Frankly, My Dear, ....

That both the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution of Iraq and Sistani appear to be opposed to amnesty for leading Baathists augurs ill for the new government plan. Frankly, it augurs ill for Iraq.

It has been several months since Don Juan Cole engaged in any positive planmongering of his own for the benefit of the militant Republicans' hapless neo-Iraqi subjects, and he is perhaps more formidable when he shoots from the bushes like this, giving no hostages to fortune himself. Still, a double negative makes at least a tentative affirmation, so probably when JC reveals that he does not like the UIA caucus not liking "amnesty for leading Baathists," it must seem rather a good idea at Ann Arbour. One is rather a loss to see that such an amnesty could matter so late in the fiasco from the standpoint of practical occupation management, but perhaps with JC, amnesty is more an educationalist or Sabbath-school matter of desiring that Mercy and Justice should come to proper terms? It rather tends to discredit generic religionism, does it not, that so clerical a political faction is inclined to be relentless and unforgiving.

Nevertheless, JC himself pooh-poohed the likely immediate results just the other day:

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani will put forward new legislation offering an amnesty program for Baath officials. If they come in from the cold within 3 months, they can be restored to high office. The Debaathification Commission, headed by corrupt financier Ahmad Chalabi and on which Nuri al-Maliki played the role of hardliner earlier on, had excluded such figures from a role in public life. The problem is that the mere announcement of a three-month amnesty is highly unlikely to bring in from the cold the people who are now heading the Sunni Arab guerrilla movements. And, at a time when security is so bad that the vice premier is blown up with the connivance of his own security guards (and tribesmen), it can't be a pleasant prospect to be a Baathist branded as collaborator. AP suggests that the real motive for the measure is twofold. First, its announcement may take some pressure off the Iraqi government at this week's Arab League summit, where, as Iraqslogger notes, a draft proposal is said to urge abolition of the 'Debaathification Commission' and disbanding of Shiite militias. Second, rehabilitating the Baathists and being nicer to the Sunni Arabs is the platform on which former appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has been campaigning to form a new political bloc-- a campaign that has been met with some favor in neighboring Sunni Arab states and Egypt.

Ah, Mr. Bones, is the JCIA going all wobbly and TommyFriedmanite on us, then? Has our guru seriously revised his reba‘thification position between Monday evening and Friday evening? Will our acquaintaince Mr. Badger notice this apparent discrepancy and incorporate it in his War Against Juan?

The last contingency is unlikely: Mr. Badger's fantastic general notion of Prof. Cole is quite incompatible with at least the Friday position. Nobody who was seriously shilling for SCIRI would have written the sentence we began with, and certainly JC has not turned his coat altogether in a mere five days. There are some appearances that need to be saved, obviously, especially that mildly sarcastic sounding "being nicer to the Sunni Arabs," but salvage is possible.

My hypothesis is that Ann Arbour has consistently preferred that sort of an occupation policy, but gets a bit distracted and unpredictable whenever it finds somebody else it does not care for in general happens to agree with it about a comparatively minor detail like reba‘thification. Above all, such is the case when Ann Arbour finds itself in agreement with Rancho Crawford. A few days later when it can express disagreement with Cardinal al-Sístání and the abominable SCIRI and not mention the militant Republicans at all, one gets a clearer picture of the real underlying position, which is more or less stable. As you will recall, Mr. Bones, the most striking feature of the last comprehensive Cole Plan mongered was nothing if not nice to Sunni Arabs -- they were to be bribed with a double share of New Baghdad's petroleum revenues! Needless to say, Cardinal al-Sístání and Monsignor al-Hakím would have cared for that nifty idea, had it ever been brought to their attention, even less than they care for reba‘thification.

At the moment, the late Khalílzád Pasha's petroleum bill is quite as controversial in Green Zone collaborationist circles as the amnesty proposals are, with the Sunni Arab pols perhaps thinking at bottom that it is not half nice enough to their own theocommunity, but taking the far more respectable public line that it is a threat to centralized government, a position that the Sadr Tendency can support as well, and indeed, a position that we should support also, had we the misfortune to be neo-Iraqi subjects. As usual, we find ourselves only fellow travelers with the Sadriyya, supporting more or less the same platform planks, but for reasons that would probably not occur to the indigenes. The worst thing wrong with it, from our outlandish point of view, is the sheer Khalílzádianity of it, or call it the pig-in-a-poke aspect. As with the pasha's "constitution," there are so many blanks left to be filled in later, maybe, that anybody prudent should simply refuse to have anything to do with the whole affair. Furthermore the petroleum bill violates the cardinal point of our quasi-Sadrism, namely that everything done under the yoke of Crawford is at very least tentative and provisional, if not illegitimate altogether. As a general rule it would therefore be wise to do as little as possible, so that there shall be that much less that requires to be undone or redone when "Iraq" is a country once again.

I remind you of our own stance, Mr. Bones, so as to contrast it with some other products currently available and indicate how isolated we are. To begin with, our stuff can be framed as a direct answer to the question, "Who would you vote for if you were an occupied native?" Not many paleface students can do so, and Prof. Cole least of all, despite Mr. Badger's dotty "narrative" about him. Proving by quotation that JC does not like anybody in neo-Iraq very much would be easy, although perhaps a bit misleading, because he is always likely to dump on anybody the GOP extremists seem to be favoring at the moment with a special vim and vigor that has no bearing on the intrinsic merits of the various neo-Iraqi factions. Nevertheless, outside Free Kurdistan, which JC is not much interested in, ninety percent of the natives are "fundamentalists," to hear Ann Arbour explain it, and the other ten percent are little better. Dr. Chalabí and Dr. ‘Alláwí, the two most prominent individual pols from the rootless cosmopolitan community, have even acquired Homeric epithets from Don Juan, "corrupt financier" and "CIA asset" respectively.

Antecedently one would expect a neo-Orientalist and a social scientizer to align himself with the "secularist" ten-percenters more or less without reserve. Presumably that course is not open to Prof. Cole mainly because it is so plain that the militant GOP likes them best too. As regards American domestic politics, receding as far as possible from the Crawfordite position will bring you 'round right nine times out of ten, but the maxim does not work so reliably out in the boondocks. Part of the trouble is that the cowpokers themselves do not have any really solid druthers about their collaborationist pols: the rootless cosmopolitans would be best ideally, no doubt, since none of the other occupied natives are likely to be interested in AEIdeology and Heritagitarianism, but they are simply too weak a reed. For the moment, at least, the invasionites have decided to stick with poor M. al-Málikí, a choice that can in a pinch be defended as some sort of democracy, although scarcely the best sort by GOP criteria or perhaps any other. Prof. Cole is accordingly repulsed from the UIA caucus, but not in any definite direction. Don Juan is never going to come out against "democracy" in so many words, of course, but he is not sufficiently interested in political structures to work out a coherent anti-majoritarian position either. Today's "frankly" is an interesting straw in the wind, but it does not commit him to anything much. At the slightest sign that the Crawfordites are going to ditch poor M. al-Málikí, and especially if it looks as if a certain CIA asset might be reinstalled in quasi-power, Prof. Cole is bound to shift his position and think more cheerful thoughts about the UIA caucus., though perhaps not about the abominable SCIRI. A reflexive schizophobia, a morbid dread of anything like partition, is as close as JC comes to having an absolutely fixed position about neo-Iraqi native politics. No matter how much the Crawfordites may agree with him about that, he will doubtless not abandon it. But that one rigid fixity doesn't answer the question about how Don Juan would vote if he was under occupation himself, because "for anybody but SCIRI" is not a full and adequate response. In the US, "vote for anybody but the Republicans" is probably in practice sufficient as a rule of thumb, but the internal politics of the GOP neocolony are a good deal more complicated, and something a bit more nuanced is mandatory.

I doubt Don Juan has ever been seriously tempted by anything much like our own position, Mr. Bones. There is quite a lot for the typical practitioner of Area Studies to dislike in the Rev. Señorito Muqtada, even over and above that "fundamentalism" of most of his merry men. From time to time old-fashioned economics-based politics crosses Prof. Cole's mind, but then it goes away as quickly and unexpectedly as it arose. Even when the fit is on him, though, we are much more likely to hear about "War for Oil" in a basically anti-GOP vein than anything directly in favor of the Sadr Current as a "social movement" of the oppressed. He does insist that the Sadriyya is "a social movement" and not a mere (?) "political party," to be sure, but that appears to be a wannabe-objective Soc. Sci. classification and by no means any sort of endorsement.

In any case, when Prof. Cole proposed to dole out double shares of "their own" petroleum money to selected neo-Iraqi subjects, his criterion was strictly sectarian and had nothing to do with need. Furthermore, the Cole scheme would have done nothing for 99% of the Sadrists, presumably. The former Sunni Ascendancy may be as irretrievably shattered as Humpty-Dumpty, but very few of the fragments can have sailed as far from the scene of the smash as to have become political disciples of Sadr Tertius.

But God knows best.

