The Wages of Bribe-A-Tribe™

Sunni leaders from Iraq's Anbar province on Friday said they want billions of dollars as compensation for joining U.S. forces in the fight against al Qaeda militants. Sheikh Ahmed Abureeshah, a local tribal leader, said Anbar needs some $2 billion to rebuild roads, communications networks and other infrastructure that were destroyed before tribal leaders sided with American troops to fight al Qaeda in Iraq militants. Anbar province was once a stronghold for al Qaeda in Iraq and the site of some of the worst fighting during four years of war. But it is now relatively safe, thanks to cooperation between local residents and U.S. authorities. "Al Qaeda followed your army to Iraq after they attacked you here in the United States [sic]," Abureeshah said through an interpreter. "The people of Anbar united with the American army and they started fighting al Qaeda together, and they have been successful," he said. "So we are asking now that we compensate this province for all of the destruction they have faced." Pentagon spokesmen were not immediately available to comment on the request to compensate Anbar for cooperating with U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Some of the Big Party's little foreign friends have been reading about themselves in the press of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and drawing some rather swollen-headed conclusions about their own worldhistoric significance. It is not, of course, the fault of the LFF's themselves that they should be grossly ignorant of elementary Crawfordology and the spirit of the Party of Grant. M. Bin Vichy here must have been trying to please his paymasters with that amazing "Al Qaeda followed your army to Iraq after they attacked you," though it seems very optimistic of him to expect that the GOP extremists won't recall that several years elapsed before the spontaneous sympathy of al-’Anbár governate with the paleface Kiddie Krusaders on the occasion of 11 September 2001 was very detectably expressed. [1]

The notion that foreign powers ever aggress and invasionize to benefit their neo-subjects is dotty, for all that some of the stumblebums' own agitprop very insincerely makes the claim. M. Bin Vichy does not behave like that himself at the horse-theft level, now, does he? He ought to realize that the only workable approach to the Big Party operatives is always to ask what he may graciously be permitted to do for Rancho Crawford and Castle Cheney, never mentioning any flow of goods and services in the opposite direction except when it can be applauded as happily beneficial to both co-conspirators. He'd be more likely to gouge $2,000,000,000.00 out of his ideobuddies for the purpose of fightin' al-Qá‘ida even better and fiercer than hitherto. Potentially good for him, "to rebuild roads, communications networks and other infrastructure that were destroyed" could easily be presented as a matter of Protectorate Defense rather as a matter of compensatin' anybody for anythin' or sheer bleedin'-heart or nation-buildin'.

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In the politics of the holy Homeland, one could not discuss parallel human events without wondering about the old question, "Yes, but will he stay bought?" In the case of M. Bin Vichy, however, that worry may be off the mark. He has not got anybody else to sell out to, after all, at least not in the strict dinars-and-dirhams sense of "sell." I daresay if he decides that M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí are likely to prevail after all, he'll not be the last to join them, but they are certainly not going to purchase his support, or anybody else's, having no financial means worth mentioning. At this point in the aggression, one can imagine other cupboards that M. Bin Vichy might conceivably fall in love with -- Sa‘údiyyan, Háshimiyyan, TelAvivistání and more -- yet at the moment none of these are actually dispensing, so far as I know, and it may be that none of them will ever start. Fortunately for him, when our Harvard Victory School MBA's take to political stumblebumism, they rather lose sight of their Lord Mammon's most basic insights, such as that when there is only one buyer worth mentioning, she ought to have the whip hand. The Big Party Managers are perfectly capable of payin' M. Bin Vichy far more than his services are worth, but it is not going to happen, or rather, continue to happen, unless he works the gravy train less clumsily than he does in this instance.[3]

But God knows best.




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[1] "Through an interpreter" rather darkly comes the collaborationism of M. Bin Vichy: "Here in the United States" is presumably some mere garble, unless it is the Bedouin Muse run amok altogether, pretending that the Salvationite faction of TwentyPercenterdom, at least, has already been admitted to the Union.

Probably not a garble is how M. Bin Vichy sides with the Big Party operatives and sympathizes with the difficulties that lesser indigs may trouble them with: "THEY [the people of al-’Anbár] have been successful. So WE [the Salvationites] are asking now that WE [the militant Republicans] compensate this province for all of the destruction THEY [the locals] have faced." The Reuters person errs, I take it, when he begins with a topic sentence suggesting that M. Bin Vichy might want something for himself personally: "Sunni leaders from Iraq's Anbar province ... want billions of dollars as compensation for joining U.S. forces in the fight against al Qaeda." Very likely that is exactly what the nomad hogenmogens want, but one can't prove it from Bin Vichy's impeccable wording, which suggests that every last dinar and dirham will be passed on to The People.

Looking up the food chain, "Let's you pay 'our' bills" would be nice if M. Bin Vichy could get it, but naturally there is no chance of that. To refer to the tab presented with the word "compensate" must make his generosity with other folks' taxpayers' money even less acceptable to the Busheviki: thinkin' in the language of aggression, no matter what M. Bin Vichy may have originally intended in Arabic, they are bound to feel that "compensation" insinuates some liability or negligence on the part of Boy and Party, an utterly unacceptable heresy. Trying to collect damages from M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí would, I suppose, seem silly to even the most naïve little foreign friend, yet poor B.V. has no more chance of getting recompense out of Crawford than out of Khurasán, for all that the Big Party perps could certainly spare a billion or three if they liked.


[2] M. Bin Vichy need not know much about Grant's Old Party in particular to work out that his collaboration with them should not be allowed to become too completely successful. If "al-Qá‘ida" was ever to become extinct altogether in al-’Anbár, he might find his pension reduced or even eliminated. Perhaps some of his counterparts in Pakistan have worked out a scheme that would be sustainable long-term, with the Forces of Evil always on the run and never in danger of taking over even small provincial towns, let alone setting up any "Islamic State of Fulánistán" that has much more than an Internet presence -- but yet the FoE never get just plain eradicated once and for all either. The middle way is probably best.

In any case, every competent crook should naturally want to stabilize his golden goose racket, which means, in the case of M. Bin Vichy, that he ought at the moment to be figuring out somethin' he can do for the Big Management Party on a sustainable long-term basis. A "war" against AQI that never ends is the most obvious possibility starting from where we happen to find ourselves at the moment, but I'd guess that something a bit broader and more political would work out better at the end of the day for the Baní Vichy and their peerless leader. However, devising some service that the Baní Vichy can perform, or pretend to perform, for militant GOP extremism indefinitely will almost certainly require detailed knowledge about why the stumblebums want to hang around in the former Iraq in the first place. Even after such a service is devised, M. Bin Vichy will have to be able to maintain with some plausibility that his Salvationites can perform it better than either Free Kurd hillbillies or Ráfidí heretics, not to mention all the other fragments of TwentyPercenterdom left over from the former Sunní Ascendancy.

The task is not, I incline to guess, impossible, but it will not be easy, and there is some reason to fear on the basis of the present article that M. Bin Vichy may not be the con man to do it. His "compensate" seems to me a grave misjudgment, so the sooner the blame for it is fixed on Mr. Interpreter, the better for B.V.



[3] I see everything above is from the needy indig side, with nothin' about the greedy Big Party side. Allow me to at least drop the name of Party neocomrade Dr. C. Murray , however, who would presumably object that to subsidize the likes of the Baní Vichy is tantamount to makin' sure there will be more and more of 'em in days to come. Unless he, too, forgets all his own Mammonite stuff as soon as we talk foreign and invasion policy instead of domestic affairs.

Since the Murray connection accounts for my naming this scribble as I have, it won't do to leave it out altogether.