Parmenedism Exemplified

[S]enior [British] officers are at pains to point out that one should not mistake deteriorating conditions on the ground [at Basra] for an Iraqi inability to govern and exercise authority. The trouble is that the one is demonstrable and the other conjectural.

The Sunni International and Mu’ámara Junction and Dr. Righteous Virtue are not alone in sweeping mere superficial appearances aside and discerning a Secret Truth about the former Iraq that is invisible to less metaphysically gifted persons.

Here we Aristotelians note exactly the Form of Parmenedism filled up with an entirely different Matter. The appearances to be denied or rather seen through have nothing to do with all neo-Iraqi subjects burning with national (wataní and/or qawmí) zeal, all deplorable "sectarianism" (tá’ifiyya) being a recent importation, but with the performance of the collaborationist pols and their army and their secret state police.

Unfortunately General Mallinson does not follow his Platonic insight up on the same high philosophical plane. Indeed, his very next sentence suddenly breaks in from a different universe, as it were:

On this point, however, the British and the new American doctrine agree: "third-nation forces can only hold the ring and set the conditions for success of local forces", says FM 3-24.

How to connect those dots, Mr. Bones? I suppose one could say that Marvin the ARVN has got to hack it for the neo-MacNamaran counterinsurgency of Dr. Gen. Petraeus, Princeton-educated author of Field Manual 3-24, to attain success and victory, but that hardly warrants the inference that Marvin is in fact hacking it. Be that as it may, Gen. Mallinson switches direction abruptly for a second time and arrives at his real topic, which is probably not one of much interest outside violence profession circles in the United Kingdom:

It is a fine operational judgment just how much the presence of "third-nation forces", which the local population see as forces of occupation, is fuelling the trouble in Basra and making the job of local forces all the more difficult, but what scope for any other operational decision can there be when we have only enough men to manage a steady withdrawal? The MoD desperately needs to get its troops out of Iraq so that it is not defeated in Helmand.

Clearly this redcoat gentleman (and pious Kiddie Krusader, and writer for the Daily Torygraph ) does not attach much importance to his Parmenidism, at least not around Basra. Though the Secret Party Truth be quite different from what the MSM fiends print, yet it scarcely matters what is Reality and what is mere appearances in the south of the former Iraq: the great thing, immediately, is to rush off to save Helmand from "global insurgency." Long term, the great thing is to supply the redcoat gentry with far more cannon fodder than they possess at present. (Tony Blair's fault -- this is the Torygraph after all!)

A doubter might even doubt that there is any metaphysics comparable to that of Mu’ámara Junction present here at all, taking the low view that General Mallinson would prefer to think happy thoughts about what might happen in Unoccupied Basra after the Brits pull their kissinger. But it is all much more fun Aristotle's way, is it not?