Slogger City and the Bazzázístán Times

Iraqi Papers Tues: A New Political Pact? Out With "De-Ba'thification", Enter "Accountability and Justice" By AMER MOHSEN Many of the intellectuals and policymakers who supported the invasion of Iraq and theorized for the war have been backtracking in terms of their expectations of the new “democratic polity,” which the war, in their minds, was designed to create. Notably, the war's supporters (on the American and Iraqi sides) seem to have abandoned the idea that Iraq will follow the “German” or “Japanese” models, whereby an invasion by a “benevolent” democratic force will lead to the creation of a healthy and prosperous democracy, almost in an organic fashion, once the shackles of authoritarianism are removed. One of the main tenants of post-war “reconstruction” that were lifted directly from the post-WW2 experience was the policy of “de-Ba'thification” in Iraq, modeled (at least rhetorically) after the de-Nazification laws in Germany. De-Ba'thification was aimed at removing the figures of the dictatorship from the decision-making centers, but also at uprooting the “culture” of authoritarianism in Iraq, which would open the gates of democratic participation, liberal party politics, and civic culture; not unlike the case of Germany (in fact, several historians cast doubts on the extent of de-Nazification in Western Germany following the Second World War.) Today, Az-Zaman reported on its front page that the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and the Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, made a joint statement announcing a radical review of the de-Ba'thification law and its replacement with a new law called “Accountability and Justice.” Al-Mada reported the same news, also on its front page, but without confirming the new proposed law. What is more notable is that, according to Az-Zaman, “Accountability and Justice” was the fruit of labor of the departing American ambassador, Zalamay Khalilzad, who “participated in intense meetings with Iraqi politicians and political parties, paving the ground for the promulgation of the “Accountability and Justice” law.” De-Ba'thification was one of the first policies to be applied, forcefully, by the invading Americans. Even the dismantling of Saddam’s army was, at the time, seen under the light of de-Ba'thifying Iraq. The reversal of the law (in addition to several major changes that are expected to come soon) may be a result of the deep instability and opposition to the American-sponsored “political process” in Iraq, which necessitates a new “political contract” with many sections of the Iraqi society. But it may also indicate a realization, on the part of the US administration, that the anti-Ba'thist forces that came to rule in Iraq are not exactly Jeffersonian democrats, but sectarian and religious parties that do not provide a platform for liberal politics, the way war-planners had envisioned and hoped. Establishing a new political pact, even with the old-Ba'this, may therefore be part of a process whereby the US upholds some form of a quasi-stable state in Iraq, allowing the bulk of its army “an honorable exit” from the costly war, in the words of Fouad Ajami, one of the war’s staunchest supporters. The timing of the new law could not have been more opportune for the Iraqi government, as the Iraqi delegation heads to Riyadh to join the Arab summit that is to be held there this week. Arab diplomats have been exerting pressure on al-Maliki to effectuate amendments to the Iraqi political system, including a review of de-Ba'thification, which is seen by Sunni Arab states as a tool for the exclusion of Sunnis from participation in the political system and the bureaucracy. In fact, Az-Zaman claimed that the timing of the announcement may be “an attempt to appease Arab fears in the Riyadh summit vis-à-vis the faltering situation in Iraq.” Az-Zaman admitted, however, that the law has been in the works for some time. Az-Zaman is still promoting the Arab summit as an event that could “pressure” the Iraqi government into amending some of the problematic articles of the constitution, and open a wider scope for Sunni participation in the governance of Iraq. Az-Zaman quoted several (mostly Sunni) Iraqi politicians who called on al-Maliki to use the summit as an occasion to “correct past mistakes.” Az-Zaman also took the adoption of the draft Iraq resolution (published in al-Hayat yesterday) as a sign of Arab determination to “rectify” the political process in Iraq. Az-Zaman may very well be exaggerating the effect and influence of the Arab League summits: the Arab League is known for having little or no mechanisms for the enforcement of the resolutions it adopts against member states; and many Arab countries (especially rich oil exporters) are notorious for not fulfilling financial obligations that they pledge during Arab summits. Two very sensitive dossiers will be discussed in Riyadh tomorrow: Palestine and Iraq; tomorrow’s deliberations might indicate whether the summit will be a turning point in Middle East politics, as its proponents claim; or another in a series of several summits (at least since 1991) that have failed to produce tangible effects.

"A Good Dispatch from Baghdad"

The NYT fronts a good dispatch from Baghdad that looks at how most Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad are much worse off than the parts of the city where Shiites are the majority. One of the reasons for this is that Sunni insurgents do not hesitate to kill other Sunnis who are seen as collaborators. This has resulted in government workers from either sect refusing to deliver services to Sunni areas.

Poor M. al-Málikí and the UIA pols (and lots of non-OnePercenters in East Baghdad) may well fail to appreciate the goodness of this particular performance from the columns of Manhattan island's fishwrap of record, between not knowing the language of invasions well enough to appreciate it as literature and certain questions about its political tendency. But let the lady report, and then perhaps we may venture to decide.

Sunni Baghdad Becomes Land of Silent Ruins / By ALISSA J. RUBIN BAGHDAD, March 25 — The cityscape of Iraq’s capital tells a stark story of the toll the past four years have taken on Iraq’s once powerful Sunni Arabs. Theirs is a world of ruined buildings, damaged mosques, streets pitted by mortar shells, uncollected trash and so little electricity that many people have abandoned using refrigerators altogether. The contrast with Shiite neighborhoods is sharp. Markets there are in full swing, community projects are under way, and while electricity is scarce throughout the city, there is less trouble finding fuel for generators in those areas. When the government cannot provide services, civilian arms of the Shiite militias step in to try to fill the gap. But in Adhamiya, a community with a Sunni majority, any semblance of normal life vanished more than a year ago. Its only hospital, Al Numan, is so short of basic items like gauze and cotton pads that when mortar attacks hit the community last fall, the doctors broadcast appeals for supplies over local mosque loudspeakers. Here, as in so much of Baghdad, the sectarian divide makes itself felt in its own deadly and destructive ways. Far more than in Shiite areas, sectarian hatred has shredded whatever remained of community life and created a cycle of violence that pits Sunni against Sunni as well as Sunni against Shiite. Anyone who works with the government, whether Shiite or Sunni, is an enemy in the eyes of the Sunni insurgents, who carry out attack after attack against people they view as collaborators. While that chiefly makes targets of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Army and the police, the militants also kill fellow Sunnis from government ministries who come to repair water and electrical lines in Sunni neighborhoods. One result of such attacks is that government workers of either sect refuse to deliver services to most Sunni areas. For ordinary Sunnis, all this deepens the sense of political impotence and estrangement. American military leaders and Western diplomats are unsure about whether the cycle can be stopped. “The Sunnis outside the political process say, ‘What’s the point of coming in when those involved in the government can do nothing for their own community?’ ” said a Western diplomat who is not authorized to speak publicly. Militant religious groups, known as takfiris, “have taken these Sunni neighborhoods as bases, which made these areas of military operation,” which stops the delivery of services, said Nasir al-Ani, a Sunni member of Parliament who works on a committee trying to win popular acceptance of the Baghdad security plan. “Now the ministries are trying to make services available, but the security situation prevents it. Part of the aim of the takfiris is to keep people disliking the government.” It adds up to a bleak prognosis for Sunnis in Baghdad. Until the violence is under control, there is unlikely to be any progress. But it is hard to persuade Sunnis to take a stand against the violence when they seem to receive so little in return. “We want to highlight that when the government is denying services to Sunnis, they are pushing them toward the Sunni extremists who attack the Shiite-dominated security forces,” said Maj. Guy Parmeter, an operations officer for the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry, which operates in the Sunni areas on the west side of Baghdad. “And when that happens, it makes it harder to deliver services to those areas.” Government leaders admit that there has been outright obstruction on the part of some Shiite ministries. Ali al-Dabbagh, the government’s spokesman, said that the Health Ministry, dominated by Shiites loyal to the militant cleric Moktada al-Sadr, has failed to deliver needed services to Sunni areas, which had thrived under Saddam Hussein. “This is part of the lack of efficiency in the ministry which didn’t improve this year,” Mr. Dabbagh said. He added, however, that he did not see any remedy in the near term. But officials also emphasize that many of the skilled Sunnis who used to keep the ministries going have fled, so the ministries are not delivering services to anyone. Again, security has to come first, they said. Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite whose most recent role is to lead the committee working to win popular acceptance of the security plan, said he saw four problems particularly plaguing Sunni areas: food distribution, electricity, fuel and health services. Mr. Chalabi says he may have found a solution for the first by assuring that food agents, especially in Sunni areas, have an Iraqi Army escort to the food warehouses. The other problems are deeper, and solutions will take far longer to find, he said. Since there has been no census taken in years, it is difficult to say the relative proportion of Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad. Rough estimates suggest that Sunnis now make up no more than 40 percent of Baghdad’s population and possibly much less. Day-to-day life for most Sunnis has become a nightmare of frustration, punctuated by terror that they will be caught in the cross-fire. Sunni Baghdad is now made up of block after block of shuttered storefronts, broken glass and piles of rubble. By midafternoon in those neighborhoods, hardly a person is on the street. Many residents will not leave their neighborhoods to go to jobs or see a doctor for fear they will be kidnapped at a checkpoint. Baghdad’s Sunni areas, mostly on the west side, were once roughly 70 percent Sunni and 30 percent Shiite, but those ratios have become more lopsided as Shiites have fled. Each neighborhood has its own sad tale. In Amiriya, one of the western neighborhoods that was taken over early on by hard-line Sunni insurgents, the Americans and the militants have fought a running battle for more than three years. More recently Shiite militiamen joined the fray, kidnapping and killing those they believed were collaborating with the insurgents. Now they have fled and been replaced by cells of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who threaten Sunnis who refuse to cooperate with them. They take over houses that families have fled and use them as bases to attack Iraqi Army and police checkpoints in the neighborhood. Small wonder that streets are empty, shops are shuttered and neighbors view every foray for life’s essentials as a dangerous journey. For Um Hint, who did not give her full name for fear of retaliation, the past four years have been a downhill slide. She learned to recognize the different insurgents by what they wear. “The ones we see now are different from the ones before because those wore masks,” she said. “The merchants no longer sell their goods from their stores. We must go to their houses when we want something like shampoo or clothes. Anyone trying to open his shop, the insurgents will threaten him. Sometimes they leave a note, but sometimes they put a bomb in front of the shop.” The hazards on the streets have forced women to take over many of the activities often taken care of by men: food shopping, making inquiries at government agencies and taking household belongings for repairs. The militants “only kill men,” said Ms. Hint, 40. “So we go out alone.” In Mansour, an odd silence pervades even before the shadows begin to lengthen. Along the once busy 14th of Ramadan Street, most shops are closed, and almost every side street is blocked off by coils of barbed wire and concrete blocks. Residents describe an infrastructure so completely broken that they barely limp from one day to the next. “I simply want to say that there are no services now,” said Abu Ali, 52, an engineer who works for a local cellphone company. “I get electricity for only two hours a day.” He added: “The phones have been dead for two months; the sewers are bad; I have a broken water pipe in front of my house that has been flooding the street for nearly eight weeks. The garbage truck stopped coming two months ago.” Even well into 2004, Mansour was one of the most luxurious shopping areas of Baghdad, the home of embassies and government officials. People lucky enough to live there could not imagine moving. Now, the Shiite areas they once scorned evoke envy because Shiite militias provide security and services. “There are neighborhoods where people are receiving their food basket in full quantities and on time,” Mr. Ali said. “The reason is that those areas are pure Shiite — they are controlled by Mahdi Army,” he said, referring to the militia that claims loyalty to Mr. Sadr. “There you have someone to complain to, even if it’s not the government.” In Adhamiya, the most heavily Sunni majority neighborhood on the east bank of the Tigris, there has also been a succession of armed groups. Most recently, gangs of young men prowled the neighborhood and attacked anyone trying to help local residents. The head of the district council was gunned down 10 days ago; three months earlier his predecessor was killed the same way. The council had been a beacon for beleaguered Adhamiya residents, its offices busy from early morning. But its members are under attack, and it is unclear how long they will be willing to continue to take the risks that come with helping their neighbors. Haji Daoud, 46, a council member and engineer with a degree in psychology, is the man with many of the answers for those who come. He has a caseload of about 2,500 families. For the poorest, he has tried to organize shares in small generators so that they at least have enough electricity to turn on lights at night. No one has enough to run a refrigerator. Mostly, people want jobs. Shaima, a 22-year-old divorced mother, asked Mr. Daoud if he could find her a job as a cleaner. Mr. Daoud shook his head. “There are no shops open here to clean,” he said. Across from her sits Ahmed Ali, a grizzled 72-year old carpenter who came for help getting his food ration basket. Mr. Ali closed his carpentry shop because there was no electricity. Known throughout Adhamiya for his craftsmanship, he was famous for making an Arab version of the lute for local musicians. His eldest son was killed a year ago. When he collected the body at the morgue, he found that holes had been drilled through his son’s joints, a form of torture that is a mark of Shiite militias. Last summer, his younger son was kidnapped near the neighborhood. He leaned forward slightly on his cane and looked hard at Mr. Daoud as he tried to explain the depth of his losses: the carpentry shop, his food rations, his family. “I made lutes and sometimes I played, but my fingers are numb now,” he said. “I cannot play. I want only to find my kidnapped son.”

