Ah so, "Hashimi-Biden"!

You can detect in advance, Mr. Bones, from such a blatant absurdity that the Mu’ámara Junction gentry have relapsed into their same old, bad old ruts. But let's look at the context, shall we?

Let's look at the context. Please recall that there were two Iraqi politicians who had the immense privilege of one-on-one meetings with Bush after the Amman Bush-Maliki meeting last fall (the "Hadley-memo" meeting, if that helps you place the event). They were Tareq al Hashemi, head of the Islamic Party of Iraq (Sunni), and Abdulaziz al-Hakim, head of SCIRI (Shiite). For convenience, lets refer to them as the two leading politicians clearly in Bush's pocket. Now as it happens, two days ago this man Hashemi announced with much fanfare what he called a "National Pact", touting this as a new departure in national reconciliation, and one of the clauses included recognition of Iraq as a "federal" country. This, as Aswat al-Iraq noted at the time, was the first time ever that a major Sunni party had officially endorsed federalism in any form. (Recall that the fall 2006 disputed parliamentary vote on federalism-procedures was something pushed through by the SCIRI-Dawa-Kurdish bloc, and was bitterly opposed by the Sunni parties. This was, along with the execution of Saddam, one of the major late-06 events that did so much damage to the so-called "political process"). And since then, there have been reports of a very promising meeting between Hashemi and the Ayatollah Sistani on this "National Pact" idea, creating the odor of possible rapprochement between Hashemi's Sunni party, and Hakim's SIIC (one of the major Sistani clients). Thus: Based on a document including the first-ever Sunni-party recognition of "federalism", we have the hint of a rapprochement between the two leading politicians clearly both in Bush's pocket.

Well. OK, so maybe it really IS kinda ridiculous for Rancho Crawford to suppose that "reconciliation" with M. Táriq al-Háshimí personally (plus of course his seconds and his relatives and his clients and his bottle-washers) can ever be decked out as "Sunnidom Reconciled." Onwards!

And here it is important to understand that these two characters represent, or purport to represent, two of the "big three" slices of the fairy-tale cake that the partition-advocates imagine represents Iraq: "The Sunnis", and "the Shiites". And so what a pleasant surprise to partition-advocates to see that at the same time a character by the name of Joseph Biden has introduced a "sense of the Senate" amendment that advocates just this fairy-tale three-part division. True, it is covered in multiple layers of fine rhetoric, but it is the same division of the spoils: [o]ne part for "the Sunnis" (but only that tiny minority that is participating in the Green Zone "political process"), and one for Hakim's SIIC (leaving the status of the Sadrists, Fadhila and all of the other non-SIIC Shiite groups up in the air, or out in the cold).

The Free Kurds seem not to interest Mu’ámara Junction even in the slightest, so perhaps they may get away from the rubble of the former Iraq intact at last. (And Bon voyage! say I!)

Meanwhile, back in the bushogenic quagmire, 'tis "the status of the Sadrists, Fadhila and all of the other non-SIIC Shiite groups" that Mu’ámara Junction invites one to worry about. Onwards!

And here we should refer to the main refutations of the whole Biden dipsy-doodle, one from Reider Visser, cutting through the Biden rhetoric and showing that the Biden plan is unconstitutional even in terms of the existing Iraqi constitution; another by Toby Dodge underlining the depth of Biden's ignorance, wilful or otherwise, about the social and political realities in the country he purports to be talking about. And of course, thirdly, there is the Iraqi resistance, somehow overlooked in the Biden proposal. In other words, the Biden proposal which so many Democrats voted for is bogus in many different ways: It is multi-dimensionally bogus.

RV we know of and dissent from well enough, but who's this shifty-sounding "Toby Dodge" person,then?

FP: Unless it can actually get into neighborhoods and provide necessary services, is there a future for the Iraqi government? TD: I don’t think so. The fundamental cause of all these problems is the collapse of the Iraqi state. I was living in Baghdad in April 2003, and it was amazing to watch the institutions of the state disappear. You would see men running out [of buildings] with computers, then desks and chairs, then the plumbing and electrical wiring out of the walls. The state was dissembled, taken away, and put in people’s houses. And what the looters didn’t do, [Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul] Bremer’s de-Baathification did. It broke the institutional memory of the state. On that basis, we don’t have a failing state or a collapsed state—we simply . If you stand in the Green Zone and look over the blast walls, the state doesn’t go much beyond that. The Iraqi state’s ability to deliver public goods to the population is crucial for drawing that population back into the state. If you look at the recent BBC/ABC poll, all the indicators—on jobs, water, and electricity—are down from presurge levels. There is a militant pessimism. First and foremost, the state needs to be rebuilt. And that is an international problem and it needs an international solution.

Master Toby gets a little carried away with his militant pessimism, perhaps. What "we" of Master Toby's is it that some exotic paleface WE should have, or not have, "a failing state or a collapsed state" amidst the aggression-based smithereens of the former Iraq? Yet of course we are all statists now, and to abandon the GOP-neo-liberated ex-Iraq as a stateless vacuum to Miss Rand and Mr. Nozick of Harvard won't do.

Meanwhile, back at Mu’ámara Junction,

But meaningless? Consider the nice fit between the stealth passage of the Biden amendment in Washington, and the "National Pact" announced by Hashemi on the same day in Baghdad and already semi-endorsed by Sistani: both of them, when you look at the fine print, aiming for this same three-part division of the spoils between the Bush-allies. It's true that the Hashemi document talks about "all Iraqis", just as the Biden amendment talks about "agreement" or the Iraqis, but first of all Biden is a known character by this time, and as for the Hashemi scheme is concerned, consider this (from Aswat al-Iraqs summary of the document): The "National Pact" document proposed procedures and methods for arriving at agreement... and referendums would be one such method or agreement by the leaders of the main political formations in direct meetings, or mass meetings ... and there follows a list of the types of broad-based meetings that have already been convened in the government's already-discredited and highly unsuccessful "national reconciliation" program.

Ours is a tough row to hoe, Mr. Bones! Scarcely anybody but Hegel likes statism better than we do, yet as regards the former Iraq, we no more confuse our own statism in MA with any re-instauration of the former Sunni Ascendancy in IQ along trashy Sunninterní MJ lines than with "So maybe why don't they all just turn Zoroastrian?"

Qui pauca considerat, facile pronunciat!

Let Dr. Johnson's epigram be our genuine program, Mr. Bones, and never any sort of mere excuse for idleness! As soon as we figure out how poor M. al-Málikí can best advance decent and politically grown-up statism in IQ without even the faintest contamination from any tendentious tá’ifiyya whatsoever, we'll instantly e-mail it to poor M. al-Málikí at brave New Baghdád! Let's firmly resolve on that, Bones!