But seriously . . . .
Don't you wish you were a Murdochite and a Weekly Standardizer, Mr. Bones? Then you, too, could learn the bigmanagerial secrets of Boy and Party, or at any rate, exactly what Dr. Gen. D. Petraeus and Neocomrade R. Crocker would like their Boy and their Party to do next (on Uncle Sam's tab) about their biggest little Problem of Success:
| Colonel Steve Boylan, General Petraeus' personal Public Affairs Officer, pointed out to [Señorito Rick Lowry of National Review] in a recent set of emails that the Joint Campaign Plan is focused on "efforts to build governance capacity, communicate strategically, spread the rule of law and bring about reconciliation between competing factions." The initial focus ... [is less interesting than how the braniacs propose to counterinsurge next. So let's fast forward to] Now, with the surge forces in place, the Coalition's attention is turning to reconciliation. Colonel Boylan went on to say that "The campaign is intended to maintain a sustainable security capability throughout Iraq, starting with local security We are trying to set conditions for them to negotiate a power-sharing agreement where they decide to quit fighting." The nature of this conflict is complex. It is a "communal struggle" for power and survival. There still [sic] remain elements of a Sunni-based insurgency and a radical Islamist terrorism intent on winning their cause through violence and intimidation. If that were not enough, Iraq's neighbors, particularly Syria and Iran, are stoking the fire, while the government in Baghdad is "chronically unable to fulfill its obligations to its citizens." This unique conflict requires a unique solution. Colonel Boylan stated, "One way to end the conflict would be to let them fight it out. The other way is to negotiate a power-sharing agreement..." The Joint Campaign Plan is focusing on power-sharing and reconciling the reconcilables. The military element of the plan will deal with the irreconcilables. Picture several guys fighting; none of them can stop or they risk getting "popped" by one of their opponents. Such is the case with the several competing factions in Iraq. Our forces have to reach in and separate them. Once that happens, other elements of coalition power can be applied. This is where the political, economic and diplomatic facets of the Joint Campaign Plan will come into play. By addressing each "fighter's" concerns in a secure environment, the plan aims to "convince them to stop fighting on a more-or-less permanent basis." |
Naturally certain elements of so splendiferous a JCP are bound to be over the heads of mere lay sheep, as for instance what, if anything, it means to "communicate strategically" -- who does that with whom? about what? does it involve ICBM's? (No doubt that bit made more sense in the original PowerPoint.)
However there are lucid patches too that seem to be English, like "One way to end the conflict would be to let them fight it out. The other way is to negotiate a power-sharing agreement." That sounds plausible, though the second prong of it is not seriously to be billed (even by a shameless PPAO straight out of Madison Avenue) as "a unique solution" to "a unique conflict." Surely in all the centuries since the Third Dynasty of Ur, somebody must have thought of "a power-sharing arrangement" before Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point did Why, hasn't somethin' of the sort been mentioned in the earlier course of the present aggression? Mightn't Khalílzád Pasha consider that Konstitution that he helped impose upon his Party's neo-liberateds "a power-sharing arrangement"? [1] It is not easy, admittedly, to think off-hand of a case where an utterly alien invader and occupier such as the militant Republicans are in the former Iraq enforced a power-sharing arrangement on spear-won natives that lasted very long or thrived very vigorously. Still, didn't the Imperial Brits attempt this trick not once, but several times, as in Palestine and India and Cyprus (plus perhaps even Ireland might be adduced)?
Be that as it may, the Dr. Gen.'s PPAO leaves out much the commonest historical case, that in which the far-fetched aggressor picks one side amongst the indigs and then makes sure (if possible) that the side picked triumphs and then monopolizes power (if possible). That paradigm seems adequate for the MacNamara-Kissinger War, plus probably hundreds of other case, maybe even thousands. And it is at least much simpler conceptually, is it not? [2]
Peaceful Freedumbia is not "South Vietnam," of course, Peaceful Freedumbia is the scene of "a communal struggle for power and survival." Or if it is not, at least that's they way the braniacs want to spin it, and as almost always, one is to assume they believe their own allegations, however improbable or contradictory or self-servicin'.
