Woes of Wall Street Jingoism

The WSJ fronts a good dispatch from Baghdad that says U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly saying the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia group run by cleric Muqtada Sadr, is preventing them from making any kind of progress in Iraq. "The Mahdi Army has infiltrated Iraq's government and society so deeply" that it's hard to identify the enemy, says the Journal.

"Infiltrated" is a joy, Mr. Bones, "infiltrated" is almost priceless! -- even for those of us who noticed the almost mutinously disgruntled attitudes of the Green Zone Officers Club aeons ago.

But "increasingly"? That's hard to be quite so sure about.

I suppose Neocomrade D. Politi vaguely alludes to some WSJ vague allusion to the fact that the Twin Paleface Hopes of Boy and Party, Dr. Gen. Petrolaeus and Neocom. Amb. Crockerius, did not start off at once by clobberin' Master Muqtadá so as to gratify all those even-better-than-indig paleface invasionite colonels and generals out in their Boy-'n'-Party boonies as well as all the rear-colonelcy and rear-generaldom at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh

O God, O Bernie Lewis! What went wrong for WSJ and GZOC (and Signore D. Politi) that Sadr III should be more acclaimed in the former Iraq than George XLIII is acclaimed? How come that splendiferous Iraq-the-Model™ product of theirs sells so poorly amongst the "infiltrators"?

Messrs. (messers-about in Mesopotamia) Petraeus and Crocker have some serious explainin' to do to Murdoch and Boy and Party and God and Bernard Lewis (plus also of course Signore D. Politi and all the GZOC disgruntled and WC and RL and the vast and far-flung Big Management Party base-and-vile in general) about their preferred implementation of the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™ product from A.E.I. and fat Freddy Baní Kagan -- so why didn't they instantly clobber Muqtadá, then? What are they, soft on infiltation, then? Don't P&C want "any kind of progress in Iraq," then?

Let's count our own blessings, Mr. Bones, and prominently among them that we've never been close enough to rightist and neo-rightist Dolchstoss circles to think it cost-effective to purchase any body armour even for our backsides.

The infiltrators who subtly infest the aggression-based Peaceful Freedumbia of Boy and Party and Bernie Lewis and Rush Limbaugh under the specious guise of being natives thereof even as all their progenitors were natives umpteen generations back -- "sons of the soil" it appears they like to call themselves , even! -- undoubtedly DO need some sort of body armour, Mr. Bones, but you and I cannot provide it, so let's just sit back and watch the Kiddie Krusaders' Long War Show unravel itself, shall we?

Always to criticize such performances toploftily as critics rather than as interested parties, Mr. Bones! Never, ever, to say anything crude out loud like "If we were neo-Iraqi subjects ourselves, why of course we'd be Sadristas"!

In any case, Our vicarious Boy isn't doing all that badly, klutz though he undoubtedly is. Petrolaeus and Crockerius have not yet attacked seriously and now he's lying even lower than ever -- "Sadr Suspends His Militia’s Military Operations" ! So probably that's all right, no matter what venom the Wall Street Jingo spouts.

But God knows best.

Way-Past-Laffin'-At Deparment

Bush's Lost Iraqi Election By David Ignatius Thursday, August 30, 2007; A21 Ayad Allawi, the former interim prime minister of Iraq, hinted in a television interview last weekend at one of the war's least understood turning points: America's decision not to challenge Iranian intervention in Iraq's January 2005 elections. "Our adversaries in Iraq are heavily supported financially by other quarters. We are not," Allawi told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "We fought the elections with virtually no support whatsoever, except for Iraqis and the Iraqis who support us." Behind Allawi's comment lies a tale of intrigue and indecision by the United States over whether to mount a covert-action program to confront Iran's political meddling. Such a plan was crafted by the Central Intelligence Agency and then withdrawn -- because of opposition from an unlikely coalition that is said to have included Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was then House minority leader, and Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser. As recounted by former U.S. officials, the story embodies the mix of hubris and naivete that has characterized so much of the Iraq effort. From President Bush on down, U.S. officials enthused about Iraqi democracy while pursuing a course of action that made it virtually certain that Iran and its proxies would emerge as the dominant political force. The CIA warned in the summer and fall of 2004 that the Iranians were pumping money into Iraq to steer the Jan. 30, 2005, elections toward the coalition of Shiite religious parties known as the United Iraqi Alliance. By one CIA estimate, Iranian covert funding was running at $11 million a week for media and political operations on behalf of candidates who would be friendly to Iran, under the banner of Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The CIA reported that in the run-up to the election, as many as 5,000 Iranians a week were crossing the border with counterfeit ration cards to register to vote in Iraq's southern provinces. To counter this Iranian tide, the CIA proposed a political action program, initially at roughly $20 million but with no ceiling. The activities would include funding for moderate Iraqi candidates, outreach to Sunni tribal leaders and other efforts to counter Iranian influence. A covert-action finding was prepared in the fall of 2004 and signed by President Bush. As required by law, senior members of Congress, including Pelosi, were briefed. But less than a week after the finding was signed, CIA officials were told that it had been withdrawn. Agency officials in Baghdad were ordered to meet with Iraqi political figures and get them to return whatever money had been distributed. Mystified by this turn of events, CIA officers were told that Rice had agreed with Pelosi that the United States couldn't on the one hand celebrate Iraqi democracy and on the other try to manipulate it secretly. Ethically, that was certainly a principled view. But on the ground in Iraq, the start-stop maneuver had the effect of pulling the rug out from under moderate, secular Iraqis who might have contained extremist forces. (Asked about the withdrawal of the intelligence finding, spokesmen for Rice and Pelosi declined to comment.) "The Iranians had complete command of the field," recalls one former U.S. official who was in Iraq at the time. "The Iraqis were bewildered. They didn't understand what the U.S. was doing. It looked like we were giving the country to Iran. We told Washington this was a calamitous event, from which it would be hard to recover." Allawi, in a telephone interview Tuesday from Amman, Jordan, confirmed that the United States had shelved its political program. "The initial attitude of the U.S. was to support moderate forces, financially and in the media," he said. "This was brought to a halt, under the pretext that the U.S. does not want to interfere." Allawi said the American decision was "understandable" but ceded the field to Iran and its well-financed proxies. Allawi said he is trying to gather support for a new coalition of Kurds, Sunnis and secular Shiites as an alternative to the Shiite religious coalition that installed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in power. Some commentators see Allawi's recent decision to hire a Washington public relations firm as a sign of the Bush administration's support, but the opposite is probably the case. If Allawi had U.S. government backing, he wouldn't need the lobbyists. Future historians should record that the Bush administration actually lived by its pro-democracy rhetoric about a new Iraq -- to the point that it scuttled a covert action program aimed at countering Iranian influence. Now the administration says it wants to counter Iranian meddling in Iraq, but it is probably too late.

Sublime Security

Maliki, however, appeared unbowed. "I wish to give reassurance: Those who speak about pushing out the present regime, whether Carl Levin or Mrs. Hillary Clinton or the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, who apologized for his remarks — none of these pose a real threat to the continuance of this government and the continuance of the political process," he said. "As for the Iraqi politicians, our partners in the Iraqi government, they pose no threat even if they called for our resignation, for they have no authority within the democratic frame to depose us." At one point, asked if Iraq's parliament could agree on anything, let alone replacing him, he laughed and said, "So, the government is safe, then."

All These Years, and "Still Unclear"?

Rear-Colonel Kaplan of Slate solemnly professes not to understand where our Ideologue-in-Chief is comin' from. Yet that scarcely matters, because he's solved the former Iraq himself, Fred Kaplan has!

[I]t is still unclear, after all this time, how Bush defines "win." At one point in his speech [of 28 August, Bush] came close to defining the term, but by that measure, we're not doing well. The "central objective" of his strategy in Iraq, he said, is "to aid the rise of an Iraqi government that can protect its people, deliver basic services, and be an ally in this war on terror." The Iraqi people do not feel more protected (or, to the extent they do in certain areas, for instance in Anbar province, the relief has nothing to do with the Iraqi government). Basic services—clean water and electricity—are more lacking than they were a few months ago. And, even if the Baghdad regime gets its act together, it is unlikely to get confrontational with, say, Iran or Hezbollah. It has always been doubtful that the U.S. military could pull off all these objectives. With the inevitable drawdown of troops, the chances are dimmer still. It's long past time to stop declaring lofty, unachievable goals and to focus on what's feasible. Two military goals are feasible and worthwhile: defeating, or at least severely weakening, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (with the assistance, however opportunistic, of Sunni tribesmen and insurgents); and keeping the Kurdish territories stable. All other goals—for instance, keeping the Sunni-Shiite civil war from escalating or from expanding beyond Iraq's borders—are chiefly political in nature and can be accomplished only with the cooperation of neighboring countries.

Ah, Mr. Bones, In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister! Even Goethe and you and I could go for a spin with Col. Fred if only he'd limit himself one masterfuly smidgen more and define the verb "to win (in Mesopotamia)" as "keeping the Kurdish territories stable," -- only that and nothing more. Even a Sole Remainin' Hyperpower under the guidance of a Big Management Party could probably manage that much, especially when it's done already and only needs to be preserved from undoin'. [1]

But no, FK goes a goal too far and demands the "defeating, or at least severely weakening, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (with the assistance, however opportunistic, of Sunni tribesmen and insurgents)." Notice, Mr. Bones, how verbose Minimum Goal One is compared with the stern and Lacaedemonian starkness of ""keeping the Kurdish territories stable." No doubt FK is still way up at the top of the slippery slope that plunges down to GWB and GOP and the utter abyss of intellectual and ethical degradation, but isn't that the way he's headed? Shall we, in imagination, allow "President Kaplan" a decade or a generation to decide whether it is necessary for Uncle Sam to defeat his (Kaplan's) chosen foe (not merely severely weaken it), whether in the event assisted or unassisted, as the case may be, by Bribe-a-Tribe™ allies?

I think not. Much better we should spoof "It is still unclear, admittedly after not a whole lot of time, how Kaplan defines 'goal'."

'Tis a pity that we should have to spoof Mr. Fred Kaplan at all, but times have changed and new alliances are aformin', and he's on the wrong side of the new frontier. Only very slightly over the line into Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ CFR/ISG bipartisan occupationmonger territory, yet what are lines for, sir, if "very slightly" is allowed to trump "over"? FK wants to stay, we want to go.

