28 September 2007

Wherein Rear-Colonel F. Kagan Explains All

[T]he adoption of a true counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq in January 2007 has led to unprecedented progress in the struggle against al Qaeda in Iraq, by protecting Sunni Arabs who reject the terrorists among them from the vicious retribution of those terrorists.


And whither doth it all tend, you ask? Freddy say:

This turnabout coincided with an increase in American forces in Iraq and a change in their mission to securing the population. Not only were more American troops moving about the country, but they were much more visible as they established positions spread out among urban populations.



Hath not neo-Iraq any better friend than this weight-challenged AEIdeologue of a Freddy, who wants always more and more GOP operatives and Party-hired mercs scattered all over the landscape only just to "protect"?

Is THAT what you originally intended, my Uncle Sam? Our wannabe City-on-a-Hill turned into an invasive protection racket?

Ah so, "Hashimi-Biden"!

You can detect in advance, Mr. Bones, from such a blatant absurdity that the Mu’ámara Junction gentry have relapsed into their same old, bad old ruts. But let's look at the context, shall we?

Let's look at the context. Please recall that there were two Iraqi politicians who had the immense privilege of one-on-one meetings with Bush after the Amman Bush-Maliki meeting last fall (the "Hadley-memo" meeting, if that helps you place the event). They were Tareq al Hashemi, head of the Islamic Party of Iraq (Sunni), and Abdulaziz al-Hakim, head of SCIRI (Shiite). For convenience, lets refer to them as the two leading politicians clearly in Bush's pocket. Now as it happens, two days ago this man Hashemi announced with much fanfare what he called a "National Pact", touting this as a new departure in national reconciliation, and one of the clauses included recognition of Iraq as a "federal" country. This, as Aswat al-Iraq noted at the time, was the first time ever that a major Sunni party had officially endorsed federalism in any form. (Recall that the fall 2006 disputed parliamentary vote on federalism-procedures was something pushed through by the SCIRI-Dawa-Kurdish bloc, and was bitterly opposed by the Sunni parties. This was, along with the execution of Saddam, one of the major late-06 events that did so much damage to the so-called "political process"). And since then, there have been reports of a very promising meeting between Hashemi and the Ayatollah Sistani on this "National Pact" idea, creating the odor of possible rapprochement between Hashemi's Sunni party, and Hakim's SIIC (one of the major Sistani clients). Thus: Based on a document including the first-ever Sunni-party recognition of "federalism", we have the hint of a rapprochement between the two leading politicians clearly both in Bush's pocket.


Well. OK, so maybe it really IS kinda ridiculous for Rancho Crawford to suppose that "reconciliation" with M. Táriq al-Háshimí personally (plus of course his seconds and his relatives and his clients and his bottle-washers) can ever be decked out as "Sunnidom Reconciled." Onwards!

And here it is important to understand that these two characters represent, or purport to represent, two of the "big three" slices of the fairy-tale cake that the partition-advocates imagine represents Iraq: "The Sunnis", and "the Shiites". And so what a pleasant surprise to partition-advocates to see that at the same time a character by the name of Joseph Biden has introduced a "sense of the Senate" amendment that advocates just this fairy-tale three-part division. True, it is covered in multiple layers of fine rhetoric, but it is the same division of the spoils: [o]ne part for "the Sunnis" (but only that tiny minority that is participating in the Green Zone "political process"), and one for Hakim's SIIC (leaving the status of the Sadrists, Fadhila and all of the other non-SIIC Shiite groups up in the air, or out in the cold).


The Free Kurds seem not to interest Mu’ámara Junction even in the slightest, so perhaps they may get away from the rubble of the former Iraq intact at last. (And Bon voyage! say I!)

Meanwhile, back in the bushogenic quagmire, 'tis "the status of the Sadrists, Fadhila and all of the other non-SIIC Shiite groups" that Mu’ámara Junction invites one to worry about. Onwards!

And here we should refer to the main refutations of the whole Biden dipsy-doodle, one from Reider Visser, cutting through the Biden rhetoric and showing that the Biden plan is unconstitutional even in terms of the existing Iraqi constitution; another by Toby Dodge underlining the depth of Biden's ignorance, wilful or otherwise, about the social and political realities in the country he purports to be talking about. And of course, thirdly, there is the Iraqi resistance, somehow overlooked in the Biden proposal. In other words, the Biden proposal which so many Democrats voted for is bogus in many different ways: It is multi-dimensionally bogus.


RV we know of and dissent from well enough, but who's this shifty-sounding "Toby Dodge" person,then?

FP: Unless it can actually get into neighborhoods and provide necessary services, is there a future for the Iraqi government?

TD: I don’t think so. The fundamental cause of all these problems is the collapse of the Iraqi state. I was living in Baghdad in April 2003, and it was amazing to watch the institutions of the state disappear. You would see men running out [of buildings] with computers, then desks and chairs, then the plumbing and electrical wiring out of the walls. The state was dissembled, taken away, and put in people’s houses. And what the looters didn’t do, [Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul] Bremer’s de-Baathification did. It broke the institutional memory of the state.

On that basis, we don’t have a failing state or a collapsed state—we simply . If you stand in the Green Zone and look over the blast walls, the state doesn’t go much beyond that. The Iraqi state’s ability to deliver public goods to the population is crucial for drawing that population back into the state. If you look at the recent BBC/ABC poll, all the indicators—on jobs, water, and electricity—are down from presurge levels. There is a militant pessimism. First and foremost, the state needs to be rebuilt. And that is an international problem and it needs an international solution.


Master Toby gets a little carried away with his militant pessimism, perhaps. What "we" of Master Toby's is it that some exotic paleface WE should have, or not have, "a failing state or a collapsed state" amidst the aggression-based smithereens of the former Iraq? Yet of course we are all statists now, and to abandon the GOP-neo-liberated ex-Iraq as a stateless vacuum to Miss Rand and Mr. Nozick of Harvard won't do.

Meanwhile, back at Mu’ámara Junction,

But meaningless? Consider the nice fit between the stealth passage of the Biden amendment in Washington, and the "National Pact" announced by Hashemi on the same day in Baghdad and already semi-endorsed by Sistani: both of them, when you look at the fine print, aiming for this same three-part division of the spoils between the Bush-allies. It's true that the Hashemi document talks about "all Iraqis", just as the Biden amendment talks about "agreement" or the Iraqis, but first of all Biden is a known character by this time, and as for the Hashemi scheme is concerned, consider this (from Aswat al-Iraqs summary of the document):

The "National Pact" document proposed procedures and methods for arriving at agreement... and referendums would be one such method or agreement by the leaders of the main political formations in direct meetings, or mass meetings ...


and there follows a list of the types of broad-based meetings that have already been convened in the government's already-discredited and highly unsuccessful "national reconciliation" program.



Ours is a tough row to hoe, Mr. Bones! Scarcely anybody but Hegel likes statism better than we do, yet as regards the former Iraq, we no more confuse our own statism in MA with any re-instauration of the former Sunni Ascendancy in IQ along trashy Sunninterní MJ lines than with "So maybe why don't they all just turn Zoroastrian?"

Qui pauca considerat, facile pronunciat!

Let Dr. Johnson's epigram be our genuine program, Mr. Bones, and never any sort of mere excuse for idleness! As soon as we figure out how poor M. al-Málikí can best advance decent and politically grown-up statism in IQ without even the faintest contamination from any tendentious tá’ifiyya whatsoever, we'll instantly e-mail it to poor M. al-Málikí at brave New Baghdád! Let's firmly resolve on that, Bones!

Mysteries of L*b*r*l*sm

The LAT's Rosa Brooks isn't impressed by the show put on by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week and calls the whole thing a "farce." Bollinger was quick to describe the encounter as "free speech at its best," but Brooks says that only happens "when someone really does speak truth to power." And Bollinger didn't need much courage to criticize Ahamadinejad. "If Bollinger had invited President Bush to Columbia and made those same unvarnished remarks to him," and Bush actually tried to answer a couple of critical questions, that "would have been free speech at its best."


Ah, well, Mr. Bones, are not thee and I principaledly for free speech even at its very WORST, then? For it, even when it "speaks nonsense (maybe even lies) to imbecility," as it were, instead of "Truth to Power"?

But let's hear from the little lady direct:

Ahmadinejad was playing to global public opinion, and though he lost some PR points for incoherence and general bizarreness of message ("In Iran, we don't have homosexuals"), he gained some for coming off as a bit more mature than his prissy, infantile host. ("In Iran, when you invite a guest, you respect them," Ahmadinejad observed dryly.)

Bollinger, meanwhile, was playing to a different audience. After taking a beating for giving Ahmadinejad a forum, he was eager to show the media, alumni, concerned Jewish organizations and a raft of bellicose neoconservative pundits that he was no terrorist-loving appeaser of Holocaust deniers.

In a narrow sense, both Ahmadinejad and Bollinger achieved their goals. Ahmadinejad showed that he could be dignified in the face of crass American bullies, which will play well abroad -- and may even buttress his dwindling prestige in Iran. And Bollinger showed that he can be a crass American bully, which, in our current political climate, is what passes for "courage."


What's really goin' on here, O Bones? Myself, I'd prioritize the forum-granting first and account it authentically l*b*r*l. Should the forum-granter turn heckler, whether spontaneously or under pressure of crass bullyin' from the general direction of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and perhaps even the dread unspeakable AIPAC itself, why, that's a serious offense against adult decency and good manners, obviously, but what has it do with Free Speech? President A of I said his say freely, and so did President B of C -- where's the problem? What's to object to?

"In Crawford-untainted America, when we invite a speaker, Mr. President, we primarily want to hear what she says -- 'respect' is only an optional icing on the cake,."

