Don Juan Hits The Campaign Trail

Ker-PLUNK!!!
First of all, Mr. Bones, the time has come to remove the velvet gloves. Buckley Minor havin’ perished yesterday, nobody remains amongst the barbarian hordes who can translate civilised and gentlemanly political Latin for them, so waste not a single additional moment in pretending to be polite: No More Mr. Nice Guy! -- there's the ticket!

Bush's loathsome toadies actually come out and say that all this spending of our blood and treasure is the price of security. But [they lie.]

Wow, there goes the toady vote! Who's next?

No, not so fast, the sayin’s of the toadies of Big Management may be important, even though their individual votes are beyond all hope of seduction by America's party.

However in this case the question is rather one of their non-sayin’s. You and I, Mr. Bones, undoubtedly waste far more time examining the e-gutters of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh than JC does. So I ask you, sir, have you ever heard any spokesperson for the Ever-Victorious Coalition™ [1] say anything very like the words that JC would thrust into their maws? Something along the lines of "Make no mistake, America! All this spending of [y]our blood and treasure is the price of [[y]our] security -- and don't you ever forget it!"

Genuine Boy-and-Party toadies, and mere non-toady fellow-travelers with militant GOP extremism as well, do not often express themselves quite like that. It is not an accident that Don Juan does not provide a direct quotation. [2] The aggressionistas all believe somethin’ like that, no doubt, and probably most of them would sign a petition written by somebody else that contains the exact Colean words, but when they are speakin’ freely and for themselves, they speak differently. Don Juan and we may hold them rigorously to whatever follows logically from their barks and bellows, but that does not warrant the claim that they "actually come out and say" so-and-so. If the L.T.'s, loathsome toadies, had actually come out and said it, you and I would know exactly where to send our pet google to retrieve a verbatim copy. (But we don't, so they didn't, so Prof. Cole is in error. Q.E.D.)

Is not our overwhelming impression of pro-aggression discourse, Mr. Bones, that expenditure of treasure and effusion of blood are scarcely mentioned at all? [3] The context in which they are most frequently rehearsed is a peculiar one, namely the topos that runs "Let not these sacrifices be in vain!" (Alternatively: "Why not throw good money after bad?") In other words, the financing of invasions and occupations and the casualties resulting from them are subjects that the fans allude to predominantly in the past tense. No golden-tongued orator of Republican Party extremism has seen fit to emulate President Kennedy and sloganize "Pay any price, bear any burden!" with reference to future payments and endurances. [4]

How do they talk of things to come, then? That has depended on circumstances: before the Big Managerial bozos had accumulated a track record in their semiconquered provinces, they ran to cakewalks and Jam Tomorrow. Now that they're notably in a jam today, they favor doomsday scenarios of roughly the type that Party neocomrade T. Clancy churns out. Their fall-back or damage-control P. R. scheme does involve the "price of security" half of the Colean misformulation, but "all this spending of our blood and treasure" remains absent in the sense Prof. Cole attaches to it. Instead of that, we get mostly the sense that Neocomrade Clancy attaches to it -- nukes in Nebraska! Islamophalangitarianism in Indianapolis!! -- and, to a far lesser extent, adumbrations of genocide amongst the Coalition's neoliberateds. In neither case do central North American blood and treasure expended in the path of AEI/GOP/DOD aggressions and occupations abroad enter in.

I'm not sure whether "Bush's loathsome toadies" are too IQ-challenged to think of the Colean sense or whether, havin’ thought about it clearly enough, they decide not to mention it in public. Both these possibilities could be combined in any proportions, of course: some toadies too dumb, others too prudent. (But God knows best the general state of the aggressionistas' affairs!)

In the privileged and especially interesting individual case of J. Sidney McCain, however, "too dumb" is almost certainly correct. (894 out of 899, remember!) That is not the whole truth, because there is also the "too Mugwumpish" factor to be considered, JSM bein’ an extremely rare birdbrain. As far as I know, American history so far has never yet presented us with the spectacle of a dumb Mugwump. Nobody could dislike the Baní Greeley at sight more than I do, yet the prominent specimens of it have invariably been gentlebeings of intellectual respectability, though naturally only insofar as that is compatible with a sustained Big Management Party affiliation. Most recently there was Representative John B. Andersen of Illinois, for example.[5] Nothing could have been more pluperfectly mugwumpish than to dye one's hair white, but for all that, the man was clever enough. Whereas McCain . . . .