From the literary point of view, the most notable thing is that the agitprop comes first and the "vivid" journalism and anecdotal evidence only afterwards. This arrangement is certainly preferable to the spaghetti technique that entangles the two inextricably, skipping back and forth more or less at random from paragraph to paragraph. But is it better than the more old-fashioned block approach, that starts with the parable and defers the moral of it until the end? Very likely tastes will differ, but one may guess that the neoteric Rubinian method will find more friends in these fast-paced and hectic timess of ours, when a scribbler would be ill-advised indeed to assume that all her organ's customers will read every word of her piece.

Mr. Politi, he who summarizes for Slate, which is to say, for the Washington Post Company, is rather a special case, of course, and perhaps he regards this ploy less as a convenience than as an infringement on his own function. Still, he has no legal grounds for complaint that I can envision, nor would he even if there were a leap to the apotheosis of Rubinism at once, with every article of more than a couple hundred words introduced by a clearly labeled "Executive Summary." Considering that everybody except you and me and Mr. Bones seems to like being flattered as an "executive," irrelevant fifth wheels that we are, it's a bit surprising that the respectable press have not reached that point already. Except that perhaps that plan would positively encourage customers not to clean their plates conscientiously. "On the third hand," though, it might be nice to have Ms. Rubin's own summary as well as Mr. Politi's. Like headline editors, summarizers have been known to reach conclusions about journalistic items that seem entirely at odds with what was actually written.

In the case at hand, I suspect that Ms. Rubin would probably not have singled out "One of the reasons for this [malign neglect] is that Sunni insurgents do not hesitate to kill other Sunnis who are seen as collaborators." To emphasize that point in isolation misdirects and weakens the propagandistic thrust of the whole considerably.

Which brings us to the most interesting question of all: regardless of what she would actually admit out loud, did Ms. Rubin consciously and deliberately intend some particular agitprop impact? Or is the impact only present here because our invasion-language media's conventional wisdom about neo-Iraq is itself warped in that direction, allowing her to become tendentious unawares? The latter seems far more likely to me. Although this lady is several cuts above the ineffable Sabrina Tavernese, she is unlikely to know enough or care enough about Uncle Sam's neo-Iraqi subjects to set up to champion this or that native faction on the basis of mere private judgment. If the usual superficial Murdochoid pretences of fairness and balance are omitted when it comes to poor M. al-Málikí and the "government" of "Iraq," that is not because Ms. Rubin has anything against them of her own, it only results from a prudent desire to stick with what "everybody" knows already. She has no independent position to contradict milady Sapientia Conventionalis from, so to conclude that if she were to sound eccentric she would probably be mistaken is reasonable enough. If worst comes to worst, she can one day claim that "everybody" else was wrong too.

The ultimate source of much of Miss Sappy's stuff , and therefore of Ms. Rubin's, is indicated honestly enough:

“The Sunnis outside the political process say, ‘What’s the point of coming in when those involved in the government can do nothing for their own community?’ ” said a Western diplomat who is not authorized to speak publicly.

Note, though, that our old friend Major Leaker -- dressed up as Ambassador Leaker this morning -- is on exceptionally shaky ground as regards the matter he leaks about. What can he know about the attitudes of Sunnis outside the political process? He'd be more credible dressed up as Secret Agent Leaker when he wants to work that point into the conventional wisdom. Or rather, to reinforce that point, for it has been near the heart of Miss Sappy's neo-Iraq lore ever since the plebescite of 15 December 2005 at latest.

One takes for granted that such stuff comes to Ms. Rubin and her hotel-lobby colleagues from the Proconsular Palace and the Green Zone Officers Club. But she has developed a rather surprising additional new source of the same old product:

Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite whose most recent role is to lead the committee working to win popular acceptance of the security plan, said he saw four problems particularly plaguing Sunni areas: food distribution, electricity, fuel and health services. Mr. Chalabi says he may have found a solution for the first by assuring that food agents, especially in Sunni areas, have an Iraqi Army escort to the food warehouses. The other problems are deeper, and solutions will take far longer to find, he said.

What the Hero of Error is up to now, which way he thinks the winds are blowing, is a fascinating question in its own right, but not one that involved Ms. Rubin in particular. Apparently the New York Times Company has boxed the compass, however, and Dr. Chalabi is once again a reliable font of conventional wisdom and printworthy news. The unexpected rehabilitation is probably not very important, but you must admit it is striking. The NYTC higher-ups must have issued a directive about AC to their employees, for here is Mr. Wong citing the same precious source this morning:

Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi politician who is a friend of Mr. Khalilzad, said the talks fizzled partly because insurgent representatives made untenable demands. They sought a suspension of the Constitution, breakup of Parliament, reinstatement of the old Iraqi Army and establishment of a new government, he said.

Father Zeus help any poor NYTC customer who knows nothing more about this gentleman than that he is "an Iraqi politician who is a friend of Mr. Khalilzad"!

The Intellectual Apprentice

M. Kan‘an Makiya perhaps truly deserves the way he was treated by Mr. Wong of The New York Times yesterday. His politics, now as then, seem simplistic and ill-considered. His old political dabbling has led to some unfortunate happenings, and his new dabbles may well lead to more, although naturally he does not foresee or intend. A certain inadequacy as regards foreseeing and intending has characterized the celebrity intellectual ever since M. Rousseau (or whoever) first set up in that line of journalism. Jean-Jacques was safely dead long before the supposed consequences of his naïve mistakes had even begun to take place, let alone seem mistaken. M. Makiya has not been so lucky, having survived not only through "his" revolution's Thermidor but through its Waterloo.

Under the circumstances, if he's still sufficiently bewitched by celebrity to let Mr. Wong inside his front door, he cannot complain too pathetically about how he found himself "profiled" subsequently. If he did not anticipate that Mr. Wong might be as fixated on the current USA as he himself is on the former Iraq, what can we say except that he damn well should have? If intellectual celebrities cannot anticipate that sort of thing better than most, one begins to wonder why Modern Times bothers with them at all.

The burden of anticipation falls on the learned clerk rather than on the hack scribbler, surely? Mr. Wong would not have behaved as he did if he had properly reflected on M. Makiya's peculiar situation. Nevertheless Wong seems to have reflected at least a little, since he at least managed not to emit some blatant crudity like "Don't you think you owe Americans an apology, sir?"

Enter Don Juan Orientalista to supply the crudeness deficit:

Kanaan Makiya, an intellectual architect of the Iraq War, admits it is a disaster but insists he has nothing to apologize for. Makiya is still peddling the Neoconservative myth (as an ex-Trotskyite, he is a genuine Neoconservative) that everything would have been all right if the US hadn't occupied Iraq after conquering it. How likely was that? Makiya, after having tried to convince us all that Ahmad Chalabi is a really great guy and not a fraud, now wants to convince us of other things. Why should we agree to be convinced by someone so wrong about so much? Couldn't he please work out his intellectual theories in ways that don't get more US troops killed?

To begin with the last error first, poor M. Makiya did at least manage to cover his posterior as regards getting undue numbers of Republican Party troopers killed:

“The first and the biggest American error was the idea of going for an occupation.”

