Selling A Smellout

The Oscar Wilde way with banalities -- "Divorces are made in heaven," and so on -- is too mechanical to be interesting ordinarily, but in this case there are mitigating factors, Your Honour, three of them: (1) Is not "smellout" pretty exactly the business that the gentry of Mu’ámara Junction themselves profess to be engaged in? (2) May one not say in Mandarin English, or Middle High Bloggish, that Dr. Goebbels used to "sell" his wares, even though he never charged anybody a penny? Thus too MJ. (3) Finally, no opportunity to cartoonize the august Dr. Cartoonoclastes ought to be missed. Failure to shoot his sort of fish in its barrel is not charity or humanitarianism, only culpable negligence.

But ad rem! Here's a whiff of the smell outed:

The sources say that the unpublished part of the agreement relating to Mosul includes an agreement [between M. al-Háshimí and the Free Kurds] on the administration of Mosul that gives two-thirds of the city to the Kurds and one-third to the Arabs and the other ethnic groups, in addition to adding the district of Sinjar to the Kurdish administration. If the truth of this is confirmed, then the Islamic Party has placed itself in a very difficult position vis-a-vis the Sunni-Arab street, which will not be able to allow this to happen under any circumstances. So far the Islamic Party has refrained from commenting on this very serious report.

That passage is a discovery, not a concoction or even a twistification, of the Mu’ámariyyans. Miss Lynx, who of course performs all the more banausic labours for her male colleagues, found it at http://news.76news.net/news.php?id=6320 . Mr. Badger -- the MJ newsroom chief, so to speak -- indicates the general nature of its aroma, "the Sunni-oriented Haq news agency," though one should be aware that that orientation is specifically towards the TwentyPercenters of the former Iraq rather than the Intergalactic Sunnintern. To be sure, a tendentious contortion like "the Sunni-Arab street ... will not be able to allow this to happen under any circumstances" gives the game away: no ideologue I know of was ever permit her crew's enemies to "be able to allow" this or that to happen. For reasons of convention rather than of logic, to bark and bellow "That is totally unacceptable!" about what one cannot begin to prevent is a joke when the other guys do it, yet nobody in the Heimatland so much as smiles when Dr. Goebbels goes on like that. (Perhaps the sweet puppies think there is a disloyalty to the team involved in any admission of impotence? But God knows best why team people like to play their silly games....)

As to the sellout rather than the Sunnianity, that smell is rather in the nostril of the besniffer. You and I, Mr. Bones, would not consider that M. al-Háshimí is well placed to sell anybody out, since he does not represent much of anybody to begin with. Indeed, his attaining to so lofty a pinnacle as the vice quasipresidency of ex-Iraq was very likely facilitated by his not representing much of anybody beyond himself. The circumstances of his exaltation are very peculiar, to be sure, a genuine curiosity for the student of Pol. Sci. to collect and treasure, because even in Peaceful Freedumbia, no Free Kurd or Twelver pol can be considered to be at an advantage because he has nobody and nothing in back of him.

So say you and I, Mr. Bones, but the anonymous street Arab quoted, like the gurus of the Mu’ámariyya who quote, believe nothing of the sort. In their alien and bewildering world, M. al-Háshimí "represents" all of GOP-occupied TwentyPercenterdom, and he may accordingly play Benedict Arnold to the same if he chooses to. As Gen. Arnold actually did, TH could maintain that he is "betraying" his own team in their own long-term best interests, a plea that seems less demented in a TwentyPercenter of the former Iraq than in a commander of Patriots. But we outside aggressors and anti-aggressors should probably avoid that sentimental variety of "seems" altogether, because it is not, after all, our team that is being discussed in conjunction with a M. Táriq al-Háshimí. Whether such a hack "sells out" in vain or becomes the all-time champion political turncoat does not have much bearing on the primary aspects of the bushogenic quagmire. It would be very unfortunate if extremist GOP schemes of aggression and prëemptive retaliation came to be regarded as having "worked" in the former Iraq -- that is the ball to keep your eye on, Mr. Bones, and if the career trajectory of M. Táriq al-Háshimí has any close connection with that, I have missed it entirely.

I have, rather impolitely, editorialized this faint whiff of news my way before taking notice of how Dr. Cartoonoclastes editorialized it the Mu’ámariyya Junction way. Like this, that was:

Myself, I think this type of horse-trading or attempted jurisdiction-swapping in the north would be consistent with a coming GreenZone musical-chairs restructuring, in the form of Hashemi buying some support from the Kurdish parties. And the musical-chairs concept, I think, is what is probably going to come out of the current "reconciliation" process, of which the next step is the officially unannounced Cairo meeting, where I think the outreach to the resistance is going to turn out to have been mostly for show.

Since "musical chairs" is an entirely new figure of rhetoric, I am not sure whether the honourable and gallant rhetor means his stuff strictly or not. The crux of the literal parlour game is that the number of chairs is steadily reduced, so that players are compelled to drop out one by one. But since there is a certain radical looseness of thought amongst the MJ gentry, in my estimate, Cartoonoclastes may have meant no more than "merry-go-round," that is to say, a continual reshuffling of political furniture among a fixed and constant quantity of Green Zone collaborationist pols.

In any event, M. Táriq al-Háshimí in particular is not slated to drop out. On the contrary, we are told that he is going to "buy" "support." Does that mean that somebody else's "support" must dwindle? Might it mean that the "support" of poor M. al-Málikí in particular shall dwindle? If you can make anything out along those lines from this latest oracle, Mr. Bones, I hope you will share it with me. Clearly Cartoonoclastes and I do not think about political events in the same way. In this case, I'd pick up his stick by the opposite end and wonder why on earth the Free Kurds should be interested in "selling" M. al-Háshimí any more "support" than they have furnished him with already. The cartoonoclastic analysis may conceivably have something to be said for it, but at this point in the aggression, it is far easier to see how TH can advance the interests of Free Kurdistán than vice versa: in addition to helping them enlarge their holy homeland, M. al-Háshimí might be of assistance in keeping the Turks off their back, although obviously the militant Crawfordites would be more useful still in that department.