He's also a Pascalian disappointment in morality, Bones, which is perhaps more important than his occupation policy views. Rear-Colonel Fred Kaplan certainly aspires to think straight before he shoots straight, and he relentlessly picks on Little Brother and Big Party and Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh when they shoot before thinkin'. Nobody would know better than Kaplan what is wrong with his own Minimum Goal One if some half-baked Crawfordite had proposed it. However when he proposes MG1 himself, the spoofability of it slips under his radar, so to speak. [2]

Exactly like that other Rear-Col. Freddy K., the AEIdeologue prominently behind the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™, our present not-that-bad FK starts out with Goethe and wants to do some serious beshranking of the problems of success as the first step towards solution of them. And like their Boy-'n'-Party fat Freddy, our Mr. Kaplan runs off his originally intended rails before he definitively arrives. It's easier to see where the black-hat FK went wrong: he originally proposed that the militant extremist GOP of our own holy Homeland should content itself with extirpatin' the extremist militant Arabophone Sunnis of the former Iraq. "Our" Tweedledumb and "their" Tweedledee would have been well met and well matched in that world-historical sideshow, but it never happened, because the Great Crow unexpectedly turned up, as it were, the Great Crow in question being conventionally called "sectarianism" or "civil war." Before that nifty scheme of the kaganiyya could even get launched as Freddy first thunk it in a violence pro way, the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™ had been held hostage to the political needs of Boy and Party in the holy Homeland and to so-called "mission creep" at the Green Zone Officers Club. All the flab and distractions that poor professionally deformed F. Kagan had tried to cut out with Occam's razor had already been reinstated three- or fourfold before the Party perps ever actually started surgin' at all.

Thus in the fullness of time comes along our not-that-bad Fred K. to attempt a re-Occamization of aggression's problems of success in the former Iraq. How can we simplify? What's mandatory to be grabbed, and what's only optional, grabwise?

These are excellent questions, Mr. Bones, as far as they go, just the sort of questions that our own ideobuddy M. Pascal would regard as compliant with his Travaillons donc à bien penser. Excellent even when some [exp. del.] Boy-'n'-Party fat Freddy asks them at AEI! To Occamize, to strip off all obese irrelevancies and optional extras and unnecessary distractions and see precisely what it is that one is basically and relentlessly minded to grab! That's the sort of exercise in bien penser that appeals to us. [3]

So, then, Mr. Fred Kaplan of Slate wants indispensibly to grab

Two military goals feasible and worthwhile: defeating, or at least severely weakening, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (with the assistance, however opportunistic, of Sunni tribesmen and insurgents); and keeping the Kurdish territories stable.

'Tis a mad world indeed, Mr. Bones!




___
[1] Mr. Kaplan is an invasionite, but not a dubyapologetic invasionite. He might conceivably agree to the proposed restriction without caring that it retrospectively renders the Party aggression of March 2003 otiose, the Free Kurds being then free enough already, and even more or less "stable" as such things are accounted in the Greater Levant.


[2] If you insist on speaking strictly that way, it was hatched under the Kaplanite radar, so of course how should the radar detect?


[3] This is of course only a bien penser secundum quid rather than bien penser simpliciter. A maxim like "Thou shalt not grab!" is off our present GOP-contextual scope altogether.

Inside Bribe-A-Tribe™

Iraq's deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they've extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province. The payments, in return for the insurgents' allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, Iraqi contractors, politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said. A fresh round of rebuilding spurred by the U.S. military's recent alliance with some Anbar tribes — 200 new projects are scheduled — provides another opportunity for militant groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq to siphon off more U.S. money, contractors and politicians warn. "Now we're back to the same old story in Anbar. The Americans are handing out contracts and jobs to terrorists, bandits and gangsters," said Sheik Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, the deputy leader of the Dulaim, the largest and most powerful tribe in Anbar. He was involved in several U.S. rebuilding contracts in the early days of the war, but is now a harsh critic of the U.S. presence.

And so forth, and so on.

The Harvard Victory School really ought to consider revoking Little Brother's MBA: this sort of thing is no credit at all to respectable practitioners of Big Management.

"Iraqis basically ignore car bombs"

Slogger City summatorializes from behind the Great E-Wall of the Wall Street Jingo:

Carter Andress, CEO and principal owner of American-Iraqi Solutions Group, a company that builds bases for Iraqi Army and police units then supplies them, says in a Journal op-ed, "We are winning this war." Why? Because he doesn't see the fear in everyday people's faces, he says. (He also doesn't seem to see everyday people, based on his essay.) He says U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker is wrong to say the Iraqi people feel fear. He says the British have failed to uphold their responsibilities in the south, that Shi'ites in Sadr City don't want to fight Americans. He says he sees no civil war among his Arab and Kurdish security forces -- which may be because there's no real Arab-Kurdish violence in Iraq right now. He says Sunni and Shi'a Arabs have seen there is no alternative to American protection, so the Sunnis and Moqtada al-Sadr's people have returned to Parliament -- which is irrelevant as they haven't returned to the government. He conflates al Qaeda in Iraq with al Qaeda and makes the stunning statement that Iraqis basically ignore car bombs. They "mourn the dead and then go back to work." Ho, hum. This is a foul essay, ignoring many basic realities and focusing on a small sample of Iraqis -- those working for him, mainly. Also, does the fact that he gets a lucrative contract to supply Iraqi troops and police officers play into the fact that he's anxious to see the Americans stick around -- and keep paying him?

Now that is summatorializing with a vengeance, Mr. Bones! "This is a foul essay" indeed!

One is tempted to entertain the low unworthy suspicion that this may be an illustration of the proverb "Two of a trade will never agree." But God knows best.

Parmenedism Exemplified

[S]enior [British] officers are at pains to point out that one should not mistake deteriorating conditions on the ground [at Basra] for an Iraqi inability to govern and exercise authority. The trouble is that the one is demonstrable and the other conjectural.

The Sunni International and Mu’ámara Junction and Dr. Righteous Virtue are not alone in sweeping mere superficial appearances aside and discerning a Secret Truth about the former Iraq that is invisible to less metaphysically gifted persons.

Here we Aristotelians note exactly the Form of Parmenedism filled up with an entirely different Matter. The appearances to be denied or rather seen through have nothing to do with all neo-Iraqi subjects burning with national (wataní and/or qawmí) zeal, all deplorable "sectarianism" (tá’ifiyya) being a recent importation, but with the performance of the collaborationist pols and their army and their secret state police.

Unfortunately General Mallinson does not follow his Platonic insight up on the same high philosophical plane. Indeed, his very next sentence suddenly breaks in from a different universe, as it were:

On this point, however, the British and the new American doctrine agree: "third-nation forces can only hold the ring and set the conditions for success of local forces", says FM 3-24.

How to connect those dots, Mr. Bones? I suppose one could say that Marvin the ARVN has got to hack it for the neo-MacNamaran counterinsurgency of Dr. Gen. Petraeus, Princeton-educated author of Field Manual 3-24, to attain success and victory, but that hardly warrants the inference that Marvin is in fact hacking it. Be that as it may, Gen. Mallinson switches direction abruptly for a second time and arrives at his real topic, which is probably not one of much interest outside violence profession circles in the United Kingdom:

It is a fine operational judgment just how much the presence of "third-nation forces", which the local population see as forces of occupation, is fuelling the trouble in Basra and making the job of local forces all the more difficult, but what scope for any other operational decision can there be when we have only enough men to manage a steady withdrawal? The MoD desperately needs to get its troops out of Iraq so that it is not defeated in Helmand.

Clearly this redcoat gentleman (and pious Kiddie Krusader, and writer for the Daily Torygraph ) does not attach much importance to his Parmenidism, at least not around Basra. Though the Secret Party Truth be quite different from what the MSM fiends print, yet it scarcely matters what is Reality and what is mere appearances in the south of the former Iraq: the great thing, immediately, is to rush off to save Helmand from "global insurgency." Long term, the great thing is to supply the redcoat gentry with far more cannon fodder than they possess at present. (Tony Blair's fault -- this is the Torygraph after all!)

A doubter might even doubt that there is any metaphysics comparable to that of Mu’ámara Junction present here at all, taking the low view that General Mallinson would prefer to think happy thoughts about what might happen in Unoccupied Basra after the Brits pull their kissinger. But it is all much more fun Aristotle's way, is it not?

Alors et alors seulment:

A Little Sarkasm about the Former Iraq

La tragédie irakienne ne peut pas nous laisser indifférents. La France était et demeure hostile à cette guerre. Que l'histoire nous ait donné raison ne nous dispense pas d'en mesurer les conséquences : une nation qui se défait dans une guerre civile sans merci ; un affrontement entre chiites et sunnites qui peut embraser tout le Moyen-Orient ; des groupes terroristes qui s'installent durablement, s'aguerrissent avant d'attaquer de nouvelles cibles à travers le monde entier ; une économie mondiale à la merci de la moindre étincelle sur les champs pétroliers. Il n'y aura de solution que politique : elle implique la marginalisation des groupes extrémistes et un processus sincère de réconciliation nationale, au terme duquel chaque segment de la société irakienne, chaque Irakien, devra être assuré d'un accès équitable aux institutions et aux ressources de son pays ; elle implique aussi que soit défini un horizon clair concernant le retrait des troupes étrangères. Car c'est la décision attendue sur ce sujet qui contraindra tous les acteurs à mesurer leurs responsabilités et à s'organiser en conséquence. C'est alors, et alors seulement, que la communauté internationale, à commencer par les pays de la région, pourra agir le plus utilement. La France, pour sa part, y sera disposée. C'est le message que Bernard Kouchner vient d'apporter à Bagdad, message de solidarité et de disponibilité.

Maybe we should grapple with Le Monde more often, Mr. Bones. Maybe we learn nothing important and new about the flashy-trashy M. du Sarkozy, yet unquestionably it is a solid gain to know what an étincelle is, should we ever encounter one. [1]

It stands out that we get no explanation of WHY France was and is and (ever?) shall be opposed to the Mesopotamian edition of the Kiddie Krusade. To talk about reasons would have adverse consequences as regards Greater Texas, no doubt, but if the Gallic ideobuddy allows himself était et demeure hostile à cette guerre, most of the harm is done already. Down at the ranch they forgot their own reasons for the Boy-'n'-Party aggression in the first six months of it, at most, so if M. du Sarkozy was to explain, for instance, that he and his party and his country believed that Hans Blix was right and the Bushies and Blairies and Party neocomrade Gen. Powell were talkin' self-servicin' rubbish, no additional damage control would be necessary. [2]

We learn elsewhere in the oration that Sarko is (was and remains) a global Kiddie Krusader whose reservations are confined to the Mesopotamian front:

Le débat international n'est pas abstrait ou lointain : les menaces d'aujourd'hui -terrorisme, prolifération, criminalité- ignorent les frontières ; les évolutions de l'environnement et de l'économie mondiale affectent nos vies quotidiennes ; les droits de l'homme sont bafoués [3] sous nos yeux.

