Asked "why reconciliation has been so hard to attain," Dr. Mahmoud pontificated thusly:
| “No one can rely on the political participants who lack a common view of the public interest. ... Such a concept is completely absent from the thinking of the political powers in Iraq’s government, so each side works to get their own quota of positions or resources.” |
Some NYTC headline editor repackaged that indigenous fortune cookie as "Iraqi Factions’ Self-Interest Blocks Political Progress" , which is not quite the same thing. As well becomes an avowed student of Planet Hobbes in general rather than of any one mere civil State, the geopolitical scientizer did not commit himself to any rash prescriptive optimism about "progress." Just the facts, ma'am! Thus Dr. Mahmoud's first sentence nicely explains why the United Nations and "collective security" so regularly disappoint quite as well as it explains why invasion-basin' disappoints in Mesopotamia.
However it is also a fact that there used to be a mere civil State in Mesopotamia, i.e., the former Iraq itself, whereas the United Nations and "the international community" have not been arrived at by a comparable process of degeneration -- not unless we absurdly join the late Filmer and start our Pol. Sci. with the Garden of Eden. Technical terms like "lack" and "complete absence" conceal a significant ambiguity: Planet Hobbes lacks what it never had to begin with, whereas Peaceful Freedumbia lacks by deprivation rather than by default. To distinguish further, Peaceful Freedumbia lacks by deprivation ab externo. That is to say, it was militant extremist Republicans who smashed the former Iraqi State by violent breakin' and enterin'. The resultant "complete absence" is not at all the result of a local convention voting to rescind its ratification of the Social Contract after the fashion of South Carolina in December 1860.
If one regards statism as artificial rather than "natural," which Mr. Bones and I do and M. Mahmoud seems to, then unstatism -- "lack" and "complete absence" of the Civil State -- must have came first historically. Proponents of unstatism may therefore justly be termed "conservatives" and then the practioners/victims of unstatism can be divided into four classes:
(A) Conservatives who never heard of innovation S.
(B) Conservatives who know about S and conscientiously reject it. ("Reactionaries" proper)
(C) Postconservatives deprived of S by external violence.
(D) Postconservatives deprived of S by due process. [1]
Planet Hobbes and "the international community" fall under (A), I'd say, because fantasizing universal monarchy, for the UN or anybody else, on the analogy of particular States remains only fantasy. None of Uncle Sam's neo-Iraqi subjects in August 2007 can belong in that category, however: everything in their parochial politics since at latest 1958 assumes that statism is familiar, like it or not.
Unstatism having been inflicted upon the former Iraq by gross supralegal violence from outside, there is a natural tendency to assume that pretty well all neo-Iraqi subjects belong in category (C): "everybody" knows what statism is, and almost everybody wants it restored. At the same time, any student of the bushogenic quagmire who takes mere superficial appearances seriously and does not platonize them under the rug and out of sight can see the obvious difficulty: if a restoration of statism is what "everybody" wants, why on earth don't they have it already? The Occupyin' Party is not deliberately tryin' to foist the Rand-Nozick ("libertarian") tripe and baloney off on its colonial victims, however much partisan fun it may be in central North America to pretend otherwise. Unstatism in their semiconquered provinces is a serious nuisance to Boy and Party, although needless to say they would not care for an expressly anti-Bushevik sort of restored State either.
M. Mahmoud may or may not have evolved some ingenious Bernielewisite theory of What Went Wrong: he is quoted so briefly that it is impossible to guess what it would be. However I think we may infer that he believes in the general wrongness of "Freedom means peace" as actually imposed and implemented from the words "each side works to get their own quota of positions or resources," and especially from that particular Q-word. It looks as if Peaceful Freedumbia resembles Lebanon, that fascinating but sui generis locus of unstatism, a bit too much for his taste. If some of the NYTC news analyst's subsequent unsourced ruminations are, as often happens, borrowed from M. Mahmoud, there may be a bit more for us to work from. After kissing off the Free Kurds, Mr. Damien Cave continues
| Shiites and Sunnis, however, are still the factions with the greatest responsibility for Iraq’s political stalemate, and the ones most able to gain from the dysfunctional status quo. Shiites in particular, as the majority, have managed to take advantage of the weak central government in a number of ways. Religious parties in majority-Shiite areas like Basra now openly fight for positions of power. Killings of Shiite officials by Shiite gunmen in the south have grown more common, and with huge oil wealth located in the region, interference from Baghdad remains entirely unwelcome. |
That majorities benefit especially from weak central government may be a very disputable sort of Pol. Sci. proposition, [2] but clearly it is a Pol. Sci. proposition and as such may derive from Dr. Mahmoud or from somebody very similar. "Shiites in particular have managed to take advantage" speaks for itself only too loud and clear, and the Tendenz of the rest of the passage is even more so. Consider the flip side: exactly whom in Peaceful Freedumbia would it best suit to have a strong central government that fosters a minority and interferes with huge oil wealth wherever located? Not a very hard question. [3]