If one did not know of the mu’ámmariyyan mindset, the whole affair would be a puzzle indeed, since the Free Kurds possess nothing plausible to "buy" M. al-Háshimi's "support" with that begins to be of equivalent value. What are they going to do, let the man call himself "President of the Republic," or perhaps "President of the Council of Quasiministers"?

For you and me, Bones, that last is a rhetorical question, for even a neo-Iraqi hack pol cannot attach that much importance to empty vainglorious gauds. What on earth is this traitor to his theocommunity supposed to be selling out FOR?

Taking cognizance of conspiratorialist psychology, however, one begins to get a glimmering. Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes need not be supposed to account M. al-Háshimí a bubbleheaded idiot. Far more likely they have not the imagination to consider such an affair from the Hashemite standpoint at all: what, if any, "support" the traitor is "bought" with does not concern them, they arise in factious wrath that the betrayal should happen, or indeed, that it should be possible -- they arise bi-lá kayfa, as it were, "without [asking] how."

====

Cartoonoclastes' little joke about "the officially unannounced Cairo meeting, where I think the outreach to the resistance is going to turn out to have been mostly for show" could be taken, somwhat maliciously, for a profundity about the metaphysics of the Mu’ámariyya: Secret Truth is a zillion times more important than mere appearances, yet if it be disclosed and vulgarized -- and that seems to be what the firm of Lynx, Badger and Cartoonoclastes exists to do -- does Secret Truth not in some sense become a mere appearance too?

As usual, the Mu’ámariyya's diagnosis of its patients winds up peculiar. It sounds as if the black hats propose to reach out to "the resistance" at Cairo mostly in the form of a secret show. I daresay Humpty-Dumpty could make sense even of that, though probably nobody really needs it made sense of for mere political purposes. BGKB.

To Puke Or Not To Puke?

The occasion alleged seems pretty run-of-the-mill bilge for the Wall Street Jingo to me, Mr. Bones, but Don Juan professes to be beside himself:

I just wanted literally to puke on my living room carpet when I read this bilge.

And here, without more ado,

What Iowans Should Know About Mormons By Naomi Schaefer Riley (Ms. Riley is the Journal's deputy Taste editor.) Yesterday, at the end of Mitt Romney's speech, he told a story from the early days of the First Continental Congress, whose members were meeting in Philadelphia in 1774: "With Boston occupied by British troops . . . and fears of an impending war . . . someone suggested they pray." But because of the variety of religious denominations represented, there were objections. "Then Sam Adams rose and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were [sic] a patriot." Were Adams alive today, he most certainly would hear a prayer from a Mormon. It is hard to imagine a group more patriotic than the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But there is reason to believe that voters in Iowa and elsewhere will not accept Mr. Romney's invitation -- put forward implicitly in his remarks yesterday at the George Bush Library -- to ignore religious differences and embrace him simply as a man of character who loves his country. A recent Pew poll shows that only 53% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Mormons. That's roughly the same percentage who feel that way toward Muslims. By contrast, more than three-quarters of Americans have a favorable opinion of Jews and Catholics. Whatever the validity of such judgments, one has to wonder: why does a faith professed by the 9/11 hijackers rank alongside that of a peaceful, productive, highly educated religious group founded within our own borders? Many evangelicals in the GOP view Mormonism as "a cult," or at least not a Christian faith. One Southern Baptist leader recently called it the "fourth Abrahamic religion." I remember, a couple of years ago, sitting in on an apologetics class at a Christian high school in Colorado Springs, Colo., and hearing the teacher describe a critical moment in the history of the Muslim faith, when the rock that now sits under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem tried to fly to heaven and had to be restrained by Mohammad. Acknowledging that it sounded a little wacky, the teacher added: "Well, it's no stranger than that guy who found golden tablets in upstate New York." The students laughed uproariously at the reference to the Mormons' founding father, Joseph Smith. Six years ago, I probably could have counted on one finger the number of Mormons I had met. Having lived most my life in the Northeast, my situation was hardly unique. Then, while researching a book on religious colleges, I decided to spend some time at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. In preparation, I picked up Mormon America: The Power and the Promise by religion reporters Richard and Joan Ostling. The Ostlings offer a comprehensive account of the church's history and theology, as well as helpful descriptions of the Mormons' cultural and political outlook. "The onetime believers in plural marriage, considered a dire threat to Victorian probity and the entire nation," the authors write, "have become the exemplars of conservative monogamous family values." It is hard to disagree. Mormons marry young and have large families. They don't drink, smoke or gamble. The church does not condone homosexuality. Members give at least 10% of their income to the church and often volunteer more than 20 hours a week in some religious capacity. With no professional clergy, the survival of congregations (or "stakes") is entirely dependent on lay participation. All young Mormon men and many women spend two years as missionaries, their travels funded by their own families. The church stocks soup kitchens across the country and internationally (both its own and those of other faiths) with food from its farms and warehouses. Rather than behaving like an insular cult, members are integrated into the society around them, sending their kids to public schools and assuming leadership positions locally and nationally. Once Mormons complete their missionary service, they are not obliged to proselytize, so having Mormons as neighbors doesn't mean a constant bombardment with invitations to join up. But many Americans, unless they've actually had a Mormon neighbor, might find all these rosy facts meaningless, feeling deeply uneasy with some of Mormonism's tenets. A lot of what we call religious tolerance depends on social contact, not theological understanding, and there are only about six million LDS members in the U.S., mostly concentrated in the Western states (though increasingly less so). If you press Baptists, they will acknowledge finding Catholics' belief in transubstantiation implausible at best; Jews like me have a little trouble getting over the virgin birth. But we all get along, for the most part, because we know each other and live similar lives as Americans, whatever faith we profess. But most Iowans will not meet a Mormon in the next six weeks unless Mr. Romney comes to call -- Mormons make up less than one half of 1% of the state's population. So let me offer a brief snapshot, not in the hope that Iowans will vote for Mr. Romney but in the hope that, if they don't vote for him, their decision won't have anything to do with his religion. The young men and women at Brigham Young University are among the smartest, hardest-working and most pleasant college kids you will find anywhere. (For better or worse, I have visited dozens of college campuses.) The student body lives by the Mormon principle: "The glory of God is intelligence." Most reside off campus without adult supervision, yet they adhere strictly to curfews, rules about contact with the opposite sex and every other church directive. They are purposeful but seem to enjoy themselves, spending their free time hiking in the sprawling desert. And BYU has America's largest ROTC program outside of our military schools. This last fact is one I had occasion to think about on my trip. I left for BYU on Sept. 7, 2001, and returned home a week later. On 9/11, the students gathered for a campuswide devotional. The university president tried to comfort the students with "the eternal perspective." My eternal perspective is not the same as theirs, of course. But hearing more than 20,000 young people around me reciting the Pledge of Allegiance made me realize that our temporal perspective is the same. I'm sure Sam Adams would have agreed.

