Responsible Nonwithdrawal For Dummies

[A] long term American military and political presence [is] surely worth a try

That is all the dummies require, but writing for immediate subdummies [1], Dr. T. G. Ash, a formerly distinguished Military Humanist now affiliated to the extremist GOP's Hoover Institution, went on a bit more long-windedly. Here's the last three paragraphs of his latest Brit-orientated performance :

There will be a conference of the major regional actors in Istanbul at the end of next month. It is just possible that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran will conclude that their own, separate and conflicting interests are all best served by an Iraq that stays together in a kind of precarious, artificially sustained stalemate, under the woolly auspices of the UN - a weak, divided country in which the neighbours all have a hand, but none the upper hand. Since they distrust each other as much or more than they distrust the US, they might even accept a long term American military and political presence as a minimal guarantee that no party to the conflict would reach for domination or, in the case of Iraqi Kurdistan, full independence. This may be whistling in the dark but, given the grim alternatives, it's surely worth a try. The neighbour least likely to cooperate is, of course, Iran. The regional negotiation around Iraq is infinitely complicated by the simultaneous attempt to prevent Iran acquiring the capacity to make nuclear weapons. In Washington earlier this month, I was assured by several very well-informed observers that, despite all the contrary advice they are receiving, President Bush and vice president Cheney may still decide to bomb Iran before they leave office. This is a danger that President Nicolas Sarkozy is attempting to head off by his tough talk and proposal for stronger European sanctions: a French preemptive strike, so to speak, against the possibility of an American preemptive strike. So the challenges of Iraq and Iran are closely linked. After the twin towers, they are the twin nightmares. The nightmare in Iraq is very far from over, while that over Iran has barely begun. They will be disturbing our sleep for many years to come.

You'll perceive, Mr. Bones, that Tiger Timmy has learned some Dick Morris triangulation trickiness out amongst the colonials. His Military Humanism™, a tender hot-house plant all along, has wilted into mere invasion-basing as regards the former Iraq, but he does his dubyapologetics with an air still, for he does not (at this precise moment) want to march on the evil Qommies. So Timmy's a good boy still, even vaguely a "liberal." Does he triangulate with clean hands and pure heart and subjective sincerity? Our own rules compel us to stipulate that he does, although this particular specimen is intelligent enough to be ruthlessly cynical.

Consider first the specimen's tactical flair: (1) M. Sarkozy comes in very handily, since Tiger Timmy wisely shrinks from presenting himself as an area studies guru about the Greater Levant. Continentals, however, he knows academically, especially Eastern continentals, and is not M. Sarkozy of Hungarian provenance? (The mad mullahs had better watch out, or paws of velvet will change their régime out from under them!)

(2) More immediately, though now entirely enlisted for service on the Kiddie Krusade's Peaceful Freedumbian front, Dr. Ash could teach his neocomrades some lessons in modus operandi if he addressed himself to them rather than to ex-comrades at the Guardian. The great good thing for the aggression fans at the moment is clearly to buy time: remainin' in the former Iraq for a century or three must begin with remainin' there for the next six weeks (or six months, or six minutes). The point seems self-evident and trivial, but there is a point here that Tiger Timmy appears to have noticed when the rest of the pack have not: "at the end of next month", six weeks from now, is not unimportant. The occupied natives are never going to be able to chase the militant GOP out unilaterally, only a Dolchstoss from Greater Texas popular opinion can do that, and for purposes of protectin' the Preëmptive Retaliation posse's backside from that, the more "benchmarks" or "milestones" that can be fadged up, the better.