We shall have a general critique of Makiyatism later on, so suffice it to say his counterfactual political dabblings may be no better than his actual ones. Very likely Mesopotamia would not be the Garden of Eden now even if the militant GOP had departed before Christmas of 2003. Nevertheless, that is what M. Makiya would have advised, it appears, and so the prosecution's last charge, at least, must be dropped.

"Why should we agree to be convinced by someone so wrong about so much?" is an interesting question indeed. Perhaps the effective answer is merely "Because he is a celebrity intellectual, of course." I fear Mr. Wong will have taken more or less that view. He did not get quite the ringing denunciation of Crawfordite extremism that he presumably was hoping for, but he did fairly well:

Then there is the small issue of American policy. “Everything they could do wrong, they did wrong,” Mr. Makiya said.

Prof. Cole rebuts that the whole Dread Neo-Con Cabal tend to talk like that now that Little Dubya has somehow botched all their clever schemes. Dr. Strangepearl said almost exactly that to the reporter from Vanity Fair, did he not? To which I respond that it is silly to classify M. Makiya as a neoconservative. The former Iraq is all in all to him, whereas for the real Weekly Standard article, "Iraq" is only another sports club for their libido dominandi to take a workout in. If the accused is in fact rebounding from Trotskyism, he has rebounded very thoroughly. "Makiyatism in one country" is the only brand of his product that exists, and the country in question is not Mr. Wong's and Dr. Cole's. Genuine neocomrades like Kristol Minor and the Kagan clan are concerned at this point to rescue the general proposition that American invasionism is good for the lesser breeds without from certain doubts that the performance of the militant GOP has caused some students to entertain. M. Makiya is not interested in American invasionism as a generality even in the slightest. What good will it do him or his "Iraq" if the next thrilling neo-con episode works out far less disastrously somewhere else? Are we to suppose madly that he wants the militant GOP to take another whack at his country a few years from now, after they improve their technique elsewhere?

Mr. Wong may be a bit disappointed that M. Makiya is no more against American invasionism as a general principle than for it, but his attitude is understandable enough once you get the hang of not always putting America first.

What's left in the indictment? Ah, "Makiya, after having tried to convince us all that Ahmad Chalabi is a really great guy and not a fraud, now wants to convince us of other things." As regards M. le Docteur Tchélabi individually, our intellectual celebrity seems willing to admit to a misjudgment, but "Mr. Makiya said he preferred not to name names." Be that as it may, the prosecutions's real charge is not that he recommended A.C. to the Crawfordites, but that he implored them to come invasionize his country. So many people have been diddled by M. Tchélabi that it is a very minor midemeanor indeed, compared with encouraging international vigilantism.

I can't guess what Prof. Cole is afraid of being talked into this time. Does he seriously disagree that "Everything they [the Republicans] could do wrong, they did wrong"? Not likely. Perhaps he is more worried about "There were failures at the level of leadership, and they’re overwhelmingly Iraqi failures"? On the whole, Don Juan is not very interested in discussing failures by anybody other that the Occupyin' Power, just as M. Makiya instinctively concentrated on the invadees and had to be prompted to add the other remark. How either of them could suppose that the Green Zone collaborationist politicians have shown even average competence at their new profession eludes me. Still, if they do disagree about it, I'm with M. Makiya. Similarly, it seems extremely unlikely that the JCIA considers the execution of Saddam a resounding success. (Mr. Badger may think that it ought to, but that is another story.)

I can't find any policy advice for the future in the piece at all for the JCIA to fear being deceived into agreeing with, unless monumental (but shelved) plans for rebuilding brave New Baghdad are to count.

That leaves only what seems to be the core of neo-Makiyatism, the theory of where all that nasty "sectarianism" came from. This again is to look backwards rather than forwards. It seems so incoherent, however, that who can be seriously tempted to be diddled by it? Unless Mr. Wong has garbled things seriously, somehow sectarianism is due entirely to the Ba‘th, or perhaps to all the barracks-based patriots who followed the Mecca monarchy. But then, it is also entirely due to the return of unscrupulous exiles after the aggression. Here is the Urtext:

“I want to look into myself, look at myself, delve into the assumptions I had going into the war,” he said. “Now it seems necessary to reflect on the society that has gotten itself into this mess. A question that looms more and more for me is: just what did 30 years of dictatorship do to 25 million people?” “It’s not [as if] I didn’t think about this,” he continued. “But nonetheless I allowed myself as an activist to put it aside in the hope that it could be worked through, or managed, or exorcised in a way that’s not as violent as is the case now. That did not work out.” [omit paragraph of reportorial local colour] “There were failures at the level of leadership, and they’re overwhelmingly Iraqi failures,” he said. Chief among the culprits, he added, were the Iraqis picked by the Americans in 2003 to sit on the Iraqi Governing Council, many of them exiles who tried to create popular bases for themselves by emphasizing sectarian and ethnic differences. “Sectarianism began there,” he said. [And then on to Chelabi.]

Perhaps it can all be rhymed together somehow, with the Old Régime discrediting nonsectarianism or "secularism" and the returnee pols noticing that this had happened and taking advantage of it. Myself, I don't think most of the post-aggression pols are smart enough to be guilty as charged, so if anything of the sort happened, it will have been accidentally and unconsciously. There may be something to be said for it, with that modification: most of the revenant OnePercenters were presumably "notabilities," ’a‘yán, only locally. Too much time has passed since 1958 for those who conducted politics under the Mecca monarchy to be of much significance. These new big fish in small stagnant ponds may have put together patronage networks of the age-old Levantine type that began as "sectarian" in fact without the OnePercenters deliberately intending anything of the sort. When Sultan Jerry brought all the notability class together to provide himself with a neo-Iraqi facade, like may have associated itself with like at a higher level, again without conscious conniving or malicious intent.

Up to a point a modified neo-Makiyatism is plausible enough, but the various plebescites conducted under the GOP occupation would appear to be the sticking point. The lower ninety-nine percent of neo-Iraqi subjects have certainly shown no sign of disavowing wicked "sectarianism." Au contraire, candidates of the rootless cosmopolitan community did consistently worse than the invasionites had expected and hoped. Sultan Jerry was not endowed with a great flair for politics either, though, not to mention with any knowledge of the neighborhood he was supposed to rule, and it seems a bit unfair to blame him for not seeing what was going to happen before it actually did.

Here, too, M. Makiya's implied counterfactual history might easily have been as bad or even worse. Suppose Crawford had presciently and ruthlessly pretended that only the ten percent or so of neo-Iraqi subjects in the "secular" theo-community were to have any significant role in Jerry's facade? Might not a great many of the excluded have decided that they were being discriminated against because of their chauvinism and religionism, "just like under the Ba‘th"? Such anti-"sectarian" discrimination would not, to be sure, have been just like, but probably close enough to it for practical political purposes.

Viewed from the USA, and therefore with reference to matters that do not concern M. Makiya at all, that counterfactuality was almost certainly impossible. Extremist Republicans perhaps still do not relish majoritarian democracy very heartily, but there can be no question of their flatly opposing it after any such fashion as that. Furthermore, although they were pleased and proud to have invaded and conquered and occupied M. Makiya's country, at no point in the whole saga of fiasco were they seriously interested in administering it. They required, and still require, to have a veto on anything misguided that the natives might do, but on the positive side, they have insisted on very little. Even that monstrosity of a Khalílzád Konstitution was not simply shoved down the throats of the neo-liberated. Their own OnePercenters agreed to it, did they not? Although perhaps they agreed without having the slightest intention of taking it seriously -- apart from the Free Kurds on the cardinal matter of the virtual independence of Free Kurdistan.

I begin to digress. M. Makiya apparently doesn't take the monstrosity very seriously either, or at least he did not mention it to Mr. Wong.

In any case, even if Prof. Cole were so gullible as to "agree to be convinced" that the neo-Makiyatan hypothesis about where "sectarianism" comes from is sound, it's hard to see what difference it would make. Wherever it came from, it's here. Perhaps we should expect a celebrity intellectual to offer us some plan for dealing with it, but if Mr. Wong asked at all, the response must have been judged not worth printing. Had I been the reporter, I should have asked a number of rather obvious questions about the future, beginning with what M. Makiya thinks of the Surge of '07. It may be, however, that he has simply given up thinking about such things. He notably declined to exercise his option to apologize to anybody about anything, yet perhaps he has learned his lesson all the same and has stopped recklessly vending panaceas.

M. Rousseau died too soom, M. Makiya has lived too long. When a celebrity intellectual sets up as sorcerer's apprentice, the happy medium would be to die during the radiant and blissful dawn, when one's dubious panacea seems to be really working, and one does not need to feel tempted to distance oneself from the suggestion that one was "an intellectual architect of" its temporary successes.

Oh, well.

"Transforms"? "Private"? "Tenuous"?

If it was not for the Times of Bazzázístán, M. Amer Mohsen's press summaries would hardly exist at all. Today's specimen is typical. The communitarian bias of Al-Sabáh is mde clear enough, while you won't learn about that of the TOB and M. AQMJ through this particular filtration mechanism. The more dubious claims of the "official" Twelver fishwrap are recounted inside shudder-quotes, but M. le Ministre and M. al-Bazzáz's employees are attended to more respectfully. On top of which, we get a healthy dose of flat-out newsitorializing pointed in the predictable direction.