After that Mr. Cave moves on to settle the Rev. Señorito Muqtadá's hash, still without shifting to any other named quotee capable of impartial news analysis, real or pretended:
| In the capital, offices run by the militia and civilian organization of the populist cleric Moktada al-Sadr have opened like franchises across the city. His militia, the Mahdi Army, known as Jaish al-Mahdi, now controls businesses ranging from real estate and ice to guns and gas. One Mahdi commander from eastern Baghdad recently estimated that the militia controlled 70 percent of the city’s gas stations, a figure that is hard to verify but which falls in line with what American officials describe as a sophisticated network that combines brutality with business. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, for example, recently called the organization “Jaish al-Mahdi Incorporated.” Mr. Sadr does play a role in the government. His party — encouraged by the Americans to join Iraq’s government — controls several ministries rich in resources, including the Health Ministry. Without Mr. Sadr’s support, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fellow Shiite, would not have become prime minister. Like many others here, Mr. Sadr and his followers have recently turned on Mr. Maliki, repeatedly pulling out of the government to register discontent. And yet, Mr. Sadr has not called for a replacement. |
If that comes from Dr. Mahmoud too -- or indeed, even if it doesn't -- what we have here must be the Mahmoudian mechanism, the secret trick by which mere majorities can take unfair advantage of weak régimes. It appears that they do for themselves what we statists would want done by a proper State. Not the most amazing discovery of social scientizing is that one! Yet why should contemptible majorities have a monopoly on this ploy? Can't noble minorities do it as well, especially given a reasonable degree of geographical concentration?
With astonishing self-restraint, Mr. Cave does not mention the God Party of Lebanon in this connection, but I shall do so and point out that the Hizballáh manages to do the trick in question without being a majority inside the Beirut statelet. As regards the former Iraq, one might conjecture that if the TwentyPercenter smithereens were doing the same for themselves, their self-help efforts might tend to be overlooked by paleface news analysts because they also tend to bomb and shoot at Republican Party operatives, a practice which is traditionally accounted rather more newsworthy in itself, not to mention what news customers in Manhattan might be expected to demand. On the other hand, maybe the smithereening of the former Sunni Ascendancy has gone so far that that theocommunity could not emulate the God Party and “Jaish al-Mahdi Incorporated” even if they tried? God knows best.
Myself, I do not pretend to know about the factual question, yet I venture to pronounce that there can be no objection in principle to minorities as well as majorities coping with conditions of unstatism along Sadr Tendency lines. [4] Such privatesectorian coping is the obvious answer to our original question, "What comes after 'Smash the State!'?"
It may not be the only answer, to be sure, that is another story. Presumably John Galt would not do exactly what the Sadr Tendency and the Hizballáh are doing to cope with unstatism, but you'll have to consult Miss Rand of Petrograd or Mr. Nozick of Harvard for the details.
_____
[1] This is not the case of Charleston 1860, which falls rather under (B). If anybody on that occasion had voted against secession, however, she would belong to (D) as being a member of a minority that does not on that account withdraw her allegiance to the local convention. In Peaceful Freedumbia, category (D) has been increasing as effective political support for cosmopolitan rootlessness ("secularism") dwindles. In our own annals, General Lee of Virginia (rather than "of the United States") is the standard model of a (D) person.
"Due process" is not to be pressed too hard: one can know the general drift of one's own theocommunity well enough without formal assemblies or plebescites. To go with that flow voluntarily but disapprovingly is the essence of (D). "Our party, right or wrong!"
[2] What would Senator Calhoun or "President" Davis have made of it, I wonder? The pre-GOP Fedguv was so weak as to scarcely exist at all, by present standards, and the slaveocracy did indeed take the line that it was systematically biased in favor of mere majorities and against themselves. Yet the very last thing they had in mind was to strengthen it, surely?
From a different viewpoint, though, as long as they could control the puny creature through the National Democracy and the three-fifths rule, they condescended to put up with it. Yet how were they able to pull that trick for so long if feeble government fosters majority rule?
[3] The whole business has a Cloudcuckooland flavor to it. In the real world, the TwentyPercenters are so fractionated and disintegrated as to be quite incapable of imposing themselves as they always used to do. Perhaps that will change eventually and their natural mastery be imposed once again, but meanwhile to confound statism and Sunnianity like this is not just mischievous and selfish but ridiculous.
[4] Speaking of factual questions, I believe "And yet, Mr. Sadr has not called for a replacement" is an error. He has called upon poor M. al-Málikí to replace the resigned Sadrists with so-called "technocrats," and therefore the live issue is why that has not been done.
To be sure, Peaceful Freedumbia being what it is, and especially what the Khalílzád Konstitution makes it be, most neo-Iraqi subjects might not notice even if there were no quasiministers at all.
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