The tactical and triangulatory genius of T. G. Ash understands well that 1 November 2007 is not very much of a benchstone or milemark, "It is just possible" that China and Peru and the local Levantines will get together to accomplish what has thus far eluded the Harvard Victory School MBA classes, plus or minus Mr. Anthony Blair. For practical purposes it is quite impossible, and doubtless Tiger Timmy recognizes as much, but it will do as a major milestone for the purposes of Boy and Party all the same. Advanced dummies should be able to grasp that the Major Milestone consists in the conference assembling itself at all, quite apart from whether it accomplishes anything whatsoever for the Occupyin' Party or its subjects. As long as the immediate neighborhood and "the international community" are willing to attend such a non-event on Dr. Ash's and the Big Party's terms, there is at least no danger of a immediate stab in the back from that direction. Even better, the ignorant vulgar of Televisionland and the electorate (and Capitol Hill) can be buffaloed by pointin' out that if "the international community" does not mind giving aggression a few more extra innings, why should they? [2]

Considered simply as Karl Rove mob control, it won't matter what doesn't emerge from the international gabfest as long as some different Major Milestone looms on the horizon to be ballyhooed around 1 November 2007. "Jam tomorrow" is an admirably workable Big Party tactic, but usin' it requires some attention to detail. "Tomorrow" should not be very distant once it starts bein' ballyhooed about, and there must be a whole kaleidoscope of different jams and marmalades and preserves to switch nimbly among whenever the time "today" gets to be about 2330 hours. Neocomrade Dr. T. G. Ash appears to have a gift for this sort of thing. Naturally one wonders what Major Milestone he'll recommend his clients to ballyhoo next in the former Iraq. One cannot tell from the present scribble, but that is natural enough, for the scribble is not a memorandum to his co-conspirators at all, but an agitprop piece or advertisement for their customers on Airstrip One. There would be no point in goin' on about the day after tomorrow's jam product for that target audience., it would only confuse the marks and dupes.[3]


After tactics, strategy. The TGA grand strategy for perpetual occupation of the former Iraq appears in the above extract only summarily as "given the grim alternatives." However he had outlined his grimnesses previously, quotin' another honourary neocomrade, T. Dodge, by way of an echt neocomrade, G. Packer:

If American troops depart, [Dodge] says, they will leave behind "a free-for-all where everyone will be fighting everyone else - a civil war that no one actor or organisation will be strong enough to win ... So if you and I were mad enough to jump in a car in Basra - pick a date, 2015 - and we tried to drive to Mosul, what we'd be doing is hopping through islands of comparative stability dominated by warlords ... Those fiefdoms will be surrounded by ongoing violence and chaos. That looks a lot to me like Afghanistan before the rise of the Taliban. Or Somalia. That's where Iraq goes when Americans pull out." These are the views of two independent analysts who know the realities on the ground.

T. Dodge has evidently concocted an aggression-friendly rescension of Max Weber, the great thing is that some "one actor or organisation will be strong enough to win." One doesn't know for sure whether Tiger Timmy agrees with the Pol. Sci. innovation, however, so let us object only the most obvious two objections, namely (1) that so far the Occupyin' Party has not achieved the desiderated monopoly of violence in the former Iraq, despite fifty-four months of tryin', and (2) that although Greater Texas and Airstrip One -- or even "the international community," in a most improbable pinch -- almost certainly could pour in enough bodies and bombs and bayonets to rule the roost in Peaceful Freedumbia eventually, not one neocomrade in a thousand dares to say so out loud. The other 999 never speak either of escalatin' quant. suff. in order to assure that the Occupyin' Party "wins" itself or of sidin' with one particular set of indig collaborationists and makin' sure that they "win."

However that will be 2015, and now is 2007. The immediate point is not how T. Dodge would solve the grimnesses, but how T. G. Ash conceptualizes them, and that is clear enough. "We" must hang around the former Iraq forever because Ordnung muss sein! and anarcholibertarianism is not to be allowed to prevail. Bein' a hard-nosed Military Humanist, Tiger Timmy does not work up his strategic stuff from the humanitarian side and ask our hearts to bleed for the Big Party's semiconquered neo-Iraqi subjects. No idle crocodile tears, no mention of ‘genocide’! Indeed, the dangers of Unordnung do not prominently feature the natives at all, but rather Wunnerful US:

"America's diplomatic leverage will be weakened by a withdrawal, and Iraq's predatory neighbours will take advantage of the power vacuum to pursue their own interests. Even if regional interference doesn't take the form of Saudi troops crossing the border to defend their Sunni brothers, Iranian Revolutionary Guards infiltrating Iraq to secure Shi'ite power, and Turkish forces entering Kurdistan to prevent it from becoming independent, the combined effect of proxy fights, irregular incursions, and increased refugee flows will likely roil the Middle East for years."

