28 April 2007

Is He Joining Us?

Or are we just getting annexed to Mr. Badger, willy-nilly?

Iraqi positions on the Democrats' "withdrawal" initiative

An Al-Hayat reporter prepared a round-up of comments by people from some of the main political groups in Iraq, on the Democrats' passage of the bill that would tie war-funding to the announcement of a schedule for withdrawal. (This assumes "withdrawal" means what it says. Critiquing that is another question entirely).[A]

What this comes down to is that spokesmen for the Maliki administration, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the main Kurdish coalition in parliament, all think the bill is a bad idea, and mostly for the same reason, namely, that US "withdrawal" should be tied to the ability of the Iraqi forces to take over all security responsibilities, and should not be scheduled independently of that. In various ways, these groups all warn about chaos if that factor is ignored.

On the other side of the question is the Sadrist spokesman:

"Nasr al-Saadi, deputy for the Sadrist block, said: 'The occupation forces are the root cause of all of the security and political problems from which the country is suffering. ...The American administration controls the decisions of the Iraqi government, and consequently the latter lacks autonomy and desicion-making power. Once the occupation withdraws from the country, the government will be able to extend its control over the Iraqi scene. . . . Some have the impression that the American administration is incapable of shutting down the sources of terrorism and rooting it out, and what this leads to is the attrition of all the economic, material and human resources of the country. We support that [withdrawal-timetable] bill completely, and its implementation at the earliest possible time.'"

And the journalist notes the Sadrists aren't the only group supporting the withdrawal idea. The issue of American withdrawal from Iraq is a core demand of the main armed resistance groups, which have made [withdrawal] a condition to their entering into any negotiations with the American forces that would involve disarming and entering in to the political process.

So those are the two poles of the argument: Maliki-SCIRI-Kurds against withdrawal because the Iraqi forces aren't ready, with the Sadrists and the main resistance groups in favor of withdrawal which they see, from their different perspectives, as a precondition for normalization.

The remarks of a representative of the main Sunni parliamentary bloc and also Allawi's Iraqi List, are ambiguous, and talk around the question of withdrawal. Here is the Iraqi Accord Front person:

"Deputy Hussein al-Faluji from the Iraqi Accord Front said "we support any measure from any party that promotes national reconciliation....What we're interested in is the stability of the country and the solution of problems, starting with security. ...This latest bill shows that the Americans have admitted that the occupation of Iraq was a big mistake. ...We will be preparing demands on the US for compensation for all who suffered damage in the occupation, [and this will involve] over three trillion dollars in damages...[B]


The Allawi person, for his part, stressed that you have to understand this latest bill as part of a political struggle in Washington in which the paramount interest of each of the parties is to make the other look bad.[C]

As I noted above, the assumption in this collection of reactions is that the bill really does refer to a "withdrawal" plain and simple. Once the Iraqi parties study the fine print and realize that what the Democrats are intent on defeating is the Republicans, not the Iraq-control project, the configuration among Iraqi parties could be different.[D] For instance, if it became clear that the Americans could in effect garrison Iraq and protect some some of status quo via mega-bases over or under the horizon, or whatever the expression is, or with special forces, or what have you, then it stands to reason that the status quo parties could well support it.[E] But that is another question. The point about today's piece is that the opponents of even talking about withdrawal at this point are the Maliki administration backed by SCIRI and the Kurds, with the "yes to withdrawal" position represented by the Sadrists and important parts of the Sunni resistance.
posted by badger at 7:10 AM


Alliances, alliances, Mr. Bones! And to hear Mr. Badger talking less unreasonably for once!!

Let's review the bidding, sir: in Massachusetts, where we have the honour to be citizens, we are Democrats in America. Had we the misfortune to be neo-subjects of the extremist GOP in the former "Iraq," we should be some sort of fellow travelers, at least, with the Sadr Tendency. It is nice, but not at all dispositive, to find that M. Nasr Sa‘dí -- plus Mr. Badger to boot! -- seem to find that combination plausible.

So far, so good, but then comes "the 'yes to [genuine] withdrawal' position represented by the Sadrists and important parts of the Sunni resistance." It is not as if we have any antecedent objection to the political stance taken by "important parts of the Sunni resistance," Mr. Bones, but when Mr. Badger lumps us in with them unilaterally and preëmptively, well, I dunno, sir. At the same time, he seems to be trying to disenlump us from Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi on the home front, and that's a tricky business that not to be cheaply cartoonized as well. We are, of course, only fellow-traveling donkeys the same as most other registered donkeys are. Like Will Rogers, we don't really hold with organized politics, we're only Democrats.

Out there in one Crawford-conquered boondock of the world, the Sadr Tendency appears to hold promise, political disorganizationwise: nowadays you rarely get fifty words past the first mention of it in the invasion-language MSM than you run into "rogue elements" of it that the "firebrand cleric" does not seem to quite altogether control. Appearances have been known to deceive at times, though, Mr. Bones, and I fear this present is likely to prove one such time. Anyway, it is rather the theoretical policy than the practical fragmentation of the Sadriyya that we vicariously endorse -- if we wanted fragmentation as such, we should look rather Sunniwards.

So, then, what's the Sadrist policy? "Once the occupation withdraws from the country, the government will be able to extend its control over the Iraqi scene," says quasideputy al-Sa‘dí. There is a touch of Dr. Pangloss in that estimate, perhaps, but it does hit the right nail on the head. All the champions of responsible nonwithdrawal take for granted that poor M. al-Málikí's really existing quasigovernment wouldn't last a week if the Crawfordites ever just simply marched back home where they belong. All conventional wisdom thinks that, even, not just the aggression hawks, but Ivory Tower planmonger doves as well. Most of Ms. Sapientia Conventionalis's devotees don't have anything very serious against the existing quasigovernment, or wouldn't if they could disentangle themselves from the delusion that it is all about sponsoring Twelver death squads. The number of folks who would ever actually lift a finger, or throw a bomb, to get rid of poor M. al-Málikí is really rather small, Mr. Bones, if we exclude the extremist Republicans themselves. Unfortunately for Mr. Badger's volunteer match-making efforts, however, most of the quasigovernment's real enemies might easily be described as "important parts of the Sunni resistance."

Even more unfortunately for poor M. al-Málikí, however, scarcely anybody is prepared to lift fingers (or throw bombs) in defense of him, rabid Crawfordites once again excepted. Nevertheless, his position is much stronger than Ms. Sappy appreciates, because his bitter enemies are so feeble that his lack of strong and loyal friends becomes comparatively unimportant. And poor M. al-Málikí has, or may come to have, many wishy-washy slightly helpful -- maybe -- quasifriends in all sorts of places, at Qom and Tehran, at a future de-Crawfordated Washington, at Tel Aviv, at Brussels, at Turtle Bay. The "international community" is never going to actually lift a finger for him, but winking and nodding count for something too, do they not, Mr. Bones, at least at the margin and on occasion?

Meanwhile, here is Quasideputy al-Sa‘dí with much more immediate succour: 'The occupation forces are the root cause of all of the security and political problems from which the country is suffering. ...The American administration controls the decisions of the Iraqi government, and consequently the latter lacks autonomy and decision-making power. Once the occupation withdraws from the country, the government will be able to extend its control over the Iraqi scene. . . . Some have the impression that the American administration is incapable of shutting down the sources of terrorism and rooting it out, and what this leads to is the attrition of all the economic, material and human resources of the country. We support that [withdrawal-timetable] bill completely, and its implementation at the earliest possible time."

That is to say, the quasigovernment need not just slit its throat out of sheer self-disgust about its own quasi-ness, only because it was installed under the yoke of Crawford, it may yet hope to evolve into a genuine and legitimate State, rather than being instantly cast into the dustbin as soon as Iraq becomes a nation once again. This ought to be good news for poor M. al-Málikí, and it is certainly a handsome gesture from the Sadr Tendency, immediately after the sacking of their ministers.

So perhaps there is hope for us all, Mr. Bones?

_____
[A] And who cares that the Boy-'n'-Party crew will veto and sustain, respectively, so it won't happen anyway, tra-la-la?

[B] Another Dream Palace™ courtier is M. Husayn al-Fallújí. Down at the ranch, I doubt that neo-subjects who send in three trillion dollar bills will be considered very ambiguous. What's H. F. going to do, hold the GOP extremists hostage in "Iraq" until they pay his ransom?

[C] Does "the Allawi person" mean, rather disrespectfully, the former George Washington of Peaceful Freedumbia himself personally, or only some spokesman for the rootless cosmopolitan community? Not that it matters.

[D] Isn't that what Dr. ‘Alláwí, or his mouthpiece, just said? Naturally the sectarians of secularism are likely to understand Crawfordology, and mainstream USA politics also, far better their less expensively educated fellow indigs. They cannot be in favour of anything but a responsible nonwithdrawal, I shouldn't think, although that is perhaps only a matter of preferring the frying pan to the fire. The militant Republican invaders could have installed them in power four years ago, but somehow the Bushies unaccountably failed to do that, and the original mistake is not likely to be corrected at this late date.

Their shouldabeen patrons have let the rootless cosmopolitan gang down badly, yet to whom can the latter turn now that would not be even worse than the idiot GOP? Perchance to poor M. al-Málikí, who has indeed make noises about replacing the Sadr Tendency ministers with "technocrats" -- that being another codeword for the RC faction? Ah, well, poor M. al-Málikí is good at making noises, but when it comes to making changes, perhaps one may say without giving offense that he takes festina lente as his watchword? In any case, the president of the council of quasiministers answers to Crawford TX first and foremost, and the cowpokers have already decided against efficaciously empowering "secularism" in their neo-liberated colony. At the moment the paleface patrons are all agog to provide Affirmative Action for those pitiably unfortunate and oppressed Sunni Arabs of neo-Iraq -- and then after a sufficient dose of that, "national reconciliation" will spontaneously break out, &c. &c. don't you know? Why hand out plums and cherries to "Allawi persons" who are nationally reconciled already, and in any case have no viable alternative to hoping that "Iraq" remains a GOP neo-colony indefinitely. (No collective and political alternative, that is. As individuals, they can always fly back to London.)

[E] Not support it simpliciter, however, but only secundum quid and when they are quite sure none of those pesky street Arabs can overhear matters can be frankly discussed in Arab Palace circles alone. The idea of some future "Iraq" that thinks about having lots of Crawfordite troops based even in out-of-sight places the same way the Bundesrepublik Deutschland thought about hosting Uncle Sam's military after 1949 is ridiculous. That tomfoolery is only the Dream Palace™ of the Weekly Standard neo-cons, so to speak.

27 April 2007

Señorito Freddy Kagan Solves American Politics

Here we were, Mr. Bones, taking for granted that the junior AEIdeologue F. Kagan was devotin' all his attention to creatin' the military happiness of neo-Iraq, surge by surge. Underestimated him have we! This little laddie's also got time to describe the political unhappiness of Greater Texas -- which of course consists mostly in us donkeys still not having gone extinct.

Why, omnicompetent little Freddy can even do politics for the natives out in the boondocks, sir! -- and maybe that's the best fun of all:

Successes in Iraq have occurred because Iraqis believe that we will help lay the foundation for them by establishing security, knowing that they cannot do so on their own. They will prove ephemeral if we declare our unwillingness to do so.


Now if you was, hypothetically, a backward and unenlightened indig, Mr. Bones, somewhere out in the boondocks of Planet AEIGOP, wouldn't you of course acknowledge that you "can't do so on your own"? Why of course you would! You'd recognize that there is something fatally wrong with your tribe's own traditional system, seeing that it cannot properly "establish security." And to whom could you repair for better ways of establishing security than to the Crawfordites, who cowered under their beds in fear of Saddam Hussein's, or perhaps rather Tony Blair's, terror-tipped 45-minute specials? You would have naturally concluded that HERE are folks who take their security really seriously, gurus one can really learn Security Management from. Plus of course there are all Señorito Freddie's security successes in Peaceful Freedumbia to date -- for exact details about which you'll have to apply to him rather than to me, however.