Meanwhile, back on the carpet,

I just wanted literally to puke on my living room carpet when I read this bilge. Islam is not 'the faith professed by 9/11 hijackers.' Islam is the religion of probably 1.3 billion persons, a fifth of humankind, which will probably be a third of humankind by 2050. Islam existed for 1400 years before the 9/11 hijackers, and will exist for a very long time after them. Riley has engaged in the most visceral sort of smear, associating all Muslims with the tiny, extremist al-Qaeda cult. We could play this game with any human group. Some Catholics were responsible for the Inquisition. Shall we blame Catholicism for that, or all Catholics? Of course not. Jewish Zionists expelled hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians from their homes in 1948. Is that Judaism's fault or that of Jews in general? Of course not.[1] She goes on to further stick her foot in her mouth by complaining that she heard conservative Christians call Mormonism 'the fourth Abrahamic religion' (alongside Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and complains that they compared a Muslim belief she considers 'wacky' to Mormon stories. It is all right for her to call folk Islamic motifs wacky, mind you. She's only interested in being fair to Mormons, not to Muslims. Mormons are good people, but some of their forebears were also involved in violence in the 19th century of a sort that other Americans viewed as terrorism. Riley's remarks exemplify the problems with Romney's speech, which demands fairness for his group but not for, e.g., secularists. Thus, he says: "In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. ... Our Constitution,' he said, "was made for a moral and religious people.' Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." What Romney omits is that many of the "religious people" among the founding fathers were Deists, who did not believe in revelation or miracles or divine intervention in human affairs. Thomas Jefferson used to sit in the White House in the evening with scissors and cut the miracle stories out of the Gospels so as to end up with a reasoned story about Jesus of Nazareth, befitting the Enlightenment. Some Founding Fathers were Christians, some were not, at least not in any sense that would be recognized by today's Religious Right. Jefferson believe that most Americans would end up Unitarians. As for the insistence that you need religion for political freedom, that is silly. Organized religion has many virtues, but pushing for political liberty is seldom among them. Religion is about controlling people. No religiously based state has ever provided genuine democratic governance. You want religion in politics, go to Iran. Liberty can survive religion, especially a multiplicity of religions within the nation. Because that way there is not a central faith that imposes itself on everyone, as Catholicism used to in Ireland or Buddhism used to in Tibet. But organized religion would never ever have produced the First Amendment to the US constitution, and the 19th century popes considered it ridiculous that the state should treat false religions as equal to the True Faith. Deists, freethinkers and Freemasons--the kind of people that Romney was complaining about-- produced the First Amendment. When Tom Jefferson tried out an earlier version of it in Virginia, some of the members of the Virginia assembly actually complained that freedom of religion would allow the practice of Islam in the US. Jefferson's response to that kind of bigotry was that other people believing in other religions did not pick his pocket or break his leg, so why should he care how they worshipped? And that's all Romney had to say. But he did not want to say that. Romney said the opposite. He implied that is is actively bad for a democracy if people are unbelievers or if there is a strict separation of religion and state. We know the Founding Fathers and Romney is no founding father. By Romney's definition of freedom, Sweden and France, where 50% and 40% of the population, respectively, does not believe in God, cannot have a proper democracy. But of course Swedish democracy is in many respects superior to that in the United States. Look, the reason that Americans took religion out of the public sphere was because the religious kept fighting with each other in the most vicious way. We had violence between Catholics and Protestants in schools in the 19th century because religion was in the public schools, and therefore each branch of Christianity wanted to dominate and control it. You take religion out of the schools, suddenly people stop fighting about it. People like Romney who want to put religion back into the public sphere are just going to cause a lot of trouble. 14% of Americans don't believe in God. Another 5% belong to minority religions (and both categories are rapidly growing). That nearly 20% doesn't necessarily want sectarian Christian symbols in public schools. Even a lot of the 80% that are some kind of Christian don't belong to a church and aren't necessarily orthodox in their views. So Romney's so-called plea for tolerance is actually a plea for the privileging of religion in American public life. He just wants his religion to share in that privilege that he wants to install. Ironically, the very religious pluralism of the United States, which he appears to praise, will stand in the way of his project. posted by Juan Cole @ 12/07/2007 06:30:00 AM

The gut of the WGAS got a bit distracted, it looks like. Nausea began with Big Management Party neocomradess N. S. Riley badmouthin’ Muslims to entertain the tasty readership of the Jingo, which has not much to do with Gov. Romney on the errors of Deism. Rather au contraire, I should think, since any toleration His Latter-Day Excellency can win from Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh for persons hereditarily encumbered with silly fables about Mr. Joseph Smith logically ought to apply to Dome of the Flying Rock fans as well. To be sure, "logically" often does not go down well with religionists and neoreligionizers, but that is scarcely poor Mitt's fault.