'Nuff said![1]

___
[1] I've said enough to resolve the matter of fact decisively, but one may idiotically generalize and daydream much farther on than that. Suppose, goose-and-ganderwise, that President B. of C. is invited to the I. of President A. strictly quâ "respected guest" and not at all as "invited speaker." Nevertheless, since all Presidents and presidents and "presidents" whatsoever are ex officio addicted to the sound of their own voices, it would surely be very disrepectful and uncollegial for A. to deny B. of C. at least one oratorical outing in the Islamic Republic. What sort of an auditory should the lone Bollinger Lecture ever be delivered to, then, at Qom U.? Ideally to one that didn't know twenty words of English between all seven hundred of them, I suppose, but would that arrangement really be workable? Even if workable, would the arrangement be properly hostly-respectful? How about a picked pack of mad mullahs who understand spoken English perfectly but can be reliably counted upon to deplore pretty well everything that any native speaker is likely to say in that medium? But wouldn't it be difficult for President A. of I. to pick such a select pack as that?

I daresay that plan might give President B. of C. a really ding-dong battle in the Q&A session after the only Bollinger Lecture ever at Qom, for the mad mullahs of Twelverdom have rather a lot to say for themselves that is scarcely available in English. But since it is indeed scarcely available in the Language of Invasion, poor President B. of C. wouldn't have a clue where his fiercely disagreeing questioners are coming from, and isn't it almost quite as bad, really, that Respected Guest should find his select assembled auditory materially incomprehensible as linguistically vice-versa?

Clearly the correct answer in immediate practice is that President B. of C. should not be reciprocally invited by President A. of I. on any terms whatsoever, and I believe we may safely count on THAT!

As to how to evaluate the inevitable nonreciprocation, well, I'm tempted to throw the little lady's "And Bollinger showed that he can be a crass American bully, which, in our current political climate, is what passes for 'courage''" straight back at her: as if His Excellency Amadínejád were not equally, or even more severely, courage-challenged than the Hon. Bollinger is, more tied down to what one's own crazies back home will put up with!

A. of I. loses on points to B. of C. not only on that account, but also, as I consider, because A. of I. cheated at Columbia, unleashing an oration that makes excellent sense on invited-speaker terms, but is indefensible altogether as any sort of presentable behaviour emanating from a Respected Guest. "I grab this on YOUR principles, and I deny your right ever to countergrab anything on OUR principles" -- that's the pith and gist and crux, and if it's any better than naked Rancho Crawford and occult Castle Cheney, let somebody point out to me what I have missed.

Clearly B. of C. is no hero, but to make him out a positive villain compared to A. of I. is only to fall off the horse on the other side.

(Doesn't anybody have any proper sense of measure any more?)


===

Well, but how about Little Miss Piggy :
You know where I'm going. Is it necessary to say when one speaks of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that you disapprove of him, disagree with him, believe him a wicked fellow and are not amused that he means to have missiles aimed at us and our friends? If it is, I am happy to say it. Who, really, isn't? But THIS HAS BEEN OUR HISTORY: TO LET ALL SPEAK AND TO FEAR NO ONE.

That's a good history to continue. The Council on Foreign Relations was right to invite him to speak last year--that is the council's job, to hear, listen and parse--and Columbia University was well within its rights to let him speak this year. Though, in what is now apparently Columbia tradition, the stage was once again stormed, but this time verbally, and by a university president whose aggression seemed sharpened by fear.


Golly, maybe there is hope for us all, Mr. Bones!

27 September 2007

‘no pressure to exaggerate’

Under no pressure at all, apparently, except a request from GOP Today for a coonskin count, Big Party Management is reported to report as follows on the state of the aggression:
More than 19,000 militants have been killed in fighting with coalition forces since the insurgency began more than four years ago, according to military statistics released for the first time. The statistics show that 4,882 militants were killed in clashes with coalition forces this year, a 25% increase over all of last year.


The requestin' party seems to have some doubts about the Party numbers, however, although scarcely the ones that occur first to the Muses and me:

Last year, Gen. John Abizaid, then commander of military forces in the region, estimated the Sunni insurgency to be 10,000 to 20,000 fighters. He said the Shiite militia members were in the "low thousands." The U.S. military hasn't publicly provided any recent estimates. There are 25,000 detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq, according to the military. The numbers of enemy killed and detained would exceed the estimate given last year of the size of the insurgency.


What will Wombschool World make of that information? Assuming certain WW journalism customers recall who Gen. Abizaid was, they no doubt reflect that he was a jerk, whereas Dr. Gen. Petraaus of Princeton and West Point is a dab hand at invasion and occupation. I suppose their faith in their new Surgent General may be strengthened, for is he not aware that coonskins plus kidnap victims cannot possibly add up to more than the size of the insurgency before the insurgency is exterminated?

We don't profess to know at first hand what Rio Limbaugh thinks or wants, exactly, when it does text rather than bellowin's and pictures, but it does appear that Mr. (or very likely Neocomrade) Jim Michaels thinks the base folks out that way ideologically would be interested in this curious analytical paragraph [1] that he provides. Perhaps he fancies his customers reasonin' "OK, we've killed 19K -- or put 44K out of business one way or another -- but how many more alligators are still out there in the swamp?" If so, I fear he overestimates his wombscholars' interest in precise details about Peaceful Freedumbia. The latter rather incline to the view "THEY ALL hate Wunnerful US," a perspective from which the unknown quantity to be divided by 19K (or 44K) is so immense that it would be silly to play at calculation of it.

But perhaps JM fancies alternatively that what his wombscholars really want to guess at is not "the size of the insurgency" but the projected length of the Kiddie Krusade? That would be a rather different reasonin', not because it is any more calculable from the data available, but because it suggests that defeatism may be settin' in on Wombschool World, or at least the bratty impatience of "Daddy, are we there yet?" [2]

Turning to the sort of calculation that we'd naturally make ourselves, Mr. Bones, we find that it is not completely alien to the mindset of J. Michaels. Nevertheless, he does not think of it before his very last paragraph and then only in a restricted historical context:
The deadliest month for militants was August 2004 when thousands of militia fighters loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed with American forces in Najaf in southern Iraq. That month, 1,623 militants were killed. The U.S. military lost 53 troops in fighting during the same time.


'Tis a cinch to recur to one's calculator and discover that 1623 divided by 53 comes to 30.623. So far, so good, but if one then divides 19,000 by 30 and gets 634, well, perhaps that is not quite so satisfactory an outcome. Rather than relapse into PowerPoint and Cloudcuckooland altogether, though, Mr. Bones, let us observe in mere prose that it is not difficult to understand why Boy and Party might wish to be at war eternally with the Rev. Señorito al-Sadr and his juvenile delinquents, rather than with the actual Forces of Immoderation that still shoot at GOP operatives (and GOP collaborators, and others) in the former Iraq as of September 2007.

Now as to ‘exaggeration’, sir, why 30.623 would certainly qualify as an exaggerated quantity in a certain sense, would it not? But you are to mark that Big Party Management did not single out August 2004 for special attention, it was Mr. (or Neocomrade) J. Michaels of GOPToday who did that. Here again, one naturally wonders what the objective of the analytical exercise was. On Wombschool World, I daresay Muqtadá al-Sadr is a better remembered name than John Abizaid. Do you suppose, Mr. Bones, that the text readers of Rio Limbaugh are nostalgic for the good old days of 30.623 -- at any rate, that JM might rationally estimate that they are? Or if not that, what?

One could guess, but it would probably be better advised to guess about the GOP/DOD complex, which has compiled a certain track record in the former Iraq to work from, rather than worry about one isolated J. Michaels, whom we never heard of before just now and probably will never hear of again. Why is Big Party Management so scrupulously careful to eschew ‘exaggeration' when it comes to countin' their coonskins?

The statistics, provided at USA TODAY's request, were retrieved from a coalition database that tracks "significant acts." Militants are identified in the database because they are linked to "hostile action," said Capt. Michael Greenberger, a Freedom of Information Act officer in Baghdad. There is no way to independently verify the data. "The information in the database is only as good as the information entered into it by operators on the ground at the time," Greenberger said. "Follow-up information to make corrections is done whenever possible."

The U.S. military rarely discusses the numbers of enemy dead, fearful of raising parallels with the Vietnam War when the U.S. military's reliance on "body counts" led to allegations of inflated figures because of political pressure to show results. Today, U.S. commanders consider the number of enemy deaths a poor measure of progress in an insurgency and say there is no pressure to exaggerate. "The big difference is the command climate in Vietnam encouraged inflation," said T.X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel and insurgency expert. "The general command climate (in Iraq) is: 'Don't exaggerate.' "

The military's new counterinsurgency manual emphasizes political and economic solutions to eliminate the conditions that breed militants. Those actions are considered more decisive than combat. "You can't kill them all," Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of the American division responsible for northern Iraq, said in a recent interview.


"Because coonskin countin' would remind people of Secretary MacNamara's War" is a plausible suggestion, even though it seems to have originated here with the aforesaid isolated J. Michaels. Still, what sort of a Big Manager would say such a thing for direct quotation? To explain one's corporation's advertisment strategy in the public prints would be counterproductive in general, nothing a proper HVS MBA would ever dream of doing, even if such a ploy would not, as in the present case, so alarmingly resemble the Elizabethan cure for toothache that requires one to circumambulate a churchyard three times and never once think of a fox's tail. "We don't want to talk to you about it because it might remind you of Vietnam" would be a prize absurdity even by Rancho Crawford stumblebum standards. [3]

Neocomrade Col. Hammes on "command climate" is mildly interesting, although he seems to be proposin' a basically Saigonocentric explanation as well: if the Green Zone Officers Club does not think it advisable to count their coonskins in public for any reason other than that it might remind us all of the late M. V. Nabókov's "So. Vietnam," there is no hint what further considerations enter into the policy of unexaggeration. [4]

Neocomrade Gen. Mixon does not mention the dread V-word at all, but he, too, looks to be Saigonocentric at bottom. Any successful revival of Petraeo-MacNamaran counterinsurgency dogma in general -- regardless of the degree of DOD/GOP Success and Victory achieved in the former Iraq specifically -- seems bound to require that West Point and Princeton revisit Indochina in the spirit of St. Bernard Lewis, ever askin' themselves "What Went Wrong?" However it would be no help at all to have the other ranks, let alone flat-out chickenhawks, engage in prolonged reflection along those esoteric lines. Such unqualified sweet puppies can have no adequate violence-pro appreciation of why the Petraean updatin' of MacNamara's whiz kids makes neocounterinsurgency a whole different ball game. [5]


There are other senses or directions of ‘exaggeration’ that J. Michaels does not allude to, as for instance tactically, the alleged accomplishments of the Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme, and strategically, the question of whether the GZOC gentry might not be paintin' the present state of the aggression in rather darker colours for public consumption than they privately view it at the Club. However we can talk about those matters any time we choose and need not detain J. Michaels and GOPToday any longer.[6] AGKB!