That's neocomrade G. Packer speakin' for himself, although T. Ash hints at no reservations about it. The main point to notice, Mr. Bones, is that it diverges father markedly from mainstream aggression-basin'. If we take them strictly at their word, as by our own lights we ought to, these two neocomrades are against power vacuums simply as such, and would oppose toleration of a power vacuum in the former Iraq even if minor details like the Gulf of Petroleum and the Tel Aviv statelet did not exist. Mainstream Big Party lemmin's have difficulty mentionin' those details, to be sure, yet it is plain that they attach very great to their economics and their sentimentality/ideology. G. Packer and T. Ash genuinely don't seem to do so. Neocomrade T. Dodge may not be altogether on their wavelength, yet he did mention Afghanistan and Somalia, which would make him attractive to P&A unless perhaps he explicitly argued that such power vacuums as those do not require to be filled up, whereas the one in Peaceful Freedumbia does.

In short, there is a tolerably coherent strategic doctrine or dogma here, though scarcely the orthodox Boy-'n'-Party one. Forget "terrorism" and Domino Democracy and Jewish Statism and cheap petrol and cheaper dogooderism, Mr. Bones! Keep you eye out for power vacuums and abhor them as much as Ms. Nature was formerly alleged to do with plain old-fashioned matter vacuums. Should you spot a P.V., sir, then rush in at once and . . . .

Well, but maybe I'm moving on a bit too fast. I'm not sure that it is "you" that ought to do the rushing in, let alone what a properly credentialled inrusher is supposed to do after she rushes in. [4] Neocomrade G. Packer spoke in a not very friendly manner of "irregular incursions," remember, and who but some self-appointed Big Party vigilante would ever wish to incurse irregularly? Father Zeus forbid! [5] On the other hand, mark that the general Ash Doctrine of Globostrategy, so to call it, does nicely support Tiger Timmy's particular differentiation of the evil Qommies from the former Iraq: the mad Safavid mullahs may not be entirely satisfactory, but they certainly are not presiding over a power vacuum. Au contraire, if anything.

The Big Party mainstream will probably not be converted to this product any time soon, however. Quite apart from sentiment and pocketbook considerations, the Ash Doctrine (as tentatively reconstructed) would displease most of the more orthodox Party neocomrades because it legitimates or pseudolegitimates "régime change" only in cases where there is not much of an ancien régime left to change, and indeed, the aggression-basers' beloved bumper sticker would have to be revised to "régime installation," strictly speakin', should Dr. Timothy Gorton Ash ever take over extremist GOP invasion and occupation policy.

It is probably no accident that the Ash Doctrine applies much better to the collapse of the Lenin-Gorbachev racket, which really did create something like a Power Vacuum for a moment, than to the cowpokers' aggression into the former Iraq or a conjectural aggression by them against the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, it will not matter to the Party of dummies that Tiger Timmy may be refighting his most successful campaign. That would be history, and history is bunk, especially since 11 September 2001. It will not matter why his proposals for the conduct of Long War and Kiddie Krusade were advanced, only that they are not at all simpático. Perhaps the Ash Doctrine does imply perpetual nonwithdrawal of GOP military and mercenary forces from the happy Land of Peace and Freedom, but apart from that one rather narrow particular, almost everything about it is collaterally displeasin'. It does not obviously justify the original aggression, it does not take petroleum and Jewish Statism seriously enough, it does not pander to the Chicken Little side of Boy and Party, and it is almost grotesquely too concerned with both "the international community" and "nation buildin'" for most palates at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh.