As you saw in the headlines, Mr. Bones, terrorisme, prolifération, criminalité signifies "Qommies and more Qommies and still more Qommies." It is at least a little bit more intellectually and ethically respectable to be terrorized of Iranian nukes rather than of Saddam's forty-five-minute terror-tipped specials. On the other hand, in the present case even the autoterrorized admit that what they loathe and dread not exist at the moment. This means that M. du Sarkozy is a devotee of the Prëemptive Retaliation dogma right up there in the Tony Blair class, and that in turn suggests that Sarko's own hostility to the Iraq aggression may be mosty based on envy -- Oh, that Paris could act as Crawford can! Like Messrs. Pollack and O'Hanlon, he does not see any objection in principle to breakin' and enterin' other peoples' countries, but wants it to be done with competence and by the right people. Competence is competence all the world over, but when it comes to pickin' the right people for their vigilante patrols, doubtless one crew means Democrats and the other Europeans.

The best thing about his brief analysis of the bushogenic quagmire is that little spark about the Gulf of Petroleum. In the holy Homeland, Dubyapologists and bipartisan advocates of Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ find it impossible to be that frank except on very rare occasions. Since our own invasionites find the subject of fossil fuel undiscussable, naturally there can be no proper discussion of whether Boy and Party must occupy the former Iraq eternally in order to keep gas prices down where gas prices belong. M. de Sarkozy finds oil mentionable, but just barely. He can scarcely be said to discuss it, and so we must guess for ourselves whether France's hostility to Dubya's war was and is based on the perception that cheap gas did not at all require such strenuos exertions. [4] That would be suitably hard-nosed in the traditional French style, at any rate, and ethically more presentable than sheer hyperpower envy. BKGB.

When it comes to pickin' up the pieces in "Iraq," Sarko's mind is chock full of the usual cant. He has no clue, I take it, why "un processus sincère de réconciliation nationale, au terme duquel chaque segment de la société irakienne, chaque Irakien, devra être assuré d'un accès équitable aux institutions et aux ressources de son pays" did not happen years ago. I myself have no clue why he supposes "que soit défini un horizon clair concernant le retrait des troupes étrangères" should fix things up in a jiffy, no more than when Democratic politicians talk the same way. Both parties are to be applauded for disagreeing with Rancho Crawford and Rio Limbaugh and wanting a serious withdrawal with absolutely no GOP military operatives or GOP military bases left behind -- assuming that is what they want, a point that is rather clearer with M. du Sarkozy than with most prominent donkeys. All the same, "defining a clear horizon" still leaves the horizon a long way off, and probably receding as one advances boldly towards it.

As we agreed yesterday, Mr. Bones, the point of such claptrap is probably rather that France should be noticed as uttering it than that the extremist Republicans actually do it.

Then finally comes Dr. Bernie and the " message de solidarité et de disponibilité ," a message which poor M. al-Málikí seems to have understood well enough. If M. du Sarkozy seriously intended to solidaritize with the neorégime at brave New Baghdád, the results might be interesting, but clearly he and his government and his party and his France are only at the disposition of a chimaera, the humble servants and cordial wellwishers of an "Iraq" sincerely processed into national reconciliation. Should the nonexistence of that fabulous creature be not enough to make sure that Sarkozy & Cie. never have to do anything much, he sets up another impossibly high hurdle:

Car c'est la décision attendue sur ce sujet qui contraindra tous les acteurs à mesurer leurs responsabilités et à s'organiser en conséquence. C'est alors, et alors seulement, que la communauté internationale, à commencer par les pays de la région, pourra agir le plus utilement.

I.e., Sarko promises to be good as soon as everybody else is good too -- but not an instant before! The Gaullist or pan-French cynicism about collective security and international coöperation is sound enough, so the chances that such a "promise" will ever actually have to be kept are indistinguishable from zero. Thanks a lot, Nick!

___
[1] Ah, you too? "Spark, flash, brilliance." Figuratively, it means Sarko's idea of Sarko, for instance. As it happens, I had emitted that little flash of my own before I reached for the dictionary.


[2] That "demeure" could be questioned by pedants, considering that, like the rest of the Security Council, France was willing enough to pardon the outrageous offense against traditional international law as soon as decency allowed, or even sooner. However that particular sort of pedant is likely to be rare chez Sarkozy. In those circles, the whole Turtle Bay complex of notions must seem so absurd that it scarcely matters what one's UN ambassador votes for or against. Only a provincial redneck like Neocomrade J. Bolton would get worked up over matters completely trivial.


[3] "scoffed at, made game of" Observe that human rights brings up the rear of the procession. Might it have been omitted altogether if Dr. Bernie K. was not around?



[4] In Greater Texas, the other great unmentionable about the aggression is Jewish Statism and the interests of the Tel Aviv statelet. This dirty little secret is not quite so unmentionable, invasionite pols may safely bloviate about it when addressin' AIPAC and other such audiences, but that limited liberty of thought and expression may only manage to aggravate the real occupation policy problem. The purpose of their bloviation is to affirm their eternal devotion to &c. &c., so to announce that the Party's semiconquest and occupation of the former Iraq has little or nothin' to do with the security of Jewish Palestine would seem counterproductive even if they believed that to be the case. No doubt they do not believe that to be the case, but as long as the subject is taboo, there will be no chance to correct that error.

Sarko devotes five paragraphs to the Palestine Puzzle, most of it tame boilerplate conventional wisdom: "la France est déterminée à prendre ou à soutenir toute initiative utile. Mais elle a une conviction : la paix se négociera d'abord entre Israéliens et Palestiniens " and so on and so forth. He points out no direct connection between the two great Levantine occupations and probably, quite correctly, thinks that there is none, yet he is bound and determined to be a Kiddie Krusader (outside "Iraq"), hence

[L]a création d'un " Hamastan " dans la bande de Gaza risque d'apparaître rétrospectivement comme la première étape de la prise de contrôle de tous les territoires palestiniens par les islamistes radicaux. Nous ne pouvons pas nous résigner à cette perspective. La France ne s'y résigne pas.

Laughing Out Loud Department

I never quite understood George Bush’s fascination with Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales struck me as a man of average intelligence and below-average competence. But this was known when he was nominated for attorney general and confirmed by the Senate. The Senate doesn’t like conservatives who are of above average intelligence and highly competent, e.g., John Bolton.

One Touch of Thuggery . . .

. . . makes the whole world kin.

Mr. John Wilkes Booth can reasonably be called an assassin even though he only murdered that one victim. Bein' a "military humanist" thug is not the same as becoming a certified assassin, exactly, but it certainly does not require cheerin' for every aggression that comes down the pike any more than one must shoot down every stranger one meets in order to get classified as a murderer.

Now as for the staff and management of the fifth French Republic :

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has offered to apologise to Iraq if he had meddled in its affairs. The statement comes a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Maliki demanded an official apology because Mr Kouchner had suggested he resign. (...) Last week Mr Kouchner said the Iraqi government was "not functioning" and was quoted saying he had told the US that there was strong support in Iraq for Mr Maliki to resign and he "has got to be replaced". In an interview with RTL radio on Monday, Mr Kouchner said: "I think that he [Mr Maliki] misunderstood, or that I was not clear enough that I was referring to comments I heard from Iraqis I talked to." "If the prime minister wants me to apologise for having interfered so directly in Iraqi affairs, I'll do it willingly," he said. Mr Kouchner visited Baghdad last week to promote France's role in efforts to solve the Iraq crisis and mend relations with Washington damaged by France's opposition to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. In an article in Monday's International Herald Tribune, Mr Kouchner said France was well-placed to "provide a fresh look" at Iraq.

Insofar as thuggishness is a mindset rather than an overt act, Dr. Bernard Kouchner, former dictator to Secretary of War Allbright's spear-won province of Kosova, has impeccable credentials to present. The distinguished aggressionite statesperson has never pulled any triggers personally. And if he had, doubtless he'd be happy to apologize about that little misunderstandin' afterwards as well.

We are usefully reminded, Mr. Bones, that peccatum originale is not unknown either in France or on the Left.

A fluent burbler of Václavhavelian commonplaces like M. Kouchner would never dream of resortin' to the Eichmann Defense, one trusts, yet let us charitably consider the possibility that the poor tool may have been just followin' orders:

Meanwhile President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for a clear timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq. He was making what was described as his first major foreign policy speech since becoming president in May. Mr Sarkozy said such a timetable would force the various Iraqi parties to accept responsibility for the country's future.

M. le Président de la République is clearly not broadcastin' on quite the wavelength hoped for by the Freedom Fries™ Fan Club, although there are lots of donkeys (rather than elephants) in the holy Homeland whose conventional wisdom is Sarkozioid enough. The question of the moment, however, is whether imposin' a "clear timetable" on the natives was thought to require gettin' rid of poor M. al-Málikí first. If so, then one may acquit Dr. Kouchner à la Eichmannienne and concentrate one's Pascalian fire on M. de Sarkozy, who will have put Bernie up to it.

It is not an easy question. Almost everybody in the "Scare 'Em Straight!" school of aggression and occupation policy would like to ditch poor M. al-Málikí, yet there is no absolute or logical connection that I can discern. To begin with, the Málikí-ditchers of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh intend to hang around in their Party's semiconquered provinces forever no matter what the indigs think or want: "reconciliation" in Peaceful Freedumbia would be nice, but it is strictly optional, only icin' on their invasion-based cake. Any putative Málikí-ditchers at Paris must be presumed to mean what they say and say what they mean, and plainly that is not it. Was M. de Sarkozy possessed of Sole Remainin' Hyperpower, SRH, he would not be bluffin' when he warned his ungrateful neo-Iraqi subjects that unless the latter get themselves reconciled pronto, Big Brother will yank the trainin' wheels off their Bike of State and turn his back and walk away -- and then where will the restless natives find themselves?

The policy is clear, even though thoroughly Cloudcuckoolandish in that M. de Sarkozy neither possesses SRH nor would act like that if he did. He'd think above all of economics and the Gulf of Petroleum and come out for the Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ product just as the incumbent clowns are doin', though with slightly less sentimental attachment to Jewish Statism and the Tel Aviv régime than the extremists of Rancho Crawford cherish. Charity suggests that one assume M. de Sarkozy realizes as much himself and regards "Scare 'Em Straight!" as a good policy for France to recommend rather than a sensible policy for anybody to actually implement. The cheapjack pol is rather a showboat and may not in fact be bright enough to think such things out consciously, yet when we have no insider information at all, why not presume that the wannabe thugs are operatin' on the best case for their wannabe thuggery that can be made? [1]

So then the question of whether Dr. Kouchner is to be let off thanks to an Eichmann Defense boils down to whether M. de Sarkozy considers that proposin' to ditch poor M. al-Málikí (or even actually attemptin' to assist at the ditchin') makes France look good or not. In this connection, Bernie's "apology" "for having interfered so directly in Iraqi affairs" strikes me as rather beside the point. Naturally it will not do for France to be caught treatin' the "sovereignty" and "independence" and "constitutionality" and "democracy" that so happily now obtain in all the provinces of the former Iraq with contempt and shoulder shrugs, but who knows for sure that Bernie and M. de Sarkozy privately mind anything more than gettin' caught? [2]

The affair does rather bolster Marianne's traditional self-image in the sense that there is no idle Anglo-Saxon sentimentality and hypocrisy anywhere in sight. [3]

But God knows best, even about the French.