Defense Minister Speaks Out The Iraqi Government Transforms Tribes Into Private Armies By Amer Mohsen The Iraqi minister of defense admitted to Az-Zaman that weapons earmarked for the Iraqi army somehow find their way into the hands of the militias. In an interview he gave to the Iraqi newspaper, ‘Abd al-Qadir Muhammad Jasim declared that corruption and militias inhabit the halls of his ministry. Jasim confirmed that the phenomenon of “fictitious” employees is still rampant among his units, which means that salaries and benefits are paid to non-existent staff and soldiers. This problem plagues several administrations of the Iraqi state, and it points to the extent of complicity between administrators and corruption in Iraqi institutions. More significantly, Jasim affirmed that “he is being pressured by the major political blocs in Iraq to restructure his ministry along the lines of power-sharing deals.” The minister claimed that he is resisting such pressures and that he is not beholden to the will of the political parties. Statements like these have been made by other Iraqi officials, but, as is often the case, Jasim did not specify which militias are illegally receiving Iraqi Army weapons, and did not name the politicians who are “pressurizing” him to comply with “power-sharing deals” (or muhásasa in Arabic, a polite term for legalized corruption and patronage.) Jasim’s statements inform us about two contradictory strands within the institutions of the Iraqi state: on the one hand, there is the legacy of the Iraqi central state, which runs as far back as 1958; on the other hand, the new sectarian power-sharing formula, which was established –through formal and informal means -- since the American invasion. The Iraqi administrations and ministries are facing pressures to comply with the “new rules of the game”, whereby sectarian formulas (which often run through patronage networks) determine the composition and functioning of the state bureaucracy. Az-Zaman also revealed new facts pertaining to the execution of Taha Yaseen Ramadan, Saddam’s vice-president. According to “sources close to the tribunal,” none of the major court members of Ramadan’s tribunal were present during his execution. The judge was “on a vacation in a foreign country,” while the public prosecutor was in Kurdistan “presenting his felicitations to the president Jalal Talabani for his recovery (from a recent health crisis).” Az-Zaman reminded its readers that the Judge of Saddam’s case had applied for asylum in England, a hint as to why Ramadan’ judges avoided being present in the scene of his execution. The government-owned As-Sabah headlined with the news of the clashes between Anbari tribes and al-Qa‘ida. The newspaper said that “full mobilization” has been announced on the part of the clans against the armed groups in Anbar. In addition, a front-page op-ed by the editor-in-chief, Falah al-Mish‘al saluted “the heroic tribes of al-Anbár” for their “continuous victories” against “the terrorists.” The paper reported that the city of al-Falluja is being “cleaned” of armed men, in house-to-house battles which have left large sections of the city under the control of the clans and the Iraqi police. Al-Sabáh’s front page today marks a new turn in the relationship between the central government and the tribes. The editorial by al-Mish'al signifies that the government now openly supports the tribal forces in their fight in Anbar, and publicly acknowledges them as allies and partners. Iraq, like several states in the Levant and the Gulf region, has always had a tenuous relationship with its tribes. The central government has often seen the clans as a threatening and competing centrifugal force, even though in some instances, the government tried to conciliate with [sic] tribal groups and attempted to use them as political allies (which the monarchical regime did, as well as Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War). Several questions will need to be asked sooner or later regarding the “legitimacy” of arming tribes and recognizing their armed militias (formally or informally) as legal entities. Will these tribes be disarmed after al-Qa‘ida’s flight from Anbar? Or will they be used as a paramilitary force to police the province? What will the long-term effects be of allowing tribal armies to garner power and influence? Is the Iraqi government effectively replacing one armed militia with another? And finally, how will these arrangements reflect on the shape of the “New Iraq” that is to emerge from the current crisis?

We need not leap to the conclusion that Slogger City as a whole sees the neocolony through Bazzázian spectacles, strictly speaking, although M. Amer Mohsen certainly seems to. His concluding deluge of questions can hardly be taken as other than Ba‘thophil or Ba‘thoid. The Central Government (may it speedily be restored to the fatherland's Natural Masters!) should in principle not make deals with the backward Bedouin, and in practice the incumbent usurpers are "conciliating with" entirely the wrong militant Sunnites.

M. Mohsen would not dream of viewing the question from the viewpoint of poor M. al-Málikí and the U.I.A. caucus, who quite naturally have no theo-communitarian leverage in al-Anbár to speak of, and might be pardoned for making mistakes about exactly which horse thieves to back. Advising that they support none at all amounts to recommending that they give up all pretenses to controlling the Wild West at all. That is questionable advice in itself, and doubly so given the likelihood that M. al-Bazzáz and M. Mohsen look forward to a day when the Málikí crew will no longer be able to pretend to govern any other governates either, that being the ideal shape for their preferred "New Iraq."

There's no harm in these gentry rooting for their favourite team, of course, and probably not much in pretending to be objective and neutral as they do so either, as long as the pretense is written up in Arabic and nobody who matters is likely to be taken in. Doing it in the language of invasion, however, is more open to reproach, since the target audience is very ignorant and thus readily deceivable. M. Amer Mohsen definitely needs a few points subtracted from his score.

As to the management and staff of Slogger City, one cannot say more for sure than that they do no object to this sort of thing. It seems likely that they have no special communitarian preferences for Sunnites over the Shia of their own. Yet it is not quite impossible that they might. Had Rebecca West written this mess up rather than the Yugoslav mess, she might have quoted us "Sunnis are heroes and Shiites are lawyers," or some equivalent folk wisdom, as a sentiment to be approved by all left-minded persons. It's rather a good parallel, since her adorable Serbs were natural masters in charge of the central government, whereas all those pettigoging Croat attorneys were partition fans and troublemekers generally. (Ah, Mr. Bones, what might Black Lamb and Grey Falcon be like, had the lady visited those provinces in the wake of a Mussolini invasion that had put the "lawyers" temporarily on top, in violation of justice and nature?) In any case, extremes of sympathizing with particular factions in very remote quarrels must be possible, seeing that it has actually happened. Nevertheless, the odds are against it.

Much more probably, Slogger City as such is only militantly sympathizing with pretty well everybody's conventional wisdom about Crawford's conquered provinces: the best way to kiss the quagmire and make it well is "clearly" a ruthless program of Affirmative Action for those poor mistreated Arab-speaking Sunnites. Needless to say, that plan of campaign overlaps with the agenda of the Times of Bazzázístán well enough to be getting on with. True, the Bazzázian subset of occupied natives themselves want a good deal more than Crawfordites or CFR/ISG gentry have in mind to allot them, but for that matter, so do most of the Free Kurd natives as well. In the abstract, Peaceful Freedumbia might work well enough if those lines were projected and enforced: Free Kurds and Arab Sunni subjects would settle for less than total independence and total domination respectively, because if the militant Republicans ever went away, they'd have even less than they have at the moment. And the UIA usurpers would have a stake in a permanent GOP occupation as well, since it allows them to pretend to be the central government nominally, though scarely substatntially.

The real world does not work quite like that, however, and so much for "in the abstract"! Only in the case of Free Kurdistan do abstraction and reality even begin to coincide. And, as a pessimist might expect, that is the wheel that squeaks least already.

So then, how about Ms. Sapientia Conventionalis and her abstraction? If the Ba‘thoids and all the rest of them, al-Qá‘ida in ‘Iráq excepted, are once sufficiently pandered to and overrepresented, would that sufficiently do the trick? By doing the trick we must mean that the arrangement remains viable after some sort of partial withdrawal of GOP forces from the neocolony, perhaps rather along Senator Clinton's lines, which would allow hit-and-run strikes against evil globoterrorists, but no additional mucking about with the Green Zone pols. The latter would have to be set on exactly the right course at the outset, like an ICBM, and not continually fine-tuned like a cruise missile. Given that crucial restriction, can a hefty dose of Affirmative Action for Bazzázístán be expected to save the face of Boy and Party?

It seems unlikely. M. Mohsen accidentally alludes to what I consider the really fundamental problem, the fact that really exists no unified "Bazzázístán" to be pandered to. Humpty Dumpty was pushed off the wall by the invasionites, and now he's not to be put together again, no matter how many horses and men King Dubya sents out to aid Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton. In a way, the Slogger City twistifier is quite right, "the long-term effects of allowing tribal armies to garner power and influence" will not be very pretty. Regardless of which tribal armies are favoured. Also regardless of whether nontribal Ba‘thoids are favoured instead. Whatever neo-Iraqi Sunnite Arabs poor M. al-Málikí, or his patrons down at the ranch, may pick to pander to, he will make more enemies than friends. There is no longer any there there, no functional theo-community, only shreds and tatters of the former one. Historically considered, this fate of disunity and disintegration perhaps serves them right: under Turks and Brits and Mecca monarchy and barracks-based patriots and then finally Saddam, their Sunni Ascendancy was so complete that it did for that theo-community what Kurds and Twelvers perforce had to do for themselves. By the time the Crawfordites broke in and smashed the last incarnation of their racket, they had forgotten how to do unity for themselves. Neocomrade Chas. Murray ought to have preached them a very severe sermon about the insidious dangers of dependency on the Wicked State a generation or two ago.

Not that it would have mattered if he had, any more than it helps now to point out in AEIdeological terms that what conventional wisdom is prescribing at the moment is only a slightly different strain of Murray's Disease. In the improbable event that any sort of Affirmative Action contraption makes it down the runway and up into the air at all, it will crash long before anybody can become conditioned to dependency upon it. A wide variety of outcomes for the Republican extremists' neo-Iraq remain conceivable, but Lady Sapientia kids herself badly about her current favourite, the one in which poor M. al-Málikí is kicked in the head until he makes sufficient concessions to the Bazzázístánís, and then they stop shooting at Republicans and Twelvers, and then the Badr Organization and the Mahdí Army are abolished as unnecessary, and then finally all the polluted water in the Gulf of Petroleum turns to champagne for everybody to toast Success and Victory with.