____
[1] Two "paragraphs," actually, because Wombschool World likes its print journalism short and snappy. GOPToday is not quite as snappish as the BBC on-line news is, but the latter has the plausible defense that many of their readers are not native speakers of Greater Texan.


[2] Daddy's stock response, I take it, goes something like "No, but were are getting there real fast." And JM's other analysis already quoted may correspond roughly: "4,882 militants were killed in clashes with coalition forces this year, a 25% increase over all of last year."

If the GOP operatives can only keep it up, I believe that will amount to over a 50% increase for all 2007 over all of 2006. Und morgen die ganze Welt!


[3] On the other hand, the Party's Little Brother recently chose to remind everybody of Vietnam quite unmistakably, although to be sure not with reference to the present topic. The GOP/DOD Complex is not perfectly monolithic, of course, and, as any fool could easily foresee, the violence pro hired hands are rather more circumspect than chickenhawk Big Management.


[4] Whether the GZOC gentry actually entertain other considerations is another matter. Very likely they do, although they are tactically unmentionable as well at the present moment. (It will be fun to read some of our brassier violence pros' memoirs!)

Above all, should the Ever-Victorious Surge of '07™ somehow fail to do the trick for invasionism, it will be sauve qui peut as the GOP/DOD Complex comes unglued. Little Brother and the chickenhawk HVS MBA's will want to pin their sorry tale of Peaceful Freedumbia on the so-called Democrat Party. That plan cannot be altogether satisfactory from a hired-hand perspective, though, for if the hands are not kept on or rehired by "President Clinton" or the like, why, they'll be out of work altogether.


[5] The Petraeo-MacNamarans could do with some Madison Avenue advice, it seems to me, for even chickenhawks do know a little bit of useful stuff at times. The P-M crowd ought to find some brand new monniker for their revised product, some label that does not have any "surge" in it whatsoever that might lead the wombscholars and the niedergedümmten (plus a certain slice of the so-called Democrat Party) to ignorantly expostulate, "But we already tried that, and everybody knows it didn't work!" Verb. sap.!

Meanwhile, Neocomrade Gen. Mixon scarcely does the (admittedly chickenhawk) whiz kids of RSM justice. Certainly their earlier release of the counterinsurgency product had a number of bugs in it, yet the notion that they thought in terms of "Let's simply kill them all!" is only what Mu’ámara Junction would call a "cartoon."


[6] 19 / 4 = 4.75. (But please don't tell anybody I told you that, Mr. Bones!)

25 September 2007

TwentyPercenters United Can Never Be Defeated!

This morning's learned informant [1] starts in the middle of things, it seems to me, only from when "recently [the ever-growing total unity was] kept quiet," but his analysis since "early 2007" is largely not to be contested:

[D]ifferences came out into the open in the form of warring public statements between the Islamic State of Iraq (a coalition including Al-Qaeda) and the Islamic Army in Iraq, exposing previously unacknowledged animosity.

As the two groups went at each other in the media, other Sunni groups began a complicated process of splintering and reformation. The 1920 Revolution Brigades split into two military factions, Fatah and Jihad, with Fatah later reclaiming the 1920 Revolution Brigades name. Hamas-Iraq, which emerged as the first armed movement to build political and media institutions parallel to its military activities, joined forces with the Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front. In early May 2007, the Jihad and Reform Front was formed, incorporating the Islamic Army in Iraq, the Mujahideen Army, and the Sharia Committee of Ansar al-Sunna (which split from its mother organization, Ansar al-Sunna), with the Fatiheen Army joining later. Then in early September seven factions, including the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Al-Rashideen Army, joined forces to establish the Jihad and Change Front.

This period of upheaval has left four main blocs in the Iraqi Sunni resistance: first, Jihadist Salafism, which is an extension of Al-Qaeda. This bloc consists primarily of the Islamic State of Iraq and is close to Ansar al-Sunna as well.

Second, nationalist Salafism, which observers believe toes the Saudi Salafist line and receives material and moral support from abroad. The groups in the Jihad and Reform Front belong to this bloc.

Third, the Muslim Brotherhood trend, mainly Hamas-Iraq and the Resistance Islamic Front. Observers believe it is associated with the Islamic Party, which participates in politics within the Iraqi Accord parliamentary bloc.

And fourth, the nationalist Islamist trend, including the Jihad and Change Front groups (such as the 1920 Revolution Brigades and Al-Rashideen Army). This bloc is ideologically close to the Brotherhood trend and is considered an extension of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the leading group of Iraqi Sunni clerics.


One, two, seven, four whole blocs of 'em, plus AMS![3] Total Unity breeds like rabbits, and even reminds one of Mr. Malthus about the superior powers of multiplication over addition. And the enumeration is obviously incomplete, since in the window it said "armed Sunni factions in Iraq since the beginning of the occupation," but when we get inside the shop, there is not much sign of anybody but faith-crazies: so toss in maybe three flavours and colours of strict Ba‘thiyya plus a few odd neuters and other eccentrics.

Unsurprisingly, given the credentials in note [1], our analyst is not altogether pleased with the situation and goes on to ask What Went Wrong? and maybe even Who's To Blame?:
[I]t is important to understand why Sunni groups are experiencing such turmoil. Two factors - US discussion of withdrawal from Iraq and genuine ideological and political differences among Sunnis - can explain what is taking place.


That seems safe enough and even almost tautological, although it is a small puzzle why he should puts the cart behind the horse like that. It seems very unlikely that all the Total Unitizers of the Former Iraq waited until they were deluded into supposing success and victory over the militant GOP was just around the corner before making up their very own factious banner and flying it high. We did after all read "kept quiet" in the shop window, an expression that seems to indicated that something for the devotees to hush up already existed. (God knows best.)

When he expands on cart and horse, however, Dr. Abú Rummán turns out to mean something a bit different than it appeared, especially about the cart: the hypothesized irresponsible withdrawal of Republican Party forces is only the occasion, not the essence, of his cart, which consists rather in even more diversities of tawhídiyya, this time amongst various external Sunninterní patrons of the TwentyPercenters:
[T]he Islamic State of Iraq (Al-Qaeda and its allies) has not only tried to spread its influence among the other factions, it has also demanded that many faction members pledge allegiance to its emir, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. At the same time, Arab countries (particularly Jordan and Saudi Arabia) have begun to worry about who will fill the power vacuum after the US withdraws. Such countries are concerned about preventing the dual threat of increasing Iranian influence and the rising power of Al-Qaeda in western Iraq, the latter of which constitutes a clear and direct threat to their security.


Again the enumeration is incomplete, Khurasán and al-Riyád and ‘Ammán are perhaps the outside agitators best able to stir the pot, but there are lots of other wannabes, notably including Damascus and the Anglo-Arabian Press Trust. As a Háshimí subject, this analyst is, I suppose, inspired by either loyalty or prudence to play down the Street Arab brand of Sunnintern kibitzing in the former Iraq. [4]

When it comes to the horse behind the cart, Dr. Abú Rummán at least manages to avoid the more absurd brands of starry-eyed idealization:
The outcome depends on many variables, but especially the relationship between Al-Qaeda and other factions in the Sunni fold, as well as the relative military strength of various groups.[5]


His tail has the right sort of scorpion sting in it, but not the exact individual scorpion, unless in the improbable event that the relative military strength of various groups that are not TwentyPercenters or Sunninternís at all is far less than appears.

Not to count your chickens before they hatch, O Total Unitizers!


____
[1]
Muhammad Abu Rumman is a Jordanian scholar and writer. This commentary, translated from the Arabic by Paul Wulfsberg, is reprinted with permission from the Arab Reform Bulletin, Vol. 5, issue 7 (September 2007) www.CarnegieEndowment.org/ArabReform ...



[2] That would be qawmí rather than wataní, I presume, although neither epithet fits the Great Cardboard Kingdom exactly.


[3] Let's try to work it out exactly, Mr. Bones: Bloc One must have at least three total unities to it, Bloc Two seven, Bloc Three comprehends three (or perhaps four) distinct total unities. Bloc Four, however, seems to involve some cheating on Dr. A.R.'s part, for he plainly proposes to recount some or all of the seven total unities of Bloc Two. It's not clear that there is anything really distinctive there, total-unity-wise, apart from M. al-Dárí & Cie. But in any case, here are at least fourteen smithereens of the Tawhíd al-Kámil present, twelve military and two collaborationist-political. Not at all a bad show by Malthus standards if dated from early 1 January 2007.


[4] Omitting to mention the Street Arabs proper could even be an Arab Palace manipulation to tacitly confound them with M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí out in Khurasán. One could arrive at the same result by working backwards from the remedy that seems to be proposed: an anti-Safavid Axis would appeal to The Base even though there is no proper Arab Palace out in Khurasán, whereas it would not appeal to the Republican Palace people of Syria. The AAPT or coffee-house intellectual sort of Street Arabs would likely disagree about that project, there being a sort of "left" to disapprove and a "right" that cares not at all for the evil Qommies. Still, de minimis non curat rex, the AAPT is perhaps really too impotent to signify.


[5] Again, a loyal/prudent dynastic analysis is readily at hand, though not mandatory: certainly all the cardboard kings and princes do not fancy any such "Islamic State of Iraq" product as that label is currently pasted on any more than a Safavid take-over. BGKB.

23 September 2007

Well One May Ask!

To the Editor:

Roger Cohen (column, Sept. 13) considers an Iraq breakup “unthinkable.” Why? What is so sacred about the artificial colonial borders? Why is “democracy” in conflict with self-determination?

Why should the Sunnis and Kurds be ruled by the Shiites? Or in Kosovo, what is so wrong with a referendum, which might result in the Serb-populated areas voting to return to Serbia?