___
[1] The best case available without going around the bend after the manner of the folks at Mu’ámara Junction, that is, the best case that does not witlessly assume that all the people one disapproves of politically are at least as clever as Mephistopheles and rather more malignant.



[2] On the other hand, if France were to assist at the ditchin' and then nobody ever heard of it, how would that make the wannabe thugs look good? One may conjecture that the wannabes intended to take a modest share of the credit only after the thing had become a fait accompli, mere spilt milk that most moralizers would not waste their tears on. "Offenses must come," no doubt, but it need not be all that woeful to bring them in secretly and the applaud oneself in public after a decent interval of time has elapsed.

And let's face it, Mr. Bones, you and I are among the few palefaces who would be perturbed to watch poor M. al-Málikí get ditched by his alien ideobuddies. Flat-out thugs and responsible nonwithdrawers and peaceniks unite to dump on him. Why, the New York Times even managed to dump on him in an unsigned editorial with "The Problem isn't Mr. Maliki" at the top of it! (I'm sorry to report that Aunt Nitsy didn't spot the real problem correctly either.)

Yet perhaps it would seem wiser to some or all of the above paleface parties to keep Núrí Jawád Kamál around to dump on and kick in the late Mr. Nixon's fashion, should they ever reflect deeper about aggression and occupation policy than they seem to? BGKB.



[3] The well known intellectual self-esteem of the French may have suffered some slight collateral damage, however, because Bernie "apologizes" after the manner of "I didn't break it on purpose and after all it was broken when you loaned it to me and furthermore I never borrowed it in the first place." The Pottery Barn Defense enlivens the silly season for the rest of us, but only at the price of making Dr. Kouchner look slightly silly himself.

Not only the cause of France but the universal cause of Military Humanism sternly demands a total unsilliness from all those who seek to advance it. Bernie could do worse than take M. Michael Ignatieff as a suitable rôle model in future. Now there's a gent who knows how to take himself seriously!

"a new level of stridency"

Iraqi Prime Minister Assails Democratic Critics By JAMES GLANZ BAGHDAD, Aug. 26 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Sunday extended his tongue-lashing of foreign politicians who have questioned his government, saying that Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Carl Levin needed to “start making sense again” after the senators, both Democrats, called for his ouster. Mr. Maliki, who previously reacted with anger to President Bush’s criticism of the Iraqi government’s lack of political progress, also lashed out at the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who called for Mr. Maliki to be replaced in an interview that appeared on the Newsweek Web site on Sunday. But Mr. Maliki appeared to reach a new level of stridency with his reply to Senator Clinton, of New York, and Senator Levin, of Michigan. In remarks in a news briefing that referred to the senators by name, Mr. Maliki said they had spoken “as if Iraq is one of their cities.” “Iraq is a sovereign country, and we will not allow anyone to talk about it as if it belongs to this country or that,” Mr. Maliki said. He added a phrase that could be translated as indicating that the senators ought to make sense again or should return to a logical path. Later in the day, Mr. Maliki appeared to have calmed down as he went through a series of meetings and participated in a joint statement of broad political unity by two major Kurdish parties, two Shiite parties, including his Dawa Party, and a bloc led by Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni. The White House, eager for signs of progress, welcomed the agreement. A spokeswoman, Emily A. Lawrimore, said the leaders’ decision was “an important symbol of their commitment to work together for the benefit of all Iraqis.” In advance of a report on progress in Iraq by the United States ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and the American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the statement appeared tailored to show that steps toward political unity had been taken. The report by Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus is widely expected to point to some advances on security and the economy, partly as a result of an American troop increase. But the fractious government has made little progress in crucial areas like laws regulating the development of Iraq’s oil resources and governing the sharing of oil revenues. But Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd, who was at the multiparty talks, said that he thought the participants had negotiated the statement in good faith. “I hope that this agreement offers us an opportunity to move beyond the political crisis that has afflicted the country,” Mr. Salih said. “I would consider this an important step forward, but we have to admit that we have more work to do.” Mr. Crocker was at the meeting of officials pushing along an agreement, Mr. Salih said. In his earlier news briefing, Mr. Maliki also gave very qualified support to another initiative he has been pressed to accept: bringing former members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein back into the government. “The doors are open for all the politicians who don’t call for violence and the use of weapons against the government,” Mr. Maliki said. “But some people want to bring back the old regime,” he added. “They want to bring back the time when the minority governed the majority. This time is past, and no one can do anything outside the political process.” Still, despite the promising signs on Sunday, Iraq’s political process remains all but completely stalled. And Mr. Maliki’s government has been gravely weakened by major defections in the past few weeks. In the most recent, the secular political alliance Iraqiya, led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, withdrew from the government on Friday. In an interview on Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition,” Mr. Allawi said his alliance had “lost our faith in the capability of the current government of salvaging the country and moving forward.” “I don’t see that we are getting closer to reconciliation,” he said. “I don’t see that we are getting closer to getting rid of militias. I am not seeing that we are getting closer to having assertive policies, foreign policies, which would not allow Iran to intervene in Iraqi affairs.”

How about that, Mr. Bones? Should this wannabe collaborator with militant extremist GOP invasionism be encouraged or rebuked when he lashes out at us humble donkeys? When he lashes out even with strident strokes "that referred to [our] senators by name"?

I myself mainly suspect that poor M. al-Málikí simply doesn't know enough facts about our own holy Homeland politics to be very dangerous. Context is all, "circumstances, which with some gentlemen ...." &c. &c.

The indig pol can do a very presentable Jefferson-Jackson impersonation, though: "The doors are open for all the politicians who don’t call for violence and the use of weapons against the government But some people want to bring back the old regime,. They want to bring back the time when the minority governed the majority. This time is past, and no one can do anything outside the political process."

Of course the real GOP-invasionized neo-Iraq resembles that picture not at all, being a place where "outside the political process" is the only place where anything can ever get done, Khalílzád Pasha's Konstitution having very niftily assured that it should be so. Sitting atop the nominal "political process" of régime-changed former Iraq, as he does, it is very natural that poor M. al-Malikí should defend shadows as if they were substances. Rumplestiltskin stamps his foot, and then . . . .

LEADER PROFILE

I think, Mr. Bones, that we had better squirrel this little treasure of political self-presentation away safely lest poor M. al-Málikí get abruptly demoted to ex-Führer:

Nouri Mohammed Hassan Al-Maliki, was approved by the Iraqi parliament on 20/05/2006 to serve as Iraq’s first-ever elected Prime Minister of a full-term government.[1] He had been elected as one of Islamic Dawa Party’s Members of the Iraqi National Assembly as part of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) slate in January 2005, and again in March 2006, this time heading the Babil list. In the previous transitional assembly, he served as the Head of the Defence Committee (2005-2006), was a leading member of the committee drafting the Iraqi Constitution and was the official spokesman for the UIA up until his nomination for premiership. He was also a member of the De-Baathification Committee from 2003 to 2005. [2] Born in July 1950 in Abi Gharq west of Hilla in the Babil province, Nouri Al-Maliki received a bachelor's degree at Usul Al-Din College in Baghdad, and a master's degree in Arabic literature from Salah Al-Din University in Sulaimania. He had been involved in Dawa discussion circles before then, but it was only when he became a student that he became highly active politically. From there on, he devoted his time to political resistance, working tirelessly to spread Dawa’s message amongst the student population, helping recruit members and rising quickly up the ranks of the party. In the years to follow, he developed a particularly strong reputation for his argumentative and organisational skills, and his bravery in the face of the Baathist onslaught on Dawa. He was finally forced to leave Iraq through Jordan on 21st October 1979 after learning of the regime’s intention to have him killed. Saddam would later go on to pass a death sentence against him in 1980, a few months after he had left Iraq. Several plans to have Nouri Al-Maliki assassinated in exile were implemented, but none succeeded. In exile, Nouri Al-Maliki, under the pseudonym “Jawad”, lived in Syria until 13/01/1982 when he moved to Iran. There he lived for a year in Ahwaz, before moving to Tehran, where he lived until 1989. [3] His decision to go back permanently to Syria that year was faltered when he fell seriously ill and was forced to halt his plans. But, on 16th September 1990 he finally left Iran to return to Damascus where he remained until the fall of Saddam in April 2003. During his time in Syria, Al-Maliki was highly active in the political arena. He oversaw the publication of the Dawa Party owned newspaper Al-Mawqif and soon became head of the influential Damascus Branch of Dawa. In 1990, he worked on the Joint Action Committee, a Damascus-based opposition coalition, serving as one of the rotating chairmen. He toured Europe and the Middle East to garner support for the Iraqi opposition movement and its struggle against the regime. On 11th March 1991, these efforts culminated in the Beirut conference, where the 17 main Iraqi political parties and Iraqi NGOs met, with delegates from Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Kuwait as well as other international organisations present. [4] In the 2003 Dawa leadership election, he won a seat on the leadership council in the Dawa party, emerging as one of the most influential leaders in the party, a key negotiator and a driven leader. Following the fall of Saddam’s regime in March 2003, Nouri Al-Maliki realised his dream of returning to his beloved Iraq. He has since worked assiduously to fulfil the Iraqi people’s and Dawa’s ambition for a free and prosperous democratic Iraq. Nouri Al-Maliki is married to Fareeha Khalil and has four daughters and one son.

===

Words don't exactly fail me, Mr. Bones, but I somehow prefer not to utter them just now. To pick on poor M. al-Málikí under the present circumstances would be indecent, and in any case everybody else in the holy Homeland seems to be doing it for us.


____
[1] All pre-1958 events and Dr. Ibráhím Ja‘farí have been flushed down St. George Orwell's memory hole, it looks like: wasn't IJ "elected Prime Minister of a full-term government" on exactly the same terms? Have I missed some invasion-based double talk here?

Well, actually I have, but in the bloody bushogenic quagmire such technical niceties tend to get confused and confusin', don't you know? Let's review the bidding:

* The first neorégime after the former Iraq was violently and irregularly formerized, that of Sultán Jay (General Garner), existed by sheer Boy-'n'-Party (unright of) conquest.
.
* The second, under Sultán Jerry (Party Neocomrade P. Bremer), reposed itself upon the same easy and sensible basis, but it diverted the gullible natives with an ornamental "Governing Council" of twenty-five notabilities who certainly were never guilty of governing anybody.

