read like a news story instead of a press release, naturally a sine quâ non, there is nothing here that cannot have come straight from the lips (or the laser printer) of Maj. Leaker.

Secondly, it lacks the tell-tale signs of a Big Management Party autoleakage and bears several positive counterindications on its face, beginning with the New Baghdád dateline. The strongest clue that Cheney & Co. are not directly involved is the number of individual perps mentioned by name. Apart from D. Kilcullen and "a British officer," who are aliens -- or perhaps one should label them "coalitionites"? -- probably all the names belong to registered Republicans, yet they do not issue their press release on behalf of the Big Party. Despite the references to Neocomrade Proconsul R. Crocker and Neocomrade Dr. S. Biddle of the CFR, the press release seems patently intended to be taken as an "independent" assessment of the state of the aggression issued by violence professionals. Not so intended, presumably, but nearly as patent, is that it must emanate from the immediate entourage of Dr. Gen. Petraeus of West Point and Princeton. (One may even guess, not that it matters, that Maj. Leaker's identity is "Col. Peter Mansoor, the executive officer to General Petraeus.") There are bits of it that seem to be in conflict with the general consensus of the Green Zone Officers Club, notably "avoid undercutting the authority of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki." In the other direction, up the totem pole, there is nothing in it that takes cognizance of any bigger Big Picture than the bushogenic quagmire that immediately surrounds the Green Zone, which makes it unlikely that it fully reflects views held at the very top of the nonchickenhawk section of the chain of command. [1] The blessèd and mysterious MacNamarioPetraean word "counterinsurgency" only occurs twice, but the first occurence is significant and stronly indicative of where this press release is coming from:

[T]he new approach reflects the counterinsurgency precept that protection of the population is best way to isolate insurgents, encourage political accommodations and gain intelligence on numerous threats.

Neither the Cheney chickenhawks nor the top brass take exactly that view, the former because they certainly do not launch their Party aggressions and invasions and occupations to protect anybody beyond themselves, the latter because the program specified does not much resemble the unsubtle sort of war winning that they prefer and that has traditionally worked out well for Uncle Sam. [2] The press release would not have been supplied to Mr. Gordon if Boy and Party had forbidden that it should be, yet it really is "independent" of the Big Managers up to a certain point. That it only overlaps with what the chief GOP geniuses think themselves and does not coincide altogether, is itself part of the purpose of the exercise, and more or less must be now that Little Brother has committed himself to pretendin' that he defers to "his" generals and wants Senators and Congresscritters and Televisionland and the electorate to do the same. [3] Under these circumstances it would not do for this document to have Neocomrade K. Rove's fingerprints on it. It does not, and thus for once the stumblebums have managed a show of competence.

Here begins Paragraph Four, and I haven't even mentioned dates and deadlines and benchmarks, which most decent adult political commentary will shriek about first. Well, that angle is obvious enough and therefore anybody's business to shriek against. Let's pass it over, shall we?

To conclude on a literary note instead, observe that Mr. Gordon and his corporation retained the right to rearrange the contents of press releases from the David Petraeus Fan Club (and anybody else, even the great GOP itself) and have done so rather cleverly. Look what comes last, the sting in the tail:

“We are going to try a dozen different things,” said one senior officer. “Maybe one of them will flatline. One of them will do this much. One of them will do this much more. After a while, we believe there is chance you will head into success. I am not saying that we are absolutely headed for success.”

In theory, that could be satire on the micawberizin' of the Big Management Party stumblebums, but the chances that it really is are negligible. One would need almost to be Dean Swift himself to make up anything so extremely ben trovato. Doubtless Major Leaker actually said it, moving his hands as well as his lips. And you must admit that the saying is 100% Karl Rove free! Nobody with narrowly Party-political objectives in mind would have said that. Why, it even tends to raise questions about Big Management as such! One doubts that the Harvard Victory School instructs its MBA's to hope that they will, by chance, head into success. West Point perhaps does, for in a way Maj. Leaker's frankly avowed micawberism is a gloss on "All's fair in love and war."

In the context that this rhetorical weapon was deployed in it, it may rather beg the crucial question. Unless one starts by supposing the success of MacNamarioPetraeanism to be very precious indeed, the prospect of futzin' about indefinitely tryin' to obtain it by "chance" may not have much appeal. But God knows best.


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[1] At least one hopes it doesn't. It is, nevertheless, possible that Joint Chiefs &c. have also lost sight of the forest for the sake of the one Mesopotamian upas tree.


[2] As observers have observed, counterinsurgency also tends to upset the intramural correlation of forces at DOD, leaving the sailors and the flyboys very little to do and thus imperilling their fair share of the budget. Dr. Gen. Petraeus may have become even more unpopular than ever with his peers and his uniformed betters now that he is not merely ten times brainier than they are, but, for the moment at least, in a fine position to extort almost any level of funding he wishes from Boy and Party. Extortion from Congress may be rather trickier, and doubtless Maj. Leaker was to to some extent thinking of that as he composed this morning's press release.

The narrower inside circles of Cheney chickenhawks shares the top brass's reservations as well as possessing their own. Countersurgency is, after all, a pretty wimpy business, is it not? Are they to brief their Dr. Limbaugh to bark and bellow about "isolate insurgents, encourage political accommodations and gain intelligence on numerous threats," then? The Party base-and-vile want to assassinate insurgents, they take Neocomrade J. Bolton's dim view of political or diplomatic accomodations, and they confidently rely on Sole Remainin' Hyperpower to attain success and victory without any need to solicit intelligence from mere lowly indigs. Or even from the Central Intelligence Agency, for that matter.

A MacNamarioPetraean Kiddie Krusade is no doubt slightly better than no Kiddie Krusade at all, but it is hardly ideal from Wingnut City's perspective. ("Hey, why not take out Iran?")



[3] The MacNamarioPetraeans preach that "American troops cannot impose a military solution," no surprise in that. It is a rather picturesque chiasmus, though, that Boy and Party have now been reduced to hopin' for a purely military solution to their own special domestic difficulties, in the sense that whether or not they get their Long War (not to mention retain control of the Executive Branch) is beginnin' to hinge exclusively on whether or not Dr. Gen. Petraeus can bring home enough bacon for them.