| For a long time, the idea of an externally imposed partition of Iraq was the preserve of a few relatively isolated but loud US politicians and pundits, including figures like Joseph Biden, Leslie Gelb and Peter Galbraith. More recently, however, certain academics have added their voice to the partitionist propaganda. These studies warrant close scrutiny, because their academic style and, in some cases, elaborate footnotes, make it very likely that they will achieve status as “serious pieces of research” among those who advocate partition. |
The devil quoting scripture was bad enough. What's to become of us all if the Prince of Darkness is now to brandish a mail-order Ph.D. and take to solemnly citing footnotes as well? O God, O Bernie Lewis! Wirklich wir leben in finsteren Zeiten!
There is the usual tertiary-academic fun side to this carnival: RV shrugs his figurative shoulders about a mere Senate foreign-relations committee chairman, the sort of peripheral bit player who obviously can't make any difference in the real world except as regards the volume level. On the other hand, he is terrorized of Messrs. Amitai Etzioni and Edward P. Joseph and Michael E. O’Hanley [1] and rushes forth to do battle at once.
("Professional deformation" is the pathologists' term for this syndrome, I believe. Has the interaction with acute schizophobia ever been clinically studied?)
Fas est et ab hoste doceri appears to be Dr. Virtue's maxim, or at any rate, if the fiends of ‘devolution’ are going to borrow his weapons, then he'll switch to something else. One alternative to Fussnotenkampf is guilt by association:
| On pages 9 to 11, Joseph and O’Hanlon (who in 2006 complained loudly in the US press after having been marginalised in the sessions of the Iraq Study Group) enumerate in greater detail the supporters of their plan. They appear to be, Joseph, O’Hanlon, most Kurds, and Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite politician. The authors are too modest: they could have added al-Qaida, which would welcome this kind of federation as a permanent scar on Iraq that would prove to the whole world how “Western crusaders are intent on dividing the Muslims”, as well as Iran, which consulted closely with Hakim before he launched his campaign for a Shiite federal entity in the summer of 2005 and prior to the intensification of it in August 2006 – and which would rival Saudi Arabia as holder of the world’s largest oil reserves if it were able to exercise control over the Basra fields. |
It's tempting to toss that petard right back at Dr. Righteous Virtue and see how he likes it. Suppose we pay no attention in detail to the ‘propaganda’ that he scribbles and only ask whom it aids and abets that such propaganda should be scribbled at all. "Aha! to judge from R. Virtue's singling out Safavids and faith-crazies as the Ultimate Enemy, he must be a Bushevik in sheep's clothing. Notice how the man as good as admits he's an apologist for the Great Cardboard Kingdom and a petroleum-based Weltordnung to be presided over from al-Riyád. It is not very hard to guess who's payin' this piper, ladies and gentlemen!"
That is not fair at all, of course. In fact Dr. Virtue's opinions are so isolated and cranky that to associate them with anything or anybody at all, whether to insinuate depravity or request applause, can only be misleading. The worst one can say of them is that they they do in significant respects overlap with certain extremist GOP views and also with certain other generally Sunninterni or specifically Sa‘údiyyan views that are actually held by players who matter. However since neither Rancho Crawford nor the Anglo-Arabian Press Trust nor les altesses royales du Ryad sacralizes the territorial integrity of the former Iraq in anything like Dr. Righteous Virtue's manner, there is nothing much to do with these overlaps after one has noted them with interest. [2]
Should we propose in earnest to tar him with guilt by association, we would associate him with the whole zoo of paleface planmongers, left and right and center, whom he resembles in respect of taking for granted that the Virtue Plan must be imposed top-down, for all his solemn pretense that it, and it alone, is exactly what bubbles up from below and exactly what all Greater Levantine history has been pointing towards for decades or centuries. If the former Iraq were ever to be abandoned to its inhabitants, they might do the wrong thing altogether -- that's just as much a problem for Dr. Virtue as it is for any other exogenous impositionist. Perhaps it is even a worse problem for him, since acquiring his well advertised erudition may perhaps have put him in better touch with the natives than most paleface planmongers can claim to be.
