| [MoL] calls for a 50 percent reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq within three years and a total withdrawal and handover of security to the Iraqi military in five years. ""The United States faces too many challenges around the world to continue its current level of effort in Iraq, or even the deployment that was in place before the surge . . . It is time to chart a clearer path forward." |
To make that self-avowed "clear" scheme a bit clearer than it really is, the lovebirds seem to propose dissurgency or deëscalation as follows:
September 2007 100% 160,000 troops
September 2008 83% 133,000
September 2009 67% 107,000
September 2010 50% 80,000
September 2011 25% 40,000
September 2012 00% (0.00)
The palefaces did not say that they would unsurge or disescalate smoothly, though of course they could not withdraw 80,000 armed Party operatives and all their invasionite bag and baggage and violence paraphernalia in a single day on 31 August 2009 and 31 August 2012 either. Without disputing anybody's sincerity -- we'll get to that dispute in a moment -- the program is almost certainly intended to be fudged and fadged the same way within the three-year half and the two-year half as the two halves fudge and fadge the whole Five Year Plan: more and faster irresponsible withdrawal later on, perhaps, but definitely lots of Responsible Nonwithdrawal ™ up front. And again prescinding from motivations, we should probably add on six or twelve months before the Five Year Plan even gets properly started at all. Gen. Odierno or somebody said the other day that GOP forces can be maintained at current Ever-Victorious Surge of ’07™ levels through August of 2008. Correlating with the Beltway City clock, that would mean that if we assume that "President Clinton" succeeds "President Giuliani" as of late January 2013, she'll still have up to 40,000 -- or even, say, 60,000 -- warm bodies as a beachhead in the former Iraq for undisescalation, should she consider that advisable.
The reason for saying sixty thousand is that that just happens to be the number garrisonin' (?) South Korea. You'll recall that Little Brother thought it fort mauvais recently that the Seoul hogen-mogen should propose everybody signing a peace treaty about President Truman's War and presumably then cut that number a little. Sixty thousand is perhaps what it takes for our GOP geniuses to feel quite sure they are safe in somebody else's country when nothing military has happened for years. Paleface planmongering ought indeed to aim at "a clearer path forward," that's an obvious inference from Travaillons donc à bien penser. Perhaps the lovebirds could have thought a little better and clearer and more realistically, though, about how extremely timorous our Big Management Party is than they actually did? It is pretty well no use to recommend anything whatever to Boy and Party that would actually requires them to be brave a little, and after the Saddám Hussein WMD Show, one can scarcely guess from the outside what they will decide to be courage-challenged about next.[1] The Five Year Planners do have a consciously timorous side to them, perhaps, but rather as regards "too many [other] challenges around the world" than as regards the bushogenic quagmire in Peaceful Freedumbia.
Furthermore, the lovebirds
| call on the United Nations to immediately begin "intense negotiations" among Iraq's squabbling politicians. The talks should not be allowed to adjourn without agreements on power-sharing, revising the constitution, oil resources, local elections, easing a ban on former Baath Party members and the future of Kirkuk, the report urges. A similar model was used to broker an end to the war in Bosnia. (...) "The situation remains fluid, but a window has opened, fleetingly, for Iraq to proceed with political reconciliation. Iraq's national politicians have been unable to take full advantage of this opportunity" (...) [The United States should block Iranian attempts to control Iraqi politics and interdict its arms supplies to Iraqi militias, while also continuing to talk to Tehran directly and accommodating some Iranian interests in a neighboring state. "As long as the U.S. and Iran engage in a zero sum context for influence, Iraq will remain in turmoil and the U.S. will be bogged down" (...) [The MoL] generally blasts Iraq's neighbors for failing to help stabilize Iraq. But it also criticizes the United States for losing the confidence of key allies in the region because of Iraq. In contrast to a growing number of recent calls for various forms of breaking up Iraq along religious and ethnic lines, the report strongly stands against partition of one of the geo-strategic powerhouses in the Middle East, but leaves the question of decentralizing power to the Iraqis. |
Au moins il est différent, that first part! Wow, Turtle Bay is suddenly to start behaving as Baron Thatcheress formerly did with those miserable upstart Argies: "The talks should not be allowed to adjourn without agreements"! BAM!! Shazaaam!!! I fear these gentry at the Ministry of Love don't possess Pascalian clearness at all, if that's their "clearer way forward." Clearly they'd like it to happen, perhaps, but they are demented if they seriously expect it to. What sort of sorcery or additive to the water supply is to turn the ninety-eight pound international weakling into Charles Atlas is not clear at all. It isn't even obscurely visible, or not from where I stand, anyway. Could this be all a spoof in favor of so-called "realism" in foreign policy, then? Anything more like Unrealpolitik than those first two sentences quoted would be hard for a satirist to invent, Bosnia nothwithstanding.