* After Bremer fled the country, a third or "transitional" neorégime took over, having been specified in the Jerry-built "Transitional Administrative Law," and at its head stood CIA asset Dr. ’Ayad Alláwí. At this point Boy and Party first started fibbing about the "sovereignty" and "independence" of their neo-Iraqi subjects.

* Phase Four was in fact the Age of Khalílzád Pasha and konstitution-makin' and all those inky-fingered plebescite, though the CIA asset presided still, technically.

* After that, as konstitutionally provided for, came the "interim" neorégime of Dr. Ja‘farí, yet with the Spirit of Zalmáy still always broodin' over everthin' that mattered.

* Finally come Modern Times and poor M. al-Málikí, who is neither "transitional" nor "interim," but probably should not count on being permanent all the same.


[2] That may be the very caltrop to unhorse him well this side of a "full-term government." Down at Rancho Crawford, the Big Management Party stumblebums radically fail to understand how their little Twelver friends feel about the Ba‘thiyya. They themselves could zig-zag back and forth anyway they pleased about whether Saddám was a solid pillar of "regional stability" or an imminent menace to East Texas armed with terror-tipped forty-five-minute specials. 'Twas all but a great game for Big Party cowpokers who could even boast of Sole Remainin' Hyperpower as they aggressed.

No Twelver GOP-occupee in the former Iraq can ever be quite as blithe and frivolous as the militant extremist Crawfordites and their Party base-and-vile have been about Saddam and all that. Even their very best former ideobuddy Dr. A. Chelabi, whose Twelverism seems marginal to nonexistent, only a trashy westoxicated Norman Vincent Peale matter of "identity," is very solidly unforgiving about the Ba‘thí Ascendancy. It would nicely suit the Party of Grant that that all its neo-Iraqis subjects get mutually reconciled, but one must remember that Saddam never inflicted anything at all on the Party of Grant, either its geniuses or its dupes. When somebody else did actually inflict upon them a tiny little bit for a change once in a while, 11 September 2001, the Boy-'n'-Party bozos did not exactly prove themselves models of the forbearance and reconciliation that they now recommend to all their spear-won subjects in the former Iraq.

"Another's tears are water," says the Russian proverb. Forbearance and reconciliation are excellent things, things certainly not to be discouraged! But the Harvard Victory School MBA señoritos ought to ponder and understand the sales resistance to this particular product, why it is so hard for the Lesser Breeds Without to forbear and be reconciled when they actually have some real grievance to forgive, or to pretend to forget. Even Mr. Bones and I "know" the correct answer at the back of the textbook well enough, yet we fail to "know" what it is like to be oppressed and suppressed by a systematic Saddámite dictatorship or by any incoherent lawless Kennebunkport-Crawford Dynasty factious muddle.

Pastor Bonhoeffer deplored "cheap grace," without at all setting himself up against Grace as such. Let's deplore "cheap reconciliation" in the spirit of Bonhoeffer, then, Mr. Bones: poor M. al-Máliki ought to forgive and forget about the sins of the Ba‘thí Ascendancy, yet we're no better than shameless Party-of-Grant cheapjacks if WE (we, of all people!) preach that sermon to him directly. "Softly, softly, catchee monkey"!


[3] I didn't know that, Mr. Bones, did you? I seem to have confused the qPM with Dr. Ja‘farí, who worked out of Damascus consistently.


[4] If that great harnessing of diversity was ever visible from an invasion-language perspective at all, it has sunk without a trace since. Why, the former Iraq is a foreign country, Mr. Bones, just think of THAT, sir! They do things differently there, including milestone marking. Though the lunar calendar be decorative rather than functional, it is an admirable emblem of the radical asynchronicity between Big Party cowpokers and small neoliberated pokees. We in the holy Homeland have never heard of 11 March 1991 especially; conversely poor M. al-Malikí is very inadequately worried about (Tuesday) 4 November 2008. Compared to that, the conventional journalistic sort of difference in "clocks" relied on by Party neocomrades Petrolaeus and Crockerius at brave New Baghdád as opposed to the clocks of Congress and Televisionland on Main Street sinks into negligibility. No ordinary clock can be more discrepant with its mate by more than six hours. The discrepancy between poor M. al-Málikí and his aggressionist betters down at Rancho Crawford cannot be gauged by clocks like that.

The End of the Affair

It appears that Rear-Colonel F. Kagan of AEI is the anti-Cupid who finally smashed up a beautiful and dreamy romance:

There are only 512 days until George Bush leaves the White House and his departure cannot come quickly enough. ... And still it is hard for some on this side of the Atlantic to admit how damaging the consequences of his period in office have been. It should be especially shaming for those of us in that dwindling band prepared to admit that we were enthusiastic supporters of the Iraq war (I plead guilty), and even worse for those of us persuaded as far back as the tail end of the last century that this man had the attributes and inclinations which would make him a successful president (guilty again). ... In light of that [Boy-n'-Party failure in the former Iraq] the sustained attacks on our brave forces by senior advisers to a failed President are even more offensive; his arrogance and incompetence is compounded by rudeness. What began with comments by General Keane, in a candid interview with the Sunday Telegraph last weekend, picked up pace throughout the week and has been given a new intensity today by the intervention of Frederick Kagan. An architect of the US surge in Iraq, he has some fairly choice things to say about the "Brits" in southern Iraq: our troops have done too little to stabilise Basra, their withdrawal will cause resentment on the part of US troops, and as a nation we misunderstand al-Qaeda's threat.

There's a great deal more Torygraph wallowing in self-pity over Greater Texan ingratitude where that came from , but let us have a bit of Fatso's side of it, shall we?

In an outspoken interview, Mr Kagan condemned British politicians for failing to understand how best to tackle Islamic extremists, and for refusing to increase the size of the Armed Forces so they could pull their full weight in Iraq. Details of the number of US troops required to take over were disclosed by a senior British officer, who asked not to be named. He also revealed that commanders at the Ministry of Defence were "irritated" by the growing criticism from the US of their handling of Basra. To fill the vacuum, US Army chiefs may have to break a promise not to extend operational tours in Iraq beyond the current 15 month maximum, or risk diverting a significant number of the extra soldiers currently in Baghdad for the troop surge. Mr Kagan, who has just returned from Iraq, said: "The likeliest effect of British withdrawal from Basra is to keep an American unit in country for longer than they would like. I do worry about the short term effects on the relationship between the two countries. It will create bad feeling with American soldiers if they can't go home because the British have left ."

And there's a great deal more where that came from as well.

Justus comedit et replet animam suam; venter autem impiorum insaturabilis.

Islam Is, or Islam Ain't?

How might a pseudo-Confucian rectification of names render assistance to paleface Kiddie Krusaders? Now here is a silly season topic fit for Huntin'ton of Harvard, the galaxy famous inventor (or discoverer, as the case may be) of Anglo-Saxon Clashism™:

[Six years afrer six years ago, t]he more perceptive writers will note that the vast bulk of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims continues to reject extremism. The less perceptive (and less travelled) will talk about a continuing war for civilisation. As well as considering the views of the various commentators, we would do well to stop a moment to consider the language in which they are expressed. For we have reached a critical moment in the war on terror ...

Even if I was not anthologizing it and spoon-feeding you with it, Mr. Bones, but let you gaze upon Mr. Jason Burke's whole thing in the buff, you'd probably still be puzzled who his "we" are, and what seems to him so "critical" about their "moment" or anybody else's. Has Nostradamus or Stephen Hadley written somewhere that if M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí are not brought to vengeance in six full years, [1] they walk free forever? Unfortunately Mr. Burke is operating in pseudo-Confucian mode, however, and carries on the krusade at an obtuse angle:

We have reached a critical moment in the war on terror. Sorry, let me rephrase that, we have reached a critical moment in our efforts to counter the terrorist threat. No. We are at an important juncture in the continuing process of countering Islamism... no... Islamic militancy... er ... modern Muslim radicalism... al-Qaeda... no, make that al-Qaeda-inspired violence... er... on second thoughts... For the semantics of the post-9/11 era have never been easy. From the mantraps of the use of words such as 'crusade' in the days after 11 September to difficult decisions by broadcasters and print journalists over whether they talk about 'terrorists', 'militants' or 'violent activists', the battle fought to ensure a language that more or less accurately describes the phenomenon that we have seen emerging in recent years, which I call 'modern Islamic militancy', for want of a better term, and the response to it has been as important as any other. And that battle is far from over.

Ah! Nostradamus is dead, Gandalf is fictional, Master Hadley is uncredentialled, Dr. ‘Alláwí of the former Iraq is a woefully incompetent apprentice, yet does any of that anecdotal evidence prove that the ars magna does not work? Not to Mr. Jason Burke, anyway. If only he could find the True Name that he fumbles after there, the, uh, "entity" corresponding would be at his mercy, which it probably would not get much of. "Poof! Shazaaam! Take that, Bin Ládin!" And that would be the end of his we's crisis in even less than a moment. Perhaps we would never learn the Burkean we's exact identity, but "exact identity" sounds like it must be located somewhere in the neighborhood of True Name, so presumably the Weness of Them is very well defended by spells and conjurations. And it's not as if one cares, after all, is it, Mr. Bones? Whatever Jason the Conjurer may think he's doing, we think he's wasting his time except insofar as he collaterally benefits sceptics like us with a little light entertainment suitable to the Dog Days. Sit back and watch the show, sir! It will begin as soon as J. the C. gets done repeating that he believes in onamatomancy:

It took many years to establish a vocabulary that was broadly accepted to adequately describe the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Finding an equivalent set of terms for the threat posed by bin Laden and others will take longer still, but as language often determines thoughts and, thus, policies, it is an essential process that we need to survey as carefully as our check-in queues. It is a counterterrorist effort as valuable as any other.

As valuable as any other contribution that he can offer, perhaps. After the preliminary sales patter, why not a few testimonials from satisfied purchasers of the Burke's Verbal Witchcraft™ product?

As in more conventional areas, this battlefield has seen victories and defeats. An example of the former is, following the arrival of Gordon Brown at Number 10, the consigning of the inflammatory and counterproductive term 'the war on terror' to the governmental linguistic dustbin. The term 'al-Qaeda' has also evolved. Senior British politicians now speak carefully of 'al-Qaeda-inspired' violence. There is now sufficient knowledge among the general population of the actual nature of al-Qaeda, an ideology as much as an organisation, for it to be impossible for a politician to claim baldly that any given attack is the work simply of Osama bin Laden.