Happy days.

____
[1] The EVC™ comprises principally AEI and GOP and DOD -- Big Ideology plus Big Party plus Big Violence. Toss in the occasional Tony Blair or Señorito Aznar out towards the periphery. Do not omit Senators Zell and Lieberman, two vast and neobarbarous hordes in themselves.

(The proposed blogghinition uses the branded name of AEI™ loosely and generically to comprise all the doctrinaire tank-thinkers of Wingnut City, and notably Heritagitarians and Hoovervillains as well as AEIdeologues proper. The Catoholics, however, cannot be said to adhere to the EVC™, because a large subfactionette at that address disapprove of aggression, or approve of Representative Paul of TX, or both.)


[2] Well, it could have been an accident if one assumes that JC spends zero [0.00] minutes per week attending to what the enemy have to say for themselves. But that cannot literally be the case, because there is a passage from the wannabe Commanderissimo cited right here.


[3] Since we discuss the slaves of Lord Mammon, it is reasonable to reverse the standard order and place bucks before bleedings. "To the civilized man, the right to Property is more important than the right to life."


[4] This silence of the aggressionistas interferes with the slogans that they actually do bark and bellow: as everybody knows, they are rhetorically and propagandistically determined to be at "war" with somebody or somethin’. For the present purpose it doesn't matter whom or what they bark against; the state of war as such has traditional verbal trappings that one expects to encounter as soon as war is declared. Among these are the topoi of Chivalry and of Sacrifice. Neither of these appeals to the mind of the typical Crawfordite vigilante: she shrieks that she wants to be at "war," but she certainly does not concede that there can be any warriors on the opposing team. Plainly she conceives the crusadin’ kiddies of the Ever-Victorious Coalition™ to be engaged against a conspiracy of cockroaches in human form.

As with Chivalry, so with Sacrifice: possibly both these quaint romantic notions made sense several centuries ago, but "That was then, and this is now." Party neocomrade M. E. Bellona -- i.e., our stereotypical Crawfordite aggresionista -- is fond of those seven little words. The same magic formula was also deployed by Neocomrade General R. Limbaugh yesterday as the compendious answer to Sen. Obama's frivolous objection that there existed no Al-Qá‘ida in Iraq in the former Iraq before GOP extremists marched in. One nail drives out another; evidently TWTATIN ("toot-a-tin"?) has replaced Chivalry and Sacrifice in the collective unconcious of our military/militarist classes.

Be that as it may, Sacrifice is definitely out of fashion here in the Epoch of Creative Destruction™, and is accordingly not often mentioned by loyal neocomrades, except in that one special and retrospective connection already noted. There is one other: it would still be dulce and decorum to mention Sacrifice at the funeral of a particular mercenary sacrificed, or in his obituary notice. But that is an extremely insulated context much like a Sabbath morning lecture or a Commencement Day address, a context in which all sorts of obsolete verbal heirlooms that are purest Cloudcuckooland on regular weekdays may flourish for centuries.

Furthermore, Neocomrade Bellona and the loathsome toadies most assuredly do not want Televisionland and the electorate thinkin’ about funerals and obituaries every time the subject of AEI/GOP/DOD invasions and occupations arises. "Boost, don't knock!" It is not absolutely impossible to boost Sacrifice, even in the Epoch of Creative Destruction™, but as a matter of fact the only militant neocomrade who shows the faintest signs of actually doin’ so is the AEIdeologue V. D. H. Blimp. One buzzard doesn't make a spring, however, except possibly at Perkins OH. For practical and political purposes, the geistige Militärismus of Rear-Colonel Blimp might as well not exist.

Pardon my digression, sir. The "interference" that I spoke of may be conceived as a clash of rhetoric between obsolete Sacrifice and trendy "That was then and this is now." Logically speaking, the loathsome toadies (&c.) cannot avail themselves of both simultaneously, and there is no question but that it is the latter they have more in mind and at heart. It is usually illuminating to consider whatever the Ever-Glorious Coalition™ may be up to most recently from a Harvard Victory School MBA perspective. Only a lunatic or an ignoramus would call on the credentialled private-sectorian exponents of Big Management to concern themselves with Sacrifice. They speak of "cuttin’ our losses" and they don't sentimentalize about it in the slightest.

