| We shouldn't stay in a losing game indefinitely. I believe we should give ourselves until October 2008; if there's no Iraqi political accommodation by then, we should get out. Meanwhile, we must play out the hand we have dealt ourselves. |
Surely that must be the shortest and snappiest bit of paleface planmongering yet! Unfortunately Professor P. is likely to prove much inferior at self-knowledge and knowledge of colonial politics than his day-to-day claptrappery might suggest to the unwary.
As usual, there is no need to raise any questions about this perp's subjective sincerity. It suffices in general to repeat that subjective sincerity is a very cheap commodity indeed. In perfect good faith, Tony Powerpoint will discover in October 2008 (and conceivably in October 2028 as well) that he has slightly misjudged the state of the aggression and must revise his previous recommendations accordingly. [1]
Brief though his planmongerin' be, it yet includes enough evidence to make Tony's upcomin' U-turn easy to spot from afar, for anybody who attends more to human events than to violence professional statistics and slick e-presentations:
| [T]he stakes are immense. America's reputation and credibility are at risk; it "broke" Iraq, put 28 million lives at risk and is morally responsible for the consequences. Global energy security -- the continued flow of the oil exports that fuel the world's economy -- are also in play. |
Will the petroleum and the credibilitarianism and the "morally responsible" that TP mentions -- plus the sentimental or "ideological" attachment to the Tel Aviv statelet that he carefully omits to mention -- be significantly different next year or twenty-one years hence? Will these considerations have ceased to matter because poor M. al-Málikí's neorégime, or its successors, shall have done, or shall have failed to do, such-and-such? Does Tony Powerpoint seriously -- as distinguished from sincerely -- propose to allow the merest tail of Sole Remainin' Hyperpower to wag the whole elephant like that? The odds are about 1000:1, I'd say, that it is a near total failure of self-knowledge for Tony to think that Tony is serious.
As to knowledge of the occupied indigs, whatever a Tony Powerpoint may possess in that line certainly does not seem to empower:
| The leaders of Iraq's sectarian and ethnic factions are shaping events far more than the United States can. The most the U.S. can do now is to continue to pressure all sides into some form of political accommodation. |
It is some other invasion lover's department, clearly, to decide exactly what sort of pressure to apply and how to go about it. (Col. Dr. Powerpoint feels nuch more at home countin' and classifyin' tanks, don't you know?)
Emitted from the lips of a different brand of invasion lover, the whole shtik might be taken for an attempted bluff at the expense of poor M. al-Málikí, but Tony disavows that notion in so many words, and here again one should, as far as I see, take the perp at his own word:
| What leverage we have at this point does not lie in threatening to leave but in offering more incentives in the form of aid and long-term support. |
==
Moral disapprobation befits this shabby performance, though not because of any shortage of sincerity. Col. Dr. Powerpoint simply is not doin' his own proper job. Tusk, tusk! The Los Angeles Times sufficiently indicates what sort of duty gets shirked:
| Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies is the author of Iraqi Force Development: Conditions for Success, Consequences of Failure. |
Read the whole scribble, Mr. Bones, it's short enough, and then judge for yourself whether there are three words of it that bear on international strategy or "force development." Or even on "consequences of failure," though that is admittedly rather out of Tony Powerpoint's professional line, strictly delineated.
What this piechart-crazed perp ought to be doin', I should think, is to work out a viable proposal according to which Boy and Party can redefine "success and victory in the former Iraq" down to some target small enough to be attainable, or at least very probably attainable. Yet their Tony does not attempt anythin' of that sort, he might as well be Princess Cassandra of the soon-to-be-former Troy waving her arms and prophesying doom, for all the good he does the cause of invasionism with this sad stuff. Shirkin', I calls it. [3]
_____
[1] Rank-and-file Big Managers from Grant's Old Party will take the view that poor Tony misjudges the situation right this moment, for is it really the case that Boy and Party are "in a losing game"? Have not Petrolaeus and Crockerius all but nailed the coonskin to the wall?
[2] To follow up the previous footnote, do not the Boy-'n'-Party hogen-mogens think so well of their nifty Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme that everybody ought rather to be talkin' about the radiant successes of current "incentives in the form of aid and ... support"?
Be that as it may, Col. Dr. Powerpoint almost certainly subscribes to the conventional Big Party wisdom that all foreigners can be bought, wherein he betrays a lack of self-knowledge and indig knowledge simultaneously. Unless, to be sure, he'd happily sell out personally to the highest bidder.
[3] As you and I agreed the other day, Mr. Bones, although we stipulate the subjective sincerity of a Tony Powerpoint, our stipulation does not mean that we can't let it cross our minds at all that he might be up to somethin' cynical and manipulative. Uncharitable speculation must come second or third or nineteenth, but when it does at last drop by for a brief visit, that "October 2008" could easily be regarded under the species of politics. If Televisionland can be persuaded to more or less forget the whole bloody bushogenic shambles until "President Giuliani" has been elected, then the Kiddie Krusade or Long War of the invasionite crew can probably be protracted until some date in 2011 or 21012 without too much difficulty. One could make "We shouldn't stay in a losing game indefinitely" fit that paradigm too, no? Verb. sap.
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