Who are we to set the borders of other nations? How would we feel if they did it to us?

Béla Lipták
Stamford, Conn., Sept. 13, 2007

"What strikes me as even more peculiar"

. . . is also pretty nebulous and gassy, but have a look:
The Al-Hayat account today of the latest "Bin Laden" tape is accompanied with a screen-capture or whatever you call that, a still, showing the SITE Institute moniker in the upper corner. And Al-Quds al-Arabi, for its part, refers to the same SITE institute as an authority for saying the latest tape is "new". The Hayat picture suggests that that London-based pan-Arab paper possibly wasn't able to find the tape on any of actual "jihadi" sites. And the Al-Quds reference is probably an indication that there wasn't any better "analysis" to rely on. Peculiar. What has happened is that in recent weeks or is it months, the web-sites where normally you could browse the jihadi comment-boards, and find the latest releases, have become unavailable. (...)

Most or all of these, reportedly, were hosted in the United States, which also seems a bit strange. Just to be clear, it isn't clear how or by whom (or as far as I am concerned, exactly when) these were shut down. (...)

[T]he news from "AlQaeda" is increasingly filtered through anti-Islamist entities like SITE, and also Lauramansfield.com (you can check some of her antecedents on the Wikipedia, or you could just check the sites listed on her blogroll which include Daniel Pipes, Michelle Malkin and other superstars of the extreme right).

What strikes me as even more peculiar is that this is happening at the same time that the "Al-Qaeda" message is becoming noticeably more Bush-like, by which I mean that the stress is more and more on the irreconcilable and open-ended "war of cultures" nature of the conflict, (as opposed to earlier positions that in effect said "as you kill you will be killed", suggesting that the conflicts were thought of as defined). And in this context the Zawahiri remarks about killing the French and Spanish in the Maghreb are particularly telling.

What Dr. Z. said was
"Taking back al-Andalus is a responsibility borne by the Ummah as a whole, but particularly on you in particular [to the Islamic people of the Maghreb], and this cannot be done without cleansing the Muslim Maghreb of the children of France and Spain...")


At Mu’ámara Junction they pretty clearly read mainly to confirm their own biases, which means that actual examination of "Daniel Pipes, Michelle Malkin and other superstars of the extreme right" will not be happening very often. One consequence is that they are most likely simply ignorant of MEMRI's kind offer to ISP's in the holy Homeland to translate all those inscrutable chickentracks on their customers' websites and find out whether they are selling Islamophalangitarian terrorism or only preowned camels. It looks as if some success is bein' achieved, though no doubt the bad hats will e-relocate to Vanuatu or Bolivia without too much difficulty.

MJ does pay some attention to the more intellectually respectable mainstream outlets of invasion-language journalism, if only to remind themselves of their sad inadequacy and cartooning, so perhaps they noticed the New York Times story about how State Department employees get paid taxpayer dollars to counterblog the bad hats. However,
The team concentrates on about a dozen mainstream Web sites such as chat rooms set up by the BBC and Al Jazeera or charismatic Muslim figures like Amr Khaled, as well as Arab news sites like Elaph.com. They choose them based on high traffic and a focus on United States policy, and they always identify themselves as being from the State Department. They avoid radical sites, although team members said that jihadis scoured everywhere.
Probably MJ avoids such milk-and-water e-locales, though, just like the Wingnut City superstars, so we won't be learning from that direction whether Neocomrade K. Hughes's latest brainstorm has had any impact.

E-warfare as such is not the crux of the nebulosity, I don't think. I'd focus on the fog, so rather peculiarly to speak, of "the 'Al-Qaeda' message is becoming noticeably more Bush-like, by which I mean that the stress is more and more on the irreconcilable and open-ended 'war of cultures' nature of the conflict, as opposed to earlier positions that in effect said 'as you kill you will be killed,' suggesting that the conflicts were thought of as defined."

Exactly how much sheer ignorance there is at Mu’ámara Junction is difficult to gauge. Have they never heard of Huntin'ton of Harvard, then? Or do they know all about Uncle Sam, but twistify his views over to the Dynasty Boy deliberately? In any case, that's an absurd thing to mean by "Bush-like." Of course Little Brother and Big Management would dearly like to have themselves a Long War, but hardly any open-ended war of cultures. I can't even guess how this mirage of "earlier positions that ... the conflicts were thought of as defined" might have arisen. Militant extremist Republicanism has been almost 100% consistent from 12 September 2001 down through 23 September 2007, and consisent on the side of what one might vaguely describe by saying "the conflicts were thought of as defined." There was one brief bobble over towards "irreconcilable and oped-ended" rhetoric for six or eight or ten weeks before the last midterm elections, but once Neocomrade K. Hughes and Dr. C. Rice made it clear to Himself that such rhetoric made it more difficult for them to handle the lesser breeds without, that baloney vanished without a trace and normalcy returned. After the polls closed, there was no more point in talkin' "Islamic fascism," really, so Little Brother gave it up without protest -- a sufficient indication that he never took what the rhetoric means seriously in the first place. Apart from that, you and I and Helena Cobban get endless enjoyment from mocking how the Party perps have switched from kiddie-kusadin' against "global terrorism" to kiddie-krusadin' against "extremism," but of course the reason that's a joke is that the bozos are so obviously playin' with their words rather than dealin' with their Party's enemies. The little laddie from Yale has the highest respect for most Muslims' ’Islám, after all. (Master Dubya is rather a sucker for religionism all 'round, actually, and therefore all the more remote from the Yankee Clashism™ of Huntin'ton of Harvard.)

Now since it is entirely a mirage to see Bush imitatin' Huntin'ton, to fancy that M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí are imitating an imitation that is not in fact happening my reasonably be labeled a supermirage or hyperfantasy, a great step forwards in the direction of around the bend and out of sight altogether, which is of course the general direction in which most of the mu’ámariyya are fated to eventually drop off the real-world scope at last.

Still, at CJ they must profess to see a resemblance between the Busheviki and the salafiyya of Outer Khurasán, resemblance being a sort of lesser included offense under imitation. Imitation of A by B once dismissed, how about imitation by B of A, which would equally well account for the resemblance of A to B? Fas est et ab hoste doceri, Mr. Bones, so perhaps Little Brother and Big Party really are takin' lessons in "the irreconcilable and open-ended 'war of cultures' nature of the conflict," only with tutoring from Dr. Zawáhirí rather than from Prof. Huntin'ton? We ourselves have somehow missed the conspiratorialists' perceived resemblance between A and B altogether, although it is always fun to draw mischievous rhetorical parallels of our own between Kiddie Krusaders and the paynim chivalry and neo-Saladins. At CJ, though, resemblance in respect of Clashism is mirage-like perceived, so we neutrals may legitimately speculate on two points: (1) Is it possible that the militant extremist GOP really is becomin' more and more like the bad hats? (2) Is the salafiyya of Outer Khurasán genuinely Clashist in something like Prof. Huntin'ton's originally intended sense?

For the moment, though, let us have the vicarious politeness to speculate upon only to the extent that Mu’ámara Junction might be interested in them. Which extent as regards question (1) is zero. However, (2) is more fruitful of immediate discussion. At very least we may wonder how the peculiar MJ species of conspiratorialist mindset would react to the notion that Dr. Z. is quite as bad as Prof. H. and bad in more or less the same way.

Now it is not as if they like M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí very well at MJ, Mr. Bones, for to call these militant extremist Sunni theogentry "noticeably more Bush-like" was certainly no compliment. Maybe MJ liked the Outer Khurasání salafiyya better the less Bush-like way they miraged them before, but in any case they do not like them much right this moment and they cite Dr. Z.'s dottiness about the reclaiming of the ’umma's irredenta in al-’Andalus as nothing better than dotty.[1] The dottiness was the whole point of the citation, for the very pith and gist of the current MJ fog is that lately one hears through a veil or filter darkly about al-Qá‘ida only when al-Qá‘ida looks dotty or bloodthirsty to almost every rational creature alive. MJ concedes implicitly that at least sometimes The Base really is dotty.

Circumstantial or a priori evidence may be adduced as well, for The Base is a sore trial to the sweet-throated bards of Mu’ámara Junction when they sing us their siren tales about the former Iraq. It would be so much simpler for MJ if there was only a strictly self-defensive muqáwama untainted by any 'proactive' or aggressive designs on al-’Andalus or schemes for a neo-Caliphate, and even simpler and easier still if that muqáwama were very strictly (sort of) a muqáwama wataniyya, a spontaneous and untampered-with upwelling of that beautiful utter unsectarianism that has especially characterized Mesopotamia -- crossroads of the world, meeting-ground of peoples! -- ever since Sargon of Akkad or thenabouts. How should The Base not be a sore trial for the fogbound ideological druthers of Mu’ámara Junction? [2]

M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí are perhaps too obviously conspirators for any serious conspiratorialist mindset persons like the MJ gentry to take them quite seriously. They say what they want, and they want what they say, and if their list of demands and grievances varies from manifesto to manifesto, that's probably only because life is short and one can't always remember to stick in EVERYTHING.

Little Brother and the Big Party are much better game for the MJ gentry, for they really do act guilty and shifty and lurky like one vaguely supposes every proper wannabe Catalina ought to enact the rôle of conspirator: ta-DA, Uncle Sam's "national interests" are announced to be at stake in the Occupyin' Party's Peaceful Freedumbia, but after the drums-and-trumpets fanfare, we never hear anything more about our Sam's rock-bottom interests, only about what "David" (Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point) has ephemerally accomplished with Bribe-a-Tribe™ schemes and suchlike for his Boy and his Party. They act guilty, they skulk, they shift, they lurk, they require Guantánamos in Cuba and who-knows-what in the way of secret prison facilities and black-box "renditions" to tortune-prone elsewheres, they hand holy Homeland Rulalaw itself over to a thoroughly contemptible and incompetent General Gonzales in practice, and to even more odious and irregular Yoos and Kmieces in theory.