Master ("of Business Administration") Dubya slept through a good part of the HVS curriculum, but that will not be the whole explanation of why he does not implement TWTATIN ruthlessly out in Peaceful Freedumbia by cuttin’ those losses. So-called "political capital" does in fact exist and behaves differently from mere Finanzkapital. We can discuss it in detail someday soon, Mr. Bones, we've been blown far enough off today's course already.


[5] No, Mr. Bones, I have not forgotten Citizen Ross, but how to pigeonhole that specimen? He might pass, I suppose, for a sort of inferior first draft of the Big Party's wannabe Commanderissimo, half a dunce and half a mugwump.

On the other hand, M. Perot seems to stand outside all previously attested political lineages at least as clearly as J. Sidney falls within one of them. Considering that he seems to have sunk without a trace, perhaps we may pass him over in silence, hoping for no recrudescence of whatever-it-was? BGKB.

The Mind of the Moderate

The question of Tehran’s goals and intentions need not detain us. Taking an Olympian view, one might note that Iran is, with a few exceptions, simply behaving like a normal powerful state: using its economic power to derive political leverage; supporting some factions and opposing others in regional politics; training, equipping, and advising favored military organizations against their enemies; and so on. Yet explaining Tehran’s behavior as natural realpolitik or, more disingenuously, as a response to the surrounding American menace, does not diminish the reality of the Iranian threat to the United States and its allies. Nor does it account for the fact that the Islamic Republic is not a status quo power and , regardless of how many ordinary Iranians may feel, often seeks to promote an ideology that is, at its root, hostile to the fundamentals that underpin U.S. society.

The honourable and gallant thought-tankists (FREDERICK W. KAGAN / KIMBERLY KAGAN / DANIELLE PLETKA) stand undetained well away from Olympus, namely at page 59 of 68 of Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan .

The great unexpected thing about this specimen is that KK&P have condescended to take a page out of their humble neocomrade Dr. Limbaugh's playbook, to "leave half their brain tied behind their back, just to make it fair." That is to say, they undertake to set forth the AEI/GOP/DOD case against the evil Qommies without reference to WMD. (With only twenty nuke references, that is, if you are so petty-minded as to actually go rake through the verbiage.)

The immediate occasion of this self-denying strategy can only be the National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007. In the middle distance, the embarrassment to Boy and Party and Ideology that involved Saddam Hussein's terror-tipped forty-five-minute specials may count for a little. Yet these are upmarket para-academic gentry, "defence intellectuals," who might be expected to try to frame their pet enemies in a Big Picture and sub specie aeternitatis at any point. As long as the Big Picture does not resemble a view from Mount Olympus, of course. [1]

I have emboldened -- now there's a good aggresionite word! -- what I consider the essence of the matter. The neocomrades themselves may well disagree with me about where their center of dogmatism is located, though: as you see, they have placed the "reality of the threat" ahead of the "fundamental hostility of ideology." KK&P may, perhaps, be distinguished after the manner of the former Kremlinology as moderate, rather than hard-line, AEIdeologues. I detect a definite hint that coexistence with the evil Qommies does not require that the latter stop maintaining in private that almost everything that AEI and militant Republican Party extremism stand for in a world is a crock, merely that the true believers refrain from all efforts to promote such stuff.

But relax!, peace amongst the doctrinaires is not going to break out any time soon. Imagine the reaction down at Rancho Crawford if the mad mullahs were graciously to announce that AEI and GOP and DOD are entitled to entertain their erroneous views -- but only as long as they do not attempt to proselytize.

"Two of a trade will never agree."

Happy days.


____
[1] It may have occurred to KK&P on the literary side that Neocomrade T. Clancy, for instance, can craft better -- more thrillin’ -- doomsday scenarios for the Chicken Little market than they can. St. Adam Smith's "division of labour," don't you know?

St. Adam's "bottom line" concept is also relevant. When they wind their way to the bitter end at last, here is where the three anti-Magi arrive:

Mobilization. The United States is not now mobilized on any dimension appropriate for the necessary struggle. Our military is too small, our foreign aid programs ill-designed, our intelligence systems dysfunctional [that damn NIE!], and our decision-making apparatus poorly designed and conditioned to take a holistic view of the challenges we face in a key region. Mobilization and reorganization to face the new threat were key components of the Cold War containment strategy. They are no less important or urgent now.

>

George F. Kennan wannabes are they.