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom" is possibly a bit barf-inducing, but it is probably not really very venomous. Like most neocomrades and some other shallow thinkers, poor Mitt assumes that all the things that he happens to like must be united by some intrinsic bond more impressive than "being liked by Willard Mitt Romney." The Narcissus Perspective is all that such muddle comes to, usually. As an actual practitioner of Big Management, though, the governor may mean somethin’ more sinister, for the GOP/CEO/HVS/MBA gentry invariably consider that their True Freedom consists in the ability to bigmanage unobstructed. Exactly what such a specimen would consider its True Religion to consist in could be problematical, though more likely it would be only the basis for a phony fellowship with his managees, "Hey, look, I let Father Zeus bigmanage me, so why can't you guys . . . &c. &c.?" A very old song. [2]

Don Juan's countersong is familiar as well, and none too persuasive in context. Suppose we stipulate that His Latter-Day Excellency's "so-called plea for tolerance is actually a plea for the privileging of religion in American public life," what does this wicked "privileging" substantially amount to? Is the Mormonite brand of Enthusiasm and Superstition particularly oppressed and persecuted because other brands do not recognize it as a proper E&S? Not very obviously, and even if it were, by Don Juan's own principles, that would be no business for Uncle Sam to take action about. It is not inconceivable that the barbarians may benefit in some respects from being located outside the Great Wall of Separation. To decide that such benefit involves a "privileging" and must be regulated out of existence is contradictio in adjecto, to abandon the separation under pretence of enforcing it. Naturally the devotees of E&S can't be permitted to assign themselves extra votes at elections because of their devotion, but neither can the devotees of anything else, TrueFreedom™ and freedom and toleration included.

The jingo neocomradess is out beyond the Great Wall also. At least I cannot think of any plausible way to restrict her badmouthin’ of Muslims. N. S. Riley and her co-conspirators and her dupes must be allowed one vote per election also, and Uncle Sam would be misbehaving if he tried to alter that magic number 1.00 either upwards or downwards. The Straight Way is so easy to detect and expound hereabouts that the importance of walking in it may be lost sight of. There are lots of good reasons for disliking bad people, Enthusiasm and Superstition are far from alone in affording such reasons. The ’phobe Riley's own specialty, Taste, is perfectly adequate. She'd never dream of votin’ for a Muslim terrorist swine, and nobody is gonnta tell her different. If she wants to dress up Neocomrade R. Neuhaus's naked public square with op-eds against terroristical swine, Uncle Sam, at least, can do nothing to stop her. Unlike TrueFreedom™, plain public-domain freedom does tend to run to an unedifying tune: we can be most assured that we are bestowing it upon the needy when the needy insist on behavin’ so as to inspire warm holiday thoughts like "I just wanted literally to puke on my living room carpet."

Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.


____
[1] Oh, dear.


[2] To insist on the bigmanagement of Zeus theologically might indeed make a religionizer averse to Deism, although the consequence is not strictly logical. Still, His Latter-Day Excellency would probably not care to be held to a Deistic standard of competence in operations control, with everything foreseen in the Original Intent and no course corrections ever necessary afterwards. Indeed, if a Big Manager doesn't get to meddle as he muddles through, is he really "managing" at all, let alone bigmanaging? Even though there is patently no need to meddle? Father Zeus does not have to worry about establishing Who is in control, the mythographers claim, but mere mortals are not often so fortunate. A poor Mitt could quite conceivably degrade the Mark I plan a few percentage points in order that all his subalterns understand clearly that it is the Romney Plan they must comply with.

Towards An Anthology Of Idiocy

Wherever we end, Mr. Bones, and no matter what the Aggression of the Month Club gentry may really be up to en masse, their Little Brother deserves to march first in this week's parade:

"I think it is very important for the international community to recognize the fact that if Iran were to develop the knowledge that they could transfer to a clandestine program, it would create a danger for the world. And so I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. And the reason why it's a warning signal is that they could restart it."

Maving happily missed out on instruction from the Harvard Victory School and the New Haven Seminary for Undergraduates, you at least, O Bones, can have no trouble placing that elegant specimen of Big Party pidgin poop under the most suitable rubric, namely ‘Lucus’ â non lucendo, "Let it be called a ‘danger for the world’ in light of the clear fact that it poses no danger." This movement of the mental bowels is notorious in the textbooks as a fallacy, but one does not actually meet it outside very frequently nowadays. Perhaps some part of one's response should be a muted cheer that so agreeable and venerable a dottiness has not gone extinct altogether.

Dubyapologists, mercenary or deluded, will classify their hot dynasty poop differently and appeal to other maxims and saws. Fas est et ab hoste doceri! From the point of view of the twistatorial Baní Rove, what is to be done with their head laddie's "And the reason why is ...."? There is no proverb ready to hand -- is there? -- that inculcates "Whatever can once be started can forever after be RE-started." That's no worse a fortune cookie than most received apophthegms, I daresay, but unfortunately for Big Management just at the moment, this one does not happen to have been received.

Merely for the fun of the thing, let us suppose the wooden figurehead of Grant's Old Party totters on the brink of absurdity deliberately, and not merely Yalewise. That strategy, if it existed, could bring Little Brother to a fallacy that is even more fun than â non lucendo -- to our old friend the Invisible Cat, who, whenever he sits down on a chair, immediately causes the chair to appear unoccupied. Sixteen hundred intelligence agencies, with or without SIGINT and G@@GLE, could not distinguish that situation from the case in which the chair is re verâ empty. We know the impossibility of such a demonstration in advance, we know it a priori, the philosopher might say, although some party poopers would speak instead of a trivial verbal deduction from the meaning of the word "invisible." Whatever the Faculty Club finally rules on that case, it would by no means poop the Big Party's schemes of invasionism and Preëmptive Retaliation™ to marry the Invisible Cat to the Qommie Nukes, as it were. "Clandestine," as Little Brother's speech therapist named the pertinent magic ingredient above, works both ways: decent political adults can no more absolutely prove the nonexistence of invisible felines than the lemmin's of Wingnut City can demonstrate it. (The upshot might seem a Mexican stand-off to a mere logician, but that only goes to show what makes logicians mere. There is no genuine deadlock here, not when Little Brother disposes of his Uncle Sam's hyperpuissance unilaterally, and the doubting Thomases cannot even write a valid traffic ticket. [1])

Himself went on to play at bein’ a nuke-you-larry scientist personally, just like Jimmy Carter used to. (Golly!)