Switching frameworks nimbly, Mr. Bones, suppose now you are an august AEIdeologue, perhaps almost as lofty such a one as Freddy Kagan is, and here are these backward and unenlightened indigs coming to you admitting their incapacity, imploring you to come rule them as the proto-Russians (supposedly) once appealed to the Vikings to do? Would you withhold your assistance, sir? Would you allow them all to perish in their incapacity, when your consenting to bear up a small corner of the Paleface Burden, even along with an uncongenial Freddie K., might relieve their distress? Plus spare us all all the horrors of Islamophalangitarianism, needless to add?

Sheesh!

Congress and Iraq
Democrats insist both that the Iraq war is lost and that setting timelines is the best way to achieve a political settlement. They're wrong on both counts.
by Frederick W. Kagan
04/26/2007 3:20:00 PM



As Congress prepares to vote on a supplemental defense appropriations bill that includes timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the lines in the debate over Iraq strategy have become ever starker. The administration and other defenders of the present strategy insist that it be given the chance to succeed. Opponents, including the Democratic leadership in Congress, insist that it is time to begin winding down America's involvement in Iraq. Some of those opponents no doubt seek only to defeat the administration or appease their own constituents, but many honestly believe that rapid withdrawal is the best course of action. Their arguments generally come down to two points: success is already beyond our reach, and setting timelines is the best way to force the Iraqis to take the difficult steps required to achieve a political settlement to this conflict. There is an inherent contradiction in these positions that war opponents must work out before acting on them, but, more importantly, neither proposition is true.

The notion that the war is already lost, articulated most recently by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, rests on the belief that Iraq has descended into a spiral of sectarian violence from which it cannot recover. In this view, the traditional hatred between Sunni and Shia became ungovernable after al Qaeda's destruction of the Golden Mosque of Samarra in February 2006. The continuing violence in Iraq, which is still often referred to as "sectarian violence," is cited as evidence of this death-spiral. Many who hold this view believe that the government of Nuri Kamal al Maliki is committed to Shia domination and even repression of Iraq's Sunni minority and is unwilling to engage in any meaningful reconciliation process. Others argue that the Sunni remain determined to recover their lost preeminence in Iraq. Most advocates of withdrawal believe that the spiral of sectarian killing is unstoppable.

Such beliefs are incompatible with the notion that American-imposed deadlines or timetables would force the Iraqi government to make necessary compromises. If the war is lost, it is because the Maliki government is unwilling to make those compromises and, presumably, is willing to engage in mass killing, if necessary, to achieve its aims. Alternatively, Iraq's government might be too weak to control the violence, in which case the issue is not the pressure they face to make the right decisions, but their inability to do so. Either way, it is hard to see how using the threat of withdrawing American forces would help the situation.

So the real alternative buried in the idea behind deadlines is that the war is not, in fact, lost. The Iraqi government could make the right decisions if it chose and could enforce them on its people, given suitable incentives. Another implicit assumption in this view is that Sunnis might accept the limitation of their power in Iraq and enter the political process if the Shiite government reached out to them properly.

Congress must decide which view it wishes to embrace. If the war is truly lost, then timelines serve no useful purpose in Iraq except to delay the departure of American troops. To argue that deadlines are a constructive force in Iraqi politics is to argue that success is still possible.


THE WAR IS NOT YET LOST, in fact, but timelines are much more likely to hinder our efforts than to help them. The idea behind timetables is to force a supposedly unwilling Maliki government to reach out to the Sunni community. But Maliki has already started to do so. He visited Ramadi himself, and the defense and interior ministers and the national security advisor followed a few weeks later to discuss reconstruction of the province with the local provincial council. These visits followed a widespread Sunni turn against al Qaeda in Anbar that is now spreading into Salahaddin and Diyala provinces, where both Sunnis and Shiites are fighting the terrorists.


IN BAGHDAD, sectarian violence dropped considerably after President Bush announced the Baghdad Security Plan on January 10th, even before new U.S. forces had arrived. The leaders of the major Shiite militias ordered their followers to stop killing Sunnis and most obeyed--a fact that undermines the notion that sectarian violence in Iraq is primordial and beyond rational or political control. Since then, the Maliki government has permitted U.S. forces to conduct a series of attacks on the worst of the Shiite militias in their strongholds in Baghdad and even in the Shiite south. It is difficult to see in these events evidence that sectarian violence is beyond control, that the Maliki government is unwilling to work with Sunnis, or that the Sunnis are beyond reconciliation. Above all, Maliki has permitted operations against the militias because he believes that the larger plan to secure his capital will work. Declaring a premature end to that plan by setting timelines for withdrawal--and implicitly or explicitly declaring that it has failed--will remove the current incentives for Maliki to support attacks on the forces he will need if civil war follows our hasty withdrawal. Timelines are far more likely to undermine progress in Iraq than to advance it.

The current discussion is confused by a misunderstanding of the rise in violence that has occurred recently. The spate of car-bombs and suicide bombs, which the New York Times describes as "sectarian violence" and which many point to as evidence of the current strategy's failure, are very different from the sectarian strife we saw raging at the start of this year. Suicide bombs and car bombs are the copyright of al Qaeda and associated militant Islamist groups--Shiite militias prefer more precisely targeted killings when they kill and do not use such methods. Al Qaeda, a Sunni group, has conducted many of the recent attacks against fellow Sunnis in Anbar and elsewhere who have started to fight the terrorists. These attacks are not sectarian violence, but al Qaeda's attempts to regain its footing in its former strongholds or to establish bases in new areas. The current wave of violence is a surge by the one force fighting in Iraq that has declared its intention to destroy the United States. It is a surge in terrorist killing by the organization that almost every leading congressman believes America should be fighting. It is not evidence that sectarian violence is uncontrollable or that the Maliki government won't make concessions. It is evidence that our implacable foe is not ready to lose yet. Timelines for withdrawal can only encourage this enemy, which has always believed that killing enough people will drive the Americans away.

The immediate drop in violence after the Bush's speech resulted from the belief by many Iraqis that this operation would be different, that American forces would stay to finish the job, and that both the Iraqi government and people could rely on us to help them stop the violence. Setting timelines for withdrawal before we can possibly have solidified security in Baghdad tells the Iraqi people that we will abandon them once again and soon. Those who bet on the success of the current plan will try to hedge and adopt good fighting positions for the full-scale civil war to come. Successes in Iraq have occurred because Iraqis believe that we will help lay the foundation for them by establishing security, knowing that they cannot do so on their own. They will prove ephemeral if we declare our unwillingness to do so. And our most dangerous enemy will conclude once again that committing horrific atrocities and killing innocent people is an effective way to defeat the United States.


And again I say, "Sheesh!"

¡Mi Casa, Su Casa de Ustedes!

25 April 2007

"Loony-Tunes People"?

Obviously there is a conflict between the expressed US-Maliki program of national reconciliation, and this apparent escalation, both personal and military, against Sunni leaders and groups. Some will attribute this to vacillating US policy. Others posit a distinction between two factions of the Bush right wing, one favoring a return to Sunni control of Iraq (and finding the Allawi-coup theory, for instance, plausible), and the other favoring a Shiite-led eradication of the Sunni establishment once and for all (a position represented by the loony tunes people at the AEI and elsewhere who say that from this perspective, things are going really well, because not only the armed Sunni resistance, but the political Sunni groups as well, are falling apart).


Arf, arf! Bow-wow! Grrrrrrr!

Which particular invasion-lovin' AEIdeologue do you suppose it is that Mr. Badger wants to bite yoday, Mr. Bones? Neither of our own two favorite specimens seems to match the caricature. Col. V. D. H. Blimp doesn't know enough about the Middle East to be dangerous -- and why should he, pray, when geistige Militärismus as such cares nothing whom or what it militates against?

Col. R. M. G. Spook, however, could be the original human being behind the badgisterial caricature. Spook's latest deliverance is available at The Weekly Standard under the title "On Democracy in Iraq", a scribble we said we might talk about the other day but never got around to. A compare-and-contrast exercise would be a twofer, then, so let's go for it, shall we?

As I recall, the putative culprit never said anything very like "Things are going well, O Weekly Standardizers, so rejoice ye, no matter how the hateful MSM lie! Not only is the armed Sunni resistance falling to pieces, so is the U.I.A. as well." The authentic Spook perorates as follows:
We, too, [as well as the Congressional Democrats]have benchmarks for Iraq. The surge needs to show real progress in providing security by the beginning of 2008. American and Iraqi forces in Baghdad will have to figure out a way to diminish significantly the number and lethality of Sunni suicide bombers. Given the topography of Baghdad, the possible routes of attack against the capital's Shiite denizens, and the common traits of Iraq's Arabs, this will be difficult. If we and the Iraqis cannot do this, then the radicalization of the Shiites will continue, and it will be only a question of time before the Shiite community collectively decides that the Sunnis as a group are beyond the pale, and a countrywide war of religious cleansing will become likely.

If the U.S. military can change the reality and spirit of Baghdad, the rest of Iraq will change too. Contrary to the despair of so many, internal Iraqi politics will probably be the easiest part of this campaign. In the next few months, of course, things could go to hell. One suicide bomber killing the right Shiite VIPs could threaten all. Yet with Petraeus, Maliki, and Sistani in charge, things may work out. If they do, we can only hope that by the time they do, the leadership of the Democratic party will have ceased to have anything in common with those Sunni Arabs who have always wanted the new Iraq to fail.


There's a lot in that passage for the staff and management of the Daily and Sunni Mystic Lynx not to care for, and also not a little that we don't much care for ourselves, especially invasionites like him badmouthin' America's party, yet pretty clearly Spook thinks Twelver solidarity is a good thing and he by no means gloats, not even preëmptively, because all the native theo-communities are crumbling like cookies dipped in hot chocolate. Col. Spook sees, and apparently Mr. Badger overlooks, the fact that, compared to the former Sunni Ascendancy in "Iraq," neither the Free Kurds nor the People of the Household are visibly crumbling at all. Of course both groups always might crumble, and in both cases the dotted lines, as it were, along which such internal communitarian crumbling would procede are not difficult to spot for anybody with a decent amateur ab externo knowledge of the region such as Spook and you and I possess, Mr. Bones. Over at the Mystic Lynx, they probably more or less know that much too, but find it inopportune or inexpedient to talk about it much.

I daresay the core Mystic Lynx constituency is aghast at the notion of a Petræus-Málikí-Sístání tri-unity -- "PMS Amalgamated, Inc." as it were. We ourselves are more than a little surprised at the notion, and doubtful that all three members of this somewhat flabbergasting troika are really running the same race, and Dr. Gen. Petræus especially. Ever flabbergastinger, though, is the way Neocomrade Col. Spook blithely assumes that the rest of his Boy-'n'-Party crew have anythin' the least bit like THAT in mind. However we have known Col. Spook a good deal longer than we have known Mr. Badger, and we are accordingly more willing to suppose that when Spook appears to put a blind eye to his factual telescope, he is doing it in the spirit of Horatio Nelson rather than in the spirit of The Dream Palace of the Arabs. That is to say, that Spook feigns blindness judiciously for some crafty purpose of his own and is not in fact ideologically or chauvinistically besotted. Why waste valuable time -- time that is gettin' very short out there in the Big Management Party's badly botched Peaceful Freedumbia-- tryin' to persuade GOP geniuses, or GOP base-and-vile either, that "PMS Amalgamated, Inc." is a good idea? Much easier to assume the dumb-dumbs one strives to be for have already agreed to what somebody sensible and yet Party-friendly has proposed: Toujours l'audace!.

