Two Lunar Plans For Ex-Iraq

The major powers, especially France under President Nicolas Sarkozy, who did not inherit his predecessor's anti-American bitterness over the Iraqi disaster, now see a role for the U.N., with full backing from the 27-nation European Union, that would enable the U.S. to phase out. This would involve giving Iraq a similar status to Kosovo pending its graduation to full-fledged independence. Thus, Iraq's sovereignty would be held in abeyance pending a new post-Saddam political settlement.

This is not the usual ChristoKorean tripe and baloney that M. le Baron purveys, but a very toney continental concoction indeed. (Compare and contrast it with any random slab of Neocomrade A. Blankley.) There is something magical about M. le Baron's moonshine, and I mean literally magical: at a mere word from some Merlin or Harry Potter at Brussels or Turtle Bay, poof! shazaam!! -- the former Iraq stops bein' "sovereign" and "independent" and "democratic" and "constitutional"! It instantly acquires "a similar status to Kosova pending its graduation to full-fledged independence"! Wow!

A very impressive trick that would be, yet exactly why any responsible sorcerer should care to impose preciselly THAT dubious fate on the extremist GOP's spear-won neoliberateds, who can say? Could some wet-behind-the-ears apprentice have taken over while the master is off on his August vacation?

It's obvious, anyway, that Euro- and globo- bureaucrats do not have quite the same tastes as we parochial provincials and colonials. [1] What will they make of this niftiness at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh? What, indeed, in darkest ChristoKorea itself? Why, just "The major powers, especially France" by itself ought to suffice to drive the Party base-and-vile up the wall.

However M. le Baron is not clinically nuts, for he concluded that paragraph as follows:

But this would require a major increment of peacekeepers, preferably from Arab and other Muslim countries. But none of them is about to volunteer.

One might add that there would also have to be a major increment of financial support, BUT nobody from China or Peru or anywhere in between is at all likely to pony up the requisite dirhams and dinars. A certain rather atypical sort of aggression fan may find it a lovely vision, but it is certainly in no danger at all of actually happenin'. You'd think A. de B. would just give it up, or even not bother to have mentioned it it at all. But no, after a gloomy paragraph about the present Party-created happiness of the former Iraq, he returns to the attack:

Britain under Gordon Brown is closer to the European Union consensus on Iraq than it was under Tony Blair. Temporary international tutelage could also undermine Iran's strategy in Iraq, which is to dominate the internal political process through weak pro-Iranian Shi'ite Islamist leaders, like Mr. al-Maliki. Think tank strategists say this gives Iran control of Iraq through pliable friends who are also acceptable to Washington.

Which tank-thinkin' señoritos does M. le Baron huddle with, I wonder? He may conceivably have garbled up somethin' geopolitical and neorightist, but otherwise sane, about the prospects for a Great Anti-Safavid Axis. Such a scheme would not, however, care much about the exact status of Peaceful Freedumbia. And who is it that claims that the evil Qommies are, at this very moment, in "control of Iraq through pliable friends who are also acceptable to Washington"? That extravagance sounds more like the exotic señoritos of Sa‘údiyya than AEIdeologues or Heritagitarians. (Fancy anybody bein' seriously supposed to control what is left of the former Iraq! Perhaps the Security Council really should settle the control issue once and for all by a show of hands! But no, I beg your pardon, they already did that, did they not?)

Then we get some expatiation on the evils of the evil Qommies and poor M. al-Málikí's shameless complicity therein, followed by the revelation that al-Qá‘ida is not without its evil points as well, followed by conventional factious claptrap about the Jihád Threat Within. M. le Baron never does get back to salvagin' Peaceful Freedumbia for Boy and Party through EU and UN. Probably we suffer no great loss by that.

Such as it is or isn't, that may be only Plan B chez Arnold, however. He began his scribble with a more familiar sort of dotty wingnut planmongerin'

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is now "hunkered down with a small group of sycophantic cronies, increasingly detached from the business of running a government." Speaking not for attribution, this was the message conveyed by a former ranking Iraqi government official in London over the weekend. The current drift at the top, he added, could only be reversed by "a strongman at the top." Asked if there was such a potential pro-Western leader in the military, he said, "one can always be found. [2] All it would require is a wink and a nod from Washington." But he conceded this was highly unlikely as the Bush administration's objective in toppling Saddam Hussein was to establish democracy.

That scheme can't possibly be part of the other one, can it? Even in the moonstruck mind of M. le Baron de Borchgrave? Quasiminister Leaker craves only a green light from Rancho Crawford; he says not a word about the United Nations or the Concert of Europe or the status of Kosova or even about Airstrip One. In addition to starrin' a different set of protagonists, Quasiminister Leaker proposes to rely on good ole-fashioned force and fraud, whereas the Plan B modus operandi is witchcraft, or somethin' like it.

Moonbat Plan A and Moonbat Plan B are far from identical, then, although no doubt they could coëxist sequentially: once the Mubárak clone gets discovered and funded and equipped and has marched in atop his white horse, M. Sarkozy and Mr. Brown and the Gang of Twenty-Seven could recognize his neorégime "pending graduation to full-fledged independence." Why not? Certainly not because "the Bush administration's objective in toppling Saddam Hussein was to establish democracy"! [3] Quelle idée!



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[1] The denizens of Planet Borchgrave must be hyperdevotees of World Government: the Security Council (as I presume the agency would be) can unilaterally and preëmptively "give" any "status" it pleases to what some of us have long misunderstood to be the constituents or components of the United Nations. That's as if Little Brother and General Don Alberto Gonzales could gerrymander Greater Texas to suit Big Management Party ends entirely at their own unfettered discretion. It's also quite as soundly based in the original compact, i.e., not based at all.

No doubt the 1945 Charter has its faults, and one of them is certainly related to this Silly Season piffle from M. le Baron: although the Venerable Framers did not actually write down that the Security Council can make two plus two be seventeen if it so resolves, yet they provided no mechanism whatsoever for challenging an action of that body as contrary to genuine and traditional international law, or even as just plain ill-advised. A potential for mischief and abuse along Borchgravid lines therefore does in principle exist. In practice, don't be silly, Arnie! They're now to have ninety-five global interference experts at brave New Baghdád instead of sixty-five. Universal monarchy is still a long way off.


[2] The little foreign friends of Republican Party extremism are no better than any other Peaceful Freedumbians when it comes to politics. Quasiminister Leaker no doubt sincerely supposes that, once given Hyperpower reliably backin' him up, General Strongman would not require any special flair for Levantine intrigue or Harvard Victory School MBA Big Management. He is dead wrong.


[3] The retired and retreated quasiminister perhaps actually believes what he says, which only goes to show that the natives have been too busy with their own bushogenic problems to be able to pursue Crawfordological investigations proper. Whether M. le Baron himself thinks that some entirely fictitious devotion to "democracy" as an export product inhibits the extremist GOP from treatin' the happy Land of Peace and Freedom as Kosova Redux, I cannot make out. For that matter, he does not even say that he agrees with Quasiminister Leaker's pessimism about Aggression Party support for a military coup.