| BAGHDAD — Up to 6,000 suspected Sunni insurgents will be freed from Iraqi jails in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the country's government from collapsing under the strain of sectarian infighting. |
It will be a small step forward if the kidnap victims are actually set free, but the notion that they are going to prop up poor M. al-Málikí out of gratitude for their release has a slightly Cloudcuckooland flavor to it. They might do better with six thousand TwentyPercenters who were never "detained" at all, assuming that so many can still be found. Meanwhile the slaves of Rupert misdescribe the natives' politics as follows,
| The release plan, which could put some hardened combatants back on the streets, is part of a high-stakes gamble by Iraq's Shi'ite-led government to win back the confidence of Sunni politicians after increasingly bitter squabbling and walkouts. It is understood to have been central to a key accord last week between the five main Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni political blocs to kick-start the government again after 15 months of near-deadlock. |
"Key accord"?! "Five main parties"?!! -- apparently M. Táriq al-Háshimí is a host in himself, though perhaps New Unity Bloc cards numbered 00018 through 06017 might be issued to those "hardened combantants"? Considering the utter smash-up of the former Sunni Ascendancy, that would make the NUB an instant biggie, a really major smithereen. But how shall it make any difference to the prospects for a successful aggression-based democracy, when neither of the two most fatal political diseases get diagnosed, let alone treated? M. al-Háshimí has only made the Sunni fragmentation problem (slightly) worse than ever, and no quasiparliamentary coalition actual or projected can hope to make the Khalílzád Konstitution a workable scheme of rule. There have, however, been rumors that the key accordsters may be planning to act unkonstitutionally with a vigilante Gang of Four -- the quasipresident (M. Tálebání), the two vice-quasipresidents, (M. al-Háshimí and M ‘Abd al-Mahdí) and poor M. al-Málikí snatching all the Executive power and then ruling by decree. Unfortunately there is not much Executive power for any indigs to grab, and even if there were, that absurd collective leadership would be bound to reproduce the "near-gridlock" in petto If they actually wanted to see some sich durchzusetzen for a change, they'd at least call in Dr. ‘Alláwí (or any other warm body) to make an odd number of votes, so that there is always a 3-2 majority available. However, the key accordsters would no doubt envision such a supralegal junta or konfederacja operating along their usual Ancient Polish Constitution lines -- unanimity or bust! So bust of course it would be.
All that "would"! Most likely nothing half so interesting to students of Pol. Sci.
One very dim silver lining to Zalmáy Pasha's konstitutional kloud is that all the qusideputies act as if they realized that it simply does not matter who controls the official facade of government in Peaceful Freedumbia. It's only militant extremist Republicans (and their dupes in the holy Homeland) who seriously care about "key accords" and suchlike impossible tomfoolery. Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point seems to have stopped carin' a whole lot and finds it much easier to work around the detritus of "Zal" than work through it. Over at the Proconsular Palace of the Party, neocomrade R. Crocker seems to be gettin' stuck with apologizin' for the Green Zone Gridlock Show, which is tough luck for him personally, especially on top of bein' upstaged all the time by MacArthur Redux.
Perhaps it shouldn't be, however, since if RC and the other invasion-basers thought things through more clearly, they ought to be able to see that they need not care so much. "National reconciliation" in their semiconquered provinces would be nice, no doubt, but it is hardly an essential part of such minimal Success and Victory for Boy and Party as remains achievable. Neither their two scarcely speakable real interests (both of them located outside the former Iraq, in the Gulf of Petroleum and the Tel Aviv statelet respectively) nor the one phoney interest that they can't stop yimmer-yammerin' about ("war" against "terrorism") absolutely require any of the things that the bozos keep on requirin' from their collaborationists. No member of the Boy-'n'-Party trifecta -- fossil fuel, "homeland security," Jewish Statism -- would ever be allowed to depend on mere lesser breeds without, each one is far too important to the Party of extremism for that. If the militant neocomrades could manage to grasp their true interests and clear their heads of silly cant talked purely for propaganda and electoral and self-esteem purposes at home, they would see that what they really need to require of their native collaborators in the former Iraq is much less than they have insisted on up to now. Very little that could conceivably happen is their semiconquered Mesopotamian provinces would have much impact on their own Three Biggies for better or for worse. Their former Iraq-the-Model™ daydreams, had they been realized, would not have made the world permanently safe for cheap gas and Ms. Chicken Little and proactive Zionization, and an Iraq-the-Fiasco conceived with worse case analysis will not mean no more gas or no more safety or no more Likudnik triumphalism. The whole shebang of ex-Iraq simply does not matter that much either way.