What strikes ME as "even more peculiar" is that all these trashy boobish Big Party sneaks and Harvard Victory School MBA lurkers are somehow simultaneously the Masters of the Universe, or at least the temporary Custodians of Sole Remainin' Hyperpower. Is ours not a mad, mad world, Mr. Bones, in which Big Party Hyperpower has to behave like Catalina and the cave-bound negligible salafiyya of Outer Khurasán at "undisclosed locations" can obtain a sort of monopoly on frankness by mere default?

To be sure, Castle Cheney chez nous must basically operate on Outer Khurasání salafí and "undisclosed location" lines, but what's the virtue of a TOP SECRET EYES ONLY frankness, then? The dottier reaches of the Sunnintern want their al-’Andalus back and, more immediately and slightly less dottily, a total restoration of Sunni Ascendancy in the former Iraq. Very deplorable objectives both, in my opinion, but at least clearly discernible objectives and objectives publicly proclaimed. The fog of neogentrified druthers at Mu’ámara Junction seems almost positively transparent compared with the fog of authentic gentry druthers at Château Kennebunkport and Rancho Crawford and Castle Cheney. What the deuce do our regnant GOP bozos concretely WANT, for Pete's sake? Why can't they hire themselves some thirty-something neo-con scribbler to write it all up for "us" at least clear and perspicuous (and therefore coheretly disagreeable with) as Outer Khurasán writes its manifesto stuff up per contra from as yet unbetrayed cave locations? One would expect that "we" ought to have a Big Party Agitprop as well as a Big Party Hyperpower on "our" side, but such expectation seems futile, Neocomrade K. Hughes to the attempted contrary notwithstanding.

Looking thus at "our" weaknesses, Mr. Bones, one is almost tempted to succumb to Sunninterni or mu’ámarí absurdities about how the militant extremist GOP has already been almost pushed out of the former Iraq. "We" examine "ourselves" and discover very severe Andover/Yale-HVS/MBA-Kennebunkport/Crawford-AEI/GOP fractures and weaknesses; out in the semiconquered GOP boondocks THEY think (and Mu’ámara Junction automatically re-echoes such congenial thoughts) that THEY have as good as won and THEIR Victory Parade is to be held in an even-newer-still New Baghdád tomorrow or the day after.

"Is that not a convergence?" you may well ask, Mr. Bones, and I concede the goodness and the opportuneness of such an asking, but all the same, sir, there ain't any convergence here at all, none whatsoever. What decent political grown-up can ever sympathize with either a shudder-quote-worthy GOP-tainted "us" or a scare-capitalized THEM? Please try to keep your head, sir. Punch and Judy, Wingnut City and neo-Islam, will be only a minor sideshow in Century XV/XXI, sir, and as what the main show is, well, how about 1.4 Euros (or 1.0 Canadian bucks, begorrah!) to what GOP-tainted bucks are worth nowadays?


___
[1] It's rather a cheap shot, but let me put it to you anyway, Bones: is it likely that the idea of snatching back Spain was suggested to Dr. Z. by either Master Dubya or Prof. Huntin'ton?


[2] That parenthetically "sort of" may be too important to relegate to a note, but here goes: this fantastically desiderated muqáwama wataniyya ‘Iráqiyya seems to be polemically conceived of at MJ as involving quite a large admixture of qawmiyya ‘Arabiyya or what a macaroni might call "qawmiyya Sunninterniyya." This particular admixture of impurity has little or nothing to do with M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí and The Base, however, and so I make footnote fodder of it, although understanding that the modern Sunni International has very little strict and necessary linkage to traditional Sunni theology or the Big Four of mediaeval Sunni jurisprudence is a necessary preliminary to many more important things than working out exactly which way the trendy gentry are slanted at Mu’ámara Junction.

It's all rather like the wataniyya of M. Charles Maurras and Action Française, as far as I can make it out, Mr. Bones: one can be a devout atheist personally and yet acknowledge that one's watan is radically ultramontane Papist for all the practical purposes of reactionary politics and chauvinism. 'Tis rather a subtle business, of course, and only properly certified and credentialled Uppers ought ever to attempt it at home, yet still, it is a trick that demonstratedly can be pulled off from time to time. Hopefully here and now in the bloody bushogenic shambles and quagmire of the former Iraq is no more appropriate time than M. Maurras ever encountered! But God knows best.

22 September 2007

What Especially Strikes Conspiracy Junction . . .

. . . turns out be only another grossly improbable conspiracy, oddly enough!

What strikes me as even more peculiar is that this is happening at the same time that the "Al-Qaeda" message is becoming noticeably more Bush-like, by which I mean that the stress is more and more on the irreconcilable and open-ended "war of cultures" nature of the conflict, (as opposed to earlier positions that in effect said "as you kill you will be killed", suggesting that the conflicts were thought of as defined). And in this context the Zawahiri remarks about killing the French and Spanish in the Maghreb are particularly telling.

So these two things are happening at the same time: These messages are filtered through Washington-based groups, and the content of the messages is increasingly supportive of the idea of an open-ended and endless war between Islam and the West.

There is another piece of this picture. Increasingly people are speculating about the possibility that Bush will have to forego some of his warlike plans because at some point his term of office will run out,[1] and the question then becomes how he will go about setting the table to make sure that a successor Democratic administration is faced with no alternative but to continue down the same road. Surely (just thinking of the logic of it), if the Bush-Cheney people were able to ratchet up the "Al-Qaeda" issue as an imminent threat to, say, the nuclear state of Pakistan, or to a cleansing of white people from North Africa, that would go a long way to serve that purpose.[2]



___
[1] It would seem constitutionally well-known to all us prescriptively inferior palefaces exactly when the GOP's Little Brother's White House lease expires, regardless of any exotic wannabe-Levantine "logic of it."

[2] If you can parse or construe that seeming mere ebullition of bitter tendentious spleen, Mr. Bones, I doff my cap to you! What the HELL is this exophiliac little CJ lady or laddie going on about, then, as (s)he "just thinks about the logic of it"? The militant extremist Crawfordites can get away with anythin' they want to if only they sufficient claim and clamour to be anti-AQ, is that it, then? What contemptible nonsense, sir, when the unsatisfactory state of the former Iraq is infinitely more due to a failure about sich durchzusetzen at Rancho Crawford!

Of course that thoroughly unintelligible or utterly irrelevant "cleansing of white people from North Africa" must take and top the cake of the Mu’ámariyya, Mr. Bones, but it's only an icin', after all. The real problem is that the underlying CJ cake is so scarcely distinguishable from the gaudy icing of it.

Astaghfiru'lláh! Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison!

21 September 2007

Harvard Victory School MBA At Work

REPORTER: I'll ask you about Iraq ... How is [the political dynamic] changing your level of frustration with the lack of political progress? And how long can Americans reasonably expect you to wait before you take some kind of action that really forces the Iraqi government's hand to reach the goals of reconciliation that you've set for them?

BUSH: In my speech, I made it clear that there has to be a change in security for there to be reconciliation. And I also said that progress will yield fewer troops. In other words, "return on success" is what I said.

There are two types of reconciliation. One is the reconciliation that -- very visible reconciliation that happens with the passage of law. In other words, it's reconciliation that shows the Iraqi people that people from different backgrounds can get along and at the same time that government can function.[1]

Clearly, there needs to be work there. In other words, there needs to be the passage of law ...


The little laddie from Y*L* sure has some cute ideas about Pol. Sci.!

Let's see, Mr. Bones, what you really need for reconciliation is either to pass a law about it, or, alternatively, to pass a law about it. 'Tis a very subtle and interesting notion for the seminar room to squabble about, no doubt, but meanwhile the (former or pre-Rove) Real World does not quite seem to work that way. If it did, the bloody bushogenic quagmire would have been drained and planted with crops and orchards long since, for what was Khalílzád Pasha's "constitution" as bequeathed to the lowly but neoliberated subjects of Boy and Party if not a serious stab at makin' reconciliation happen by scribblin' legislation towards that end? It's positively unkonstitutional in the former Iraq not to be reconciled, for Pete's sake! [2]

The Party of Grant occasionally looks a couple of presidencies further back for its Ur-pedigree, and there is an apposite joke or shaggy dog story attributed to A. Lincoln, Esq., of Illinois that I suppose you will remember, Mr. Bones, the one where the punch line runs "Calling the tail a leg doesn't make it a leg"?

==

But seriously, sir, the Brat seems obsessed with the notion that the GZ quasideputies must pass some new laws if there is to be any reconciliation in the former Iraq or any serious HVS MBA class rejoicin' at Château Kennebunkport and Rancho Crawford and Castle Cheney. We all know the list of bills the petulant Brat wants to see enacted at brave New Baghdád, well enough -- a petroleum bill, a reba‘thization bill (so to call it), a provincial elections bill. Well, suppose them all enacted just exactly as Big Party neocomrade Proconsul Crocker might dictate them unilaterally and preëmptively to poor M. al-Málikí himself in a simpler old-fashioned "gunboat diplomacy" world where "right of conquest" still remained an intelligible expression [3], would reconciliation (domestic reconciliation amongst the occupied indigs) be thereby significantly forwarded? The agitprop benefits in the holy Homeland to militant extremist Boy and Party of such enactments are obvious, but what's in it for the former Iraqis, exactly, for all or for any of 'em? Apart from the direct beneficiaries of the Big Party's, admittedly not uningenious, Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme, why should any neo-subject of Rancho Crawford be much interested in reconciliation as alien exotic invasive GOP genius conceives of "reconciliation"?

You and I, Mr. Bones, seem to be very sad and exceptional wimps. A little bit of disorder in the streets, sir, and we'd be for JUST PEACE in a flash, "reconciliation" at any cost, Neville Chamberlains willing to surrender even our very trademark umbrellas to Petraeuses and Crockerians invadin' from Mars, even, lest umbrellas be accounted weapons of unmassive destruction. That, however, is only us, O Bones. The Big Management Party's aggression-based Peaceful Freedumbia marches to a different drummer, obviously, and I daresay "The Arab Mind" must figure prominently in what seems actually to be happening out in the semiconquered Boy-'n'-Party boondocks. Fifty-four months of the Mesopotamia aggression, we've had now, and I have yet to see any sign whatsoever amongst the Big Party-occupied indigs of any JUST PLAIN PEACE party developing. Of course they (almost) all verbally deplore the DOD/GOP-imposed unpeace and all the "creative destruction" and "collateral damage" sequellae thereof, but they never propose any alternative except to reverse black and white like in chess and so now let's suppose instead that THEY win for a change.