The crux of Phase Two looks like being "[b]y addressing each 'fighter's' concerns in a secure environment to 'convince them to stop fighting on a more-or-less permanent basis.'" (The PPAO goes in for for the more idiotic use of shudder-quotes, I notice: obviously people who employ physical force against armed and invasive Republicans are fighters. The funny punctuation is just to remind everybody that they're bad guys as well. It's characteristic of the aggression crew that this should happen in a sentence that purports to be about negotiantin' with them.)
The real gem here is that "secure environment," however. What can that mean (even in PowerPoint or Party Chinese) except that the fighters have already stopped fighting on a more or less permanent basis? It looks as if the "joint" part of the braniacs' splendiferous Joint Campaign Plan is by way of window-dressin'. The Dr. Gen. is to do it all, or 95% of it, and the proposed contributions of Neocomrade Proconsul R. Crocker are not easy to detect. (Although if RC possesses a "personal Public Affairs Officer" also, perhaps there is hope that we may eventually learn how she twists the JCP in her boss's interest.)
After what I have quoted, it is all al-’Anbár all the time, which illustrates how the chickenhawk side of jointness gets the short end of the stick. It is not State Department officials who run around buyin' up every shaykh or wannabe shaykh who isn't actually nailed down. [4] It further illustrates the point in note [3] about the opportunism and slightly Orwellian revisionism that characterizes our aggression faction. Since al-’Anbár looks, at the moment, more like PetraeoSuccess and PetraeoVictory than anythin' else on the horizon, obviously that must have been what the ever-glorious Surge of '07™ was mostly intended to be about from the beginnin'.[5]
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[1] Strictly speaking, he shouldn't, for the KK is rather "a power-annihilating arrangement," so to speak. But presumably the perp himself did not think of it in quite that light.
[2] Could the braniacs be showin' off? Do the Dr. Gen. and the Neocomrade Amb. say to themselves "Shucks, anybody could win this thing that way! We've got to come up with somethin' far more elaborate than that, or else Big Management may decide it needn't have called wunnerful us in to bail it out at all."? (Probably they do not.)
[3] "Communal" may or may not mean something different in PowerPoint. Neither of the two active opponents of Big Party extremism actually mentioned -- "a Sunni-based insurgency" and "a radical Islamist terrorism" -- seem well described as struggling communally for power and survival. According to the received Boy-'n'-Party line, the latter (i.e., the al-Qá‘ida of Rancho Crawford's imagination) is GloboTerroristical -- no mere communal scaremongers, they! Plus they're all foreigners, of course, quite as forein as neocomrades Crocker and Petraeus are. "Sunni-based insurgency" (especially when expressly distinguished from the international faith-crazies) is misleading without being entirely wrong. The faith-crazies of M. Bin Ládin are "Sunni-based" also, obviously Methodists and Zoroastrians and Twelvers will never be attracted to their wares. The people apparently meant used to be called "remnants of the Ba‘th" or the like, and that terminology was more suitable than the braniacs' revision of it.
On the other hand it really is "communal" with the TwentyPercenters, it is something they all agree about when they agree about nothing else, that the hallowed Sunni Ascendancy must be restored if there is to be any presentable "Iraq" again. But that libido dominandi is so extrememly communal that the GZ collaborationists of Tawáfuq &c. agree with it quite as much as actual shootists do.
DP's PPAO may be edgin' his way gently around Badr and the Mahdí Army when he talks about "communal" at this point. That would fit in nicely with my own secret theory of the ever-glorious Surge of '07™: braniac-equipped or not, the Big Management stumblebums just keep on stumblin' and micawberizin' the same way as ever. More or less by accident they find themselves surgin' against "elements of a Sunni-based insurgency and a radical Islamist terrorism intent on winning their cause through violence and intimidation," and leavin' Badr and Sadr more or less alone. The PPAO accordin'ly redefines the Great Problem of Success to make out that whatever DP happens to be doin' at the moment is the Solution thereof. This is the same Boy-'n'-Party syndrome, surely, as when they suddenly discovered that the original aggression had nothin' at all to do with Tony Blair's 45-minute terror-tipped specials, it was all about a couple of dozen other things.
[4] I suppose this could be a sort of cultural accommodation, however. Probably the bribees consider DOD violence professionals a martial race not unlike their own, whereas the wimps from Foggy Bottom . . . .
[5] Rear-Colonel F. Kagan of A.E.I. began with very different notions, to be sure, but who is going to be bothered to look up that reference ?
" History is bunk! "
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