Helena and Toney

So what's wrong with poor Toney, then, to be weighed in the Scales of Peacenik Justice® and found so wanting?

[A] Cordesman doesn't actually sketch out, in the way McCain did, any specific scenario of dire consequences if the US should decide to withdraw from either Iraq or Afghanistan. He seems to simply assume that we all know that withdrawal would connote defeat.

The first part is easy, being only a division of labour: AC is not running for office to need to tell hobgoblin stories. He does indeed "simply assume" that being pushed out of the former Iraq would constitute a notable defeat for AEI and GOP and DOD. (As indeed it would; as hopefully it may at last!) To object that an invasion-friendly analyst does not perceive esoteric Gandhian merits in abandoning a project of domination is to have funny ideas of what goes on in our betters' heads.

Possibly HC was just trying to be helpful and tacitly recommend to AC the "Declare victory and leave!" scheme from McNamario-Kissingerian days of yore. Sen. Aiken of Vermont, wasn't it? But AC is not in the agitation and propaganda business, so advice on how to spin occupation policy should be sent to some other address. Probably no suitable address is available, however: what Republican Party extremist is likely to believe in the sincerity of free advice from this quarter? (Perhaps HC should address her own troops and make us promise to be polite and never mention the word "defeat" if the invasionites will only please consent to leave Mesopotamia and promise to kick their bad habit? No, that won't do: Field Marshal Cobban is no more in control of "her own" forces than the Rev. Gen. al- Sadr is of his. Oh, well....)


[B] His main argument, instead, is that with the right kinds of US policies both these wars are winnable. Having recently returned from visits to both countries, he starts his piece with this bold assertion: No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. He does, however, immediately qualify that statement (and cover his own rear end) by adding, "They are also clearly wars that can still be lost."

He then provides the useful service of spelling out what it is that in his view constitutes victory: "Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism." This is actually a pretty good definition . . . .

De gustibus non disputandum, of course, yet perhaps "victory" is not altogether a matter of taste, especially when it comes garlanded with notorious weasel words like "ideological" and "political." AC makes no effort to spell out exactly what must be imposed on Uncle Sam's neo-Iraqi subjects in order to achieve Meaningful Victory. Considering his background, he may have nothing very definite in mind himself. Victories used to be accounted sufficiently meaningful when one side could impose whatever it pleased. AC and his patrons in power do not have the free hand with the former Iraq that Douglas MacArthur once had at Tokyo, but it would not be surprising if AEI/GOP/DOD/CSIS conceptions of a perfectly meaningful victory still savour of unconditional surrender by the vanquished foe. But God knows best.

Dr. Cordesmann's personally recommended terms may not be too onerous. One can't be sure that he would hold out for much more than an inexorable Just-Say-No to "Islamist extremism." But like HC and MS, AC is not actually in command of the aggression faction's troops. He clearly does not wish to be seen as a political partisan, which means that salvaging the reputation of the extremist Republicans is unlikely to be part of Cordesmannian meaningfulness. The perps themselves are likely to take a different and more demandin’ view.



[C] ... though Cordesman and I might-- or might not-- differ on what constitutes "Islamist extremism." Where I differ from him, however, is in his view that it should be the US that "leads" (i.e. controls) the effort to bring good governance to the two countries. After six years of US dominance of the government and security system in Afghanistan and nearly five years of US occupation of Iraq, have we seen anything about either of these situations that encourages us to think that US is able to bring good governance to either country? No.

That is to sup with the Devil using too short a spoon, if one is to understand that aggressions and invasions and occupations are warrantable whenever they actually do result in good governance. Such a vaguely pragmatic rationale for rising above pacta sunt servanda and international law -- "All's far in love and war, assuming it works!" -- is not difficult to find elsewhere, but I doubt either HC or AC would care to set the dogmas of so-called Military Humanism out fair and square and then defend them.

Dr. Cordesmann probably, and his AEI/GOP/DOD customers certainly, will consider that HC misses the main point of their exercise, even though the two words "Islamist extremism" could be applied both to what they are actually up to and to the misapprehension of it. HC is not terrorized of "Islamist extremism" as the invasionite crew are, she merely seems to think that it probably would not tend to contribute much to creating the happiness of the former Iraq. Anybody who fails to take Ms. Chicken Little's view of Islamist extremism has no business discussing so grown-up a subject. As St. Rudyard Kipling didn't quite say, "If you can keep your head when all about are losing theirs, / Maybe you just don't understand the situation."