As a matter of fact, most of THEM actually manage to fantasize that they ARE winning!

"Serbs are heroes, Croats are lawyers" appears more than ever the best applicable maxim, Mr. Bones, and of course thee and I are but despicable Croats, worried that there doesn't appear to be any serious Rulalaw at all left west of the Zagros nowadays, as witness the Blackwater fuss, as witness the recent revelations about their Boy-'n'-Party Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone!

But we'll see. God knows best!

___
[1] There might be some excellent funning here if one pretended to take His Radiant Effulgence's pronouncements seriously and went on to solemnly ponder how, although it is antecedently to be supposed that everybody gettin' along would naturally tend to paralyze or disfunctionalize government, nevertheless in the specific case of an aggression-based Peaceful Freedumbia the general rule does apply, in light of special circumstances SC1, and SC2 and SC3 . . . .

Yet one is not to mock mental cripples, after all.

In context, the Dynasty Brat is probably only makin' up his theory as he stumbles and micawberizes his way through his own wreckage and shambles: "government" in the quagmire context means poor M. al-Málikí, and of course that meanin' must be a wunnerful one, because who but Boy and Party dunnit? On the other hand, is not the Fedguv of poor M. al-Málikí widely regarded as just a tad -- how you Anglophoneys say for tá’ifí? -- just, a little "sectarian"? Not so wunnerful, that, yet not so bad that poor M. al-Málikí needs the Diem Therapy right this minute. Big Party operatives under the inspired guidance of "David" (Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point) can work around the sectarian Fedguv at New Baghdád without ever crudely repudiatin' it, all they need to do is fan out through the nineteen governates under the boots of the Occupyin' Party and teach the locals how to get along locally in each locality without regard to what the Fibbies of poor M. al-Málikí think in that practically irrelevant "International Zone" that they have to hide their nominally national Fedguv in. This is what the Baní Kagan applaud and propagandize for as a "bottom-up patchwork quilt" approach. More to the point, this is what seems to be workin' least badly for Boy and Party just at the moment, success-and-victorywise.

To ask whether top-down seamless whole and bottom-up patchwork quilt are not predestinately on a collision course is OK for Pol. Sci. in grad. school, but to ask the 566/640 Yalie about it would only be more needless cruelty to Party animals. One can work out what Little Brother means by "In other words, it's reconciliation that shows the Iraqi people that people from different backgrounds can get along and at the same time that government can function" without elevating his murk and muddle to the dignity of a debatable thesis.

And you are to recall that in context BUSH was really only tryin' to get a hostile REPORTER off his case in the first place, Mr. Bones. "David" does all the hard thinkin' about Big Party aggression and invasion policy nowadays, or so we are told. 'Tis rather a pity, I daresay, that REPORTER wasn't a Solon or even a humble Congresscritter who might have addressed the New Iraq Brain of Dubya rather than the decerebrated shell or physical residuum wherein the NIBoD virtually or vicariously or by a legal fiction resides.

Not that the outcome would have any more enlightening: fancy Master Dubya's "David" asked "[H]ow long can Americans reasonably expect you to wait before you take some kind of action that really forces the Iraqi government's hand to reach the goals of reconciliation that you've set for them?"! What possible response to such an uppity enemy inquiry but Tom Lehrer's "'That's not my department', says Werner von Braun"?

Oh, well.


[2] Maybe the natives are really reckonsiled already (though perhaps not reconciled) even as the Big Party's Peaceful Freedumbia is already impeccably konstitutional (though scarcely constitutional)?


[3] Apart from the sadly belated Jewish Statism racket, "right of conquest" seems to have perished more or less with Century XIX. "On 3 June 1898 Salisbury asserted a joint British and Egyptian right of conquest over 'the whole of the Mahdi State'" was the very last gasp of what had once been an impeccable orthodoxy.

20 September 2007

Responsible Nonwithdrawal For Dummies

[A] long term American military and political presence [is] surely worth a try


That is all the dummies require, but writing for immediate subdummies [1], Dr. T. G. Ash, a formerly distinguished Military Humanist now affiliated to the extremist GOP's Hoover Institution, went on a bit more long-windedly. Here's the last three paragraphs of his latest Brit-orientated performance :
There will be a conference of the major regional actors in Istanbul at the end of next month. It is just possible that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran will conclude that their own, separate and conflicting interests are all best served by an Iraq that stays together in a kind of precarious, artificially sustained stalemate, under the woolly auspices of the UN - a weak, divided country in which the neighbours all have a hand, but none the upper hand. Since they distrust each other as much or more than they distrust the US, they might even accept a long term American military and political presence as a minimal guarantee that no party to the conflict would reach for domination or, in the case of Iraqi Kurdistan, full independence.

This may be whistling in the dark but, given the grim alternatives, it's surely worth a try. The neighbour least likely to cooperate is, of course, Iran. The regional negotiation around Iraq is infinitely complicated by the simultaneous attempt to prevent Iran acquiring the capacity to make nuclear weapons. In Washington earlier this month, I was assured by several very well-informed observers that, despite all the contrary advice they are receiving, President Bush and vice president Cheney may still decide to bomb Iran before they leave office. This is a danger that President Nicolas Sarkozy is attempting to head off by his tough talk and proposal for stronger European sanctions: a French preemptive strike, so to speak, against the possibility of an American preemptive strike.

So the challenges of Iraq and Iran are closely linked. After the twin towers, they are the twin nightmares. The nightmare in Iraq is very far from over, while that over Iran has barely begun. They will be disturbing our sleep for many years to come.


You'll perceive, Mr. Bones, that Tiger Timmy has learned some Dick Morris triangulation trickiness out amongst the colonials. His Military Humanism™, a tender hot-house plant all along, has wilted into mere invasion-basing as regards the former Iraq, but he does his dubyapologetics with an air still, for he does not (at this precise moment) want to march on the evil Qommies. So Timmy's a good boy still, even vaguely a "liberal." Does he triangulate with clean hands and pure heart and subjective sincerity? Our own rules compel us to stipulate that he does, although this particular specimen is intelligent enough to be ruthlessly cynical.

Consider first the specimen's tactical flair: (1) M. Sarkozy comes in very handily, since Tiger Timmy wisely shrinks from presenting himself as an area studies guru about the Greater Levant. Continentals, however, he knows academically, especially Eastern continentals, and is not M. Sarkozy of Hungarian provenance? (The mad mullahs had better watch out, or paws of velvet will change their régime out from under them!)

(2) More immediately, though now entirely enlisted for service on the Kiddie Krusade's Peaceful Freedumbian front, Dr. Ash could teach his neocomrades some lessons in modus operandi if he addressed himself to them rather than to ex-comrades at the Guardian. The great good thing for the aggression fans at the moment is clearly to buy time: remainin' in the former Iraq for a century or three must begin with remainin' there for the next six weeks (or six months, or six minutes). The point seems self-evident and trivial, but there is a point here that Tiger Timmy appears to have noticed when the rest of the pack have not: "at the end of next month", six weeks from now, is not unimportant. The occupied natives are never going to be able to chase the militant GOP out unilaterally, only a Dolchstoss from Greater Texas popular opinion can do that, and for purposes of protectin' the Preëmptive Retaliation posse's backside from that, the more "benchmarks" or "milestones" that can be fadged up, the better.

The tactical and triangulatory genius of T. G. Ash understands well that 1 November 2007 is not very much of a benchstone or milemark, "It is just possible" that China and Peru and the local Levantines will get together to accomplish what has thus far eluded the Harvard Victory School MBA classes, plus or minus Mr. Anthony Blair. For practical purposes it is quite impossible, and doubtless Tiger Timmy recognizes as much, but it will do as a major milestone for the purposes of Boy and Party all the same. Advanced dummies should be able to grasp that the Major Milestone consists in the conference assembling itself at all, quite apart from whether it accomplishes anything whatsoever for the Occupyin' Party or its subjects. As long as the immediate neighborhood and "the international community" are willing to attend such a non-event on Dr. Ash's and the Big Party's terms, there is at least no danger of a immediate stab in the back from that direction. Even better, the ignorant vulgar of Televisionland and the electorate (and Capitol Hill) can be buffaloed by pointin' out that if "the international community" does not mind giving aggression a few more extra innings, why should they? [2]

Considered simply as Karl Rove mob control, it won't matter what doesn't emerge from the international gabfest as long as some different Major Milestone looms on the horizon to be ballyhooed around 1 November 2007. "Jam tomorrow" is an admirably workable Big Party tactic, but usin' it requires some attention to detail. "Tomorrow" should not be very distant once it starts bein' ballyhooed about, and there must be a whole kaleidoscope of different jams and marmalades and preserves to switch nimbly among whenever the time "today" gets to be about 2330 hours. Neocomrade Dr. T. G. Ash appears to have a gift for this sort of thing. Naturally one wonders what Major Milestone he'll recommend his clients to ballyhoo next in the former Iraq. One cannot tell from the present scribble, but that is natural enough, for the scribble is not a memorandum to his co-conspirators at all, but an agitprop piece or advertisement for their customers on Airstrip One. There would be no point in goin' on about the day after tomorrow's jam product for that target audience., it would only confuse the marks and dupes.[3]


After tactics, strategy. The TGA grand strategy for perpetual occupation of the former Iraq appears in the above extract only summarily as "given the grim alternatives." However he had outlined his grimnesses previously, quotin' another honourary neocomrade, T. Dodge, by way of an echt neocomrade, G. Packer:
If American troops depart, [Dodge] says, they will leave behind "a free-for-all where everyone will be fighting everyone else - a civil war that no one actor or organisation will be strong enough to win ... So if you and I were mad enough to jump in a car in Basra - pick a date, 2015 - and we tried to drive to Mosul, what we'd be doing is hopping through islands of comparative stability dominated by warlords ... Those fiefdoms will be surrounded by ongoing violence and chaos. That looks a lot to me like Afghanistan before the rise of the Taliban. Or Somalia. That's where Iraq goes when Americans pull out." These are the views of two independent analysts who know the realities on the ground.