C'est magnifique, mon colonel, mais .. . . . . but probably it is not going to work, sir. Such exemplary gallantry will end up being its own sole reward, I fear, sir.

At the end of day, Col. Spook might easily end up being respected by nobody more important than Bones and McCloskey, give or take Col. Blimp, who in principle ought to cherish his AEI colleague Col. Spook's heroic adventurism, but may in practice consider merely intellectual and bloodless gallantry insufficiently geistlich to qualify.

Now back to Badgerton:
But the apparent contradiction between reconciliation and escalation can be explained in a much simpler way, based on what you could call the Bush "two carrots, two sticks" policy. As Hamoun Mohammad wrote in the piece summarized here yesterday, Bush appears to have deputized the Islamic Party to offer the Sunni-Arab leaders the prospect of a return to power, if they will cut their ties to the resistance, and join in the "political process". (Otherwise, the implication is, they should contemplate the "message" of the Adhamiya wall, or what the Baath party calls the scotched earth policy). This is the mirror image of the offer to Maliki, outstanding since at least the November Bush-Maliki meeting: "Pacify the country, or else we will oust you from power."

What appears to have changed is in the details of Bush's assignment to Maliki: in dealing with the Sunnis, Bush has said, via Petraeus, go heavier on the stick, relatively less focus on the carrot. And in his message to the Sunni groups: "join the political process now, or else!"

While the purpose is to bring resistance groups into the political process, by adding fear of annihilation to hope of power, the obvious risk is this could backfire, and Bush ends up driving some of the Sunni political groups already involved in "the political process" into joining the resistance instead. In which case the Bush assignment to Maliki could well become even clearer: "Forget the carrot entirely and wipe out the Sunni strongholds."


Oh, well....

What do you suppose is radically wrong with the Mystic Lynx mystifications, Mr. Bones? Could it be in the end as appallingly simple that the lynxers REFUSE to understand that even ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of tweny percent remains only 20%, that even if every last Arabophone GOP subject in occupied neo-Iraq defected to the "resistance," and even if the twenty-umpteen "resistance" factionettes could get their act together absolutely perfectly, the "resistance" would still remain outnumbered by its former victims four to one?

A dark hypothesis, Mr. Bones. It reminds one rather alarmingly of Secretary Albright's War as viewed from the aggressed-upon side, for whom Kosova would somehow be essentially and forever the Serbian blackbirds' 'Kosovo' of 791/1389, even if ten thousand percent of the province's actual population in 1418/1998 be mere recent immigrant Albanian scum and miscellaneous trailer trash.

The name of that game is "History is trumps," obviously, and who can seriously imagine that Kennebunkport-Crawford neo-dynasts, dimwit scalawag sons of shifty disingenuous carpetbaggers, are likely to want to play it? Nobody at the Mystic Lynx, anyway! History isn't trumps, Mr. Badger, it's mostly only trash, the 'bunk' of Huxley's 'Our Ford', now that "creative destruction" rules the roost and only pauses momentarily in its depredations because it now appears that a Bin Ládin can somehow manage the "creative destruction" shtik even better than Crawfordites can, that he should have suckered the gland-based bozos into aggressing against the former "Iraq."

Wirklich wir leben in finsternen Zeiten!, Mr. Bones, although of course Centiury XV/XXI is a fun show to watch as well.

Our own sympathies must lie ever with the not-so-much fun grown-ups, Mr. Bones, with those who pour cold water into all the soups of all the Boys and all the Boyish Parties, with those who despise all "creative destruction" and resign themselves to mere boring and thankless grown-up preservation instead. In this taedious endeavour, a few partisans over on the wrong side of the aisle assist us, Mr. Bones, and it is only decent that we should acclaim them, sir. Let the record show, then, that we think to some extent kindly about Herr Prof. Dr. Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins, and, though to be sure only at a lower and a merely para-academic level, about the AEIdeologue Reuel Marc Gerecht, both of which gentles seem able to contemplate the idea of an "Iraq" run by the local eighty percent majority of heretics and hillbillies without going instantly bananas or ballistic. It is no small achievement on their part to be able to think such unconventional thoughts even as all the conventional-wisdom Boy-'n'-Party swine rush down the Gadarene slope of expediency to pander, futilely, to the formerly ascendant TwentyPercenters in neo-Iraq.

Securus judicat orbis terrarum, that's the right tune, sir! Let us dance to it ourselves, Mr. Bones, and applaud the occasional "loony-tunes people" over on the Rancho Crawford team like Gerecht or ‘Ajamí who overcome their antecedent Boy-'n'-Party or Sunnintern prejudices to join us in the dance, and do not instantly blanch with dread at the thought of an "Iraq" that is mostly heretics and hillbillies. Harún al-Rashíd turns over in his grave, perhaps, that such unseemly things should ever come to be, but here in Eastern Massachusetts, we have seen the Papist "Antichrist" celebrate all the idolatrous abominations of the mass on Boston Common without the sky ever actually falling, no matter how rapidly Governor Winthrop may have posthumously and subterraneously rotated himself to the contrary in protest.

So maybe there is hope?

Secret Levantine Truth (Cap. MCDXXVIII)

How about this specimen, Mr. Bones?

The last thing the Middle East's main players want is US troops to leave Iraq
Across the region, ordinary people want the Americans out. But from Israel to al-Qaida, political groups and states have other ideas


Since The Guardian was kind enough to supply the boardroom here at Walter Mitty Ltd. with our belovèd executive summary instead of a mere headline, let us linger a bit, sir, and not rush on impetuously like gland-crazed invasionites. The scribbler is one Husain Agha, "a senior associate member of St Antony's College, Oxford," -- and one can even linger over as little as that, if only to wonder when the Oxbridge branch of world tertiary educationalism starting having "members" instead of fellows and undergraduates and lecturers and vice-chancellors and servants &c. Perhaps the motive for the change was gender neutrality? That might have been a success, but If it had anything to do with democratisation, the word shufflers seem to have let the class dog return to its vomit with "senior associate." How far up the totem pole is M. Husain Agha, I wonder?

Not that Brit paedagogic fuss and feathers makes any difference, of course, when it comes to the evaluation of M. Agha's brand of Secret Levantine Truth. Father Zeus forbid that we should ever reject a potentially precious fluid merely because of its container! When we do not recall ever hearing of the container before, that is. When we do recall and the truth container is labeled "Amir Taheri," say, or "David Horowitz," or "Noam Chomsky," or "Grand Ayatollah Michael bin Ledeen," we undoubtedly do rather tend to look at our watch and mutter "Farce is long, but life is short" and then pass by on the other side. 'Tis true, Mr. Bones, I fear, that we are not e-Quakers or e-Gandhians with scruples that prevent reliance on any killfiles whatsoever.

Moving on to linger over the executive summary rather than the by-line, I suppose M. Agha expects that we will be surprised to hear him say such a thing. However, we are not. Au contraire, our first thought is why he should make his SLT thesis so narrow, restricting it with "main players" and "across the region." Why did he not care to live dangerously and go for broke? Why not hypothesize that ALL the OnePercenters of the world, plus such of the 99% as they are able to bigmanage effectively, favour GOP nonwithdrawal from Peaceful Freedumbia?

The obvious flip side would, however, be indefensible: a great many of the 99%, "ordinary people," do not care one way or the other. Why, some folks in Bolivia and Cambodia and Namibia may even be unable to identify M. Sálih al-Mutlaq and M. Mahmúd Osmán, incredible though that may sound to you and me, Mr. Bones! Globalisation and MacLuhan's disease still have some distance to go as regards the ninenty-nine percent. However one may safely assume that all the OnePercenters proper have been networked by now.

At very least, there exist "main players" well outside "the region" whose zeal for Republican Party nonwithdrawal burns so brightly that it is no secret. Take Mr. Howard of Australia. Or closer to home (?) for M. Agha, Mr. Blair of Airstrip One. These two statespersons are not typical, of course, and perhaps we should remove them from our generalisations, not so much because they think in (almost) the very language of aggression and preëmptive retaliation, as because their own political fortunes have been handed over to Rancho Crawford as hostages.

The OnePercenters of Beijing and Lima, and most capitals in between, are not in that sad self-inflicted plight. They have very little to gain by advocating nonwithdrawal openly, a plan that would only produce unnecessary friction with their own respective 99 percents. At the same time, though, most global OnePercenters, and especially those outside "the region," will gain nothing worth mentioning should the GOP extremists, in the event, be pushed out of Mesopotamia lock, stock and barrel.

Dubyapologists have taken to preachin' a Party line that to "lose" "Iraq" would make Uncle Sam a laughing-stock, a pitiful helpless giant, and so on and so forth. Official Beijing and official Lima are not such fools as to suppose any such baloney, regardless of what their 99 percents may ignorantly or maliciously believe. Even at Paris, Schadenfreude is not uppermost in OnePercenterly thoughts. It may be entertaining to watch Greater Texas be taken down a peg or three, but entertainment is not to be confused with policy and realpolitisch interest. By and large, China and Peru are governed by competent OnePercenters highly unlikely to succumb to gland-basing and thrill-seeking in conjunction with a problem so remote as the bushogenic quagmire is to most of them. A GOP "defeat" in Peaceful Freedumbia would do nothing for or against them. A continuing -- and ideally, a perpetual -- GOP nonwithdrawal should commend itself to them on its own positive merits, not because of Ms. Chicken Little's silly scenarios, which at worst would affect only "the region."

What are these positive merits? Well, let's see:

(0) Mere legality ranks close to zero with Realpolitiker, yet for what it is worth, China and Peru, that is to say, the United Nations Security Council, has authorised the presence of militant palefaces from the US Republican Party inside the former Iraq. Sophists and calculators can thus maintain, even if only as a pretext, that to continue this arrangement is to uphold "international Rule of Law."

(1) Merit (0) has, or might have, a more positive aspect to it as well. If the Crawford cowpokers, or their successors in a putative Rodham-Clinton Administration, could be forced into a corner where they have to acknowledge that their whole occupation policy is legitimate only because the UNSC consents to it, that would be an excellent development from the point of view of global OnePercenterdom. In exchange for that concession, Beijing and Lima might even offer the Occupyin' Power a smidgen of serious and audible support for a change, because their domestic ninenty-nine percents could either be brought in general to see the advantages of such a deal, or at least divided and conquered with it. The local Doctors Goebbels could then proudly proclaim, "Behold how wonderful your government is, O Ruritanians! It has brought mighty America back within the law!" The Ruritanian OnePercenters themselves would not actually believe such foolery, to be sure, but that is scarcely the point. They get to pat themselves on the back, a positive benefit for them, clearly, and the invasionites get their nonwithdrawal, which they at least think is a benefit. A win-win situation -- for OnePercenters.

(2) Agitprop is not quite such a "soft power" as legalism is, but it remains pretty soft. But a silent winking and nodding at the Occupyin' Power in neo-Iraq has really hard-nosed advantages to offer as well. First and foremost is that as long as Crawfordites now, or Rodhamites to come, are bogged down in Peaceful Freedumbia, it becomes very difficult for them to invasionize any additional victims. Ruritanian and Paflagonian statespersons may very plausibly maintain that keeping the paleface invaders in the former "Iraq" is a major contribution to the national security of Ruritania and Paflagonia -- indeed, to the national security of pretty well everyplace that is not neo-Iraq (and perhaps the USA).

That last item being the crux of the matter, let us examine one primâ facie objection to it. Suppose the OnePercenters of Ruritania suddenly find themselves in desperate straits, facing some enemy domestic or foreign, "terrorists" or Paflagonians or whatever, and it would be convenient if they could borrow a bit of that Sole Remainin' Hyperpower for themselves? Wouldn't they then be very sorry that they had egged on the invasionites to nonwithdraw from neo-Iraq?

