| During his visit to Iraq last week, President Bush carved out an hour to sit down with Shaykh Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha, the controversial head of the Anbar Salvation Council who had become a symbol of America's Anbar strategy. The pictures from that photo-op were likely the Shaykh's death warrant: Abu Risha was assassinated today, even as Bush prepared to use the Anbar strategy's "success" to justify our continued involvement in Iraq. David Petraeus was quick to blame al-Qaeda for the stunning murder, a leap to judgment emblematic of all which is wrong with America's current views of the Sunnis of Iraq. In reality there are a plethora of likely suspects, reflecting the reality of an intensely factionalized and divided community which little resembles the picture offered by the administration's defenders. Leaders of other tribes deeply resented Abu Risha's prominence. Leaders of the major insurgency factions had for weeks been warning against allowing people such as Abu Risha to illegitimately reap the fruits of their jihad against the occupation. The brazen murder of America's closest Sunni ally in Iraq was as predictable as it was shocking, and carries a powerful message to both Iraqis and Americans about the real prospects for the long-term success of the American project. |
Why, oh why!, Mr. Bones, must our tertiary-educationalist neo-gentrified betters continually fall back upon their here nicely exhibited cheap trick of assuring us lay sheep that a "message" was "powerful" without condescending to inform us how they decrypt the message privily at the Faculty Club Black Chamber to merely word-for-word SAY? It's not as if they don't do any editorializing and twistification at all and always only say "killing" instead of "brazen murder," after all! If our betters simply haven't a green idea (as one says in Polish) what the "powerful message" means, of course we don't expect them to frankly admit as much and ever say nescio flat out, but still . . . .
"[A]n intensely factionalized and divided community which little resembles the picture offered by the administration's defenders" is pretty much our own amateurish view of the Sunni Ascendancy smithereens in the former Iraq, though of course we humble lack Abú Aardvaark's credentialed Pol. Sci. expertise. We ourselves think the former Natural Masters of Mesopotamia so thoroughly GOP- and self-smithereenized that it must be decades or generations before they recover enough to be dangerous. We try to say so in as few words as possible, rhetorical allowances duely allowed. Is that what Abú Aarvaark thinks too? Who knows for sure what AA really thinks "about the real prospects for the long-term success of the [militant Sunni and Sunninterni] project" in the former Iraq?
Meanwhile the shock and scandal of today's political murder may serve to help us to formulate our own position more exactly, as follows: of course the "sovereignty" and "independence" and "constitutionalism" and "democracy" of poor M. al-Málikí's sadly bedraggled GOP-aggression-based neorégime in the former Iraq are only so many shudder-quoted nonsenses at present under the omnipotent yoke of the Occupyin' Party, yet the thing to do is not to cast these pretenses or gestures aside, but attempt to actually realize them.
What is demanded of Arabophone Sunnis by that plan is basically that TwentyPercenters should resign themselves to being only a mere statistical twenty percent, and not true 1000000.00% Natural Masters of Mesopotamia after all. I expect they won't so resign themselves, I interpret today's assassination (tentatively, pending genuine evidence) as a protest against the notion that they ever even might.
Abú Aardvark, perhaps by some mere professional or professorial deformation or accident of acquaintance, seems to me a Sunni-izer, and I daresay my own championship of poor M. al-Málikí might be explained contrariwise easily enough. Not to cast stones, anybody!
But God knows best.
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