The clown crew might be given high marks for consistency, however, since attachin' a very exaggerated importance to Iraq was precisely the sand trap that the uncontrollable hormones of Boy and Party led them into when they first aggressed. It didn't much matter five years ago, it doesn't much matter now, it won't much matter five years from now. Over at Castle Cheney -- of all places, the very heart of Big Management Party darkness! -- there are signs that some elementary sense of measure and proportion may be settin' in at last, if only in the form of drawin' the sufficiently obvious conclusion (from a militant extremist OnePercenter Party viewpoint) that when it comes to defendin' cheap gas and Zion and Chicken Little, the evil Qommies now are an even worse "threat" than Saddám was before. This, too, was as true five years ago as it is now, and five years hence it will be true also, I expect, no matter whether or not the Crawfordite perps perpetrate Somethin' Really Dumb against Iran before they are compelled to relinquish their grip on poor Uncle Sam's Hyperpower.
Castle Cheney is rather an alarmin' ally for M. Pascal and me and travaillions donc à bien penser, to put it mildly, but compared with the pure "9/11" hormone-based bozodom that Little Brother so well emblemizes and embodies, one must definitely award a 'mieux', secundum quid and in context and grading on the curve. Of a 'bien' simpliciter there can of course be no question whatsoever. This is a very old song: Signore Machiavelli was a very naughty bad man, but he was also a very clever bad man, and cleverness is a good in itself, nicht wahr?
In any case, should the GOP genius crew as a whole be persuaded to take the dark Castle Cheney view, the former Iraq would presumably get the demotion and deflation that it so richly has comin' to it. The invasion-basers would start wonderin' what poor M. al-Málikí and/or their other Green Zone collaborationist indigs could do to advance the new Boy-'n'-Party Krusade against the evil Qommies. That's an utterly deplorable question, of course, but at least it's a serious question in Machiavelli's sense. Should it ever come to be asked amongst the stumblebums, I daresay "national reconciliation" will not be accounted a very pertinent answer.
For observe the corner that the Big Management Party's hormonoholics and tank-thinkers have painted themselves into here, Mr. Bones! as soon as they retrospectively honor alphabetical order and place "Iran" before "Iraq," their semiconquered Mesopotamian provinces become worse than an irrelevncy, they become a positive obstacle. The instant the Big Party aggresses against the evil Qommies, sixty percent of the former Iraq will hate them forever, and to add embarrassment to obstacle, that will be the sixty percent that they themselves emboldened (for sure!) and empowered (sorta, maybe). Very little that Boy and Party have "mischieved" -- a lovely word, Prof. Kaufman! -- in their Peaceful Freedumbia tends very much towards peace or freedom, but nothing in it at all tends towards makin' the former Iraq a suitable launchin' pad for the March on Qom.
So then, Mr. Bones, as soon as our Bushevik bozos actually start thinkin' about what they're doin', they see they've been doin' it all wrong "right from the get-go"! And even that well warrantable sneer may overestimate them, sir, because Castle Cheney is not Rancho Crawford.
I therefore ask you, sir, would anybody at all sane - even Tel Aviv or Chicken Little or Big Oil -- ever think of buying a used Weltordnung from these folks?
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