Doubtless M. al-Bazzáz and M. Amer Mohsen don't expect anything much like that to happen any more than I do. As noted, their schemes overlap with Miss Sappy's only up to a point. As fifty-eight, percent, I think it was, of our neo-Iraqi subjects of the Bazzází persuasion told the pollsters the other day, a "strongman" seems like the best idea going, and that is a very different idea from Miss Sappy's, one involving no silly imported or imposed nonsense about "democracy," let alone "affirmative action," except insofar as Mr. Big will clamp down on everybody indiscriminately -- apart from his family and friends and their traditional clients, of course. M. Mohsen is very hostile in his misplaced editorializing to "patronage networks" that work according to "the new sectarian power-sharing formula," but perhaps he wouldn't mind them so much if they employed "an old Ba‘th-like power-hoarding formula," so to call it. Or call it the Mubárak Paradigm. For that matter, you could as well call it business as usual in the Levant.

Unlike Sappy's radiant visions, the Mubárak Paradigm is undoubtedly workable, and also a fairly probable scenario for the future development of Occupied Iraq. Messrs. al-Bazzáz and Mohsen ought to worry a little, though, that they might end up with unexpectable and regrettable consequences, as for instance the worst of both worlds, a Mr. Big who actually likes "the new sectarian power-sharing formula" and means to shove it down everybody's throat with a ruthlessness that is off the scope of the Crawfordites. Or, even worse than the worst, a Mr. Big who firmly imposes a Twelver Ascendancy, giving the Bazzázians two percent instead of twenty percent of all the goodies and bennies that his Even Newer Baghdad distributes to its subjects.

However it is perhaps useless to warn them about a prospect they will consider so unlikely. I fear they really do more or less think that they are heroes and the usurpers no better than lawyers. They may even calculate that if worst looks likely to come to worst, the Sunni International will rush to bail them out. That is not as impossible as Sappy's plan, but it is nothing to bet the farm on. Here again, even an apparent success could undo them: how if afterwards the Sunni International decided that it ought to administer the provinces it will have just neoliberated from the Safavids? What if the Mubárak Paradigm meant having the General himself in to rule personally, even! (Machiavelli has a good discussion about this sort of difficulty.) The Sunni International is far from being as dismembered and disintegrated as the former Sunni Ascendancy in "Iraq", but it is not exactly a monolithic colossus either, and as to its disinterested concern for coreligionists, there are folks in East Palestine who might have a word to say on that topic.

On to the "Post-Bush Awakening"!

Let's pick on some really conventional conventional wisdom for a change!

Dabbling in the narcissism of our petty differences with Mr. Badger and the JCIA and St. Helena of Cobban and the (hopefully) one-and-only Dr. Reidar Visser is good enough for most days, Mr. Bones, but let us face it, sir, compared to E. J. Dionne, none of our gang even begins to exist! So, then, here's an Opponent of Stature, for all that he can't make the bushogenic quagmirization of both America and of neo-Iraq stop either.

So, then, ad rem!

To understand how much the Iraq war has transformed the way most Americans think about foreign policy, consider what passed for shrewd analysis four years ago. The words on the "in" list included "unilateral," "bold," "robust," "transformative" and "sole remaining superpower." T he words on the "out" list included "multilateral," "nuance," "patience," "diplomacy," "allies," "history" and "prudence." Today, the "in" and "out" lists would be almost exactly reversed. The new "out" list includes such additions as "reckless," "arrogant" and "incompetent." With so many establishmentarians now running away from the war, many would prefer to forget the political mood at 10:15 p.m. on March 19, 2003, when President Bush announced that "at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." Politics did not stop at the water's edge. The edition of The [Washington] Post in which Bush's speech was reported also included this headline: "GOP to Hammer Democratic War Critics." The report began: "Congressional Republicans are implicitly challenging the patriotism of some Democrats who have criticized President Bush's war plans, a sign that the divisive politics marking the 108th Congress are unlikely to cease during wartime." Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, then chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, predicted that Democrats would "pay a political price" for feeding the perception that they opposed disarming and deposing Saddam Hussein. Those who bemoan our politically polarized foreign policy debate should remember how it started.

Rather a disappointing incipit, innit, Mr. Bones? Although to be sure it is rather easier for us to take that line when we have not changed our own views about Boy-'n'-Party invasionism significantly since Day One. And that no matter whether the days be counted from 11 September 2001 or from 19 March 2003. But stay, let's have another chunk of it before we leap to conclusions, shall we?

When the argument over invading Iraq was publicly joined in summer 2002, many mainstream Republicans were queasy. That September, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) told me his constituents were "concerned about a go-it-alone strategy," and Rep. Thomas Petri (R-Wis.) said voters in his district expressed "concern about whether we know what we're doing or how we're going to do it." The concerns of those good citizens were never answered because the administration was so successful in creating a lock-step mood, trumping doubters with extravagant claims about perils emanating from mushroom clouds and aluminum tubes. The process of twisting the facts continued for four years. Every setback in Iraq was first ignored, then denied and then explained away as temporary. Some new strategy was always hyped as the beginning of a successful end. It's no wonder the war's remaining supporters get so little traction when they claim that the surge is working and that Bush should be given one more chance to get the war right. Patriotic skeptics have heard it before. Foreign policy hawks fear an "Iraq Syndrome" involving a pathological wariness about the use of American force and an unhealthy mistrust of every word coming out of the White House.

Of course there mst be another shoe left to drop after that last bit, some inevitable "whereas" . . . .

Comrade Dionne would, I suppose, claim that he personally was never bamboozled by the militant hormone-based Busheviki either. At Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh they would presumably agree with that self-estimate: this l*b*r*l gentlefiend has always despised the One Indispensible Lone Ranger and rooted for all the miscellaneous and assorted Tontos of the world, has he not? Was there ever really a time when Citizen E. J. Dionne, Jr., did not exhibit "an unhealthy mistrust of every word coming out of [any Republican-infested] White House"? When he would not have applauded each and every lemming in the ranks of Grant's Old Party who marches out of step with theitr own Big Management as "good citizens" whose "concerns" somehow fail to get properly "addressed"? Perhaps his bad attitude dates back no rather than Watergate, or to the Gulf of Tonkin as expounded with Pentagon Papaers glosses from Mr. Daniel Ellsberg, or perhaps to President Sorensens's Profiles in Courage. It may even go back to the mythological infancy of the race, when She talked Him into taking a bite of the apple too, thus ensuring that the Fall of Man should be a multilateral event at the time, and peccatum originale a thoroughly bipartisan concerm ever since. Whenever EJDj's bad attitude dates from, exactly, it must have been long before 11 September 2001 or 19 March 2003.

I do not profess to "mind" that Comrade Dionne should take a jaundiced view of big-managerial gland-basers out of Rancho Crawford. Our own donkey solidarity would not last long without it. Parteinost' may not be quite as wonderful as the señoritos, the little "conservative" "intellectual" friends of Eddie Burke sometimes rate it, but it is rather a good idea all the same, and I'm decidedly for it. Naturally it has to work both ways, with those silly geese keeping an ever-unenchanted eye upon us more rational ganders as well as vice versa. And naturally when a good idea is really a good idea, the goodness of it does not somehow mystically stop "at the water's edge" either. Never did. Does not now. Never shall.

Here's the other shoe, and the rest of the scribble as well:

On the contrary, this botched war is far more likely to lead to what might properly be called the Post-Bush Awakening. It is an awakening to the danger of viewing critics as traitors, to the costs of making everything about politics and to the sad tendency of establishmentarians to seek refuge within the boundaries of prevailing opinion. It is also an awakening to the wise skepticism of everyday Americans toward ideologues who believe that optional wars of their design can miraculously change the world. Here's what Vice President Cheney said in late August 2002 about the transformative potential of a war with Iraq: "Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart, and our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced." The uneasy constituents whom Camp and Petri were meeting with around the time Cheney spoke were too realistic to accept this nonsense whole. Next time, they will insist that their questions are answered and their doubts allayed before their sons and daughters are sent off to war. None of this means that American opinion has become isolationist. The country's determination to defeat terrorism has not slackened. Most Americans still believe the war in Afghanistan was a proper response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and wonder why it was left unfinished so the ideologues could go off in pursuit of Utopia on the Euphrates. The men and women who wear the nation's uniform have never been so popular. But those who spent the past four years hyping threats, underestimating costs, ignoring rational warnings, painting unrealistic futures and savaging their opponents have been discredited. This awakening is the first step toward rebuilding our country's influence and power.

Comrade Dionne may have overestimated the level of his media corporation's customers when he stuck in that little stiletto thrust about "ideologues" with a "Utopia on the Euphrates." That jab is admirable in itself, to be sure, but how many readers will inderstand it properly? Perhaps even thou and I, Mr. Bones, do not ourselves understand it as well as we ideally might, not having yet perused one of his corporation colleague's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. Anyway, EJDj certainly should have said "Tigris" rather than "Euphrates," unless he mistakenly supposes "Euphrates" to alliterate impressively with "Utopia."

More substantively, he says he expects an "awakening" and we ourselves incline to expect only more fiasco. Worse fiasco, furthermore, because the next discouraging episodes, as we envision them, will pass for bipartisan. This time we're to have Vietnam backwards, it looks like: first the strictly Big Management Party hostilities, and only afterwards the CFR/ISG or nominally all-American hostilities. ’Astaghfirulláh, one begs pardon of Father Zeus!

Ah, but EJDj seems to have known in advance that he might run into shady people like thee and me, Mr. Bones, and he wanted firmly to rule us out of order preëmptively and unilaterally, almost Crawfordwise -- "None of this means that American opinion has become isolationist. The country's determination to defeat terrorism has not slackened."