Here is the crux of the whole invade-and-occupy business, and I am sorry to say that it is brought out much more clearly over on the wrong side of the aisle. Dr. Cordesmann usually finds himself preaching to the Chicken Little Chapel choir, so he need not stress that what "Iraq" is really about is always the physical safety of one's own hide (plus one's jetliners and one's skyscrapers, naturally). Apologists for AEI/GOP/DOD who regularly talk to the Homeland populace direct, however, usually can't get to the end of their second paragraphette before the GloboTerror menace is alluded to one way or another. (It is comparatively rare for them to call their hobgoblins of choice "Islamist," although "extremists" are a dime for six dozen.)



[C] If you go to the CSIS website, you can see a PDF of a 48-piece slide presentation that Cordesman presented on Feb. 13, as a way of reporting on his most recent trip to Iraq. The slides look to have been prepared mainly by the US military themselves. I found slides #3, 35, and 41-46 to be the most informative. In slide 41, he states baldly that the US military needs a further "half decade" to be able to sort out all the many current challenges in Iraq, many of which are, as the following slides clearly demonstrate, very political challenges, within Iraq's political system. (And therefore, IMHO, no legitimate concern of any foreigners, anyway.)

Well, let's run through the CSIS (or DOD) dogs and ponies one by one, then, at least the more striking ones: [1] "Iraqracy" ?! [2] GloboTerror first and foremost! [3] (This is a summary broken down in what follows, I assume.) [7] So if there were no Arabophone Sunnis left, the aggression would be a total success? [11] Civilian casualty numbers are problematical. HUMINT must mean Sunnis dropping a dime on one another. [22] http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,4250/type,1/ [23] Bayonets can replace a municipal police department, but in ex-Iraq isn't that plan a dubious sort of mission creep? [27] Need time! [35] HC thinks it a list of failures, but look at all those radiant opportunites for improvement! [36-40] Very inadequate account of Bribe-a-Tribe scheme, perhaps because AC does High Strategy rather than humble area studies. [41] WHAT foreign threats, whether now or ten years from now? AC may be giving his patrons some free marketing advice, with NATO the model of an entangling alliance that can be sold to Yanks, whereas defence of a neorégime against its own subjects.... "Seeking some form of stability" sounds a bit desperate: GOP geniuses may have to settle for whatever they can get, but CSIS ought to do better. [42] Need to see exactly what he's spending their petrobucks on. AC no economist. [43] Martial law thru 2014-15? [44] Ah, "quality leaders"! If only they'd thunk 'a' that one earlier! Unclear what fancy toys like armour and aircraft and spookware to be given to local levies. [47-48] (illegible, but apparently repetition or summary)



[D] The various points of "positive achievement" listed in Cordesman's slides make a stark contrast with what we read yesterday in Nir Rosen's much more grounded reporting of what's been happening in Iraq during the surge. (Do you think Cordesman ever got out of the Green Zone? He gives no indication whatsoever that he did.)

The good folks who have PowerPoint® where their brains ought to be generally do not think highly of what they'll call "anecdotal evidence."

Yet naturally if Dr. Cordesmann did want that cheap and easy sort of thing to bolster the glorious Coalitional Cause, he'd have no trouble finding neo-Iraqi subjects to contradict Mr. Rosen all down the line. Trial attorneys can always find an expert to claim whatever suits: how much easier still with nonexpert testimony! Anybody can play at "grounded."

Happy days.

Freedom Means Peace. Plus Now Integrity and Stability Too!

Though bold, these claims are sound, Mr. Bones, and I'm sure the vendors will be glad to give you double your investment back should you be dissatisfied with any of their fine products even in the slightest. But ...

... but you must keep in mind that laboratory studies have conclusively shown that only genuine Willful Coalition Freedom® can perform the new and more advanced tricks reliably.[1] So whenever you require an aggression, whether an invasion or a semiconquest or an occupation, always insist on the best, sir: don't ever let your violence professional fob some inferior substitute off on you!

Do not be deceived by labels and packaging. For example, the product



shown here may look like the real Shockin'-'n'-Awesome thing, but in fact it is revealed in the fine print to be no more than a cheap Oriental rip-off:

'The Turkish Armed Forces, which values Iraq's territorial integrity and its stability, will return as soon as planned goals are achieved,'' the military said. ''The executed operation will prevent the region from being a permanent and safe base for the terrorists and will contribute to Iraq's stability and internal peace.''