T. Dodge has evidently concocted an aggression-friendly rescension of Max Weber, the great thing is that some "one actor or organisation will be strong enough to win." One doesn't know for sure whether Tiger Timmy agrees with the Pol. Sci. innovation, however, so let us object only the most obvious two objections, namely (1) that so far the Occupyin' Party has not achieved the desiderated monopoly of violence in the former Iraq, despite fifty-four months of tryin', and (2) that although Greater Texas and Airstrip One -- or even "the international community," in a most improbable pinch -- almost certainly could pour in enough bodies and bombs and bayonets to rule the roost in Peaceful Freedumbia eventually, not one neocomrade in a thousand dares to say so out loud. The other 999 never speak either of escalatin' quant. suff. in order to assure that the Occupyin' Party "wins" itself or of sidin' with one particular set of indig collaborationists and makin' sure that they "win."

However that will be 2015, and now is 2007. The immediate point is not how T. Dodge would solve the grimnesses, but how T. G. Ash conceptualizes them, and that is clear enough. "We" must hang around the former Iraq forever because Ordnung muss sein! and anarcholibertarianism is not to be allowed to prevail. Bein' a hard-nosed Military Humanist, Tiger Timmy does not work up his strategic stuff from the humanitarian side and ask our hearts to bleed for the Big Party's semiconquered neo-Iraqi subjects. No idle crocodile tears, no mention of ‘genocide’! Indeed, the dangers of Unordnung do not prominently feature the natives at all, but rather Wunnerful US:
"America's diplomatic leverage will be weakened by a withdrawal, and Iraq's predatory neighbours will take advantage of the power vacuum to pursue their own interests. Even if regional interference doesn't take the form of Saudi troops crossing the border to defend their Sunni brothers, Iranian Revolutionary Guards infiltrating Iraq to secure Shi'ite power, and Turkish forces entering Kurdistan to prevent it from becoming independent, the combined effect of proxy fights, irregular incursions, and increased refugee flows will likely roil the Middle East for years."


That's neocomrade G. Packer speakin' for himself, although T. Ash hints at no reservations about it. The main point to notice, Mr. Bones, is that it diverges father markedly from mainstream aggression-basin'. If we take them strictly at their word, as by our own lights we ought to, these two neocomrades are against power vacuums simply as such, and would oppose toleration of a power vacuum in the former Iraq even if minor details like the Gulf of Petroleum and the Tel Aviv statelet did not exist. Mainstream Big Party lemmin's have difficulty mentionin' those details, to be sure, yet it is plain that they attach very great to their economics and their sentimentality/ideology. G. Packer and T. Ash genuinely don't seem to do so. Neocomrade T. Dodge may not be altogether on their wavelength, yet he did mention Afghanistan and Somalia, which would make him attractive to P&A unless perhaps he explicitly argued that such power vacuums as those do not require to be filled up, whereas the one in Peaceful Freedumbia does.

In short, there is a tolerably coherent strategic doctrine or dogma here, though scarcely the orthodox Boy-'n'-Party one. Forget "terrorism" and Domino Democracy and Jewish Statism and cheap petrol and cheaper dogooderism, Mr. Bones! Keep you eye out for power vacuums and abhor them as much as Ms. Nature was formerly alleged to do with plain old-fashioned matter vacuums. Should you spot a P.V., sir, then rush in at once and . . . .

Well, but maybe I'm moving on a bit too fast. I'm not sure that it is "you" that ought to do the rushing in, let alone what a properly credentialled inrusher is supposed to do after she rushes in. [4] Neocomrade G. Packer spoke in a not very friendly manner of "irregular incursions," remember, and who but some self-appointed Big Party vigilante would ever wish to incurse irregularly? Father Zeus forbid! [5] On the other hand, mark that the general Ash Doctrine of Globostrategy, so to call it, does nicely support Tiger Timmy's particular differentiation of the evil Qommies from the former Iraq: the mad Safavid mullahs may not be entirely satisfactory, but they certainly are not presiding over a power vacuum. Au contraire, if anything.

The Big Party mainstream will probably not be converted to this product any time soon, however. Quite apart from sentiment and pocketbook considerations, the Ash Doctrine (as tentatively reconstructed) would displease most of the more orthodox Party neocomrades because it legitimates or pseudolegitimates "régime change" only in cases where there is not much of an ancien régime left to change, and indeed, the aggression-basers' beloved bumper sticker would have to be revised to "régime installation," strictly speakin', should Dr. Timothy Gorton Ash ever take over extremist GOP invasion and occupation policy.

It is probably no accident that the Ash Doctrine applies much better to the collapse of the Lenin-Gorbachev racket, which really did create something like a Power Vacuum for a moment, than to the cowpokers' aggression into the former Iraq or a conjectural aggression by them against the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, it will not matter to the Party of dummies that Tiger Timmy may be refighting his most successful campaign. That would be history, and history is bunk, especially since 11 September 2001. It will not matter why his proposals for the conduct of Long War and Kiddie Krusade were advanced, only that they are not at all simpático. Perhaps the Ash Doctrine does imply perpetual nonwithdrawal of GOP military and mercenary forces from the happy Land of Peace and Freedom, but apart from that one rather narrow particular, almost everything about it is collaterally displeasin'. It does not obviously justify the original aggression, it does not take petroleum and Jewish Statism seriously enough, it does not pander to the Chicken Little side of Boy and Party, and it is almost grotesquely too concerned with both "the international community" and "nation buildin'" for most palates at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh.

Even were it the most excellent geopolitical strategy for "us" possible in itself -- which of course it emphatically is not -- we would be warranted, Mr. Bones, in declining to take it very seriously as a practical recommendation. As an para- or quasi-academic exercise, the production of a tank-thinker, it is mildly interesting, but requires a great deal of elaboration to block up various chinks and answer foreseeable objections. To make vacua potentiae the root of all political evil is a hypothesis worth elaborating for purposes of tertiary-educational disputation and as a Pol. Sci. thought experiment, but the only elaboration here is aimed at manipulating public opinion and buying more time for Little Brother to micawberize away idly, never attainin' what Dr. Ash wants to see attained, nor much of anythin' else either.

As to that "weigh the moral cost of withdrawal" in the Guardian header, TGA disqualifies himself as a moral cost-weigher, because like many other rightists and neorightists and invasion-basers he disregards the maxim "They also serve who only pull the trigger." If "we" run away from the bushogenic quagmire, then pretty well all the subsequent grimness will be "our" fault. However as long as we continue to responsibly nonwithdraw, why, hardly anything in the former Iraq is our fault!

It would be difficult to find yuckier ethical spinach than that, Mr. Bones. One can only hope that Dr. Ash tosses it out casually and has not spent months and years solemnly degrading himself to the spinach level.



___
[1] Or "immediate superdummies," as the case may be -- those not quite so intellectually and morally crippled as to think "Which side are you on?" is all it takes.


[2] There are limits to how much can be accomplished in the holy Homeland by appealing to the lesser breeds without, but fortunately for Dr. Ash and the good vigilante folks that he consults for, Democrats are a good deal more open to that sort of manipulation ab externo than GOP geniuses and their loyal base and vile. Far less along these lines has been achieved for Boy and Party than might have been, mainly because so little has been attempted. The stumblebums and their spinmeisters have so little respect for the opinion of mankind that they seem unable to take advantage of the fact that decent political grown-ups think differently from themselves. They are aware of the fact itself, but they never do anythin' much with it except abuse their domestic opponents as fools for believing in "the woolly auspices of the UN" or knaves with fiendish designs for a Weltreich that would not be safely under Harvard Victory School management.

To appeal to other people's absurd or contemptible opinions without either adoptin' them or mentionin' out loud that one has not adopted them is a little bit above the dummy level -- not very far above it, but beyond the corporate reach of Grant's Old Party most of the time. Dr. Ash must find his consultancy rather discouragin' from time to time, I should think.


[3] Since I read the scribble for purposes not originally intended, it may easily be that I overrate Tiger Timmy a little, which is easy to do accidentally per contra considering the low level of his clients. Happily time will probably tell me whether I have erred or not. We have only to wait to see what jam product he is found to be recommendin' six or eight or ten weeks from now.


[4] But possibly neocomrade T. Dodge was dragged in precisely to fill that theoretical lacuna? Once arrived at the center of a Power Vacuum, the qualified inrusher must at once ensure that her power is overwhelming predominant. To speak with chemical figures, not only must the punctured balloon be reinflated, it must be reinflated with gas that is all of one type, hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine or whatever, no doubt because mixed gases may interact explosively at times.

That would make rather a nifty scheme, although it may be more our own scheme, Mr. Bones, than Dr. T. G. Ash's. Indeed, his "Iraq that stays together in a kind of precarious, artificially sustained stalemate" suggests that he cannot hold it exactly as we have projected it.


[5] Doubtless Ms. Nature has rules of Her own that we mere mortals would be ill-advised to emulate. She incurses into every matter vacuum whatsoever (given certain circumambient conditions of pressure), but that behavior is perhaps better to be called a "regularity" than a "rule." You'll recall that every genuine Rule must have at least one exception to prove it, sine quâ non. If not in Somalia or Afghanistan, then probably somewhere else there exists, or can exist, a P.V. that neocomrades Ash and Packer would not insist that anybody at all must plunge into. BGKB.

17 September 2007

"Puttin' politics aside"

That is what is meant by "precipitate" withdrawal - a withdrawal in which the United States loses the ability to shape events . . . .


But no, Mr. Bones, when so ever-august a Big Management Party guru as H.A.K. graciously condescends to yawp about, quotation must be in full:

International Herald Tribune
Putting politics aside to save Iraq
By Henry A. Kissinger \\ Monday, September 17, 2007

Two realities define the range of a meaningful debate on Iraq policy: The war cannot be ended by military means alone. But neither is it possible to "end" the war by ceding the battlefield, for the radical jihadist challenge knows no frontiers.