Hmm. In both cases the customer satisfaction and "victory" seems to reside more in Mr. Burke's imagination, or in his politics, than in the former real world. In any case, Dr. Brown has been deputy chief physician in attendance for only a few weeks, so is it not a little premature to acclaim his anti-inflammation therapy? [2]

Next comes a very peculiar attempt to recommend onomatomancy as a popular art:

This reveals the mechanisms by which the vocabulary used to describe the terrorist threat against us evolves. Words, often originating in the specialist jargon of counter-terrorism, are introduced into general conversation by journalists and politicians. They are then tested at the bar of public opinion. Sometimes, they are rejected. Frequently, they are adopted, but only after their sense has been nuanced to be closer to general perceptions. The shift in the popular understanding of the term 'al-Qaeda' feeds back into political language, into the media and finally into policy-making.

"We enchant, you decide," eh? I can see why such fake concessions to a low democratic age attract Master Jason, but surely he must really think that onamotomancy is on a par with brain surgery and Rocket Science, even though he does not want to offend the unsorcelled majority by snobbish frankness about his chosen expertise. He might have got away with honesty, though, at least if enough geezers still remember what Walt Disney did with Paul Dukas. [3]

Next we learn that onomatomancy depends to some extent upon places:

Here, cultural and linguistic factors are interlinked. In the US, where individual responsibility is emphasised and analysts tend to express themselves in an apparently rigorous, precise and empirical style, the understanding of 'al-Qaeda' has always contrasted strongly with that in countries such as France, for example, where social and historical context is emphasised, the collective trumps the individual and analysts, policy-makers and commentators are far happier with ill-defined concepts and ideas. In the wake of 9/11, French analysts decided, rightly, that al-Qaeda was a 'nebuleuse', a word which has no direct equivalent in English and denotes a nebulous, floating, dynamically evolving phenomenon that is half-network, half-idea.

There's quite a lot of irrelevant tripe and baloney in that passage, but evidently the true adepts of onomatomancy disdain to indulge in either the "apparently rigorous, precise and empirical" or in "ill-defined concepts and ideas." It's not difficult to guess where the happy via media between social scientizing and psychobabble is alleged to flourish. Perhaps at the end of the day Airstrip One alone can benefit from the knowledge of True Names? Say it ain't so, Massa Jason!

Speaking of unrigour, Mr. Burke throws in an "also" suggesting that what follows is not just further considerations about the place of places in verbal witchcraft:

Words can also collect different meanings. So 'jihad', already laden with several contesting theological interpretations, has further senses in the columns of, say, the Daily Mail and in the daily conversation among, for example, teenagers of Pakistani origin in Walthamstow. For the latter, sadly, 'jihad' is a glamorous, secretive, countercultural, ultra-violent lifestyle choice as much as a religious and cultural concept charged with centuries of Islamic history and religious argument.

One could pick on that, but let's not pause now, when the announced topic -- the advertisement reads "'Islamism' has no place in terror's lexicon" -- hoves into view at last:

Recently, a new label has been proposed for the diverse and dynamic phenomenon which threatens us: 'Islamism'. Sadly, this is not a helpful term. First, because it is already used by specialists to denote a fairly narrow ideology aiming to mobilise Muslims to take over existing modern states that differs substantially from the more eschatological ideas underpinning the project of 'al-Qaeda'. And second, because it implies a direct causal link between Islam and the violence we have seen in recent years. Islam may be part of the problem, but it is wrong to suggest that a hugely diverse and dynamic faith is the sole source of the current threat. 'Islamism' emphasises the religious above all other factors, the social, the political, the economic and the cultural. Its supporters should bear in mind that MI5 now describes terrorism in the UK as, at least in part, a 'cultural phenomenon'.

It's a bit of a puzzle why MI5 should be a place specially privileged over Walthamstow and the Daily Mail and Paris and Kennebunkport and Crawford for purposes of verbal magic, yet perhaps only a practitioner could understand the rationale. From the ignorant outside there is a more serious difficulty still, namely that Mr. Burke seems almost to defect from his own standard. He does not mention the blatant verbal difficulty about "Islamism," -- how is one to pronounce it right so that one's spells are efficacious? Instead, he only raises objections to what it "denotes" or "implies," which is all very well in its way, but nothing much to do with onomatomancy. Any Soc. Sci. Yank or vague dreamy Gaul can do the job, for Pete's sake, if it's only to be about meanings that we talk! [4]

Considered in broad daylight without any circumambient nimbus of Wortzauberdämmerung, Mr. Jason Burke is not particularly impressive. He seems almost to agree with Ms. Conventional Wisdom that we are all to keep very quiet about having noticed very little you-know-what in the world recently that the you-know-who themselves do not account Islám-related, nay even Islám-mandated. So commonplace a position must have at least a little something to be said for it, but unfortunately one runs into Shaw's Paradox at this point: "It is impossible to explain what decency is without being indecent."

M. Pascal and I think that the decency school of counterterror thus get pretty much what they deserve, although ours is to be sure an ethical judgment rather than a political one. God knows best.

(( JB never does explain "our" "critical" "moment" -- go check for yourself if you don't believe me. ))


____
[1] Why should six be a magic number and not, say, 5.3069 or 137?

Not a hard question. As you must know, Mr. Bones, there used to be the Seven Deathless Kosmokratores (vulgarly called "planets visible to the naked eye") and they often mixed up with the stars of Charles's Wain somehow, and then specifically Hebrew Christojudaeanity came along and insisted that one of seven must be set aside for silly season purposes, and there you are, basically. I take it that the mathematical "perfection" of sextity (1+2+3=6, 1*(6)=6, 2*3=6) is only a lucky add-on to the different and earlier sextity (7-1=6) of Astrology and Superstition. The incantational community don't think such coincidences happen by chance, needless to say. There's also the Precession of the Equinoxes, of course, but it's too early in the morning for me to remember clearly about that rather tricky matter.


[2] The chief attendin' physician, Dr. G. W. Dubyus of Yale College and the Harvard Victory School, is rather notoriously at cross-purposes with his Airstrip One sidekick. If the Prime Minister dared to address his betters down at the ranch in Mr. Burke's tone and vocabulary, mightn't he get the current state of anti-inflammation and productivity and victory at good old British Basra thrown back in his teeth? (We do not maintain that words can never produce any effect at all, Mr. Bones!)


[3] Maybe the incantation community does require mass participation, though not mass comprehension of the technology involved. Perhaps merely ascertaining the True Name and uttering It out loud once in Dr. Faust's study is insufficient, and something more like a Nuremberg rally chanting It in unison over and over must take place before the desired results are forthcoming? (We unbelievers admittedly do not tend to know much about how the verbal witchcraft racket is supposed to work technically, taking for granted in advance that it doesn't ever work at all except by accident.)


[4] There is also the strictly linguistic point that Jason the Conjuror shows no interest at all in what M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí call their own stuff. Since he manages well enough here in his own way with jihád, he need not actually study much Arabic to do so.

He may consider professionally that whatever the faith-crazed fiends label their product cannot possibly be the True Name of it, for they have yet to achieve any solid and Faust-worthy results with their incantations. In that case, though, what about the Arabophone despisers of al-Qá‘ida? Perhaps exotic noises like salafí and takfírí do work, at least to a limited extent, with an onomatomantic effectiveness? Isn't it worth at least a try, O Merlin?

But, Sir, What Comes AFTER "Smash the State!"?

Considering the pious or superstitious horror with which all the greedy factions (other than the Free Kurds) from Crawford to Londonstan to Najaf react to any suggestion that the former Iraq be officially dissolved or partitioned, we've now reached an interesting point in the invasion-basing process at which the affairs of those provinces can be solemnly handed over to "Nabeel Mahmoud, an international relations professor at Baghdad University" to pontificate about. The New York Times Company is as schizophobe as anybody else this side of Dr. Righteous Virtue, so I presume their "news analyst" has backed himself unconsciously into proceeding as if the success of the state-smashin' project and subsequent recurrence to the State of Nature were already a truth universally acknowledged.

Asked "why reconciliation has been so hard to attain," Dr. Mahmoud pontificated thusly:

“No one can rely on the political participants who lack a common view of the public interest. ... Such a concept is completely absent from the thinking of the political powers in Iraq’s government, so each side works to get their own quota of positions or resources.”

Some NYTC headline editor repackaged that indigenous fortune cookie as "Iraqi Factions’ Self-Interest Blocks Political Progress" , which is not quite the same thing. As well becomes an avowed student of Planet Hobbes in general rather than of any one mere civil State, the geopolitical scientizer did not commit himself to any rash prescriptive optimism about "progress." Just the facts, ma'am! Thus Dr. Mahmoud's first sentence nicely explains why the United Nations and "collective security" so regularly disappoint quite as well as it explains why invasion-basin' disappoints in Mesopotamia.

However it is also a fact that there used to be a mere civil State in Mesopotamia, i.e., the former Iraq itself, whereas the United Nations and "the international community" have not been arrived at by a comparable process of degeneration -- not unless we absurdly join the late Filmer and start our Pol. Sci. with the Garden of Eden. Technical terms like "lack" and "complete absence" conceal a significant ambiguity: Planet Hobbes lacks what it never had to begin with, whereas Peaceful Freedumbia lacks by deprivation rather than by default. To distinguish further, Peaceful Freedumbia lacks by deprivation ab externo. That is to say, it was militant extremist Republicans who smashed the former Iraqi State by violent breakin' and enterin'. The resultant "complete absence" is not at all the result of a local convention voting to rescind its ratification of the Social Contract after the fashion of South Carolina in December 1860.

If one regards statism as artificial rather than "natural," which Mr. Bones and I do and M. Mahmoud seems to, then unstatism -- "lack" and "complete absence" of the Civil State -- must have came first historically. Proponents of unstatism may therefore justly be termed "conservatives" and then the practioners/victims of unstatism can be divided into four classes:

(A) Conservatives who never heard of innovation S.
(B) Conservatives who know about S and conscientiously reject it. ("Reactionaries" proper)
(C) Postconservatives deprived of S by external violence.
(D) Postconservatives deprived of S by due process. [1]

Planet Hobbes and "the international community" fall under (A), I'd say, because fantasizing universal monarchy, for the UN or anybody else, on the analogy of particular States remains only fantasy. None of Uncle Sam's neo-Iraqi subjects in August 2007 can belong in that category, however: everything in their parochial politics since at latest 1958 assumes that statism is familiar, like it or not.

Unstatism having been inflicted upon the former Iraq by gross supralegal violence from outside, there is a natural tendency to assume that pretty well all neo-Iraqi subjects belong in category (C): "everybody" knows what statism is, and almost everybody wants it restored. At the same time, any student of the bushogenic quagmire who takes mere superficial appearances seriously and does not platonize them under the rug and out of sight can see the obvious difficulty: if a restoration of statism is what "everybody" wants, why on earth don't they have it already? The Occupyin' Party is not deliberately tryin' to foist the Rand-Nozick ("libertarian") tripe and baloney off on its colonial victims, however much partisan fun it may be in central North America to pretend otherwise. Unstatism in their semiconquered provinces is a serious nuisance to Boy and Party, although needless to say they would not care for an expressly anti-Bushevik sort of restored State either.