To which I respond, firstly, that such a dilemma would most likely befall statespersons "across the region," not outside it, so I shall let M. Agha handle that part of the question. My own preliminary intention is to expand his hypothesis to cover non-Semitic and non-Muslim OnePercenters.

As regards their strategy at the Casino of Human Events, to egg on GOP nonwithdrawal seems an excellent bet for them considered as a collectivity. Perhaps China or Peru or Paflagonia or Ruritania or Belize or Macedonia will in fact face such an unanticipated emergency, but the chances that any one of the punters in particular will do so is very slight, and the chance that all, or even a majority or significant plurality of them, will be suddenly in danger does not exist at all. Non-glandbased OnePercenters and Realpolitiker are not such children as to believe that any betting strategy whatsoever can be expected to work invariably. To be sure, Paflagonian statespersons would be buying the conceptual equivalent of life or fire insurance, a sort of "national security insurance," and so they will, if perfectly clear-headed, recognize that they are, as it were, "hoping" that the other guy dies first, or that his house becomes an arson victim rather than theirs. Yet since the other guys are all "hoping" exactly the same thing for Paflagonia, I fail to see that anybody has reason to complain. For most of the gamblers, this is once again a win-win proposition, and it might even be such for all of them, for after all, no crisis that demands assistance from Crawfordites or Rodhamites is predestined to occur to anybody at all outside The Region.

If worst comes to worst and Paflagonia, for example, loses the bet, her OnePercenter statespersons need not despair instantly. International gratitude does not count for much, but perhaps it might avail them a little to appeal to the Crawfordites/Rodhamites saying, "Don't you remember how we did as much as we dared to assist you in your nonwithdrawal from the former 'Iraq'? You guys really do owe us one." It might not work, but there would be no harm in trying it on. Whether or not they actually obtained any succour from Crawford (or Poughkeepsie) would presumably depend on the exact nature of their enemies and whether the invasionites happen to be afraid of those enemies as well. If the paleface invasionites were sufficiently terrorized in their own right, they could aid Paflagonia in distress with naval and air forces, since the high-tech whizbang side of hyperpower is not particularly bogged down in Peaceful Freedumbia. Only if Paflagonian OnePercenterdom required to have territory conquered back from their enemies and then given the Petraeus therapy would their case be utterly desperate, and that contingency is unlike to arise in this Brave New Epoch of ours in which the strictly defensive side appears to have immense and almost insuperable advantages over any assailant whose assault smacks of aggression. If the Lebanese God Party can defend itself brilliantly without even being a proper statelet, Paflagonia would have only herself to blame if such a scenario as we speculate about were ever enacted.

But now, enough of a priori generalisation, let us hear from M. H. Agha about "across the region":

Overt political debate in the Middle East is hostile to the American occupation of Iraq and dominated by calls for it to end sooner rather than later. No less a figure than King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, arguably the United States' closest Arab ally, has declared the occupation of Iraq "illegal" and "illegitimate". Real intentions, however, are different. States and local political groups might not admit it - because of public opinion - but they do not want to see the back of the Americans. Not yet.

For this there is a simple reason: while the US can no longer successfully manipulate regional actors to carry out its plans, regional actors have learned to use the US presence to promote their own objectives. Quietly and against the deeply held wishes of their populations, they have managed to keep the Americans engaged with the hope of some elusive victory.

The so-called axis of moderate Arab states - comprising Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - dreads an early US withdrawal. First, because it would be widely interpreted as an American defeat, which would weaken these pro-American regimes while both energising and radicalising their populations.

Second, if the US leaves, the emergence of a Shia regime in Iraq - in itself an offensive prospect to them - would only be a matter of time. Facing Arab antipathy, this regime would be likely to look eastward and forge close ties with its Iranian co-religionists. In the view of most Arabs, this would present a formidable challenge, setting in motion a series of dangerous events - an Iranian-Iraqi alliance; political and material support from Arab countries being offered to disgruntled Iraqi Sunni groups; retaliation by Iraqi forces; and the threat of broader regional involvement.

Third, a US departure risks triggering Iraq's partition. As some Arabs see it, the occupation is what holds the country together. So long as coalition forces are deployed, a full-blown breakup can be avoided.

In contrast, with the Americans gone, the odds of partition would increase dramatically, presenting a threat to the integrity and security of regional states. Exacerbating dormant, and in some cases not so dormant, secessionist tendencies would be one concern. Perhaps more worrying would be the ensuing challenge to the legitimacy of the fundamental tenets of nationhood, state, and national borders.


Well, well! Of what sectarianism would you guess M. Husain Agha to be, Mr. Bones? He sure sounds like a Twelver to me. The only counterindications are faint indeed, namely that he does not count poor M. al-Málikí and the U.I.A. caucus as "the emergence of a Shia regime in Iraq," and that he evidently expects that when a product of that nature does arrive, it will be in thrall to the Qommies. Really and truly in thrall, not just supposed to be so by the Sunnintern and Ayatollah bin Ledeen.

Paradoxically, the competing axis of so-called rogue states made up of Syria and Iran also wants the US to stay. So long as America remains mired in Iraq's quicksand, they think, it will be difficult for it to embark on a similar adventure nearby. This is true not only politically - the quagmire standing as a stark reminder of the invasion's failure - but also militarily: US capabilities will remain stretched for as long as the occupation continues.

Moreover, American forces in Iraq present relatively soft targets for retaliation in case Iran or Syria is attacked. In short, whether or not Syria and Iran are correct in their calculations, the occupation of Iraq is seen as the most effective insurance policy against a possible US attack against them.


The first paragraph of that is what we have attempted to expand so as to include China and Peru and Paflagonia and Ruritania. The other only applies to the immediate neighborhood. Nevertheless, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of (non-preëmptive) retaliation, even for Damascus and Tehran.

For Turkey, America's presence ensures that the national aspirations of Iraq's Kurds will not metamorphose into a fully fledged independent state, a strict red line for Ankara, which has its own irredentist Kurdish problem. By containing Kurdish ambitions, the US diminishes the probability of a costly and uncertain Turkish military campaign to thwart them. Nor is Turkey attracted to the prospect of an Iraqi Shia state allied to Iran and tolerant of Kurdish aspirations - an outcome it hopes the occupation will make less likely.

For Israel too, an American withdrawal could spell disaster. Already, nothing has dented Israeli deterrence more than America's performance in Iraq - an inspiration to Israel's Arab foes that even the mightiest can be brought to heel. An early withdrawal, coming in the wake of last summer's Lebanon war, could put Israel in a dangerous position, handing a victory to Iran - the latest putative threat to Israel's existence - and providing a boost to Syria which may be considering military options to recover the Golan Heights.

There are risks for the smaller Gulf states too. With their large Shia communities and heavy dependence on American protection, they would be threatened by an early US departure from Iraq. In Bahrain, home to an unhappy Shia majority, the fallout could be imminent.


These are the obvious regional special cases. But where is Sa‘údiyya? Does M. Agha lump it together with the Gulfie dwarfs, or does he suppose it somehow above the fray, or what?

It is logical enough that if M. Agha makes Iran out a big winner, he needs to suggest that the Tel Aviv statelet is a big loser. He exaggerates in both directions.

Inside Iraq, this is a period of consolidation for most political groups. They are building up their political and military capabilities, cultivating and forging alliances, clarifying political objectives and preparing for impending challenges. It is not the moment for all-out confrontation. No group has the confidence or capacity decisively to confront rivals within its own community or across communal lines. Equally, no party is genuinely interested in a serious process of national reconciliation when they feel they can improve their position later on. A continued American presence is consistent with both concerns - it can keep clashes manageable and be used to postpone the need for serious political engagement.

Shias in government would like the US to stay long enough for them to tighten their grip on the levers of state power and build a loyal military. Those Shias who are not in power would like them to stay long enough to avoid a premature showdown with their rivals. Militant Shia groups can simultaneously blame the occupation forces for their community's plight and attack them to mobilise further support. Pro-Iranian Shias, meanwhile, retaliate against anti-Iranian US moves with attacks on Americans in Iraq.


Golly, he sounds sort of like a cross between Dr. Reidar Visser and Neocomrade Gen. Caldwell!

Al-Qaida and its affiliates arguably benefit most from the occupation. They established themselves, brought in recruits, sustained operations against the Americans and expanded. The last thing they want is for the Americans to leave and deny them targets and motivation for new members. Other Sunni armed groups need the Americans for similar reasons and for protection against Shias. For Sunni politicians, the occupation prevents a total Shia takeover of state institutions and helps increase their influence.


Score no points for M. Agha for that paragraph. He does not see that his narration of facts amounts to the Arab Sunni mounting his camel and riding off in all directions, incidentally making it a joke to speak of "consolidation" quâ analyst. Tusk, tusk!

Of all ethnic groups, the Kurds have made best use of the Americans. Protected by the US from their powerful and ruthless historical foes, Arab and Turk, they have built quasi-independent institutions and prospered amid relative security. They have no reason to want this situation to end.

In common with neighbouring states, Iraqi Shias, Sunnis and Kurds are united in being able to use the Americans' presence to pursue separate and often conflicting political agendas. The grand disconnect in the region is between the political sentiments of ordinary people, which are overwhelmingly for an end to occupation, and the political calculations of leaders, which emphasise the benefits of using the Americans and consequently of extending their stay - at least for the time being.

In this grim picture, the Americans appear the least sure and most confused. With unattainable objectives, wobbly plans, changing tactics, shifting alliances and ever-increasing casualties, it is not clear any longer what they want or how they are going to achieve it. By setting themselves up to be manipulated, they give credence to an old Arab saying: the magic has taken over the magician.


The man's Crawfordology is at least as good as his colonial analyses, although it, too, is not faultless. Who can say with a straight face that the Boy-'n'-Party perps were ever clear about what they wanted or how to grab it? After 1 May 2003, anyway?

The overall theme of this pudding is not bad as far as it goes, but as with his treatment of the decomposition of the Sunni Ascendancy, M. Agha does not advance beyond description into explanation when he informs us that the Sunnintern tail has lately begun to wag the Crawfordite cur. So it has, but how and why?

Perhaps a B- would be fair, Mr. Bones?

23 April 2007

We're All Paranoid Now . . .

. . . about those icky mainstream medium that keep suppressing the Real Levantine Truth. Don Juan himself just joined the press gang:

The mainstream US media will sidestep this point, but al-Maliki pretty explicitly said that the reason he called off the wall building is that he doesn't want his government compared to that of Israel. That is, the Adhamiya wall is being likened in the Arab world to the Apartheid Wall being built by the Israelis in the West Bank. Al-Maliki made the statement in Cairo, and when he referred to the "other walls" he didn't want the one in Adhamiya compared to, he pointed toward Israel. The Western press is bringing up the Berlin Wall as part of his meaning, but the videotape makes it absolutely clear that his referent was Israel's project. On the other hand, Nassar al-Rubaie, a Sadrist member of the Iraqi parliament, did warn that the US is building a series of Berlin Walls in Baghdad.


(It's not worth dabbling in tube stuff for, Mr. Bones, but how do you think the WGAS, World's Greatest Area Student, could know for sure which direction poor M. al-Málikí was waving his arm at, either inside a studio or even out on the street at Cairo?)

Himself goes on to express a more serious deficiency in Ann Arbour othodoxy, namely the omnia ad Palaestinam referenda syndrome:

The politics of the wall points to the ways in which the Israeli-Palestinian issue is absolutely central to the difficulties the United States is having in being accepted in Iraq. Many Iraqis perceive the US presence as just an extension of Israeli occupation of Arabs and Arab land, and routinely refer to US troops as "the Jews."

The Israeli government has grossly mistreated the Palestinian people, the current condition of which is grave. The wall the Israelis are building is built on Palestinian land and has stolen more land from Palestinians and has in some instances run through Palestinian villages, cutting them in two and separating families. The Apartheid Wall has provoked demonstrations.