'Tis an interesting bloviation, but whom is it supposed to impress? Out beyond all that salty water, I mean? Do China or Peru or anybody in between take the Dionnean view that "terrorism" has been seriously neglected whilst the gland-based extremists muck about buildin' or not buildin' irrelevant Utopias in their Boy-'n'-Party neo-Iraq? Has such a view as that one any resonance at all anywhere except here im Heimatlande Gottes? 'Twould be a fine thing. Mr. Bones, all this "rebuilding our country's influence and power" song-and-dance of Comrade Dionne's, but is an unslackened "determination to defeat terrorism" the way to go about it? Which foreigners are actually complaining that Uncle Sam's will slackens, that of late our Sam has become insufficiently terrorized of Terrorism Itself? Do not the vast majority of Lesser Breeds Without rather incline to think that our Sam has sadly failed to put the Global Terrorist Menace in any proper perspective, failed to consult with his actuaries and other neutral specialists about how menaced that poor innocent lamb of a Sam really is, as they have long since done themselves, concluding -- quite soundly in my judgment -- that it is a danger to buy a little extra insurance against rather than to launch Kiddie Krusades against.

That can't possibly be "isolationism" on my part, Mr. Bones, can it? After all, I am recommending that Sam should take lessons in measure and moderation from China, Peru & Co., that we should learn from them and adapt our tone to theirs, neither ruthlessly imposing some cheapjack GOP Boy-'n'-Party tone of hysteria instead, nor shutting ourselves from any influence of anybody wiser's tone either. Do I not stand in the EXACT middle of the road, then, Mr. Bones, along with the yellow stripe and all the roadkill armadillos? Do I propose to "appease" the Lesser Breeds Without when I propose to take my tone from them? I conscientiously consider theirs the proper tone to take, and so I take it -- or indeed, took it already before hearing from the LBW, or speculating about what tone would do best for "rebuilding our country's influence and power."

It can't do US any harm on the "influence and power" front not to look forever like invincible Boy-'n'-Party ignoramuses and neo-hormonized preëmptive retaliators, obviously. But EJDj obviously supposes that in the last analysis there really exists some separate Influence-and-Power Front for our Sam to fight on, even if defensively only, whereas I disagree and consider that notion all a chimaera. There must be some radical mistake here, really, if omphaloscopic worry about who's to be the Glorious Leader and who the rather less glory-endowed Followers -- the whole boilerplate Lone Ranger and Tonto scenario, in short -- is forever to trump simply doing what ought to be done only because it obviously ought to be done.

One might even think, Mr. Bones, that our l*b*r*l*sm has not advanced even half a centimetre between Woodrow Wilson and Mr. E. J. Dionne, Jr., that "we" are still too proud to fight as a mere "Ally" of anybody sensible in the world and must always insist upon being recognized as rather an "Associated Power" that comes pre-equipped with special and exceptional and inscrutable heimatlandisch motivations all our own that require to be especially reserved for by other parties, since mere Gentiles can never properly understand their predestined and indispenable betters.

Was this what Mr. Jefferson meant in his 1776 Congressional Manifesto by "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind," that Wunnerful US are forever to teach, and ignorant political Gentiles predestined to be but Our pupils and Our clients? That Sam must always "lead" and never, ever tamely just "agree"?

One can only say "Yuck!" as vociferously as possible and as often as possible.

So here's three hearty Yucks to our present Opponent of Stature, plus also to everybody else who toploftily disdains to agree with even her own opinion when somebody else might claim priority.

That's political spinach, Mr. Dionne, and it stinks to high Heaven!

Doctor K.'s War, sive Badger goes Kafka

Not once or even twice does Mr. Badger wax wroth about Romans (and Halliburtonians) as imperialists and counterinsurgents, but three times in a row. All this over a couple of documents that can not be of any great intrinsic importance, surely, since the originals were composed in mere Beltway City English. You and I would have passed it over with a shrug, Mr. Bones, and for that matter, we did exactly that when the JCIA website posted part of the caboodle in question, at least, early on Monday morning.

The War on Juan that Mr. Badger rather listlessly wages is an interesting matter in its own right, and this minor skirmish could have scored a few real points, for a change, against the Sage of Ann Arbour, who really did not properly indicate what sort of document it was that he helped disseminate.

Professor Colin Kahl of the Political Science Department at the University of Minnesota shared the thoughts below . . . .

Naturally one would take it that Prof. Dr. Kahl was seated at his computer trying to get his own Soc. Sci. thoughts about invasion and occupation policy straight and then, once they had turned into an e-text, he decided they were so precious that various colleauges ought to be permitted to share in them.

In fact, however,

This e-mail concerns U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts in Iraq and a briefing presented by Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments titled The “New” Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Baghdad Surge: Formula for Success?

Mister K, that evil mastermind in the shadows, is thus not Prof. Dr. Kahl at all, but rather Neocomrade Dr. A. Krepinevich, who describes himself for potential customers of his tank-thinking as follows:

r. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. is President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Dr. Krepinevich gained extensive strategic planning experience in national security and technology policy through his work in the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment, and by serving on the personal staff of three secretaries of defense. During this period, Dr. Krepinevich wrote the Defense Department's seminal assessment of the emerging revolution in military affairs. Dr. Krepinevich also served as a member of the Department of Defense’s National Defense Panel. In 1993, following an Army career that spanned twenty-one years, Dr. Krepinevich retired from military service to assume the directorship of what is now CSBA. An accomplished author and lecturer, Dr. Krepinevich has written extensively on a variety of security related issues, to include articles published in The National Interest, Issues in Science and Technology, Armed Forces Journal, Joint Forces Quarterly and Strategic Review, among others. He is also the author of a number of monographs, including The Air Force of 2016, A New Navy for a New Era, Missed Opportunities: An Assessment of the Roles and Missions Commission Report, and The Bottom-Up Review: An Assessment. In 1987 he received a Furniss Award for his book The Army and Vietnam, a critical assessment of the service’s performance during the war. Dr. Krepinevich has testified on numerous occasions before the Senate Budget Committee, the House National Security Committee, and the Senate Armed Services Committee. He frequently contributes to both national and local print and broadcast media, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and U.S. News & World Report, and has appeared on each of the major networks and National Public Radio. Dr. Krepinevich has lectured before a wide range of professional and academic audiences, including those at Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University, the U.S. Military Academy, the Naval War College, the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University, Europe’s Marshall Center, and the Defense Department’s "Summer Study," among many others. He has taught a wide variety of national security and defense policymaking courses while on the faculties of West Point and George Mason University, and currently lectures at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and Georgetown University. A graduate of West Point, Dr. Krepinevich holds MPA and PhD degrees from Harvard University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

There must be hundreds of other Big Management Party hangers-on with similar credentials. Naturally that does not prove that this particular neocomrade is not the evil mastermind lurking in the shadows. These are very lurkable shadows, after all. Nevertheless, on the same page as Dr. K.'s autobiography are the names of his subordinate tank thinkers, not one whom has ever come to our attention before this morning. None of them seem to know anything in particular about the Middle East, and perhaps one shouldn't expect them to, when the tank as a whole floats the word "budget" aloft on its pennant. Invasion and occupation policy, "COIN," is probably not their main beat at all. The names of the Dr. Col.'s books suggest to me that he is probably mainly interested in getting big-ticket items into the Pentagon budget for the enrichment of his corporate customers. He might easily have found the late Rumsfeld a congenial spirit, considering Rummy's characteristic vixion of a brave new military with lots and lots of extremely expensive whizbangs and not a whole lot of Joe Rifleman. On the other hand, perhaps his tank thinkers can come up with ways to make the GOP GWOT pay well too?

How did the social scientizer come across Dr. Col. Krepinevich? Fortunately we have his own account, responding to Mr. Badger's first apoplexy attack:

Colin Kahl said... I read your commentary on my recent email on the evolution of U.S. counterinsurgency in Iraq, re-posted on Juan Cole's website. The "academic" tone should not lead you to believe that I, personally, think about the horrible ongoing human tragedy in Iraq in purely calculating terms. Rather, the original email was in the context of commenting on the analysis in a widely circulated briefing by Andrew Krepenevich, a well-known scholar of counterinsurgency, on the thinking leading up to the recent U.S. "surge" (the briefing and the full context of my email can be found [here]. I think it is fair to take the military and administration to task on the torture issue. However, despite the widely publicized abuse of detainees and the failure of the U.S. to live up to its international legal obligatons as occupying powers to provide for basic security in Iraq, the U.S. military has not thrown out the Geneva Conventions altogether. As my Foreign Affairs piece makes clear, the U.S. military has taken more steps than is commonly recognized to protect Iraqi civilians. That is a good thing, both morally and strategically. We know what contemporary wars look like when powerful militaries combat insurgents without any regard for the population. In Chechnya, for example, between 50,000 and 250,000 Chechen civilians have been killed by the Russian military in indiscriminate attacks since 1994 (out of a total population of 1 million). All that said, in my Foreign Affairs article, I note the many instances in which American troops have engaged in misconduct or conducted operations in ways that put Iraqi civilians at signficant risk of death and injury. And I clearly note in the conclusion of the article that the U.S. should take additional steps to protect the Iraqi civilian population and improve its record of investigating alleged atrocities. Lastly, I share your concern about what might occur "after the surge." Indeed, I have an essay on precisely that topic in the new Foreign Policy (online).

Prof. Dr. Kahl was not personally present at Dr. Col. Krepinevich's dog-and-pony show for "senior congressional staff." Who it was that summarized the words that all those pretty PowerPoints illustrated remains unknown, as does whether it was only Boy-'n'-Party staffers that were invited to the show. Provisionally we may attribute the summary to the doctor colonel himself, I suppose. It has been distributed widely enough that if he feels it misrepresents his tank thought, probably he'll take the trouble to set the record straight.