"And the thing that would make a restarted program effective and dangerous is the ability to enrich uranium, the knowledge of which could be passed on to a hidden program. The N.I.E. provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community — continue to rally the community to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program. You know, the N.I.E. also said that such pressure was effective, and that's what our government has been explaining to other partners in keeping the international pressure on Iran. The best diplomacy, effective diplomacy, is one of which all options are on the table."

So then, let China and Peru (&c. &c.) simply agree that it is an antisocial act for anybody but a Crawfordite or the friend of a Crawfordite to enrich uranium for any purpose whatsoever, and we shall have arrived in Beulahland. How anybody can resist such an "opportunity" as that at Beijing and Lima is a mystery, Mr. Bones, but for some reason I feel confident that they will manage to do so.

As a matter of fact, I did not "know the N.I.E. also said that ... pressure was effective," and after examination of the unclassified "Key Judgments" of the Sweet Sixteen, I am afraid that I still don't know that knowledge for sure in the sense that Little Brother's speech therapist had in mind.

We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.

As regards the protocol, that was obvious all along, like the protocol itself. The "halt" however is by way of being an invisible cat, and a newly unsighted invisible cat at that. The honourable and gallant spooks, like everybody else in politics, should be taken at their word as regards what they profess to believe with subjective sincerity unless it is impossible to do so without extreme mental contortions. So I judge with high confidence that they do indeed judge with high confidence. Whether they judge accurately as well as sincerely remains a different question, however. [2]

____
[1] Big Party neocomrade K. Rove's famous summary of the post-BigBang correlation of farces, as told to Mr. Suskind of Esquire , may not be attributed to the right neorightist perp, but it is not to be improved upon materially:

"You know, Ron, guys like you are in what we call the 'reality-based community.' ... But that's not the way the world really works now. We're an empire of sorts, and when we act, we create our own reality. ... We're history's actors, who are willing to do what's needed, and you can study what we do. And if you start being nice to us --which you haven't been, maybe one of us will deign to visit you at that seminar you teach up at Dartmouth in the summers, in your tattered tweed blazer."

One rather elementary analysis of the latest human events reported from Beltway City would be that sixteen "intelligence" agencies have decided, on balance, that they may safely bet against the Imperial neocomrade's splendid visions of reality-creatin’. Whether the cat-associated chair is vacant has now, as they suppose, reverted to being an old-fashioned Rechtfrage rather than a neo-Rovean Machtfrage, an "objective" rather than a "subjective" issue.

Princess Posterity is bound to think so in the long run, but I'd hesitate to affirm that the long run has already commenced as of 5 December 2007. The Tattered Blazer Folk run a genuine risk, as I consider, of coming out to dance on the graves of the Big Management enemies of the human race before all the troops of the latter have been disposed of and accounted for. Rovianity might be even become more formidable practically if trapped in the last ditch, for all that it is hooey conceptually and has never been otherwise. No band of Yale-based narcissists and greedies can ever set up a Rove World with the same boundaries as Uncle Sam's united states, but the creation of an intellectual ghetto, or Party theme park, exclusively for militant OnePercenterdom on a much smaller scale is not impossible at all. For one thing, our political landscape is already infested with Hoovervillains and AEIdeologues and Heritagitarians and jihád careerists who certainly are not gonnta vanish no matter who nukes whom in the Greater Levant --- not even if nobody gets nuked at all. Inside the Big Party's tanks of thought and its gated communities of the pricily credentialled, a shadow and subimperial Rovianity may linger for decades, quite unable to impose a general Weltordnung on the human race, but strong enough to make sure that nobody wearin’ a tattered blazer significantly exists anywhere in the immediate vicinity.

[2] As a parlor game, of course, anybody at all may stipulate the recently unsighted "halt" and speculate about its causes. ’Tis rather a silly pastime, though, so I shan't go farther than venturing to suggest that the evil Qommies might conceivably have concluded that nukes were not quite so urgent once the Busheviki had replaced the Ba‘thís next door in the former Iraq.

Those who take for granted that effacement of the Tel Aviv statelet is the only imaginable reason why a mad mullah would desire The Bomb will not care for any frivolous notion that defensive considerations might play some role.

Needless to say, God knows best what the Levantines are really up to, nukewise. And otherwise as well, for that matter.

Non-Euclidean Invasionism

Watch the parallels meet, Mr. Bones:

Ahmed Abu Risha, who took over leadership of the Anbar Salvation Council from his murdered father, brother, obviously, gave a long interview to al-Arabiya this week. It's interesting to get a sense of how his political thinking is developing. He began by talking about his recent visit to Washington. He placed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Joe Biden in the same category - really. He said that first Zarqawi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir declared an Islamic State in Anbar, and then Joe Biden declared a plan for partitioning Iraq, and that he had gone to Washington to argue that neither was the reality of Iraq. He said that he told Bush that he carried a message from all the tribes of Iraq, Sunni or Shia, that they opposed partition of the country - and that Bush told him three times that such a partition would not happen. Somebody tell Abd al-Aziz and Ammar Hakim. Intriguingly, there is no indication in the interview that Abu Risha was made aware of the impending Bush-Maliki agreement, announced a couple of days after the interview aired, during these meetings with the President.

It somewhat lowers the credit of 1950's vintage Pol. Sci. that Abu Aardvark overlooks the possibility that the schizomaniacal fiends of SCIRI may rely upon corrupt smoke-filled townsmen to the exclusion of noble open-air Bedouin. AA retains enough proportion to see the funny side of der Erwecker des al-’Anbárs, but he remains decidedly Sunninternocentric:

The most interesting parts of the interview revolved around the question of Sunni political representation. The interviewer asked Abu Risha who gave him, or the Anbar Salvation Council, the right to claim to represent anyone. Abu Risha replied that their success against al-Qaeda was the basis of their legitimacy, a fascinating mirror of the claims of the insurgency factions that their legitimacy derived from their military success against the American occupation. (He repeatedly praised the institutions of the Iraqi state, especially the the Army - but said little about the Iraqi government.) Power indeed flows from the barrel of the gun, in Abu Risha's answers, rather than the ballot box.