So being a foreign military force in an Arab country and looking like they are building security walls similar to that of the Israelis just puts the US and its ally, al-Maliki, in a very difficult position.


Taken together with the previous scrap, I don't believe that quite parses and construes. If the MSM are kind enough to suppress all mention of the analogy for the sake of invasionism, the militant GOP will not be "looking like" much of anything except to a few of us eccentrics (and the hordes of AIPAC)., people who do not need any resemblance so obvious pointed out at all. On the other hands, if JC expects that Televisionland and the electorate will now see lots of video clips from the east bank of the Tigris that look very like videoclips from the west bank of the Jordan, well, in that case, why pick on the poor persecuted MSM, when it seems they can't effectively "sidestep" after all?

But let us press on with Don Juan from superficial TV appearances to Pol. Sci. profundities:
Not to mention that walling people up is intrinsically unappealing as a governing strategy. Mahmud Osman, a member of parliament in the Kurdistan Alliance and a former member of Paul Bremer's Interim Governing Council, told al-Zaman that the Adhamiya wall is "the peak of failure" for the new security plan and "a violation of human rights." He added that the wall "is a clear sign of the failure of the American and government policy for safeguarding security." Other MPs complained that the policy would create and reinforce sectarian divisions in the capital.


M. Osmán from Free Kurdistan is as much a foreigner at New Bagdad as Mr. Wong from Manhattan is, and probably he is a good deal less influential a foreigner. But there is no reason why he should not kibitz too. The trouble is that his sound bite betrays confusion of mind. It may be shameful, or otherwise inadvisable on non-security grounds, that a neo-régime should be reduced to ghettoizing its own subjects, but purely as a plan to secure the ground, it seems an excellent idea, and "peak of failure" is ludicrous. I believe, Mr. Bones, that we have pointed out before that this scheme is basically how the Brits won the Boer War, except it seems even more promising from a technical point of view, for Republicans and Greenzonians have only to put up barbed wire or whatever around places where the potentially hostile population is concentrated already. M. Osmán is presumably not a military gentleman himself. Perhaps he is an attorney? It would be mildly interesting to learn whether the plan violates international law. Since the whole spectacle is aggression-based, such a detail would not really matter, to be sure. At a guess, though, I suspect the Occupyin' Power may probably resort to measures of this sort as long as there is a reasonable primâ facie prospect that the measures will make the subjects more secure too, not the occupiers alone. But God knows best.

Finally,
The US military had planned to build 5 such walls around Sunni Arab districts in Baghdad. It is not now clear if any will be built. Another corner of this story is the unpredictability of the political environment for the US military. It is inconceivable that al-Maliki did not earlier sign off on the Adhamiya wall, but then he changed his mind. The US officer corps in Iraq must be fit to be tied.


A mixed bag. It is nice that the WGAS has finally noticed that the Green Zone Officers Club might possibly be playing a hand of its own that is not altogether that of the Rancho Crawford chickenhawks. It is not so nice that he insists on reading other peoples' minds as he does in that paragraph, not only the mind of poor M. al-Málikí, but the collective sentiments of the GZOC as well. Isn't it in fact pretty darn conceivable that Dr. Gen. Petraeus of West Point and Princeton might have just gone ahead and done the wall thing without troubling even to pretend to ask permission from the "sovereign," "independent," "democratic" and "constitutional" neo-régime? So bright a bulb as Dr. Gen. P. is alleged to be ought, I should think, to have known that poor M. al-Málikí would detect the regrettable Palestine parallel in a flash and probably make difficulties precisely on that account. Whereas if you don't ask 'em, they can't tell you not to!

That analysis still leaves Gen. Braniac making a miscalculation, but so what?, he does not have to win all his wagers to come out with a satisfactory bottom line for The Surge of '07™ overall. If he bet that the wall shtik would not attract so much attention as to require poor M. al-Málikí to officially notice and repudiate it, Neocomrade D. Petraeus was mistaken, but not outrageously so, especially considering the probable limits of his Levantine expertise. Prof. Cole would have known better -- even thee and I would have known better, Mr. Bones! -- but consider that the likes of us don't know beans about violence profession technicalities.

Ars longa, vita brevis, we can't all be up on everything. Perhaps Dr. Gen Petraeus does tempt fate a bit when he conceptualizes counterinsurgency so globally that he seems to be demanding omniscience as well as omnicompetence of himself. Still, if he wants to judge himself more strictly than others have any right to, that is his business and not ours. But God knows best.

'Nation' Defined as 'Shia Dictatorship'!

A voice from Mr. Badger's peanurt gallery expresses the conventional wisdom of that gated community:
Nell said...
(1) Execution of Saddam in a way to heighten sect-hatred

So who was really responsible for that, in your estimation?

I ask because I was critical recently of a TomDispatch by Dilip Hiro in which he repeatedly describes Sistani as a nationalist. Yet he also says that the timing of Saddam's execution happened over U.S. objections, and was given the decisive push by Sistani.

It's an odd sort of 'nationalist' (unless 'nation' is defined as 'Shia dictatorship') who would press to inflame sectarian feelings in such a way.

I was also unwilling to let the U.S. decision-makers off the hook so easily. Why would they have given in to demands for Saddam's handover in such a hurried and designed-to-inflame way if they were serious about minimizing sectarian conflict? There was some excuse-making afterwards about concern about violent efforts to free Saddam, but I didn't give those much credibility.


Whatever twistifiers and dupes of the Sunni International or the extremist GOP may make of him, Sayyid ‘Alí himself knows where he stands, nationalismwise: "Look, Mr. Bremer, Iraq is not your country and it is not my country either. Why don't we leave their politics up to them?" (To quote from memory.)

In the local palaver, to talk about "nationalism" is a bit tricky, to be sure. His Eminence was advising Sultan Jerry that he is not into wataniyya, nationalism for "Iraq," the "nation" state that he has never become a subject of, despite many decades of residence. He is not into qawmiyya, nationalism for pan-Arabia, either. As Sayyid Muqtadá used to like to point out back when he was young and reckless, His Eminence still speaks with a Persian accent. Pan-Arabia being -- sigh -- what it is, that mob passion is ruled out theologically as well as ethnographically for somebody who takes his theology as seriously as Sayyid ‘Alí does.

The Rev. Señorito al-Sadr has dabbled in qawmiyya to a certain extent, and of course wataniyya is part of the official ideology of the Sadr tendency, to the extent such a thing exists. Neither the Arab Palace sector of the Sunnintern nor his fellow neo-Iraqi subjects of the majority "sect" have responded to Sayyid Muqtadá's overtures with the cordiality that he presumably anticipated. Quite the contrary, the poor lad has been ruthlessly and shamefully cartoonized as Mr. Death Squads. He's a mental light-weight, no doubt, and no doubt he could not administer his way out of a paper bag, which means that "rogue elements" are only what is to be expected. Nevertheless, even as Crawfordite incompetence in practice is logically only an accident, not a refutation of the dogma of Preemptive Retaliation, so it would be premature to conclude that the Hawzat al-Nátiqa paradigm can never amount to anything politically respectable in more skillful hands.

At the moment, though, who can deny that al-Hawzat al-Sámita leads by several lengths? Silence may not be absolutely better than articulation, but it sure beats hollering stuff that does not work. Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses!

A few operatives of both the Sunnintern and the militant Republicans have noticed this effectiveness gap of late and begun to change their tune, which used to be that His Eminence of Najaf was a nice old "quietist" who was going to fall in with their own pet schemes, or at least keep the native heretics from interfering with those schemes, or, at the very worst, be only a zero. Some clown in the GOP e-gutter referred to Sayyid al-Sístání as capo de tutti capi the other day, and here we have "Nell" from Badgerton. Well, at least they are beginning to realize what they are up against. Better late than never. (?)

"Shia dictatorship" is a bit alarmist. What has the wretch actually done to make the Sunnintern moan and wail? or Rancho Crawford either? It appears that His Eminence has advised the "sovereign" and "independent" and "democratic" and "constitutional" neo-régime on two points, recommending a swift execution of the late President of the Republic, and advising against "de-de-Baathification." That appears to be the whole case for the prosecution, and a flimsy case it is. In both cases the Áyatalláh was in favor doing what at least eighty percent of the eighty percent of neo-Iraqi subjects who are either heretics or hillbillies wanted done, therefore perhaps two-thirds of the colony's whole population. Perhaps one could actually be a Sulla or a Stalin on behalf of so broad a base, but why one would think it necessary I can not imagine. This abominable "dictatorship" will become a good deal more apparent when His Eminence starts somehow compelling the GZ collaborationist pols to act against their own will. I do not expect to see it happen, but I have been known to be wrong about politics before.

Apologists for the Sunnintern account it dictatorship that their coreligionizers, being twenty percent of the neo-subjects, should get "only" twenty percent of such political clout as the invasionites allow any native to possess. Naturally they do not much care for His Eminence. Dubyapologists are in a different position, for they don't give a hoot about orthodoxy in Islam and neo-Islam, or about pan-Arabia (as such) either. However, Crawford's scheme du jour in occupation policy is to lavish outrageous excesses of Affirmative Action on that twenty percent, while continuing as always to denounce the whole idea of AA as regards the Homeland of Father Zeus. So naturally the Boy-'n'-Party crew do not care much for His Eminence either -- at the moment. Unlike the Sunnintern, the militant Republicans could always reconsider, however, and perhaps conclude that Sayyid ‘Alí is not so bad a guy after all. (Rear-Col. R. M. G. Spook in fact suggests some such swerve of the Party line to his neocomrades in the latest Weekly Standard. That is an interesting scribble that we shall probably discuss separately.)

As political theory, the current Crawfordite position is uninteresting, only another flat denial that neocolonial geese are to be treated the same as heimatländisch ganders like themselves with MBA's from the Harvard Victory School. The Sunnintern's stance is a good deal better than that sheer baloney, if only because its propagandists never, that I know of, preached that Affirmative Action comes straight from Hell. They could borrow their politics (unconsciously) from the late John C. Calhoun without blatant inconsistency and demand that the neo-Iraqi TwentyPercenters be officially enrolled as a "concurrent majority." They could, but probably they will not, because the gentleman from South Carolina would have insisted that the eighty percent be permitted its liberum veto as well. If the Sunnintern and its neo-Iraqi clients agreed to that arrangement, however, they would be in effect endorsing Khalílzád Pasha's "constitution" as it stands. In the real world, they can scarcely abuse that document too much, as every newspaper reader should have noticed by now. Sad to say, Mr. Calhoun was something very like a wicked "federalist," as that term is now misapplied to colonial politics, and therefore his theorizing grants the TwentyPercenters a good deal less than they require. I fear they do not want everybody to be able to throw a monkeywrench into the workings of the Wicked State and bring it to a halt. The TwentyPercenters and their foreign friends want a monkeywrench monopoly for themselves, that is what their present bad attitude seems to amount to -- if it doesn't just amount to wanting the former Sunni Ascendancy restored lock, stock and barrel. It is natural enough, I suppose, mere peccatum originale stuff, that they should want such an arrangement, and certainly they have never rashly commited themselves to any improbable equality of gooses and ganders. 'Tis human enough that they should want the monkeywrench monopoly, but seriously expecting to get it any time soon would cast doubts on their mental balance.

