Woes of Wall Street Jingoism

The WSJ fronts a good dispatch from Baghdad that says U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly saying the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia group run by cleric Muqtada Sadr, is preventing them from making any kind of progress in Iraq. "The Mahdi Army has infiltrated Iraq's government and society so deeply" that it's hard to identify the enemy, says the Journal.

"Infiltrated" is a joy, Mr. Bones, "infiltrated" is almost priceless! -- even for those of us who noticed the almost mutinously disgruntled attitudes of the Green Zone Officers Club aeons ago.

But "increasingly"? That's hard to be quite so sure about.

I suppose Neocomrade D. Politi vaguely alludes to some WSJ vague allusion to the fact that the Twin Paleface Hopes of Boy and Party, Dr. Gen. Petrolaeus and Neocom. Amb. Crockerius, did not start off at once by clobberin' Master Muqtadá so as to gratify all those even-better-than-indig paleface invasionite colonels and generals out in their Boy-'n'-Party boonies as well as all the rear-colonelcy and rear-generaldom at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh

O God, O Bernie Lewis! What went wrong for WSJ and GZOC (and Signore D. Politi) that Sadr III should be more acclaimed in the former Iraq than George XLIII is acclaimed? How come that splendiferous Iraq-the-Model™ product of theirs sells so poorly amongst the "infiltrators"?

Messrs. (messers-about in Mesopotamia) Petraeus and Crocker have some serious explainin' to do to Murdoch and Boy and Party and God and Bernard Lewis (plus also of course Signore D. Politi and all the GZOC disgruntled and WC and RL and the vast and far-flung Big Management Party base-and-vile in general) about their preferred implementation of the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™ product from A.E.I. and fat Freddy Baní Kagan -- so why didn't they instantly clobber Muqtadá, then? What are they, soft on infiltation, then? Don't P&C want "any kind of progress in Iraq," then?

Let's count our own blessings, Mr. Bones, and prominently among them that we've never been close enough to rightist and neo-rightist Dolchstoss circles to think it cost-effective to purchase any body armour even for our backsides.

The infiltrators who subtly infest the aggression-based Peaceful Freedumbia of Boy and Party and Bernie Lewis and Rush Limbaugh under the specious guise of being natives thereof even as all their progenitors were natives umpteen generations back -- "sons of the soil" it appears they like to call themselves , even! -- undoubtedly DO need some sort of body armour, Mr. Bones, but you and I cannot provide it, so let's just sit back and watch the Kiddie Krusaders' Long War Show unravel itself, shall we?

Always to criticize such performances toploftily as critics rather than as interested parties, Mr. Bones! Never, ever, to say anything crude out loud like "If we were neo-Iraqi subjects ourselves, why of course we'd be Sadristas"!

In any case, Our vicarious Boy isn't doing all that badly, klutz though he undoubtedly is. Petrolaeus and Crockerius have not yet attacked seriously and now he's lying even lower than ever -- "Sadr Suspends His Militia’s Military Operations" ! So probably that's all right, no matter what venom the Wall Street Jingo spouts.

But God knows best.