Kahl is rather more alarming than Krepinevich, wouldn't you say, Mr. Bones? If Mr. Badger's saeva indignatio had started with that response rather than with the slide show as summarized, the situation would make more sense. Still, he can't have condescended to read very much aggression-friendly matterial in English if he finds Dr. Kahl outstandingly godawful These gentry all "share our concerns," do they not, at their CFRs and their ISGs and so on? In dealing with that crew, one needs to cultivate a sort of double vision, attending not just to their remarks about the actual state of the Kiddie Krusade, but to what they would be saying, had it all worked out more happily for Boy and Party. Mr. Badger seems to concede them one of their most dubious polemical ploys, that we are not to look back at the mistakes actually made, but think of what to do next from the bushogenic quagmire as we find it. "To live each day as if it were our first." Dr. Kahl perhaps passed the summary of the dog-and-pony show on to Prof. Dr. Cole because of the retrospective or "denial" part of it, however, and not because of the words of wisdom for future invasions and occupations.

Mr. Badger not only knows exactly why Don Juan published it, he even told us his knowledge at the end of Fit the First:

Kahl's little essay is something he sent to other experts who participate in a listserve, and he gave Juan Cole permission to publish it. Cole's own point in publishing it is no doubt that Iraq is on the brink, and this is no time to be thinking of toppling the SCIRI-led administration. But I think this tells us more than that.

It looks like the namesake of meles meles is living up to his chosen creature's reputation in so-called unnatural history. Having once gotten it into his head that poor JC is a shill for SCIRI --- on what original basis who can guess? -- Mr. Badger is never going to let go of that notion. This misunderstanding is especially funny for Mr. Bones and me, considering that we more or less actually believe the vile heresies that he wildly attributes to Prof. Cole. Unfortunately the JCIA merely reprints the summary without venturing any informed commentary about what is especially striking or important in it. There's nothing closer to "on the brink" than "that leaves the 'clear, hold, and build' option. However, as the briefing makes clear, this strategic shift may simply be too little, too late," which does not seem all that close to me, and certainly inspires no especial concern in my breast for the domination of SCIRI.

I notice, by the way, that there is a little bit of two-hundred proof Kahl present, in the sentences after the one just cited. Let's have enough of a chunk of it to get some handle on the context:

... There are other successful approaches to COIN, including what the briefing calls 'the Roman Strategy' ('make a desert and call it peace'), which was basically the approach Saddam used to prevent sustained insurgency in Iraq. But, as the briefing properly notes, adopting this approach (or even somewhat softer, but still highly coercive COIN practices, such as those used by the Americans effectively in the Philippines between 1899-1902), is incompatible with norms against targeting civilians embraced by the U.S. military and political leadership. So, with the Roman strategy off the table, that leaves the 'clear, hold, and build' option. However, as the briefing makes clear, this strategic shift may simply be too little, too late. What the briefing doesn't say is that it is also unclear whether employing COIN best practices will work in the context of not only a raging insurgency (in Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala), but also a sectarian civil war (in Baghdad, Diyala, and increasingly Kirkuk), diffuse criminal anarchy and militia rivalry (in the South), and endemic separatist tendencies (in Kurdistan) . . .

Prof. Dr. Kahl thinks that the whole neo-Iraqi racket is falling apart, it looks like, and even more interestingly, he does not care for any of the indigs much, except perhaps the rootless cosmopolitan community, which he does not mention. That view might expect to find favor at Ann Arbour as well as the preceding bit about "denial," if our own general theory of the JCIA is correct, and denouncing whatever the militant GOP happens to be up to at the moment is the real key to all Colean mythologies.

Mr. Badger is determined to think otherwise, though. He wants there to exist a coven or cabal of "experts" (his shudder quotes) that Cole and Kahl and Krepinevich are all dedicated and conscious participants in. The really existing CFR has produced quite a number of crazies who think rather similar dark thoughts about it, except that they do not often possess anything like Mr. Badgetr's detailed grasp of the Levant, or of any other hapless region that the "Conspiracy on Foreign Relations" might decide to victimize hereafter. He is further disposed to think that his preferred scenario's black hats don't have any serious objections to "Roman" solutions for their various problems with restless natives. Their boilerplate disclaimers of the "I appreciate your concerns" type are indeed rather annoying, and in the remoter background it would not be wise to forget about Hiroshima and Nagasaki altogether. Nevertheless, one can -- and some do -- go paranoid in that direction easily enough.

We ourselves are antecedently disposed to reject badgerism about the USA, because it falls under a broader rubric that we made up our minds about years ago. To think such thoughts requires that there be a "power elite" hiding at some undisclosed location and reducing our public theory about how America works to a nonsense. However the public theory is at least 95% accurate, and political power remains where the 1787 Constitution (as subsequently amended) assigned it originally, with a few hundred elected persons at Washington City and Rancho Crawford, not in the hands of corporate boards, or CFR's and ISG's, or even of partisan para-academic think tanks. If such folks want to rule, they still have to talk Representatives and Senators and Administrations into agreeing with their views. They cannot simply tell the latter waht to think and do, nor blackmail them into doing it either. I.e., they cannot really "rule" at all, not the way a Weekly Standardizer craves to rule.

This reflection is encouraging in general, but there is a certain dark lining about it as regards the Middle East in particular, where the bad news iincludes the distressing fact that our Uncle Sam aggressed against the former Iraq because he wanted to. The motives of those who think they are doing la Démocratie en Amérique a favor by dissociating it from such follies and unpleasantnesses are perhaps admirable, but since one requires to think unclearly in order to enlist under their banner, we shall not be signing up. I see that we quoted M. Pascal's maxim Travaillons donc à bien penser : voilà le principe de la morale against Mr. Badger less than a week ago, but the rule is so important that repetition seems excusable. The only defense of democracy that will look good in the long run is one that admits all the warrantable charges against our stuff and then is still for it even when described by the most hostile antidemocrat who does not positively misrepresent. The "Gulf of Defense," so to call it, is profoundly unsatisfactory. We were not, in fact, deceived by anybody as regards either Indochina or "Iraq," and even if we had been, the blame for it would be at least 50% our own for being so gullible. That portion would also be more important than the other 50%, since it is the half we could actually do something about ourselves. Attributing our own mistakes .to a Power Elite or to the craftiness of hidden persuaders and "experts" is no better ethically than it is factually.

Meanwhile, Mr. Badger's account of what the hidden persuaders are supposedly doing at the moment is positively Baroque. It appears that The Cabal wants to have an esoteric debate and an exoteric debate conducted simultaneously. In Fit the Third we read

So the problem being proposed for urgent public discussion in the vibrant American democracy is a completely different problem from that being discussed in private by the policy elite. The policy elite is discussing what to do if America can't quell the resistance to its occupation using 'best practices', and the options are to withdraw, or kick back and try the last-resort 'Roman option', perhaps with the help of some 'hired guns'. The vibrant democracy is discussing what do do if the civil war continues, and the options are to withdraw, or stay and take sides. And curiously enough, what happens is that staying and taking sides (fighting Sunnis, in other words) is presented as something that is more in keeping with America's 'moral obligations in Iraq', because having American soldiers along side Shiite forces 'might be the only way to minimize atrocities'. So when you boil it down, the policy-elite is discussing non-withdrawal in the interest of a last-resort scorched-earth policy by America, but at the same time presenting this as non-withdrawal in the interest of fulfilling America's moral obligation to help minimize atrocities.

Even if we believed in this double-barreled fantasy, it would not be easy to make out exactly what the alleged perps stand to gain from their ingenuity. Does The Cabal propose to be in fact at Roman or Halliburtonian war against all our neo-Iraqi subjects, yet pretend to Televisionland and the electorate that they are supporting the Shí‘a against the Sunnis? What sense would that make? Televisionland does not especially cherish the Twelvers of "Iraq" and dislike the colony's Arab Sunnis, it does not give a hoot about either group, except perhaps to be very tired of hearing so much about them all the time. And considered as Mil. Sci. rather than as agitprop, what's the West Point point of this "last-resort scorched-earth policy by America" supposed to be? Mr. Badger makes it sound like mere petulence, smashing the chair to pieces that one stubbed one's toe against in the dark. That line is so infantile that surely it ought to be the exoteric aspect rather than the esoteric one. Televisionland might find that plan a bit too childish even for them, but I can scarcely imagine any exalted violence professional wasting five seconds on such stuff.

Mr. Badger is probably right to expect that "nonwithdrawal" is what the CFR/ISG gentry will plump for after the Republican Party extremists' Surge of '07 fades from notoriety, but at least the gentry have grown-up ideas about their real interests in neo-Iraq, which of course center around "stability" for the Gulf of Petroleum and for the Tel Aviv statelet. Neither The Cabal's economic nor their ideological interest would be forwarded by gratuitous earth-scorching. It would not make gasoline cheaper, and equally, it would not make the Levant any safer for Hyperzionists to dwell in. It would, in brief, be stark raving madness. A policy analysis based on the assumption that they are all clinically nuts as well as politically wingnuts might conceivably be fun to make up, but beyond that I can perceive no merit in it.

However amidst the general dottiness, one faint glimmer of sense may be detected. When Surge turns to crunch, many CFR gentry are likely enough to appeal to "America's moral obligation to help minimize atrocities," as Mr. Badger phrases it. Why not? Doubtless they sincerely believe in that "military humanism" that lead them to muck about with Serbia and Kosova back when they had more influence with the Executive Branch than they do at present. What devout Boy-'n'-Party fans will make of it, though, ought to be entertaing to watch: however nice it may be for them to find Republican invasionism supported from that rather uinexpected quarter, and the face of the Big Management Party thus to some extent saved, they can scarcely be happy with the idea that Boy and Party have managed to make their neo-Iraq a humanitarian disaster comparable to M. Milosevic's Kosovo! At that point, I daresay both militant GOP nonwithdrawers and "nonpartisan" CFR nonwithdrawers will have to agree very strictly never to talk about how they got to where they find themselves. The whole fragile alliance could fall to pieces if that sort of discussion were indiscriminately permitted. And fragile their alliance is bound to be, because it is by no mean a sure thing that Congress and the electorate will agree with them that nonwithdrawal is the only proper course, the only conceivable course, even.

Mais nous verrons.



.