However tarring with that association applies to Senator Biden and Ambassador Galbraith and the rest of the schizomaniacs on the same terms as it applies to the schizophobe Dr. Virtue, and obviously it applies to aggression faction impositionists as well. They all propose to impose, and cordially agree about that fundamental point even if they then go on to squabble about everything else, much as the TwentyPercenter natives all concur that the Sunni Ascendancy must be restored if there is ever to be an Iraq again, despite differing wildly and sometimes at gunpoint about what shape that once-and-future radiant vision ought to assume. [3]
The tactic of imputing guilt by association with impositionism really does resemble poison gas a little, for there is a serious danger of doing as much damage to one's allies as one's enemies with it. There is also an opposite side of the horse to fall off, in the sense that the Khalílzád Konstitution has made it impossible for the official organs of quasigovernment to impose themselves and get things done. Speaking of which, another of Dr. Virtue's new ploys is to set up as a Strict Konstructionist, so to spell it:
| Perhaps the most problematic portion of Etzioni’s article is the section that asserts, “Federalism and Regional Autonomy Are Compatible with Iraq’s Constitution”. Of course, federalism is part of the Iraqi constitution. But where Etzioni and many partitionists with him get it wrong is the character of the federalism laid down in the Iraqi constitution of 2005. First and foremost, federalism south of Kurdistan is foreshadowed in the Iraqi charter as an optional arrangement, and, if chosen, its building blocks will be the existing governorates, which can become federal entities in their own right, or may join with other governorates. On the other hand, under the constitution, ethnicities and Etzioni’s “communities” will have no role in demarcating the federal units. If they are so eager to stay true to the Iraqi constitution writers like Etzioni should at least openly admit that there is absolutely no imperative for the comprehensive federalisation of all of Iraq in the document that was adopted back in 2005. (The relevance of a textualist approach to the Iraqi charter can of course be debated given that many Iraqis are now more interested in constitutional reform that would actually strengthen the centre, but several partitionists are at pains to pose as “constitutionalists” and therefore should at least be faithful to the document they refer to.) In fact, many Iraqi politicians, including Shiite parliamentarians, believe that the complicated rules for forming federal regions mean that in the future only one or maximum two small uni-governorate entities (Basra and possibly Najaf) will develop into full-blown federal units on the Kurdistan pattern, with the remaining 13 governorates staying within a unitary state framework. To partitionists, this is a considerable quandary. If they wish to adhere to the Iraqi constitution, then, by all means, they should feel free to do so: just sit back and relax because no external intervention in the demarcation of federal units is needed! But then again in that case their “plan” would not be a plan. |
RV is by way of being the Perfect Impositionite: no imposition means no plan at all! Though of course the planmonger is being sarcastic and is himself far from satisfied with the Khalílzádian gridlock as it is, as any wimpy "textualist approach" would leave it. The tortuous allusion to "many Iraqi politicians, including Shiite parliamentarians" establishes no more than that the Virtue Plan might be reconciled with the Khalílzád Konstitution by sophistry. Obviously what RV really wants is a Virtue Plan Konstitution that specifically demands everything good and unified and expressly discountenances all wicked decentralization. At this point it is not easy to imagine any circumstances under which his wish would be gratified. The triumph of any one of the Arab Sunni smithereens would do it, to be sure, but few outcomes are less likely to happen in the former Iraq than that one. A unanimity or even a plurality of "Shiite parliamentarians" for any Virtue Plan Konstitution is inconceivable. [4]
But the whole fuss is silly, being only tertiary-educationalist in nature no matter what view Dr. Etzioni takes about constitutionalism for communitarians.