If Abú Rishá has trouble distinguishing Sen. Biden from M. al-Zarqáwí, how about Abu Aardvark's syncope of "power" and "legitimacy"? Even in the 1950's, social scientizers knew better than that, I believe, the question having been raised recently in conjunction with Germany, among other neorégimes of those times. And then there comes Staat versus Regierung, an antithesis which seems much better to befit the Berlin end of the Baghdád railroad, although at this point AA muddles that Prussian antithesis up with the one between Macht versus Recht, a.k.a. "the ballot box." That is quite another story. AA might reflect, to begin with, that it is perfectly possible for a neorégime to lack both ingredients, as for instance that of poor M. al-Málikí, which possesses little "legitimacy" and less power. Even der Erwecker cannot envy poor M. al-Málikí his gun barrels too seriously, I trust, not at this point in the aggression. When the Sunní Ascendancy enjoys its own again, things will be different, of course: that proposition is a political tautology.

Der Erwecker may be a bit less of a clown than the Herr Prof. Dr. makes him out. Perhaps. Some sentence containing "[our] success against al-Qá‘ida [is] the basis of [our] legitimacy" would be plausible enough in the context of Little Brother debriefin’ the hero on the tribes of semiconquered Mesopotamia: the hero would be referring exclusively to the sort of legitimacy-basin’ to be expected of Crawfordite vigilantes, i.e., "Our legitimacy from your point of view, Mr. President." ’Abú Ríshá's private notions of why his relatives and friends and clients and dupes support him, or should support him, almost certainly contain many factors of scant interest to a militant extremist Republican.[1]

Even by the Aardvarkidean account of him, the hero must attach some smidgen of importance to ballot boxes, at least to deny any support thence to his miserable opponents and rivals:

Abu Risha dismissed the electoral legitimacy of both the local councils and the Tawafuq Bloc due to the low levels of Sunni participation in the elections. He pushed the idea of an Iraqi Awakening (Sahwa Iraq) as a "political entity" as the legitimate representative of all Iraqi tribes and all the various Awakenings. He claimed that there could be no conflict between the Awakening and the armed factions, but never got specific despite some pointed questions from the interviewer. Whenever the armed factions came up, he would change the subject to tribes - an obvious finesse of a politically major question.

I'd have thought it worth explaining from a high and dry Pol. Sci. point of view, Mr. Bones, exactly what "pushed the idea of" signifies here. It does not sound as if der Erwecker desires any encounter between tribes and ballot boxes, in which respect he shows himself a thoroughly orthodox and up-to-date Levantine pol, of exactly the same mindset as Gen. Mubárak and Col. Qadhdháfí and les altesses royales du Ryadh and so on down the list of usual suspects all the way down to the tiniest Gulfie minnow.

’Abú Ríshá might conceivably recommend himself to the Party of Grant on precisely those grounds, for it is the Party of Harding as well, after all, that has, or used to have, a cravin’ for "normalcy." Normalcy is not exactly the same political fluid as legitimacy, perhaps, but it has been closely associated with it ever since M. de Talleyrand-Périgord made the match. "Hey, guys, put ME in power, wouldja? I promise you I'll make your Peaceful Freedumbia normal again!" Some classy invasionites from the tanks of thought would find that an unattractive propositions, bein’ stubbornly devoted to mirages of Domino Democracy™, yet a majority of GOP geniuses. and even of Party base and vile, would probably be prepared to settle for normalcy at this point. [2]

One speculates in a void, to be sure, for the Herr Prof. Dr. says not a word about what "pushed the idea of ... a ‘political entity’ as the legitimate representative of ..." means on the positive side. Perhaps the correct guess is to take that wordlessness at face value and imagine the Awakener proposing no arrangement with GOP extremism more definite than "Why not everybody simply pretends that I am legitimate?" Political grown-ups in the West will find that a paltry sort of legitimacy, no doubt, but then ’Abú Ríshá is no Westistání, and the Kiddie Krusaders are, ex hypothesi, political kiddies.

A little of the rust and tarnish comes off Georgetown Pol. Sci. after that, however, when Abu Aardvark offers a tolerably just appreciation of the stumblebums' nifty Bribe-A-Tribe™ gizmo:

Finally, as always with the Awakenings, his position ultimately came down to money: he complained that under "the former government," Anbar received 870 [b]illion dinars a year from the central government, but in the 2007 budget (he claimed) it got only 289 [b]illion dinars, which weren't being spent appropriately. Hint, hint.

If the begging bowl is to be obtruded by der Erwecker himself, then the suggestion I made in note [1] becomes more urgent than ever. The Crawfordites are not likely to go on payin’ out the hero's pension -- plus relatives' and friends' and clients' and dupes' ditto -- indefinitely merely because of his ornamental value or his past services. The militant Republicans can be rather astoundin’ly stingy when it comes to their little foreign friends, as opposed to their good ideobuddies over at Blackwater or Halliburton.

(AA goes on at length, but here ’Abú Ríshá and I will exit the bus.)

"the least astonishing word in our language"

This scrap of grammatical hyperanalysis originated with the usual in-house TomDispatch social scientizer, Schwartz of Stony Brook, and was drawn to intergalactic attention by the world's greatest area student, JC of AA:

... [T]here was news lurking in an answer Col. Bannister gave to a question from AP reporter Pauline Jelinek (about arming volunteer local citizens to patrol their neighborhoods), even if it passed unnoticed. The colonel made a remarkable reference to an unexplained "five-year plan" that, he indicated, was guiding his actions. Here was his answer in full: "I mean, right now we're focused just on security augmentation [by the volunteers] and growing them to be Iraqi police because that is where the gap is that we're trying to help fill capacity for in the Iraqi security forces. The army and the national police, I mean, they're fine. The Iraqi police is -- you know, the five-year plan has -- you know, it's doubling in size. … [We expect to have] 4,000 Iraqi police on our side over the five-year plan. "So that's kind of what we're doing. We're helping on security now, growing them into IP [Iraqi police]…. They'll have 650 slots that I fill in March, and over the five-year period we'll grow up to another 2,500 or 3,500. Most astonishing in his comments is the least astonishing word in our language: "the." Colonel Bannister refers repeatedly to " the five-year plan," assuming his audience understands that there is indeed a master plan for his unit -- and for the American occupation -- mandating a slow, many-year buildup of neighborhood-protection forces into full fledged police units. This, in turn, is all part of an even larger plan for the conduct of the occupation. Included in this implicit understanding is the further assumption that Col. Bannister's unit, or some future replacement unit, will be occupying these areas of eastern Baghdad for that five-year period until that 4,000 man police force is finally fully developed.