(( Full disclosure: in this particular case, application of the greasy kid stuff won't actually matter, because the former Iraq has already been integrated and stabilized and pacified almost beyond perfection, as everybody outside Ankara and Ann Arbour and the Democratic Party understands well enough. Three cheers for Dr. Gen. Petraeus and Party Proconsul Crockerius! ))

Happy days.

____
[1] Willful Coalition Freedom® is manufactured by a consortium consisting principally of the American Enterprise Institute, the Grand Old Party, and the War Department of the United States of America, otherwise "AEI/GOP/DOD" or "Wunnerful US."

Parmenedism as a Research Agenda

Cartoonoclastes is fading, alas! No more visual vividities about cartoons and stick figures. Can he have fallen into his own River of Disappearance by mistake?

[T]his whole idea of boiling down what is happening in Iraq to those factors that are most familiar to Western readers ("heightened conflict with the approach of elections!") represents not just leaving out those factors that are particular and peculiar to Iraq, but of distorting our view by ignoring the anti-occupation/anti-corruption feelings that are driving dissident groups of all kinds and persuasions. This distorted view is what makes it possible for people to think the continued presence of occupation troops can be a pacifying factor! (This is a politer way of saying what I was also getting at in the prior post).

"View" is residually visual, though just barely so, and "factor" is a complete blank to the inner eye. "Feelings" and "way of saying" suggest that Mu’ámara Junction may be about to switch to some other rhetorical sense organ, though whether tactile or auditory figures are henceforth to be purveyed is at this point undecided. The suggestion that visuality offends against good manners is interesting, although perhaps it is rather I than Cartoonoclastes who suggests it.

Meanwhile, back in the former Iraq, "factor" will do for the moment, colourless though it be. The top story in our local news is that Cartoonoclastes has just discovered a Whole New Factor:

Meanwhile in Karbala, security officials have been regularly reporting arrests of persons they say belong to the "Adherents of the Mahdi", one of the groups focused on the coming appearance of the 12th Iman, and who the authorities say are planning violence violence during the Arbaeen, just as they say they did in Basra and Nasiriya a couple of months ago. One of the main tenets of the Mahdists is the corruption of the Shiite religious establishment in Najaf, headed by the Ayatollah Sistani, because of their support for a corrupt, occupation-friendly government.

I seem to remember a few faint insinuations that the wickedly sectarian International Zone régime might be more or less inventing "Mahdism" out of whole cloth. If Cartoonoclastes ever spun that narrative, though, he has now changed his mind and decided it is more expedient that "Mahdism" should seriously exist and be admitted as a major player. Given the alleged main tenet, there is no difficulty in seeing why the MJ gentry might so choose: nobody who denounces "the corruption of the Shiite religious establishment in Najaf, headed by the Ayatollah Sistani, because of their support for a corrupt, occupation-friendly government" can be all bad. And the more there are of her, the merrier: everybody knows that!

As ever, captious critics may criticize the new MJ spin on various grounds, as for instance that the factor looks almost to have been deduced from the tenet rather than vice versa. Cartoonoclastes is not identical with Rabbi Ben Trovato, admittedly, but up to a point great minds work alike, or so I conjecture. If Peaceful Freedumbia is not in fact infested by noble anti-corruption "Mahdists," it damn well ought to be, what with the sins of the marji‘iyya crying out to Heaven for vengeance. Not even to mention the sins of the Establishment Áyatalláhs' political plaything, poor M. al-Málikí!

For agitprop work, I daresay it seems better to have as many militant Mugwumps in action as possible. The Sadrists are not so very bad, of course, yet a coalition of Sadrists and "Mahdists" would be even less bad, and that regardless of whether the coalition significantly outnumbers the Sadr Tendency alone. One does not count individual noses or inky fingers in such a case, one counts the number of different organizations (or whatever) affiliated with the desiderated Popular Front. It is not cynical but realistic to notice that in a pinch the actual or physical existence of all the organizations (or whatever) coaligned can be dispensed with. Some of them, perhaps even most of them, must be detectable by crude empirical means, or else the bad guys will triumph at once. But not all of them.

Eeek, Commies! And Quakies too!! And both working together to make trouble right here in Charles River City!!!