Joseph and O'Hanlon being only inferior para-academic tank-thinkers, Dr. Righteous Virtue thinks displaying a small anthology or florilegium of their wares in the cheapjack New Criterion manner -- this week's worst example from THEM ever! -- is a useful tactic:
| Snippets from this part of the report probably speak best for themselves: “we advocate where possible dividing major cities along natural boundaries” (p. 16); “on the actual day of the relocation operation, Iraqi and US-led coalition forces would deploy in sufficient numbers to look for snipers, cover the flanks of the civilian convoys, inspect suspicious vehicles for explosives and conduct similar tasks” (p. 17); and finally, on p. 24, “this [internal border] control system would place some burdens on Iraq’s internal trade and other aspects of its economy. It would complicate the efforts of individuals to cross from one region to another to visit family and friends. For the most part these burdens would be bearable. For individuals or businesses that need to make frequent crossings across Iraq’s new internal borders, or those willing to pay for the privilege, an EZ pass system [sic] might be developed to expedite movements for those with important and regular business to conduct.” |
The Lord of Footnotes is getting a little desperate, perhaps, when he attempts to insinuate that his antagonists can't spell ‘easy’ right instead of explaining what that EZ is an acronym for -- "ethnic zone"? "evacuation zone"? Cheaper than cheapjack is that.
The level of discourse improves a bit later on, when Dr. Virtue turns away from his immediate enemies and discusses a fundamental problem for any such political Platonism as his own: how is it that misleading appearances can diverge so far from Ideal Truth?
| Those analysts who emphasise the continued existence of Iraqi nationalism among the population at large are often criticised because these ideals are not reflected at the elite level anymore. But that is just a testament to the growing gap between politicians and masses in Iraq, perhaps greater now than ever after the recent further narrowing of the Maliki governing coalition to include just two Shiite Islamist parties in addition to the Kurds. (Farcically, the current government negotiations are being reported in the Western press as a “conflict between Shiites and Sunnis”, even though the real political cleavage is between an ever more cliquish group of “moderate” sectarians who are on talking terms with Washington, and opposition Iraqi nationalists – Shiites and Sunnis – who are being ignored by the Americans.) |
"Those analysts" don't analyze deep enough, it appears, to explain why the Green Zone collaborationist pols should be getting more and more out of touch with that Silent Majority of neo-Iraqi subjects, their own countrymen, whom a Dr. Righteous Virtue can ventriloquize with such ease -- and do so without even belonging personally to the Fatherland for which he patriotizes! Perhaps there are Ideal Masses and Ideal Élites lurking somewhere in this tiefgehend Parmenidean cogitation, but in that case, would not the great gulf fixed between the two be stable rather than ‘growing’? And then one would presumably have to belong to some sort of élite to be either on talking terms with Rancho Crawford or significantly ignored by it, yet what is that nondistinction to the purpose? ‘Cliquish’ must mean something pretty bad, but I cannot see that it means anything at all explanatory. Vado in mirabilibus supra me. Perhaps I had better just give up trying to make it out.
In any case, the Lord of Footnotes insists on having the last word:
| [I]n general, this popular dimension is only rarely reflected in media reports from Iraq, which instead tend to focus on propaganda by sectarian political parties that have good communications skills and are able to spin small gatherings of their diehard supporters as “massive demonstrations”. The problem is highlighted by these authors themselves: Joseph and O’Hanlon assert (p. 8) that there is “strong evidence” that “violence is steadily eroding national unity” – with a footnote to a short article by American journalist Sabrina Tavernise! Instead of engaging in this kind of contrived referencing they and other partitionists should take a long look at their own arguments, deal honestly with their most glaring denials of Iraqi facts (ranging from the [Mamlúk] government of Baghdad in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the cross-sectarian support seen in April 2007 for Shadha Hassun, the Iraqi contestant in the Arab “Star Academy”), and then ask whether there is anything left at all. The US invasion of Iraq was based on lies; it would do irreparable damage to the entire Middle East as well as American interests in the region if also the mechanics of withdrawal should be informed by fabricated evidence. |
Golly, fabrication of evidence may be even worse than partition of the former Iraq! Who'd 'a' thunk it, Mr. Bones?