Moving onwards with our mental red pencils poised to strike, do you see any particular "window of opportunity" for the Green Zone collaborationist pols, Mr. Bones? That's invisible to me also, not just transparent or "transparent" like any proper window, but completely undectable. They could have made up their quarrels at any point since the original aggression four-and-a-half years ago, and if there is any reason why they couldn't possibly get together in the next forty-five years as well, regardless of GOP troop levels, it eludes me. Possibly when we examine the Ministry of Love document in full we will find some account from the lovebirds of why reconciliation has not in fact occurred so far. Give them the benefit of the doubt, sir, until we are quite sure they can only be spoofsters or cynics! [2]
After that the lovebirds settle down and the rest of their Five Year Plan sounds far more like other planmongers' conventional wisdom, with special emphasis upon a supposed private affair of honour between Rancho Crawford and the evil Qommies. That's tame and familiar enough, but in context it aggravates the incongruity with their nifty-dotty wildnesses. Is this incredible brave new UN that suddenly can act like Godzilla supposed to make sure that neither militant Republicans nor militant Republican Guards impose anything of their own upon the Big Management Party's hapless neoliberateds, imposition being henceforth a strict monopoly of "the international community"? That would fit in with spoofery or cynicism also well enough, unfortunately: either the notion is so crazy that those in the know are only supposed to laugh at it, or else it's another phony window of opportunity, in the sense that after it turns out -- oddly enough and mirabile dictu! -- that the international community cannot live up to its advanced billing and impose restraint evenhandedly upon extremist Crawfordites and Safavid extremists alike, the Kiddie Krusaders (and presumably the evil Qommies as well) get to have that Long War and Huntin'tonian Clashin' that their tongues are hangin' out for.
At the Ministry of Love itself , I daresay they would get to say "At least we tried!" -- but that's the mystery, is this sort of thing to be accounted seriously trying? God knows best.
____
[1] Some of the Party perps only pretend to be utter cravens, no doubt, but it is hard to be sure which ones they are, and in any case, an attempt to single them out would interfere with our own maxim of taking everybody at her word in politics until the contrary is undeniable. Today's palefaces are only partially GOP-contaminated and, since of course we must strive to take the Ministry of Love folks at their word also, Mr. Bones, let us assume that none of the Big Party lovebirds involved were completely cynical about their Five Year Plan and that everybody would really like to get out of the former Iraq altogether, if and when that becomes "possible." They may still be utterly terrorized of THEM after the fashion of Castle Cheney and the jihád careerists, but if so, they are not cynical about it, and really do think it might be safe to leave Peaceful Freedumbia alone six or seven years hence. They merely fail to appreciate their own timidity in advance, and will be as surprised as anybody else to discover that irresponsible withdrawal is not "possible" even in 2014. (They might try to think about themselves a little better, to be sure, but it would be a waste of time to preach M. Pascal to militant extremists, even if one could ever talk to anybdoy else adult about their notions of right and wrong being seriously deranged.)
[2] A spoofster would make up a "window of opportunity" on the assumption that the occupied wogs are obviously incapable of coöperation, part, present or future. A cynic who wants to remain in the Big Party's semiconquered provinces forever would define herself a "window of opportunity" that is inevitably bound to be slammed shut. It's easy to read this scribble either way, what is more difficult is to think of some clear third way forward about it.
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