I stumbled across People's Weekly World , which seems in general to be a time capsule left over from the palmier days of Marxism-Gorbachevism. In particular, how about this?

After months of administration stonewalling, Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried to pacify congressional opposition, telling the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 6 that the U.S.-Iraq agreement would not include any commitment to defend Iraq militarily and would not specify permanent U.S. bases. That did not impress Joseph Gerson, director of programs at the American Friends Service Committee in New England, which is working on an anti-military-bases campaign. Gates assures us the U.S. military presence in Iraq is “not permanent,” said Gerson, “but neither is the Great Wall of China or the pyramids in Egypt, and they’re still there.” It is important to remember that Bush’s original goals in Iraq were not only to gain control over Iraq’s oil but also consolidate long-term control over the entire region’s oil and geopolitics, Gerson told the World. The Bush administration is planning for 14 long-term military bases in Iraq, he said. The aim is to “turn Iraq into a virtual unsinkable aircraft carrier for the U.S.”

That sounds very like the Bad Old Days, doesn't it? Naïve "religious" dupe passes on what Scientific Socialism has discovered in the laboratory, the alone true material and economic bases of bourgeois aggression: It's the oil, habibi, the oil!

If it sounds like the old snake oil, the reason may be that it simply is the old snake oil: the People's Weekly World does not plead the Fifth Amendment, it boldly announces "working-class news and opinions since 1924" on its masthead. Perhaps putting one's boldness in all-lower-case is an oblique acknowledgement of 1989 and 1991, however.

(It is easy enough to understand what Comrade J. Gerson holds against the Great Wall of China, but what on earth can the subversives hope to gain by getting the pyramids out of Egypt?)

Happy days.
























One can understand easily enough why the comrades and fellow travelers should agitate and propagandize against the Great Wall of China, but what is it that they hope to gain by getting the pyramids out of Egypt?

Dr. G. appears to be no mere dupe or fellow traveler but positively a ringleader: His program work focuses on challenging and overcoming U.S. global hegemony: its preparations for and threats to initiate nuclear war, and its military domination of the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

___
But seriously, this comrade's political analysis is feeble. Like far too many other anti-Crawfordites, Dr. G. thinks he knows exactly why the aggressors aggressed -- "Bush’s original goals in Iraq were to consolidate long-term control over the entire region’s oil and geopolitics" -- when he is only wildly guessing. Or perhaps in this case, when he is rehashing his scientific socialism by insisting that some material and economic factor must be what's really going on, no matter what superficial appearances may suggest.

In the real world, of course, the cowpokers' motivations were a mystery to themselves in March 2003 and remain largely a mystery five years deeper into the Big Muddy, even though we've had a couple dozen different rationales for the aggression proposed by militant Republican Party extremists themselves after the WMD jazz had to be abandoned.

Had they ever sat down and clear-headedly tried to work out plans for Long-Term Control, as fantasists fantasize, they would have behaved differently. They might have been intelligent enough to work out that if they aspired to hegemony in the Middle East mainly in the paths of petroleum and Jewish Statism -- which I suppose is in some sense the "real" or "objective" "fact" of the matter -- there was no need to invasionize the former Iraq at all. Hegemony was doing a good deal better with old-fashioned sinkable aircraft carriers down through 2002 than it has been doing since, after all.

That point is not facile Monday-morning quarterbacking, either, because any hegemonite with half the brain needed in a Secretary of War (or a quarter of the brain that Dr. Gerson mistakenly attributes to the Crawford crew) would have seen as much in advance. Dr. Albright would have seen the bushogenic quagmire coming, for example, although the reasons why Mr. Rumsfeld did not are not primarily IQ-related. Mizz Madeleine might conceivably have sinned also, just to make herself feel good after the Pentagon/WTC attack, even though her brain told her that redecorating Mesopotamia could not be as cheap and painless as her glorious triumph in Kosova.

Hormones matter too. Hormones matter preëminently, even: "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions." Mr. Hume is a sounder guide to human events than Dr. Marx or Dr. Gerson. The collapse of the Lenin-Gorbachev racket will have had at least a little to do with the doctrinaire insistence on crudities like "It's the oil, habibi, the oil."