It is pleasant to observe that practitioners of Soc. Sci. can still deign to take an interest in the minor articles of the former humanism on occasion, even merely morphological ones. Perhaps PowerPoint has not yet rotted their brains after all, then, or rotted only Mr. Anthony Cordesman's? Nevertheless, when children play with new or unfamiliar toys, mistakes happen, and Schwartz of Stony Brook seems to be the locus of such a misfortune. He even manages to fall off both sides of the anti-aggression horse simultaneously: (1) If he actually required this degree of HaroldBloomoid strongreading to work out that the militant extremist GOP have no intention whatever of relinquishin’ their grip on the former Iraq, our scientizer is perfectly capable of overlooking his own spectacles perched atop his nose.

But then (2), once supplied with that all-but-invisible scintilla of evidence from the lips of Big Party neocomrade J. Bannister, Dr. Schwartz erects vast and foundationless castles of swamp gas. All he knows for sure is that the neocomrade colonel had in mind somebody's Five Year Plan that he refers to in mumbles that also contain the words "we" and "our." Who the Godzilla is "we" in the mouth of a mouthpiece like J. Bannister? WHOSE plan is it? Rancho Crawford's plan? The official GOP's plan? DOD's plan ? Is it a plan of the Ever-Victorious Neorégime of poor M. al-Málikí?

The list of candidates could be extended considerably if one assumes that when Neocomrade Jeff stuck in that "you know" he was merely mumblin’, not actually alludin’ to specific Party or Pentagon secrets already familiar to his select audience. The rest of the transcript makes this hypothesis seem probable to me, and after examination of it, my estimate of Stony Brook Schwartz is not enhanced by finding that he did not "quote in full." So allow me:

COL. KECK: Pauline? Q Pauline Jelinek of the Associated Press. Sir, can you tell us about use of concerned local citizens in your area, what numbers you have them in, how formal your agreements are or arrangements are with them, what they do for you? COL. BANNISTER: Sure. That's a good question now. And I'll have to frame it for you. It's a little different on east Baghdad than it is in west Baghdad. And the reason it's different is because west Baghdad has al Qaeda. East Baghdad we have, you know, more of a militia threat, and the al Qaeda comes into east Baghdad in the form of a VBIED [PowerPointesque for "car bomb"] and -- because that's what they go after, the VBIEDs, is the population centers where the Shi'a are located. So you got to consider -- (audio break) -- no al Qaeda. So do we have a requirement that -- to where we need concerned local citizens as much as the west side, because you also have to remember they have a police gap on the west side, where they don't have as many Iraqi local police. So we're building capacity here in MND-B [Party Chinese for "Crawford-controlled troops at New Baghdád"], 12,000, you know, police, and the preponderance of them are going to go on the west side. In my area, I've -- I have 1,300 that I have hired, and we're going to fill a class in March with concerned local citizens that we have hired to become IPs. ["Iraqi policemen"(?)] And what we've done is, we've broken them down. I have six coalition force battalions equally partnered with Iraqi battalions, and each one of them have a piece of these IPs to get them ready for this March class. And we've applied them in areas where we think that there's a -- you know, a security -- where we could use an increase in security. But they come from the local area, and they work in the local area. And they're partnered up with the coalition and the Iraqi security forces in those areas. So it's just not as large on the east side as it is the west. Now what we're hoping is -- and they're working on this with the Iraqis right now -- is, we can grow it to where we put them to working the essential services jobs, and so they don't have to carry a weapon and be an IP at the end of this; they can become, you know, part of the aminat or the beladiyas and work for the government of Iraq in another capacity. So that's being discussed as well. And I think that program will be huge on the east side, kind of like the IP -- you know, more of the concerned local citizens and Iraqi security volunteers that they have on the west side. So it's a little different. I hope that answers your question. Q Yes, except for one thing. They're largely Shi'a? Can you give us a sense of who they are? COL. BANNISTER: Could you say again? I didn't hear you. I'm sorry. Q (Off mike) -- mostly Shi'a? COL. KECK: Say it one more time. COL. BANNISTER: That's a good -- that's good. I can break that out. Right now we have -- you know, as coalition forces, our oversight responsibility on this is to make sure they represent the population of the areas they come from. So we have an area along the sectarian fault line, which is al-Fadel, Abu Seifein (sp) and Qenbar Ali (sp). And it is right on the fault line, and it sits near Adhamiya. So we have Sunni that work in the Sunni mahalas, up in al-Fadel; we have Abu Seifein (sp) that has Shi'a. The preponderance of our other areas, they have representation of the mahalas that they're going to be assisting in. And so there is Sunniat (ph). I will tell you that some are 70-30 Shi'a percentage-wise, but we have some that are 70 -- in one of my areas, Zayuna, it's 70 percent Shi'a, 30 percent -- I mean it's 70 percent Sunni, 30 percent Shi'a. So they represent the area they come from. Q And just an example or two of what they will be doing after the classes? COL. BANNISTER: Oh, yeah. Well, they're already doing it. I mean, they will guard schools, they will guard mosques, they will be on checkpoints in a combined fashion with the security forces. We will not put them on checkpoints by themselves. So they're going to augment existing security. And I'll tell you where we're really going to -- where this is really helping at, especially in al-Fadel, is the intelligence that comes from them, because they're from those mahalas and they are a voice for the people because the people help elect them. So I see this as -- you know, there's all goodness, not only to help with security but really to -- because our Iraqi security forces, they don't come from the mahalas that they're in. I mean, I have a Fallujah-based, a very capable Iraqi army brigade. So, you know, having volunteers from the mahalas working hand in hand with them is all goodness. It really gives them a better read on the people and the threats that are in those mahalas. Q When you said they'd be working in another capacity, I thought you meant something like services or -- they are still doing security? COL. BANNISTER: Yeah. Yeah, that is -- that isn't what (above me ?) is doing right now. They're working hand in hand with the government of Iraq to help build capacity for the aminat and the beladiyas. So an idea that they're working hand-in-hand with them on is how to grow the workers for the aminat, which is municipalities, and the ministry, the beladiyas, where they have more capacity to be able to push out essential services into the mahalas, as well as, you know, it gives them a job. I mean, right now we're focused just on security augmentation and growing them to be Iraqi police because that is where the gap is that we're trying to help fill capacity for in the Iraqi security forces. The army and the national police, I mean, they're fine. The Iraqi police is -- you know, the five-year plan has -- you know, it's doubling in size. (Short audio break) -- 4,000 Iraqi police on our side over the five-year plan. So that's kind of what we're doing. We're helping on security now, growing them into IP. They'll have 650 slots that I fill in March, and over the five-year period we'll grow up to another 2,500 or 3,500. COL. KECK: Andrew?