As a practical matter, the extremist GOP could not even give it to them if it resolved to. In the present smash-up of the Arab Sunni "community" in occupied neo-Iraq, there is nobody in particular to pander to. Until the TwentyPercenters get their act together somehow, both the dreams of the Sunnintern and the policies of the cowpokers are thoroughly unreality-based. If His Eminence of Najaf were deliberately attempting to prevent any reconsolidation, fans of both these factions would have presentable reasons to make him out a villain. But I fail to see that Rev. al-Sístání is doing anything of the sort, either in general or as regards the execution of Saddám and the inadvisability of "de-de-Baathification" specifically. In both cases, adopting the opposite policy would probably have been more divisive of the TwentyPercenters still. If the late dictator had been kept alive, presumably he would have been tried for other crimes, meaning continual additional provocation to such shards and fragments of the former Sunni Ascendancy as retain some residual loyalty to the Ba‘th. If an amnesty for Ba‘thí colonels and generals and senior bureaucrats were actually accepted by many people at this very late date, that would only sharpen the line between them and those other TwentyPercenters who cannot imagine anybody decent recognizing the GZ collaborationist régime as legitimate. It is extremely unlikely that the Grand Áyatalláh asked himself "Now what can I do to help advance Sunni unity?" before giving the GZ politicians his opinion on either matter, but if he had, the advice might have been exactly the same.

21 April 2007

A Grand Day for Cartoon Values, Begorrah!

What do you think Lao Tzu would do about the Boy-'n'-Party crew's neo-Iraq, Mr. Bones?

(And by the way, sir, have you ever noticed that after we insert a block quotation disguised as a table for one, Google spaces the lines of the main text closer together ever after?)

The wall is being built round the biggest remaining Sunni enclave on the east bank, at Adhamiya. Referred to by US troops as the Great Wall of Adhamiya, it is surrounded on three sides by Shia neighbourhoods and has been the scene of some of the city's worst violence.


What was it that North of Boston versifier scribbled, "Bad fences make good pictures"? Something like that.

Poetry aside, erecting hedges and fences and walls has rather a bad reputation as a practical tool for statepersons and violence professionals. The Chinese monstrosity seems never to have kept any "barbarians" out. Amortized over the centuries, it has no doubt proved well worth building for aesthetic and touristical reasons alone, but for defensive purposes its masterminds might as well have rearranged the same construction material in scattered pyramids. If Hadrian's most ambitious mural project had really worked, you and I would not be here keyboarding in our West Germanic language of invasion. (Since nothing comparable was attempted in the imperial southeast, however, wall-building can not have been a major reason why Hadrian's preferred solution of the Palestine Puzzle has not endured.)

Wishful thinking springs eternal, though, and "our" valiant Sassenach ancestors succumbed to it too, comparatively local and recent failures notwithstanding. Wat and Offa were not up to proper walls, technologically, but they did what they could with dykes. Perhaps the militant Republicans should consider emulating that Big Dig example, for one must admit that the Welsh never did get their Heimatland back, unless Mr. David Lloyd George counts. Skipping over the Danevirke and other less illustrious but equally ineffectual specimens, we arrive at modern times and M. Maginot, whose surname has, rather unfairly, become in itself a sort of verbal cartoon for this particular department of the Edifice Complex.

Observe that Edifice Complex side of teichomania[1] is logically distinct from the military, though. King Ozymandias may chiefly intend to create a geistlich state of Shock-'n'-Awe rather than crude practical advantage when he summons his contractors and subcontractors, as if to say "Behold, O wretched indigs! WE are a militant Republican, and therefore to establish such mighty works as these falls easily within Our alone superpower and far beyond yours! So if you know what's good for you, . . . ." - and so forth, and so on.

But let's get on to the cartoons. The glory of it is that, except for possibly a pair of scissors, a fence or wall is the easiest and best conceivable comic hieroglyph for the words divide et impera. As that distinguished critic, Mr. Badger of the Daily and Sunni Mystic Lynx, keeps advising us, implicity if not expressly, when it comes to cartoons, simplest and best are one and the same thing. Comic hieroglyphs ought to be instantly and unmistakably and unambiguously recognizable.

NB: simplicity is, as usual, not quite so simple a concept, another theme that Mr. B. dilates on admirably. The "simplicity" of a comic hieroglyph is not that of a Chinese ideogram that can be counted in brush strokes. Perhaps no better qualified aesthete than we has ever defined this notion rigorously, yet to do so seems not difficult: that comic hieroglyph is "simplest" which the newspaper customer comprehends the verbal equivalent of in the smallest number of milliseconds. (Empirical investigation will, of course, be required to establish particular quantities of milliseconds: que la recherche commence!)

One individual comic hieroglyph is not usually the whole cartoon, to be sure. In evaluating the work of polemic as a whole, other considerations come into play. In this case, it is obviously a boon to the graphic editorializer that there is (potentially) a wall on the ground in the neocolony as well as a wall in her cartoon, whereas to imagine that Bechtel and Halliburton are now to create a gigantic scissors for the use of King Ozymandias in his neo-Iraqi occupation policy would be just plain silliness, or at best a mildly recondite Eng. Lit. Dept. allusion to Our Man in Havana.

So this recent news ought in principle to be what they call "a gift" to the cartoon community. Whether they make anything much of it is another question. We shall see.

===

Ars gratiâ artis is us, of course, but colonialism and imperializing are fun too, so perhaps we may include a word or two about the literaliter. This latest Ozymandian project appears to be predicated on policy considerations that may be rather difficult to cartoonify. Here in the homeland of Father Zeus, Televisionland and the electorate are evidently meant to understand that Tigris River City remains "basically" or "really" one neo-liberated metropolis, indivisible, as long as there are still at least a few defensible Sunni ghettos or garrisons on the river's left or east bank.

Perhaps King Ozymandias XLIII of Crawford might have taken the view that this symbolism is supererogatory, considering that the Green Zone lies on the west or right bank. (To drag in that other and even more notorious West Bank is so easy as to be vulgar. besides, almost everybody else is bound to. Let us resist the temptation, for now, anyway.) His Majesty's aesthetic or philosophical taste is to be commended, on the unlikely hypothesis that he consciously understands what he is doin', for there is a very famous icon of unity indeed that features one small speck of yin amidst the circumambient yang and vice versa. Perfect symmetry and unity would require that al-’A‘zamiyya now become regional capital for all the Sunni neo-subjects of His Majesty, or alternatively that the GZ collaborationist pols be relocated elsewhere, perhaps to Najaf or Basra. (Whether the Taoists suppose each tiny speck to wag the corresponding large tadpole, I know not.)

An objector might object that the Free Kurds do not appear in this instantiated iconography at all. But that is as it should be, for with "Iraq" they now have as good as nothing worth mentioning to do. (To be sure, their OnePercenters are allowed to participate in the GZ quasigovernment, but is that a matter worth mentioning? I think not.)

Politics being the art of the possible, we need not expect so pretty a picture as that one. Still, apart from the minor detail that our cowpoker extremists actually intend nothing of the sort, it is, or will be, or would be, rather an impressive symbolism, perhaps even more striking as a "social construct" than any wall ever yet built of bricks or steel and concrete. It is even sort of geistlich after all, perhaps.

On the other hand, to envision a solution for Peaceful Freedumbia is one thing, no matter how exalted and elegant one's envisionalisation, and to impose it quite another. The fly in the ointment, impositionwise, remains the same as ever. Who is to police the Sunni tadpole, whether from al-’A‘zamiyya or from anyplace else? The Taoist iconography would imply that the former Sunni Ascendancy is now to police itself, but it does not and it cannot, and there is the fly. Or most of the fly, because there is a consociated lesser difficulty as well: although the natural masters of Mesopotamia are smashed to smithereens, as a "community," about everything else political, they all seem to agree that any "Iraq" not run by themselves would be eo ipso a monster and an abomination -- plus of course they take for granted that there must always be an "Iraq." Only lunatics and traitors and Ambassador Galbraith would doubt so self-evident a truth as that one!

Ozymandias XLIII is clearly not the brighest bulb that ever burned at Yale. Nevertheless, if you start with the little laddie's own axiom that it is for Big Management to settle all the affairs of its neo-Iraqi subjects before it mercifully goes away at last, fairness does require one to acknowledge that even a competent workman, one who could keep his eye on the job and not be perpetually distracted by Mr. Karl Rove's type of distractions, would find this task very challenging. "Politics is the art of the possible," no doubt about it, yet possibility depends on competence and a Bismarck can achieve wonders that mere Doctors Henry Kissinger or Masters Steven Hadley have not the slightest hope of. Yet, "on the third hand," some political tasks lie outside the perimeter of even the best statespersonship available in any given age of the world, and to settle Peaceful Freedumbia successfully on the basis of the militant GOP axiom may be one of these last. It does not look as if Sen. Edwards or Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton are likely to abandon the axiom, should he become President, so probably we may expect only "a different kind of failure," as the St. Louis versifier once phrased it.

Oh, well.


___

[1] "Teichomania" as a fake-clinical term for mural madness is not itself in the NED, Mr. Bones, but at 3250b you may find "teichopsia" and "teichoscopy."

In any case, why should not we, too, feel free to augment the vernacular?

19 April 2007

Freedom Means Nonwithdrawal

What's wrong with us, Mr. Bones? How comes it that you and I don't admire the CFR/ISG tribe, the bipartisan foreign-policy gentry, as much as we humble are supposed to? They now stand poised to attempt to save the Republican Party extremists from the consequences of their botch in Peaceful Freedumbia. When the Surge of '07™ comes to crunch, the gentry are bound to lecture us peasants about how irresponsible it would be to remove all Crawford-sponsored military forces from the former "Iraq." Or rather, they will soon be lecturing us in that vein insofar as they cannot simply ignore us and work around, as they would much prefer to do. We are ignorant yokels, they are virtuosi, not exactly virtuous men, perhaps, yet cultured Realpolitiker and gentlebeings of leisure. It must be a dreadful humiliation to find themselves compelled to have any dealings with the mob at all.

Everybody knows, at least in the ranks of our betters, that it is Mizz Democracy who has brought them so low. "Life is unfair," sir! and especially so when properly credentialled Area Students and neo-Orientalizers don't get about one hundred thousand votes apiece so that there is at least a slight chance that Uncle Sam might do something right east of Suez for a change.

I set forth our own position briefly for the record, Mr. Bones, because it does not appear in the record much. The CFR/ISG gentry being as I have described them, and Uncle Sam being ex hypothesi always up to something dumb and regrettable in the Middle East, the former almost automatically become a highly specialised opposition to whatever pack of elephants and donkeys has been making the most recent mistakes. At the moment, that puts the gentry at odds with the Lone Ranger and Tonto, i.e., with the GOP geniuses and their Party base and vile. Now Yankee yokels cannot, most of us, keep three juggled balls in sight at once, which means that many will mistakenly suppose that the CFR/ISG gentry are beginning to see the charms of la Démocratie en Amérique at last. That is a complete mirage, unfortunately, but over on the wrong side of the aisle, many militant elephants think they see the flip side of the same illusion, that the Hamilton-Baker humbugs and all the pointy-headed wimps who seem always to like negotiations better than explosions are in league with us avowed ochlocrats. It is, indeed, an anti-gentry tirade from one of the weaker sistern of the Boy-'n'-Party crew that occasions this morning's remarks.

We'll get to that later to some extent; the e-gutter scribble is not particularly interesting in its own right, but it serves to make clear that there are three different balls in play here: the cowpoker vigilantes proper, America's party, and the CFR/ISG gentry, who are "nonpartisan" or "bipartisan" at least to the extent that they have historically been spotted on both sides of the traditional trenches and almost certainly will be spotted on both sides hereafter. As I said, it looks as if the gentry are about to "change sides" as regards occupation policy in neo-Iraq. The quotation marks are mandatory, because what we have here is a Copernican illusion. The polished tertium quids will remain standing pretty much where they always have been, but it will appear to the average Yank and to the conventional wisdom of her journalists that they have deserted the donkeys and gone over to the elephants. (Our scribbler, a certain Neocomrade A. W. Dowd, would be makin' a strategic mistake to go after tomorrow's allies of Boy and Party hammer and tongs as he does, were he of enough consequence for his tirades to matter. This guy is goin' to be as surprised as anybody when the Hambaker sun decides to rise in the west for a "change".)