Even were it the most excellent geopolitical strategy for "us" possible in itself -- which of course it emphatically is not -- we would be warranted, Mr. Bones, in declining to take it very seriously as a practical recommendation. As an para- or quasi-academic exercise, the production of a tank-thinker, it is mildly interesting, but requires a great deal of elaboration to block up various chinks and answer foreseeable objections. To make vacua potentiae the root of all political evil is a hypothesis worth elaborating for purposes of tertiary-educational disputation and as a Pol. Sci. thought experiment, but the only elaboration here is aimed at manipulating public opinion and buying more time for Little Brother to micawberize away idly, never attainin' what Dr. Ash wants to see attained, nor much of anythin' else either.

As to that "weigh the moral cost of withdrawal" in the Guardian header, TGA disqualifies himself as a moral cost-weigher, because like many other rightists and neorightists and invasion-basers he disregards the maxim "They also serve who only pull the trigger." If "we" run away from the bushogenic quagmire, then pretty well all the subsequent grimness will be "our" fault. However as long as we continue to responsibly nonwithdraw, why, hardly anything in the former Iraq is our fault!

It would be difficult to find yuckier ethical spinach than that, Mr. Bones. One can only hope that Dr. Ash tosses it out casually and has not spent months and years solemnly degrading himself to the spinach level.



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[1] Or "immediate superdummies," as the case may be -- those not quite so intellectually and morally crippled as to think "Which side are you on?" is all it takes.


[2] There are limits to how much can be accomplished in the holy Homeland by appealing to the lesser breeds without, but fortunately for Dr. Ash and the good vigilante folks that he consults for, Democrats are a good deal more open to that sort of manipulation ab externo than GOP geniuses and their loyal base and vile. Far less along these lines has been achieved for Boy and Party than might have been, mainly because so little has been attempted. The stumblebums and their spinmeisters have so little respect for the opinion of mankind that they seem unable to take advantage of the fact that decent political grown-ups think differently from themselves. They are aware of the fact itself, but they never do anythin' much with it except abuse their domestic opponents as fools for believing in "the woolly auspices of the UN" or knaves with fiendish designs for a Weltreich that would not be safely under Harvard Victory School management.

To appeal to other people's absurd or contemptible opinions without either adoptin' them or mentionin' out loud that one has not adopted them is a little bit above the dummy level -- not very far above it, but beyond the corporate reach of Grant's Old Party most of the time. Dr. Ash must find his consultancy rather discouragin' from time to time, I should think.


[3] Since I read the scribble for purposes not originally intended, it may easily be that I overrate Tiger Timmy a little, which is easy to do accidentally per contra considering the low level of his clients. Happily time will probably tell me whether I have erred or not. We have only to wait to see what jam product he is found to be recommendin' six or eight or ten weeks from now.


[4] But possibly neocomrade T. Dodge was dragged in precisely to fill that theoretical lacuna? Once arrived at the center of a Power Vacuum, the qualified inrusher must at once ensure that her power is overwhelming predominant. To speak with chemical figures, not only must the punctured balloon be reinflated, it must be reinflated with gas that is all of one type, hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine or whatever, no doubt because mixed gases may interact explosively at times.

That would make rather a nifty scheme, although it may be more our own scheme, Mr. Bones, than Dr. T. G. Ash's. Indeed, his "Iraq that stays together in a kind of precarious, artificially sustained stalemate" suggests that he cannot hold it exactly as we have projected it.


[5] Doubtless Ms. Nature has rules of Her own that we mere mortals would be ill-advised to emulate. She incurses into every matter vacuum whatsoever (given certain circumambient conditions of pressure), but that behavior is perhaps better to be called a "regularity" than a "rule." You'll recall that every genuine Rule must have at least one exception to prove it, sine quâ non. If not in Somalia or Afghanistan, then probably somewhere else there exists, or can exist, a P.V. that neocomrades Ash and Packer would not insist that anybody at all must plunge into. BGKB.