M. Mahmoud may or may not have evolved some ingenious Bernielewisite theory of What Went Wrong: he is quoted so briefly that it is impossible to guess what it would be. However I think we may infer that he believes in the general wrongness of "Freedom means peace" as actually imposed and implemented from the words "each side works to get their own quota of positions or resources," and especially from that particular Q-word. It looks as if Peaceful Freedumbia resembles Lebanon, that fascinating but sui generis locus of unstatism, a bit too much for his taste. If some of the NYTC news analyst's subsequent unsourced ruminations are, as often happens, borrowed from M. Mahmoud, there may be a bit more for us to work from. After kissing off the Free Kurds, Mr. Damien Cave continues

Shiites and Sunnis, however, are still the factions with the greatest responsibility for Iraq’s political stalemate, and the ones most able to gain from the dysfunctional status quo. Shiites in particular, as the majority, have managed to take advantage of the weak central government in a number of ways. Religious parties in majority-Shiite areas like Basra now openly fight for positions of power. Killings of Shiite officials by Shiite gunmen in the south have grown more common, and with huge oil wealth located in the region, interference from Baghdad remains entirely unwelcome.

That majorities benefit especially from weak central government may be a very disputable sort of Pol. Sci. proposition, [2] but clearly it is a Pol. Sci. proposition and as such may derive from Dr. Mahmoud or from somebody very similar. "Shiites in particular have managed to take advantage" speaks for itself only too loud and clear, and the Tendenz of the rest of the passage is even more so. Consider the flip side: exactly whom in Peaceful Freedumbia would it best suit to have a strong central government that fosters a minority and interferes with huge oil wealth wherever located? Not a very hard question. [3]

After that Mr. Cave moves on to settle the Rev. Señorito Muqtadá's hash, still without shifting to any other named quotee capable of impartial news analysis, real or pretended:

In the capital, offices run by the militia and civilian organization of the populist cleric Moktada al-Sadr have opened like franchises across the city. His militia, the Mahdi Army, known as Jaish al-Mahdi, now controls businesses ranging from real estate and ice to guns and gas. One Mahdi commander from eastern Baghdad recently estimated that the militia controlled 70 percent of the city’s gas stations, a figure that is hard to verify but which falls in line with what American officials describe as a sophisticated network that combines brutality with business. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, for example, recently called the organization “Jaish al-Mahdi Incorporated.” Mr. Sadr does play a role in the government. His party — encouraged by the Americans to join Iraq’s government — controls several ministries rich in resources, including the Health Ministry. Without Mr. Sadr’s support, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fellow Shiite, would not have become prime minister. Like many others here, Mr. Sadr and his followers have recently turned on Mr. Maliki, repeatedly pulling out of the government to register discontent. And yet, Mr. Sadr has not called for a replacement.

If that comes from Dr. Mahmoud too -- or indeed, even if it doesn't -- what we have here must be the Mahmoudian mechanism, the secret trick by which mere majorities can take unfair advantage of weak régimes. It appears that they do for themselves what we statists would want done by a proper State. Not the most amazing discovery of social scientizing is that one! Yet why should contemptible majorities have a monopoly on this ploy? Can't noble minorities do it as well, especially given a reasonable degree of geographical concentration?

With astonishing self-restraint, Mr. Cave does not mention the God Party of Lebanon in this connection, but I shall do so and point out that the Hizballáh manages to do the trick in question without being a majority inside the Beirut statelet. As regards the former Iraq, one might conjecture that if the TwentyPercenter smithereens were doing the same for themselves, their self-help efforts might tend to be overlooked by paleface news analysts because they also tend to bomb and shoot at Republican Party operatives, a practice which is traditionally accounted rather more newsworthy in itself, not to mention what news customers in Manhattan might be expected to demand. On the other hand, maybe the smithereening of the former Sunni Ascendancy has gone so far that that theocommunity could not emulate the God Party and “Jaish al-Mahdi Incorporated” even if they tried? God knows best.

Myself, I do not pretend to know about the factual question, yet I venture to pronounce that there can be no objection in principle to minorities as well as majorities coping with conditions of unstatism along Sadr Tendency lines. [4] Such privatesectorian coping is the obvious answer to our original question, "What comes after 'Smash the State!'?"

It may not be the only answer, to be sure, that is another story. Presumably John Galt would not do exactly what the Sadr Tendency and the Hizballáh are doing to cope with unstatism, but you'll have to consult Miss Rand of Petrograd or Mr. Nozick of Harvard for the details.


_____
[1] This is not the case of Charleston 1860, which falls rather under (B). If anybody on that occasion had voted against secession, however, she would belong to (D) as being a member of a minority that does not on that account withdraw her allegiance to the local convention. In Peaceful Freedumbia, category (D) has been increasing as effective political support for cosmopolitan rootlessness ("secularism") dwindles. In our own annals, General Lee of Virginia (rather than "of the United States") is the standard model of a (D) person.

"Due process" is not to be pressed too hard: one can know the general drift of one's own theocommunity well enough without formal assemblies or plebescites. To go with that flow voluntarily but disapprovingly is the essence of (D). "Our party, right or wrong!"



[2] What would Senator Calhoun or "President" Davis have made of it, I wonder? The pre-GOP Fedguv was so weak as to scarcely exist at all, by present standards, and the slaveocracy did indeed take the line that it was systematically biased in favor of mere majorities and against themselves. Yet the very last thing they had in mind was to strengthen it, surely?

From a different viewpoint, though, as long as they could control the puny creature through the National Democracy and the three-fifths rule, they condescended to put up with it. Yet how were they able to pull that trick for so long if feeble government fosters majority rule?



[3] The whole business has a Cloudcuckooland flavor to it. In the real world, the TwentyPercenters are so fractionated and disintegrated as to be quite incapable of imposing themselves as they always used to do. Perhaps that will change eventually and their natural mastery be imposed once again, but meanwhile to confound statism and Sunnianity like this is not just mischievous and selfish but ridiculous.



[4] Speaking of factual questions, I believe "And yet, Mr. Sadr has not called for a replacement" is an error. He has called upon poor M. al-Málikí to replace the resigned Sadrists with so-called "technocrats," and therefore the live issue is why that has not been done.

To be sure, Peaceful Freedumbia being what it is, and especially what the Khalílzád Konstitution makes it be, most neo-Iraqi subjects might not notice even if there were no quasiministers at all.

Bribe-A-Tribe Is Not Enough

America's Harvard Victory School MBA classes really ought to be able to do better on Lord Mammon's own sector of the Kiddie Krusade front than this, Mr. Bones:

"I thought we would be further along at this point, but we have a lot of momentum building in terms of support and a lot of momentum building in terms of finances," Brinkley said. "America's economic might has still not been brought to bear in Iraq."

You may ask, What is Party neocomrade P. A. Brinkley fallin' behind with? It goes like this:

More than a year after the Pentagon launched an ambitious effort to reopen Iraqi factories and persuade U.S. firms to purchase their goods, defense officials acknowledge that the initiative has largely failed because American retailers have shown little interest in buying products made in Iraq.

The top Harvarditarian bosses set this "ambitious effort" up at DOD, notice, no foolin' around with AID or Foggy Bottom or even Dr. Hoover's dear old Department of Commerce! That means they musta been really serious about wantin' some victory for a change. Instead of which they got only, well, . . .

The Pentagon thought U.S. firms would be willing to help revitalize the war-torn Iraqi economy and create jobs for young men who might otherwise join the insurgency. But the effort -- once considered a pillar of the U.S. strategy in Iraq, alongside security operations and political reform -- has suffered from a pervasive lack of security and an absence of reliable electricity and other basic services. (...) Three officials who have worked with the Pentagon's Task Force to Support Business and Stability Operations in Iraq said in recent interviews that, although some factories have achieved limited success, the larger effort to link Iraqi industries with U.S. retailers has been a "failure." In an interview last Friday,[1] Paul A. Brinkley, the deputy undersecretary of defense in charge of the task force, acknowledged that promising opportunities with U.S. companies have slipped away as the war's popularity fell. So far, only one American company has agreed to purchase clothing from an Iraqi factory, in Mosul.

Do you suppose it possible, Mr. Bones, that Neocomrade P. A. Brinkley was (is?) simply unaware that there were (and are) any pesky little problems of success remaining about technical details like security and electricity out in the Dubya-blessed Land of Peace and Freedom? I can picture him to myself as piously refusin' ever to glance at the [exp. del.] mainstream media, but swallowin' whole every instance of Iraq-the-Model™ happy talk and GOP-booster sectobabble that came his way, whether from the op-ed columns of the ever-august Wall Street Jingo or from some more downmarket purveyor of tripe and baloney.

Settin' up shop amidst the violence professionals shows that somebody far up the Rancho Crawford totem pole must have fancied this particular AEIdeological moonbeam, but once set up, the violence pros down the corridor cannot have had much to contribute to it out of their special expertise. It is not their business, after all, to keep track of the Mammon-worshipper tribes of central North America so as to foresee such difficulties as

Iraqi officials have recently highlighted pending deals with retailers such as Wal-Mart and J.C. Penney, businesses that they said were considering purchasing Iraqi products from the few local factories that have restarted. But the two companies said last week that they are not in negotiations to buy Iraqi products, citing Iraq's uncertain future and the questionable viability of potential suppliers there. (...) What Brinkley described as an early "groundswell" of support from U.S. companies has waned. Business experts said that was caused by the uncertain security situation, concerns that supplies could get cut off and the prospect that Congress could end the U.S. involvement in the war.

The intrepid reporter ends up insinuating that the slaves of Mammon ought to have supported P. A. Brinkley's moonbattery out of sentimental (or "ideological," if you insist) affinity, which implies a serious misunderstanding of late capitalism. Happily his final quotee more or less sets that right and brings us back to a more accurate view of how St. Ike's "military-industrial-academic complex" really operates:

John H. Sununu, president of the consulting firm JHS Associates, said that he has been interested in the idea for more than a year. He noted that he has been talking to clients about acquiring Iraqi products or using Iraqi services but has not gained much traction. "If all the companies were doing was for the short term, they could do it altruistically," said Sununu, a former Republican governor of New Hampshire and a chief of staff for President George H. W. Bush. "For the long term, there has to be some potential for it being a good business decision, as well. They're struggling with balancing their natural inclination to do good with their business inclination to have to do well."