Since the unpartisan foreign-policy establishment is not in motion, what is? The answer looks plain enough: both the situation on the ground out in Peaceful Freedumbia and the poll results about that situation here im Heimatlande Gottes have been shifting. A clever apologist for the gentry might with some plausibility maintain that they do move a little bit, as much as is needed to nod assent to the weaker party in their inferiors' party combats, and that this scheme constitutes a modern domestic equivalent of the Old Euro Balance of Power. As long as there was no serious chance of the invasionite extremists being chased out of the former "Iraq," it was safe enough to devote most genteel effort to pointing out what incompetent colonialists and imperialists the Big Management Party have been. It is one such pointing-out that has vexed Neocomrade Dowd so badly. Now that substantive withdrawal begins to look like a real and present danger, however, a slightly different emphasis is called for.

Notice that you would get the same result if you assume that the gentry's principle is always to recede as far as possible from whatever the mob happens to want. That aspect seems secondary and accidental to me, though. Our appointed bipartisan betters really are interested in foreign policy, we must grant them that, Mr. Bones, even if they do say so themselves! They deplore other folks' democracy whenever it gets in the way of their own expertise, and they always have so deplored, but that does not mean that antidemocracy as such is their guiding star. I daresay the Hambakerite gentry would agree in the abstract that if they knew nothing about some Policy X proposed for their Uncle Sam except that two-thirds of the pollsters' patients are for it, they would think it a reasonably safe bet that X must be gravely defective one way or another. That, however, is a completely imaginary case. In the real world, the Hambakerites never start from behind such a Rawlsian veil of ignorance. Far from it, for all their own claims are based on knowing much more about foreigners than the mobile vulgus know or ever can know.

The etymology of "mob" may even be slightly pertinent. It is not a good thing, from the genteel establishment perspective, to be mobilis, a common wandering planet rather than an exalted and fixed luminary. To some extent even a theoretical donkey can sympathize with that attitude, if the motion of the fickle be sufficiently extreme and immoderate. Our own commitments to Mizz Democracy entail that even voters who were passionately in favor of Preëmptive Retaliation and the Kiddie Krusade a few years back, but have now become totally disgusted with the militant GOP's neo-Iraqi fiasco, should continue to be allowed to vote. No doubt gland-basin' will always be with us, as will the traditional moralism that insists gland-basin' ain't enough. There is no new issue for democracy fans here. Adult and instructed donkeys lack any good excuse for not being aware that THEY can fool quite a lot of us quite a lot of the time, and furthermore that when we succumb to the foolery the problem is primarily with ourselves, not with THEM. This sinister THEY, however, may include expertise-basers as well as gland-basers. "Here we have no Abiding City . . . ."

I seem to be doing my sermon backwards, Mr. Bones, to begin with the moral application like that. Anyhow, here's the prooftext, and after that we may discuss Neocomrade A. W. Dowd's grievances against the Hambakerites a little:


The Establishment's Winners and Losers / By Alan W. Dowd

The March/April issue of Foreign Policy magazine asks, “Who Won in Iraq?” A listless, torn Iraqi flag serves as the backdrop for the cover—and an indication of the grim and gloomy analysis that awaits the reader inside.

For the record, Foreign Policy’s winners are:

10. Israel, which effectively lost two enemies after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime—Iraq and Libya. “Saddam was one of only two Arab leaders who called for the elimination of the state of Israel, the other one being Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. Luckily for Israel, the Iraq war has proven to have taught Colonel Qaddafi a lesson through intimidation.”

9. Old Europe, which “argued for restraint and warned of the dangers that would follow from a rush to war.”

8. The UN, which benefits from the death of “delusions of an invincible superpower.”

7. The Price of Oil, which has more than doubled since the spring of 2003. “Go to Dubai, Qatar, or any of the city-states of the Gulf and the thing that most catches the eye is the amount of construction going on: gleaming skyscrapers, holiday resorts, opulent apartment buildings, desalination plants, and more. The reason for that massive buildup is that the Gulf states are enjoying an economic boom. Why? Because George W. Bush invaded Iraq.”

6. Arab Dictators, who “rest easy” because “the failure of U.S. policy in Iraq has provided autocratic regimes in the Middle East a reprieve from the pressure to democratize.”

5. The People’s Republic of China, which is using Washington’s preoccupation with Iraq and foundering global standing “to build up a positive image in Asia and beyond…The Bush administration’s mismanagement of the occupation turned out to be a godsend for China.”

4. Samuel Huntington, “the man who envisioned a clash of civilizations…Thanks to the bloody clashes that have exploded in Iraq, more Americans today view Islam as a violent faith than immediately after terrorists killed 3,000 Americans in Islam’s name.”

3. Al-Qaeda, which “was on life support after September 11—until a new front opened in Baghdad and revived its mission.”

2. Moqtada al-Sadr, who “can now plausibly claim to be the most powerful man in the country.”

1. Iran, which “has emerged as the biggest winner of the United States’ war. There is little stability or democracy in Iraq to impress Iranians. Conjuring more fear than hope, the war did nothing to loosen the grip of clerical rule over the country... Iraq has strengthened Iran and weakened the United States.”

The Iraqi people didn’t make FP’s Top Ten. They should have. Despite the horrors of Iraq’s postwar war, they are free—and they say they prefer freedom over Saddam’s tyranny. They have defied mass-murder and mayhem, terror and torture, to vote. In 2005 alone, they held three nationwide elections, including elections for the interim government, a referendum on the constitution and elections for the constitutional government. And they earned back their sovereignty far sooner than postwar Japan or Germany.

Nor, according to FP, has the U.S. military won in Iraq. But it pays to recall that U.S. forces took down Saddam’s beastly regime in 21 days and replaced it with a pro-Western, popularly-supported government. That government, quite unlike virtually all of its neighbors, operates under the rule of law, as prescribed by the most progressive constitution in the Muslim or Arab world. As Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has observed, U.S. troops are preventing “a renewed civil war—renewed because there has already been a civil war in Iraq. For 35 years, Saddam and his Baath Party made war on the Iraqi people. The liberation of Iraq ended that civil war.”

Nor, according to FP, did the American people win in Iraq, though the vignette on Israel concedes there are some side-benefits to ousting Saddam’s thugocracy. “There’s no telling how far Qaddafi would have taken the [WMD] program, or whether he would have ever attacked the Jewish state with nuclear materials. Thanks to the use of force against Qaddafi’s Iraqi counterpart, Israelis will never have to find out.” Indeed, we should never forget that Libya’s preemptive surrender of its WMD arsenal in late 2003 came after Saddam’s capture.

In addition, if we consider what dispassionate men like Charles Duelfer and David Kay have concluded, the American people are indeed safer now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in control of a regime with the proven capacity to build and deploy WMDs—and a clear intention to rebuild and redeploy those weapons as soon as the world lost interest.

Nor did FP’s Top Ten offer any asterisks about al Qaeda’s Musab Zarqawi, who once conceded, “Our field of movement is shrinking and the grip around the Mujahidin has begun to tighten…Our enemy is growing stronger by the day…This is suffocation.” If as most war critics constantly say, Iraq is gripped not by foreign jihadists but by sectarian war, then al Qaeda is not the problem in Iraq. (Tell that to Zarqawi’s thousands of victims.)

In truth, jihadists of all stripes are being drawn to Iraq like moths to a light. That is not all bad for America. After all, the enemy is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent; he must pick his battles. As historian Paul Johnson has observed, “America obliged the leaders of international terrorism to concentrate all their efforts on preventing democracy from emerging in Iraq.” Fresh from Iraq, Gen. Barry McCaffrey reports that the U.S. has killed 20,000 armed fighters in Iraq and arrested 120,000. In other words, the enemy is fighting and dying over there rather than over here, as the U.S. continues what American troops call their “away game.”

Zarqawi was once the most dangerous man in Iraq. He is now dead. As for al-Sadr, the Shiite leader may or may not be the most powerful man in Iraq. After all, he fled to Iran ahead of the U.S.-Iraqi surge. And as of this writing, he still has not shown his face in Iraq.

Nor did FP’s list of winners note that Old Europe’s (and the UN’s) way of dealing with what the UN Charter calls “threats to the peace” is failing in Iran—again—just as it failed in Saddam’s Iraq and the Taliban’s Afghanistan, in Srebrenica and Mogadishu, in Rwanda and Darfur. For two years now, the UN and its agencies have been warning Tehran about warnings. It calls to mind the 16 UN resolutions Saddam’s Iraq flouted, punctuated by Resolution 1441, a resolution that took eight weeks to approve and basically demanded that Iraq comply with existing resolutions. Once it passed, half the Security Council refused to enforce it. Winston Churchill, a founding father of the UN, worried about such mischief at the UN. “We must make sure that its work is fruitful,” he warned in 1946, “that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action and not merely a frothing of words.” More than six decades later, we still haven’t succeeded.

Speaking of Iran, it may not be the “winner” in Iraq for long. From their proxy wars in Iraq and lower Lebanon, to their nuclear brinkmanship with the U.S. and EU, to their hostage-taking in Iraqi waters, couldn’t the mullahs that run Iran be overplaying their hand? After all, Iran is surrounded by religious and ethnic and political adversaries. In fact, some critics of Washington’s hard-line policy with Iran point to these very realities to rationalize or justify Tehran’s misconduct. At some point, the U.S. and its allies will leverage these realities—the restive populace and distrustful neighbors, the exposed flanks and front, the numerous entry points for invasion or destabilization, the countless air corridors—to remind Iran who really holds the cards. The mullahs could end up controlling the Sadr City slums and a mayor’s office in Basra—and losing everything inside Iran.

Indeed, it pays to recall that less than two years ago, as the Purple Thumb Revolution in Iraq gave way to the Cedar Revolution in nearby Lebanon, many in the foreign-policy establishment were talking about the “autumn of autocrats” and raising their eyebrows (and scratching their heads) over the dramatic changes unleashed by Washington’s post-9/11 words and wars. Two years before that, as the statues came tumbling down in Baghdad, more than a few cynics declared, “We’re all neocons now.”

In other words, tomorrow’s geopolitical landscape may not resemble today’s. Things are never quite as good or bad as the first drafters of history claim. The editors of FP should know this. After all, on the very same webpage that FP hails all the “winners” of the Iraq war, we find a smirking critique of predictions that never came to pass—in the 1960s, it was the existential threat of overpopulation; in the 1970s, it was global cooling; in the 1980s, the ascendance of Japan and decline of America.

In a few years, perhaps we will add the March/April issue of Foreign Policy to that list.


From a strict Boy-'n'-Party standpoint, the neocomrade is more than a bit out of step, I fear. He pays almost no attention at all to what the empowered Crawfordites have been up to lately. Why, he mentions the ever-glorious Surge of '07™ itself only in conjunction with the Reverend al-Sadr, and then goes on himself to grant that "renegade firebrand cleric" East Baghdad and Basra! That is not exactly the product the good folks down at the ranch are marketing at the moment.

To be sure, the particular Hambakerite gentry at Foreign Policy magazine do not seem to have a very adequate grasp of native politics either, not if they seriously account the Qommies and Master Muqtadá the two big winners (to date) from the Kiddie Krusade. Mr. Huntin'ton of Harvard does not belong in such company at all, and must appear only due to some individual's extreme allergy to Yankee Clashism. China is almost equally unexpected, although more the right sort of candidate for mention by ISG and CFR. Perhaps it would be wisest to assume that China does belong on the list, however, and then wonder exactly what it is a list of. The real underlying question is hardly "Who won in Iraq?, but more like "What should the stumblebums have been thinkin' about instead of what they did think about?"

Neocomrade Dowd prefers to make up his own shorter list under the rubric provided, however: (1) "the Iraqi people," (2) the Pentagon people, and (3) the Tel Aviv statelet.