An abrupt withdrawal from Iraq will not end the war; it will only redirect it. Within Iraq, the sectarian conflict could assume genocidal proportions; terrorist base areas could re-emerge.

Under the impact of American abdication, Lebanon may slip into domination by Iran's ally, Hezbollah; a Syria-Israel war or an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities may become more likely as Israel attempts to break the radical encirclement; Turkey and Iran will probably squeeze Kurdish autonomy; and the Taliban in Afghanistan will gain new impetus.

That is what is meant by "precipitate" withdrawal - a withdrawal in which the United States loses the ability to shape events, either within Iraq, on the anti-jihadist battlefield or in the world at large.

The proper troop level in Iraq will not be discovered by political compromise at home. If reducing troop levels turns into the litmus test of American politics, each withdrawal will generate demands for additional ones until the political, military and psychological framework collapses.

An appropriate strategy for Iraq requires political direction. But the political dimension must be the ally of military strategy, not a resignation from it.

Symbolic withdrawals, urged by such wise elder statesmen as Senators John Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, might indeed assuage the immediate public concerns. They should be understood, however, as palliatives.

The argument that the mission of U.S. forces should be confined to defeating terrorism, protecting the frontiers, preventing the emergence of Taliban-like structures and staying out of the civil-war aspects is also tempting. In practice, it will be very difficult to distinguish among the various aspects of the conflict with any precision.

Some answer that the best political result is most likely to be achieved by total withdrawal. In the end, political leaders will be held responsible - often by their publics, surely by history - not only for what they hoped but for what they should have feared.

Nothing in Middle East history suggests that abdication confers influence. Those who urge this course of action need to put forward what they recommend if the dire consequences of an abrupt withdrawal foreseen by the majority of experts and diplomats occur.

The missing ingredient has not been a withdrawal schedule but a political and diplomatic design connected to a military strategy. The issue is not whether Arab or Muslim societies can ever become democratic; it is whether they can become so under American military guidance in a timeframe for which the U.S. political process will stand.

In homogeneous societies, a minority can aspire to become a majority as a result of elections. That outcome is improbable in societies where historic grievances follow existing ethnic or sectarian lines.

Iraq is multiethnic and multisectarian. The Sunni sect has dominated the majority Shia and subjugated the Kurdish minority for all of Iraq's history of less than a hundred years.

American exhortations for national reconciliation are based on constitutional principles drawn from the Western experience. But it is impossible to achieve this in a six-month period defined by the American troop surge in an artificially created state wracked by the legacy of a thousand years of ethnic and sectarian conflicts.

Experience should teach us that trying to manipulate a fragile political structure - particularly one resulting from American-sponsored elections - is likely to play into radical hands. Nor are the present frustrations with Baghdad's performance a sufficient excuse to impose a strategic disaster on ourselves.

However much Americans may disagree about the decision to intervene or about the policy afterward, the United States is now in Iraq in large part to serve the American commitment to global order and not as a favor to the Baghdad government.

It is possible that the present structure in Baghdad is incapable of national reconciliation because its elected constituents were elected on a sectarian basis. A wiser course would be to concentrate on the three principal regions and promote technocratic, efficient and humane administration in each. More efficient regional government leading to substantial decrease in the level of violence, to progress toward the rule of law and to functioning markets could then, over a period of time, give the Iraqi people an opportunity for national reconciliation - especially if no region was strong enough to impose its will on the others by force.

Failing that, the country may well drift into de facto partition under the label of autonomy, such as already exists in the Kurdish region. That very prospect might encourage the Baghdad political forces to move toward reconciliation.

The second and ultimately decisive route to overcoming the Iraqi crisis is through international diplomacy. Today the United States is bearing the major burden for regional security militarily, politically and economically.

Yet many other nations know that their internal security and, in some cases, their survival will be affected by the outcome in Iraq and are bound to be concerned that they may all face unpredictable risks if the situation gets out of control.

That passivity cannot last. The best way for other countries to give effect to their concerns is to participate in the construction of a civil society. The best way for us to foster it is to turn reconstruction step-by-step into a cooperative international effort under multilateral management.

It will not be possible to achieve these objectives in a single, dramatic move. The military outcome in Iraq will ultimately have to be reflected in some international recognition and some international enforcement of its provisions. The international conference of Iraq's neighbors, including the permanent members of the Security Council, has established a possible forum for this. A UN role in fostering such a political outcome could be helpful.

Such a strategy is the best road to reduce America's military presence in the long run.

None of these objectives can be realized, however, unless two conditions are met: The United States needs to maintain a presence in the region on which its supporters can count and which its adversaries have to take seriously. And above all, the country must recognize that bipartisanship has become a necessity, not a tactic.

Henry A. Kissinger heads the consulting firm Kissinger & Associates. This article was distributed by Tribune Media Services.


Same Old Euro neo-thuggish HAnK of Harvard as ever, innit, Mr Bones? Though there are faint possible counterindications:


Yet many other nations know that their internal security and, in some cases, their survival will be affected by the outcome in Iraq and are bound to be concerned that they may all face unpredictable risks if the situation gets out of control.


So China and Peru are now to become Iraq-imposers in mere self-defence?

Senility is a natural thing, Mr. Bones, it creeps up on one unawares . . .

Yet Again The Anatomy Of The Elephant

There used to be a lot of school kids crowding the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, Maryland, a few miles south of Washington. Their teachers would haul them in by the busload--more than a thousand a year. The museum is housed in the homestead of one of the conspirators who was hanged for the murder of Abraham Lincoln. It's small, but it offers an unexpectedly comprehensive review of the Civil War, with a special emphasis on the assassination, and for years grade-school teachers in southern Maryland have used a field trip there as a convenient way to keep their students awake long enough to introduce them to an important episode in their nation's history.

In the last couple years, though, attendance has dried up--cut by more than half, according to Laurie Verge, the museum's director. Laurie is a former history teacher herself. From talks with old colleagues, she's pretty sure how to account for the undesired quiet that has fallen over her museum most weekdays: "The schools just don't have as much room for history or social studies in their curriculums any more," she says. "Ever since No Child Left Behind."


And so on, and so forth, almost endlessly. The Big Management Party neocomrade author, one "Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD," seems on balance to be on Laurie's side, and who's to say it's not the better side, after all? Señorito Andy wants ideological wombschoolin', ALL the little kiddies to be SYSTEMATICALLY indoctrinated/intoxicated with militant extremist Grant Party values, whereas the authentically payroll-meetin' classes will settle for mere literacy, plus maybe she knows how to count change? Fancy Daddy Warbucks confronted with a solid wall of hired hands who are dab hands at AEIdeology and are rather more agog for Political Capitalism than Warbucks himself!

Any proper neo-conman ought to side with the Creative Destructionist faction of course: kids, like foreigners, exist mainly to read instructions and count change. Everybody knows that! (Doesn't she?) Let no idle sentimentality ever obstruct!

However no rule is proved unless it has it's "but-what-about?' exceptions, so of course a Pipesovitch Party Prince must naturally go to Harvard and learn to worry about trickier matters than countin' change and readin' instructions.

One begs pardon of God as regards the Elephant People!

Cole Oil

Alan Greenspan confirms that he urged the Bush administration to take out Saddam on grounds of petroleum security for the US, and says one official told him, 'unfortunately we can't talk about oil.' Long-time readers know that I think restructuring the architecture of US energy security was among the major motives for the Iraq War. This thesis does not contradict the Mearsheimer-Walt theory that the Israel lobby and Israeli security formed a major impetus to the war, since US and Israeli interests in energy security overlap. It is just circumstantial, but I see a nexus in the American Enterprise Institute of Exxon-Mobil money and former officials and Neoconservative intellectuals, both with the ear of Dick Cheney.


Well, not even at the Ann Arbour Faculty Club can any mere mortal manage to be always, infallibly, wrong, Mr. Bones! The Gulf of Petroleum "thesis" does indeed "not contradict" the Jewish Statism "theory," but bare non-contradiction does not advance us much forwarder. Recourse must be had to the admittedly "just circumstantial" before the unwitting fictionist reveals that AEI dunnit.

'Tis a hard fate to go about picking up after Don Juan's opinionated commentarial doo-doo, O Bones! His list of villains, in the holy Homeland at least, is close to indistinguishable from our own, but he is so much in a rush to indict somebody Republican and aggression-friendly that he glues (some of) the jigsaw pieces of Crawfordology together anywhich way and pronounces the puzzle definitively solved rather before "premature" first begins to become an applicable epithet.

Nothin' more detestable than AEI, sir. As Lord Acton once memorably didn't say, "Ideology corrupts. AEIdeology corrupts absolutely." No jackass better worthy of pinning the tail of lawless vigilante GOP invasionism on than AEI, yet all the same "corrupted" is a general expression, and general corruption is not quite the same thing as specific guilt. As a mere matter of fact, the AEI "nexus" dinna do it to the former Iraq, and neither did the greed of Greenspan nor the zeal for Zion.

When the court historians to Princess Posterity see the whole puzzle of the militant extremist GOP's Peaceful Freedumbia painstakingly reassembled in say, the year of religionism 2042/2603, no doubt even then some captious critics will claim that great swathes of the reconstructed original canvas are irrelevant to the alone true and originally intended Theme. If Prof. Dr. Tarn could play a Voltairean trick on the helpless dead for Alexander the Great of Macedon two dozen centuries afterwards, no doubt somebody Tarnlike six centuries hence will be able to do it for little tiny all-but-invisible Dubya of Kennebunkport-Crawford.

Everybody but thee and me, Mr. Bones, seems to be a Theme-monger of late, "Theme" comprising both Colean "thesis" and Colean "theory." A bloody bushogenic shambles like the former Iraq cannot have happened by mere incompetence and accident, can it? Surely there must be some Malignant Intelligent Designer behind it all, surely there must be a THEME to such a puddin'?

Oh, well, no use arguing with 'em, Mr. Bones, the gentry and neo-gentry and wannabe neo-gentry who reluct to accept the general messiness of human events.

Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison! And God knows best!!