Frustration Only Makes 'Em Even More So!

What Petraeus has been doing in Washington is merely extending that cartoon story about helping Abu Risha and the other virtuous locals fight the outsiders (now described as AQ and the Iranian agents). Meanwhile, if the Americans were ever to be serious about arranging for an orderly withdrawal from harm's way, they would need to negotiate this with the people who have defeated them, namely the Sunni resistance. But even if other parts of the cartoon-story get debunked, still the resistance is merely referred to as those who are "killing American troops", and this is by way of chilling any idea of negotiating with them. The point is not that they are killing American troops, which is what resistance movements do, but rather that they need to be negotiated with. What it is, is flim-flam: [i]nundate the Americans with stories about the humanitarian efforts being exerted by our troops to save Iraqis from each other, and shut the hell up about the fact that the main struggle, against the domestic resistance, has been lost and the troops need to withdraw.

Mu’ámara Junction doesn't seem to feel any need to say only "Golly!" at this sudden shock to its preconceptions like we do, but that's OK, too, because look what's suddenly been shaken loose from its moorings and exposed to public view, perhaps injudiciously:

if the Americans were ever to be serious about arranging for an orderly withdrawal from harm's way, they would need to negotiate this with the people who have defeated them, namely the Sunni resistance.

No subtle exotic Reidar-Visserian neo-Norse or tertiary-educational nonsenses about some supposed cross-sectarian wataniyya in the former Iraq, mark you, but only "namely the Sunni resistance"! Given a sudden enough shock, the masks slip.

And that's perhaps a step forwards, really. Better talk about what every armed band in Peaceful Freedumbia with enough armament banded together to matter NAKEDLY WANTS, than to natter on idly about fig-leafs and persiflage. The great weakness of the Rancho Crawford bandits, all Hyperpower notwithstandin', is that they simply haven't any clue left any longer what they want in Peaceful Freedumbia, clothed or naked. As against that utter GOP disarray, "the people who have allegedly defeated them, "namely the Sunni resistance" might seem almost plausible, were it not for the even more utter internal disarray of "namely the Sunni resistance"!

A curious locale is the Peaceful Freedumbia of poor M. al-Málikí! Both its Crawfordite enemies and its Sunninterni enemies seem to theoretically self-destruct, and yet somehow that does not ever seem to matter, and there's still hardly any reliable security or reliable electricity in sight, and yet here everybody blames us!

Oh, well!