The last item is a sort of pivot, since TA comes in last on the gentry's list also. What Zionists and Hyperzionists themselves make of the bushogenic quagmire is rather a different question, though, and I am not sure that they account themselves any sort of winners at all. To the extent that they do, I presume it will be because they think it helpful to have Uncle Sam bogged down in their immediate vicinity. But that must be a mixed blessing at best, as compared with paleface invasionites being present in "their" region without being bogged down in it as well. A semi-withdrawal of GOP-sponsored forces to Free Kurdistan and Kuwait and aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Petroleum would seem more eligible from that specialized point of view. Consider the interactions with the neocomrade's other alleged winners: the bogging down of the Pentagon people over in Peaceful Freedumbia can not be a good thing for the Jewish State, as far as I can make out. Not only are those particular forces useless and unavailable, the credibility of Amazing Force itself is rather brought into question, as if there were not problems enough about it after last summer's tangle with the Lebanese God Party. Jewish statists could draw the comforting conclusion that nowadays the defensive is far, far stronger than the aggressive, a view that seems sound and warrantable to me, but as far as I know, they do not in fact so conclude. On the other hand, perhaps my views about Mil. Sci. are quite wrong and they do well to think otherwise at Tel Aviv. God knows best.

As to creating or not creating the happiness of "the Iraqi people," what is that to Zion? Clearly poor M. al-Málikí's neo-régime is unlikely to attack Israel (or anybody else) in the foreseeable future, which is a plus to the extent that Saddám's régime might have done so. That extent, however, is indistinguishable from zero. Perhaps Tel Aviv really ought to be attached to the neocomrade's "most progressive constitution in the Muslim or Arab world," which certainly guarantees that the Green Zone quasigovernment is going to remain weak and divided and harmless to outsiders for a long time to come. Assuming that the neo-liberated Iraqis abide by what Khalílzád Pasha has imposed upon them, that is, which is to assume quite a lot. Again, the net value looks much like zero to me. What Qadimans and Likudniki logically ought to want is that the former "Iraq" should now be ruled by some facsimile of Gen. Mubárak, a strongman -- strong only at home, of course -- determined not to make trouble for Tel Aviv no matter how much unhappiness that plan may create amongst his own subjects. No such paragon is in sight, however, so probably a disemboggled paleface presence is the best product on offer. Better even than the current status quo, although the latter is not so very dreadful either, as far as dreading neo-Iraq goes.

Iran is another question. Still, what Zionists and Hyperzionists dread about the evil Qommies has very little to do with their influence inside Peaceful Freedumbia. As far as I am aware, nobody has been dotty enough to suggest that Iran's interests in matters nuclear is entirely a consequence of Republican Party adventurism. If the Ba‘thí Beast were still in power, that other affair would probably be in much the same state as it actually is. Perhaps the Beast himself would have been scared of the Safavids acquiring WMD, certainly he would have special reasons of his own to worry about that prospect, having done rather more actual damage to them than Jewish statists ever did. Would he have been sufficiently terrorized to throw himself unconditionally into the welcoming arms of Crawford and Tel Aviv, though? Few Harry Turtledove scenarios seem less likely than that one. For a third time, one adds the numbers up and the total comes out pretty much zero.

Suppose we address the question directly, Mr. Bones, regardless of foreign-policy gentry and sub-par neocomrades and Qadimans and Likudniks: do you think it makes much sense to claim that the evil Qommies are big winners from the Kiddie Krusade? I should say it does not. Getting rid of the Sunni Ascendancy in the former "Iraq" is bound to strike them as an excellent idea, but that is a different matter from it constituting a substantive triumph in the Great Game. From a strictly realpolitisch point of view, they were probably better off with Saddám as an enemy rather than with poor M. al-Málikí as a friend and consectarian and potential client. Even if the quasipremier and the U.I.A. caucus could somehow excape being actual clients of the Crawfordite extremists, their geopolitical cash value to Iran would not be great. It is not only Master Muqtadá who stands in the way of the Safavids making neo-Iraq into a protectorate of their own and a signal victory for veláyat-e faqíh, because ‘Alí Cardinal al-Sístání himself is equally opposed to any project of that sort. The present state of Uncle Sam's neo-Iraqi subjects cannot look much better from Tehran than it does from Crawford, it no more implies an ecclesiastical-political success for the former than "freedom means peace" has worked out in practice to the Party advantage of the latter. Both Qommies and neocomrades have some right to feel a certain sentimental or ideological gratification, and that for exactly the same reason, namely that aggression-based "democracy" in neo-Iraq remains, for the moment at least, a majoritarian racket. That mischievement remains precarious, however, and even if it were not, neither cowpoker vigilantes nor mad mullahs can draw too much satisfaction from it, considering all the other pertinent circumstances. If the eventual fate of neo-Iraq were all that Qom or Crawford cared about, the situation would be entirely different. That fate is closer to the top of Iran's agenda than to that of the militant GOP, obviously, but naturally the executors of a Sole Remaining Hyperpower have far more problems to worry about, so here again we may sum up the effective differences and get about zero.

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Neocomrade A. W. Dowd appears to expect that gross escalation will do the trick for good ol' Crawford at the eleventh hour, so he takes his own crew on that account to "really hold the cards." Well, we'll see. The ISG/CFR gentry are not going to come along for a Walkürenritt to Tehran. If that is really where the stumblebums are headed next, they have nothing left to lose by badmouthin' the Hambakers. If they're less unreality-based than that down at the ranch, however, as I'd guess they are, they ought to be seekin' an accommodation with the unpartisan gentry now so as to avoid the rush later. Even with preparations for a (seeming) GOP-CFR alliance made carefully and secretly well in advance of the actual transition point, "responsible" nonwithdrawal is likely to be a tough sell. If worst comes to worst, from the Wingnut City perspective, and we donkeys nominate the next POTUS, the aggression faction will be in deepest doo-doo. Since almost all of the GOP geniuses sincerely believe in their own Kiddie Krusade product, shoddy though others may account it, they would undoubtedly then try to begin from scratch with "President Clinton" or whomever. By that point it may well be five minutes past midnight in any case, but on the off-chance that it isn't, it would be extreme helpful for the disempowered invasionites to have the CFR around both to intervene with an infidel White House and to give it least some semblance of comouflage against the charge that it is treating the voters to a complete U-turn away from the promised direction. For that purpose it would be just as well not to insult them now.

As to what the cowpokers themselves are actually doin', I suppose the best guess would fall somewhere in between and be that they are plannin' neither to aggress against the evil Qommies in one direction nor to make nice with the Hambakerites in the other. Most likely it's the same old Mr. Micawber with them as ever, they will just sit around the bunkhouse and wait for something good to come of the Surge of '07™, with no particular Plan B to rescue responsible nonwithdrawal from Peaceful Freedumbia seriously in mind until it becomes quite clear that that won't happen. The point ought to be clear already, because even if The Surge does everything that the Bani Kagan originally assured them it will, that won't be enough, but these are militant Republican Party gland-basers we speak of, so it would be unreasonable to expect them to suddenly stop bein' flabbergasted and left clueless by whatever comes next, no matter how plain it loomed in advance. Crawfordology is far from an exact science, to be sure, and past performance may not altogether guarantee future results even with this crew. That, nevertheless, is the best way to bet, it seems to me.

The only very faint indication that Boy and Party may have not have consigned their bacon to Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton lock, stock and barrel was that curious flap about appointment of an Occupation Czar. Obviously that was only yet another stumble in one sense, since they couldn't find anybody who cared to volunteer to be a fifth wheel on the chariot of Juggernaut. Considered from another angle, it might even seem inconsistent with the public campaign against Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi for declining to write any blank checks payable to Dr. Gen. P. for the Crawfordites themselves to suggest that their hero and prospective savior might perhaps be insufficiently supervised. They cannot have intended to produce that impression, but it's a puzzle what they were aimin' at. In any case, though, to install an Occupation Czar here and now would have no obvious connection with preparation of Plans B, C, D, .. Z for salvage of the neo-Iraqi occupation itself a bit farther down the road. The most likely explanation is that no one individual invasionite has succeeded to the plenitude of Khalílzád Pasha's powers. I.e., this stumble was probably a mere matter of internal disarray and no distinct change of direction.

Neocomrade D. Petraeus may be a bit miffed that the chickenhawks in charge did not anoint him as Occupation Czar. They could certainly do far worse, and that approach would have been rather less at odds with tradition and the Constitution. To judge from a recent performance on PBS, Dr. Gen. P. understands pretty well that there is a stiff marketing challenge coming up that the invasionites ought to be prepared for. I presume he would recommend trying to sell the responsible nonwithdrawal product to the CFR/ISG gentry as well as to Televisionland and the electorate -- which is not at all to imply that he supposes the Surge of '07™ product is doomed to failure, but only that it will be inadequate even though it "works." However, the alternative theory of Petraeus -- that it would suffice to save the honour of the violence profession for it to emerge from the bushogenic quagmire with a remedy for "insurgency" that is guaranteed to work next time, when it can be applied consistently from the beginning, even though it is already too late to save the patient closest at hand -- is also not without plausibility. Dr. Gen. P. need not really make any choice, in fact: if the new wonder drug works perfectly only next time, that's good, and if it works instantly also, why, that's even better. In any case I should expect him to try to persuade the unpartisan foreign-policy gentry of the merits of his stuff and want nothing to do with Neocomrade A. W. Dowd's more exciting vistas of Shock 'n' Awe. How could anybody with a West Point education slobber over the Safavids' "restive populace and distrustful neighbors, the exposed flanks and front, the numerous entry points for invasion or destabilization, the countless air corridors" before the neo-Iraqi occupation is wound up? Two-hundred-proof chickenhawk civvie moonshine, that would be.

So then, "Freedom Means Nonwithdrawal" would make a suitable bumpersticker for the GOP-CFR collaboration to come, with both parties to the collaboration aware that nonwithdrawal is one thing, and termination of the occupation a different thing. As far as I can see, that approach should do equally well whether Big Management proposes to attack Iran next or do their utmost to avoid it. Freedom to bigmanage being, after all, the only freedom truly worthy of the name, what's to be said against nonwithdrawal combined with nonoccupation, except by a handful of cranks who object on what they are pleased to call "principle" when it comes to marching into other people's countries and doing what needs to be done?

Congress and Televisionland and the electorate may require some serious persuasion to accept nonoccupation-plus-nonwithdrawal as regards neo-Iraq at this late date, but I should not say that they "object" to it, exactly, for that verb implies certain elements of reasoned discourse that do not appear to be present, by and large. Many Americans will not like the idea of their Uncle Sam not ever really getting out of Peaceful Freedumbia at all, but that is mere sentiment, not cogent objection. As we noted at the outset, the mob knows nothing important about how to handle foreigners.

It will help the GOP-CFR collaborators considerably, I believe, if in addition to combining nonoccupation with nonwithdrawal, they try to lower the whole quagmire's public profile as much as possible. If the mob doesn't even notice what is happening, they can't emote against it, let alone object to it. The CFR gentry do not need to be given such advice, they know it well enough already. The Boy-'n'-Party crew, however, have shown a deplorable tendency to announce all of their stumbles in advance with drums and trumpets, and that may prove their undoing yet. They didn't learn this showboat style at the Harvard Victory School whilst acquirin' their MBA's, I trust, for what kind of Big Management is it that calls attention to its own boo-boos, or gives its managees any cause to suspect that managees is precisely what they are? The freedom of the bigmanager -- that alone True Freedom! -- must repose itself upon the ignorance, or at very least upon the indifference, of her bigmanagees. Republican Party extremists understand that basic point well enough in the holy Private Sector, most of the time, but for some reason they often forget about it when they take to politics. Perhaps they feel a need to recoup in glory what they lose in salary and perks and golden handshakes? Whatever the cause, they'd do much better to knock it off immediately.

"Softly, softly, catchee monkey!"