*****

Let's start over, Mr. Bones.

That is an interesting specimen of the Invasionite Mind in action, no doubt about it. ’Tis rather a pity that Stony Brook Schwartz failed to be interested by most of it. No doubt he must have wanted to rush off to announce to universal dovedom that the aggressor Busheviki, like the former Bolsheviks, now go in for Five Year Plans. A cheap shot, of course, although fun as far as it goes. Alas, the professor doctor was in too much of a hurry to extract the "all goodness" from his lucky find, as neocomrade Jeff would presumably mutter.[1]

The señorito colonel itself seems to have no very definite plans past "650 slots that I fill in March," -- that being almost certainly March of 2008, four or five months hence. There is no way to tell which month of the Five Year Plan that will be, for we have no more information about when it was adopted than about who adopted it. Well, perhaps we may follow Sidney Smith and be content with taking short views, "not past tea time," for the Harvard Victory School MBA classes have never yet been very reliable in their spread-sheetin’s more than a few months out.[2] The last fifty of Big Party Management's projected sixty months are probably to be classified as science fiction, come what may.

Neocomrade Col. Jeff was nominally answerin’ the Associated Press lady's questions about the past and present, after all. As always in dealings with the Baní Rove, whether pros or amateurs, one would do well to remember exactly what was asked before the Party perps got a chance to wander off in the direction of "And I'll have to frame it for you." So, then:

Sir, can you tell us [1] about use of concerned local citizens in your area, [2] what numbers you have them in, [3] how formal your agreements are or arrangements are with them, [4] what they do for you?

Neocomrade K. Rove might account Master Bannister's performance unsatisfactory, quite apart from any supposed scandalous revelation of Five Year Plans. He tells the lady that he has "hired" thirteen hundred MND-B capacity persons, the number as plain as day, although the nature of the things numbered remains well shrouded. A curious class of hired things they appear to be, since we learn elsewhere that "they represent the area they come from" and even -- flabbergastingly -- that "they are a voice for the people because the people help elect them." That is not at all the customary formal arrangement when Daddy Warbucks "hires" an employee for his favorite business corporation. If we assume that the señorito colonel is bein’ strictly truthful, it looks as if his "hires" means little more than that he pays those MND-B capacity persons their wages. It is "the people" -- the militant GOP's subjects in its semiconquered Mesopotamian provinces! -- who conduct the job interviews. Or so we are told.

One can appreciate why Ms. Jelinek was invited to attend this particular séance: having been told that, she does not bat an eye or ask a follow-up question about what "hired" means or anything else about formal agreements, she does not pursue any of her four original questions, she only raises a new and different fifth business, "They're largely Shi'a? Can you give us a sense of who they are?"

That's interesting also, of course. Quidquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis. It seems that the AP is distinctly interested in Sunnís and Shí‘a, rather more in that than in subtleties about "I hired" and "they represent" and "the people elect." The only story I recall encountering that went into any practical detail about the great Bribe-A-Tribe™ scheme of Dr. Gen. Petrolaeus and Party Proconsul Crockerius actually works appeared in the Wall Street Jingo. Well, naturally the slaves of Murdoch would take an interest in cash flow trajectories. Anybody could predict that.

The most interesting thing that Neocomrade Jeff let slip had nothin’ to do with Five Year Plans for the perpetual occupation of Peaceful Freedumbia, but once again with the implications of "I hired." Ms. Jelinek was not struck by it, and neither was Stony Brook Schwartz, but me, I'm fascinated by "where this is really helping at, especially in al-Fadel, is the intelligence that comes from them." Ordinarly one thinks of policemen as hiring informers. In the bushogenic quagmire things are done differently. According to Big Party neocomrade Col. Jeffrey Bannister, who certainly ought to know, his IPs were hired to be informers -- insofar as that capacity comports with popular election and neighborhood representation, anyway.

Ms. Jelinek and the AP were handed more Crawfordological data than the most optimistic reporter could reasonably expect to extract from what seems to have been a routine Five O'Clock Follies. It seems unlikely that they have passed it on to their customers, although I shall certainly check on that. The Soc. Sci. of Stony Brook did not even notice it. Presumably it would require an exponent of Pol. Sci. to want to look into a situation where a theocommunity under alien occupation does not often drop dimes to the authorities directly, yet where the latter can hire themselves intelligence sources under the rubric of "policemen."

Once you discern that Big Picture through Col. Jeff's mumbles, you'll agree that it makes excellent sense for him to add "We will not put them on checkpoints by themselves. So they're going to augment existing security." Fancy a checkpoint manned by stool pigeons! Not even GOP geniuses are likely to fall into that sand trap.

(But God knows best what they are up to.)


____
[1] Which planet of the Wingnut Cluster is it where everybody talks all funniness like Master Jeff does?


[2] I speak of their public-sectorian spreadsheetin’s only, of course, not being privy to any of the HVS future case studies, which must -- hopefully! -- be a little less inaccurate.

Let those who have paid the tuition worry about the quality assurance, however.