==

It might be amusing to pursue the neocomrade's daydreams about "America's economic might [fully] brought to bear in Iraq," but it is dreadfully late in the course of their aggression to play that game, and who can deny that the clowns have already thrown godzillions of bucks at the former Iraq? True believers from the ranks of the Political Capitalist subfaction of the Big Party are free to maintain that many fewer bucks would have done the trick, had only they been privatesectorian bucks, but that tail can't wag the elephant when the elephant's other subfactions -- Big Management proper, Political Christojudaeans, Mugwumps and Weekly Standardizers all alike -- are not much interested in its peculiar dogmas.

In the real world, Little Brother and the Big Managers must fund their Kiddie Krusadin' with money from Congress -- or, just barely conceivably, with money from Sa‘údiyya and the Gulfie dwarfs after the supraconstitutional manner of Col. Oliver North -- else there will be no more Kiddie Krusadin'.


___
[1] Today is the Friday after the Friday before, which indicates that the Washington Posties do not think as highly of this gem as they ought to.

On the other hand, and perhaps to make up for lost time, the "Today's Papers" summatorialist for WP corporate subsidiary Slate modestly burbles about "an A1 hollowing-out of a pillar of the U.S. strategy in Iraq" —the effort to get U.S. businesses to buy Iraqi products." He then becomes emboldened to contradict what he summatorializes from: compare "The problem seems to be that there are almost no Iraqi products to buy" (in Mr. Ryan Grim) with anything you like in his original. Insofar as Señorito Brinkley's HVS hasty puddin' has a unifyin' theme, it would be more like "the uncertainty around the situation in Iraq" according to Mr. Josh White, teller of the tale. That deep insight is repeated several times in one wording or another.

Mr. Grim obviously does not think Big Management Party invasions and semiconquests and occupations and counterinsurges are quite as warm and cuddly as some of Slate's other summatorializers do. (With a surname like that, maybe the man thinks nothing at all is warm and cuddly!) He goes so far as to play up some hot poop of an ad hominem nature about P. A. Brinkley that I shall not sully my keyboard by repeating. Myself, I'd even have hesitated to include the hollowing-out of strategy pillars. That vivacity is not over the line into Dr. Limbaugh's "drive-by media" zone, but it is too close to the border for comfort. Anyway, it is simple bad judgment to account this malarkey a "pillar" of anything whatsoever -- obviously it is only a toothpick at most.

Somebody's Cheerleaders Must Be Wrong

The world-historic SMFI, "struggle for mastery in the former Iraq," begins to resemble the caucus race from Alice in Wonderland:

`What is a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything. `Why,' said the Dodo, `the best way to explain it is to do it.' (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.) First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (`the exact shape doesn't matter,' it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no `One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?' This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, `everybody has won, and all must have prizes.' `But who is to give the prizes?' quite a chorus of voices asked. `Why, she, of course,' said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one finger; and the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out in a confused way, `Prizes! Prizes!'

Despite the suggestion from Mr. Carroll or Lady Dodo that caucus-races are a winter sport, there's really no reason they can't be conducted all year round. Or even year in and year out, as has been the case in Peaceful Freedumbia. In any case, the current Big Party quagmire is not exactly like a caucus race, no more than Little Brother would claim that it is exactly like the Saigon Sweepstakes of yore. Since the SMFI contestants has not yet heard from the fat lady, the worst failure of this analogy -- who's to play Alice and award all those masterful strugglers suitable prizes? -- can be passed over altogether.

Meanwhile, over at Rio Limbaugh they're quite sure that Team Hyperpower has finally broken away from the pack. In the Arabophone districts of the Thames estuary, though, and in Arab dream palaces everywhere, they all know the same about Team Sunnintern.

The cheerleaders for those two crews of thugs make more noise with barks and bellows and bombs and automatic weapons than all the rest of the zoo combined, but as you'll recall even poor M. al-Málikí has been suffering from delusions of adequacy lately:

"These statements do not concern us a lot," Al-Maliki told reporters while he was visiting Syria. "We will find many around the world who will support us in our endeavor."

I suppose that zinger brings us to the evil Qommies, for who else could His Excellency be bluffing about? As with the Jewish Statist cheerleadership, one rarely hears from the evil Qommie cheerleadership directly, but we are quite often informed by (hostile) critics that in their hearts both Tehrán and Tel Aviv are snickericking with glee about neo-Iraqi developments.

Last, and probably least, comes Team Withdrawal, under Senator Harry and Speaker Nancy, plus the invasion-language MSM and circumjacent "high-traffic blogs," just-peaceniks and informed commentarians and other such riff-raff.

The Free Kurds, having already won their caucus race, are not in the running. The only other faction that might be considered to be seriously struggling for Total Mastery of the bushogenic bog is Uncle Sam's celebrated bipartisan foreign-policy community. However, if the Free Kurds have already retired from the fray, the CFR/ISG gentry rather resemble Party neocomrade F. Thompson, having not yet quite declared their candidacy for the Dictatorship of Mesopotamia. For the moment they remain only fellow travelers with the militant extremist GOP, not separate players in their own right. As such, they have no cheerleaders, and even when they do finally jump into the caucus race, they probably won't hire any. As one sort of conspiracy freak understands clearly enough, the bipartisan international Power Élite prefer to dictate from back rooms that most of their subjects do not even know exist. [1]

Now the nominal puzzle is how Crawford and Londonstan and Najaf and Tel Aviv and Qom and even us donkeys can all be achieving secure mastery of the former Iraq simultaneously. Such an outcome is not altogether impossible, but the only manner of possibility that comes to mind involves alliances amongst the predators and a partition of the prey. Yet not one of the caucus runners admits that she is not 1000% devoted to the sacred territorial integrity of the former Iraq. In a couple of cases there are specious reasons to doubt the sincerity of this avowed unitarianism, but most of them really and truly and quite unmistakeably want to grab it all. Even that outcome might be possible, if there was to be a Grand Universal Coalition of Mesopotamian Jackals, something like the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of August 1939, only three times gaudier to accord with the jackal count. But that's ridiculous, obviously, because it would require the equivalent of M. Beck adhering to the earlier coalition. And a number of the other jackals would scarcely have any ‘identity’ left at all, should they ever make a deal like that.

Still, if one looks at the present state of the invasion-based fiasco from the right angle under suitable lighting, and omits Najaf and poor M. al-Málikí from the predator list, something vaguely similar does seem to be happening. The remaining Gang of Five are far indeed from having coalesced with one another, but they do all seem to think that getting rid of the current neorégime at New Baghdád would be a major step forwards for themselves in particular. (That is a shaky proposition as regards the evil Qommies, perhaps, yet since unity of action is notoriously not the Islamic Republic's strong point, there is bound to be some mad mullah or another who thinks that they can do better than they've presently doing. On Ms. Conventional Wisdom's dubious theory that the Qommies are supporting absolutely everybody and her brother-in-law in the former Iraq, there is at least no reason they should much mind the liquidation of poor M. al-Málikí and the U.I.A. neorégime. If they are mostly playing beard-and-turban politics, it might even seem an excellent thing to them that ‘Alí Cardinal al-Sístání's political troops all mutiny and cut the scheming old man down to size. But God knows best what plots are hatched at Qom!)

There is no doubt at all which set of jackals would most enjoy dancing on poor M. al-Málikí's grave, although that is not at the same thing as profiting from his liquidation:

... Bush's flip-flop on Maliki shows Bush doesn't have any alternatives left for continuing the Iraq-occupation project. He concludes by saying that the flip-flop on Maliki will embolden Maliki's his enemies inside and outside of the "political process" and hasten his downfall. He argues as follows: "President Bush's confusion, between withdrawing his confidence from the Maliki government, then renewing it, all in the space of a two-day period, is tantamount to the coup de grace for the man and for the government, because this will push the groups that are in opposition to him, like the Sunni bloc, the Sadrist group and the Fadhila party, to toughen their attitude and augment the level of their demands. Likewise this will give the resistance factions the feeling that their victory is imminent, and that is in fact the case. No doubt President Bush will play for additional time, and wait for the report from General Petraeus expected the middle of next month, which certainly will indicate the failure of the American project for the occupation of Iraq, confirming the defeat of President Bush and his administration.

Thus spake an ideobuddy of Mu’ámara Junction named ‘Abdul Bári’ ‘Atwán, who, as you can see from the emphasized words, really does believe that Team Sunnintern has already as good as won the Dodo Prize. The usual Greater Levantine ignorance of American politics seems to be the root cause of this egregious error: the man has no adequate notion of what alternatives are available to Little Brother and the Big Managers. Not only was there no "Bush at a dead end," the perps have already swerved their Party line over to one of them in the two or three days since this Sunninterni journalist guessed all wrong.

It was, in my judgment, seriously premature and unclever for Boy and Party to switch from the "Trust David!" zig to the "Prevent Genocide!" zag, but even an apprentice Crawfordologist can seen that eventually they'd have to do that. [2] Whether the jackals of Londonstan ought to be pleased or vexed by this latest discontinuity in GOP aggression and occupation policy seems a point one might argue either way, but plainly they did not see it coming.


You'll understand, Mr. Bones, that by continually referring to the aggression-basers of the militant GOP as "stumblebums" I do not at all mean to suggest that they are the only stumblebums in existence. There are lots of others, as the above quotation substantiates.

In defense of concentrating most of our fire upon Rancho Crawford's stumblebums and purblind narcissists, there are two points to be made:

(1) In general, they are the only ones in sight with Sole Remainin' Hyperpower at their disposal, thus far more dangerous than the other jackal packs.

(2) Parochially, they are our purblind narcissistic stumblebums, the folks whose Boy-'n'-Party mischievements usually get written up as "America did so-and-so." [3]


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[1] The CFR folks are closer to actually winning the Dodo Prize than any of the declared caucus runners, or so I'd guess at the moment, but their triumph is not going to happen next month or even, perhaps, next year. They radically differ from their stalking horse, Little Brother of Yale College and the Harvard Victory School, in being serious power hogs rather than trashy Rovean glory hogs or crude Mammonite greedies. I presume the only reason they have have not foreclosed on everybody's mortgage from pole to pole is that do not directly control that many dollars, or control any votes at all. Saber no es poder, not really, and that is a lucky thing for us humble and foolish.


[2] Though not what Londonstan journalism would call a "dead end," it is somewhat inglorious and shabby that the invasion-basers have been reduced to "The worse, the better." Busheviks and Bolsheviks can be rather distressinly similar at times, although there is no more a universal analogy of Peaceful Freedumbia with the Russia of 1917-1921 than with the "South Vietnam" of 1954-1975.


[3] In the Greater Levant, one could strike "usually" and insert "invariably." The historical reasons why militant Sunninternis wallow in their own troubles and spare few thoughts for anybody else's are not far to seek, yet to understand is not at all to forgive. Like everybody else they should be held to the standard of M. Pascal, Travaillons donc à bien penser : voilà le principe de la morale.