RV sets the threshold of political lying far too low, but then that error is so vulgar as to be venial. All the same, none of his latest three schizomaniac monsters has any intention to deceive or "deny" "facts," nor does it take much contrivance on anybody's part to quote from the (admittedly pretty deplorable) Ms. Tavernese. Dr. Righteous Virtue gets a bit carried away with himself, I fear. Possibly the saeva indignatio behind his defamation results from the undeniable reality than no partitionmonger is a virtual and vicarious patriot for the former Iraq modo Visseriano. But then nobody else on earth is either, not even in Mesopotamia.
____
[1] How many inhabitants of the former Iraq have so much as heard the names of these major Enemies of their People?
But no doubt Dr. Virtue would consider that a thoroughly frivolous topic for research. Whether his pets are aware of the dangers that they face makes no difference at all, he's going to protect them from harm -- as he, not they, conceives harm and protection -- all the same. Enlisting the indigs in "their own" defense seems at least as problematical for Dr. Virtue as for Dr. Gen. Petraeus, but fortunately the former makes war on a loftier plane where crude benchmarks and body counts do not obtrude themselves.
[2] Nothing to do with them politically, I mean. Considered as part of an intellectual parlor game or an exercise in rhetoric, the crankiness of Dr. Righteous Virtue does raise such questions as how it could have originated or how best to formulate its various overlappings with real-world strategies and interests. For example, it overlaps with the AAPT or so-called "pan-Arab" Weltanschauung rather more than with Republican Party extremism or the greed of the Gulfies, yet at the same time, no indigenous Sunninterni zealot conceptualizes "Iraq" as RV does, for his conceptualization has clearly been imported from Europe. He is a vicarious patriot for the former Iraq whose style of patriotism would be less out of place in the latitude of Ruritania.
But as I said, after one has refined the wording of the RV crankiness like that, one is no forwarder with any matter of the slightest political significance. Unless one can be interested in it disinterestedly, i.e., with knowledge of the crankiness its own sole reward, there is no reason to waste more than half a minute on Dr. Righteous Virtue. You will recall, Mr. Bones, that the Muses and I never pretended that we attend to things in direct proportion to their objective importance, not even in proportion to our own estimates of objective importance. RV is ten thousand times more fun to watch than Senator Biden of Delaware is, but not one ten-millionth as important. (Part of the fun, naturally, is RV's own estimate of that particular ratio.)
[3] That is to say, the Arabophone Sunnis are all impositionists at cross purposes too, just like the whole crew of Virtue and Biden and Gelb and Galbraith and Bush and Blair and Etzioni and Joseph and O'Hanlon taken en masse.
The Free Kurds are nothing of the sort, at least as regards New Baghdád and all that: they basically just want out of the "Iraq" racket, as even RV is forced to acknowledge.
The Twelvers stand betwixt and between, with a theocommunitarian position complicated or camouflaged by the fact that an imposition of majoritarian democracy can more or less give them what they require, and that conventional ideology nowadays does not often think of ‘democracy’ as an imposition, at least not outside the fever swamps surroundin' Wingnut City.
A note on terminology and ethics: undoubtedly the word ‘imposition’ can be abused the way militant Republicans often abuse its antonym ‘freedom,’ as for instance to suppose that if Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ somehow miscarries and all the Big Management Party operatives just leave Mesopotamia altogether, somebody or another would be ‘imposing’ civil war or partition or genocide on the hapless ex-Iraqis. That tendentious and self-servicin' baloney results from the customary displacement of accountability from where it primarily belongs to whatever opponent one happens to have it in for most.
"They also serve who only pull the trigger" ought always to be borne in mind by those who moralize with M. Pascal. Travaillons donc à bien penser : voilà le principe de la morale!
[4] Dr. Virtue may not be altogether keeping his eye on the ball. Etzioni and Joseph and O'Hanlon are all very well for the groves of Academe, but at brave New Baghdád it may be more important that the abominable Supreme Council remains in the quasiministry of poor M. al-Málikí, whereas the warm and wonderful centralizers of the Sadr tendency and the Islamic Virtue Party have departed along with the TwentyPercenter bloc. On the other hand, Khalílzádian gridlock being what it is, perhaps none of that makes any difference worth mentioning? Time will tell.
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