All These Years, and "Still Unclear"?

Rear-Colonel Kaplan of Slate solemnly professes not to understand where our Ideologue-in-Chief is comin' from. Yet that scarcely matters, because he's solved the former Iraq himself, Fred Kaplan has!

[I]t is still unclear, after all this time, how Bush defines "win." At one point in his speech [of 28 August, Bush] came close to defining the term, but by that measure, we're not doing well. The "central objective" of his strategy in Iraq, he said, is "to aid the rise of an Iraqi government that can protect its people, deliver basic services, and be an ally in this war on terror." The Iraqi people do not feel more protected (or, to the extent they do in certain areas, for instance in Anbar province, the relief has nothing to do with the Iraqi government). Basic services—clean water and electricity—are more lacking than they were a few months ago. And, even if the Baghdad regime gets its act together, it is unlikely to get confrontational with, say, Iran or Hezbollah. It has always been doubtful that the U.S. military could pull off all these objectives. With the inevitable drawdown of troops, the chances are dimmer still. It's long past time to stop declaring lofty, unachievable goals and to focus on what's feasible. Two military goals are feasible and worthwhile: defeating, or at least severely weakening, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (with the assistance, however opportunistic, of Sunni tribesmen and insurgents); and keeping the Kurdish territories stable. All other goals—for instance, keeping the Sunni-Shiite civil war from escalating or from expanding beyond Iraq's borders—are chiefly political in nature and can be accomplished only with the cooperation of neighboring countries.

Ah, Mr. Bones, In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister! Even Goethe and you and I could go for a spin with Col. Fred if only he'd limit himself one masterfuly smidgen more and define the verb "to win (in Mesopotamia)" as "keeping the Kurdish territories stable," -- only that and nothing more. Even a Sole Remainin' Hyperpower under the guidance of a Big Management Party could probably manage that much, especially when it's done already and only needs to be preserved from undoin'. [1]

But no, FK goes a goal too far and demands the "defeating, or at least severely weakening, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (with the assistance, however opportunistic, of Sunni tribesmen and insurgents)." Notice, Mr. Bones, how verbose Minimum Goal One is compared with the stern and Lacaedemonian starkness of ""keeping the Kurdish territories stable." No doubt FK is still way up at the top of the slippery slope that plunges down to GWB and GOP and the utter abyss of intellectual and ethical degradation, but isn't that the way he's headed? Shall we, in imagination, allow "President Kaplan" a decade or a generation to decide whether it is necessary for Uncle Sam to defeat his (Kaplan's) chosen foe (not merely severely weaken it), whether in the event assisted or unassisted, as the case may be, by Bribe-a-Tribe™ allies?

I think not. Much better we should spoof "It is still unclear, admittedly after not a whole lot of time, how Kaplan defines 'goal'."

'Tis a pity that we should have to spoof Mr. Fred Kaplan at all, but times have changed and new alliances are aformin', and he's on the wrong side of the new frontier. Only very slightly over the line into Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ CFR/ISG bipartisan occupationmonger territory, yet what are lines for, sir, if "very slightly" is allowed to trump "over"? FK wants to stay, we want to go.

He's also a Pascalian disappointment in morality, Bones, which is perhaps more important than his occupation policy views. Rear-Colonel Fred Kaplan certainly aspires to think straight before he shoots straight, and he relentlessly picks on Little Brother and Big Party and Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh when they shoot before thinkin'. Nobody would know better than Kaplan what is wrong with his own Minimum Goal One if some half-baked Crawfordite had proposed it. However when he proposes MG1 himself, the spoofability of it slips under his radar, so to speak. [2]

Exactly like that other Rear-Col. Freddy K., the AEIdeologue prominently behind the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™, our present not-that-bad FK starts out with Goethe and wants to do some serious beshranking of the problems of success as the first step towards solution of them. And like their Boy-'n'-Party fat Freddy, our Mr. Kaplan runs off his originally intended rails before he definitively arrives. It's easier to see where the black-hat FK went wrong: he originally proposed that the militant extremist GOP of our own holy Homeland should content itself with extirpatin' the extremist militant Arabophone Sunnis of the former Iraq. "Our" Tweedledumb and "their" Tweedledee would have been well met and well matched in that world-historical sideshow, but it never happened, because the Great Crow unexpectedly turned up, as it were, the Great Crow in question being conventionally called "sectarianism" or "civil war." Before that nifty scheme of the kaganiyya could even get launched as Freddy first thunk it in a violence pro way, the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™ had been held hostage to the political needs of Boy and Party in the holy Homeland and to so-called "mission creep" at the Green Zone Officers Club. All the flab and distractions that poor professionally deformed F. Kagan had tried to cut out with Occam's razor had already been reinstated three- or fourfold before the Party perps ever actually started surgin' at all.

Thus in the fullness of time comes along our not-that-bad Fred K. to attempt a re-Occamization of aggression's problems of success in the former Iraq. How can we simplify? What's mandatory to be grabbed, and what's only optional, grabwise?

These are excellent questions, Mr. Bones, as far as they go, just the sort of questions that our own ideobuddy M. Pascal would regard as compliant with his Travaillons donc à bien penser. Excellent even when some [exp. del.] Boy-'n'-Party fat Freddy asks them at AEI! To Occamize, to strip off all obese irrelevancies and optional extras and unnecessary distractions and see precisely what it is that one is basically and relentlessly minded to grab! That's the sort of exercise in bien penser that appeals to us. [3]

So, then, Mr. Fred Kaplan of Slate wants indispensibly to grab

Two military goals feasible and worthwhile: defeating, or at least severely weakening, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (with the assistance, however opportunistic, of Sunni tribesmen and insurgents); and keeping the Kurdish territories stable.

'Tis a mad world indeed, Mr. Bones!




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[1] Mr. Kaplan is an invasionite, but not a dubyapologetic invasionite. He might conceivably agree to the proposed restriction without caring that it retrospectively renders the Party aggression of March 2003 otiose, the Free Kurds being then free enough already, and even more or less "stable" as such things are accounted in the Greater Levant.


[2] If you insist on speaking strictly that way, it was hatched under the Kaplanite radar, so of course how should the radar detect?


[3] This is of course only a bien penser secundum quid rather than bien penser simpliciter. A maxim like "Thou shalt not grab!" is off our present GOP-contextual scope altogether.