Speaking of Great Walls, Comrade Gerson admits (well, almost admits) that he is trying to smuggle in outside agitators and subversion under pretext of violating the Jeffersonian separation of Christojudaeanity and Democracy:

Dr. Joseph Gerson has served the American Friends Service committee since 1976 and is currently Director of Programs and Director of the Peace and Economic Security Program for the AFSC in New England. His program work focuses on challenging and overcoming U.S. global hegemony: its preparations for and threats to initiate nuclear war, and its military domination of the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

Now who, I ask you, can be so naïve as to believe that the comrade cherishes theological objections to "U.S. global hegemony," as if he was John Wesley solemnly deciding that Predestinate Election won't quite do?

Blimp Overflies Main Street, Cartoonoclastes Takes Cover

Colonel Blimp has always lagged heroically behind the times, for to reluct is part of the nature that his Creator endowed him with [1]. His current incartoonification as an honourable and gallant AEIdeologue and Hoovervillain is, in superficial respects, a provincial and parochial affair of the Holy Homeland, Blimp havin’ gone transatlantic [2] much like Comrade Auden once did.

Alas for change and decay! One must strike "English" from the concise formula of the learned Wikipaedeologists and pronounce our now Rear-Colonel only "pompous, irascible, jingoistic and stereotypically [Blimpish]." On the other hand, Huzzah for Change and Decay!! England's stereotype's loss is not only Ireland's stereotypical opportunity, but a splendid victory for Western Civistán as a whole on the stereotypological front. [3]

On Greater Stereotypia the sun never sets, nor shall it ever. Despair not, rather spoof, O Westistánís!

But as I was saying, it is characteristically blimpish of Blimp to lag behind. No doubt Mr. Low had at least subliminally compared the indirigible gasbags of 1914-1918 with the Red Baron's newfangled contraptions -- and then in effect sided with the latter. Blimp 1.0 was patently a cavalryman as well as an old India hand. Minor period details like those do not befit the Blimp 8.2 release and have accordingly vanished from the cartoon. By the time we reach, say, Blimp 16.4, I daresay AEIdeology and Hoovervillainy will have begun look like obsolete historical frills also, assuming they remain present to be looked at. One never knows in advance exactly how much backwards compatibility the vendors will allow for, but beyond a certain vaguely distinguishable point it becomes foolish to keep the snows of yesteryear in one's freezer on the off-chance that they'll come in handy someday.


Sed ad rem! What is special about the Rear-Colonel's today's scribble is that he "overflies Main Street." The headline is probably not be from unit VDH in person, but "Ivy League Populism" indicates the drift pretty well. This morning our hero is determined to set up as a common blimp, a no-nonsense kind of indirigible gasbag. A strange aspiration, considering the unpopular and unpopulist nature of his own views, but wiser and better wingnuts than this one have been known to attempt tricks they have no knack for. Here's the incipit:

The rhetoric of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton about the sad state of America is reminiscent of the suspect populism of John Edwards, the millionaire lawyer who recently dropped out of the Democratic presidential race. Barack Obama may have gone to exclusive private schools. He and his wife may both be lawyers who between them have earned four expensive Ivy League degrees. They may make about a million dollars a year, live in an expensive home and send their kids to prep school. But they are still apparently first-hand witnesses to how the American dream has gone sour. Two other Ivy League lawyers, Hillary and Bill, are multimillionaires who have found America to be a land of riches beyond most people's imaginations. But Hillary also talks of the tragic lost dream of America. In these gloom-and-doom narratives by the well off, we less fortunate Americans are doing almost everything right, but still are not living as well as we deserve to be. And the common culprit is a government that is not doing enough good for us, and corporations that do too much bad to us.

The rhetoric is easy and cheap and familiar, and there is plenty more of it. One would scarcely notice this tripe and baloney if it came from a regular Big Party purveyor. Considered as hissin’ out of Blimp, however, it possesses a certain charm. Hissing is indeed the mot juste or appropriate figure of thought, because as Blimp emits gas, he loses altitude.

The underlying cause of the degeneration we have already diagnosed, Mr. Bones, in connection with Colonel Spook the other day. AEI rots the brain.

Say it again, Sam! AEI rots the brain.

Spook knows vastly more about the Greater Levant than the rest of the lemmin’ pack; Blimp is a bizarre quasi-Prussian devotee of Ares; yet to please the common run of tank-thinkers they omit everythin’ the least bit interestin’ in their thoughts and dish out unmitigated Party of Grant pablum and Peruna instead. [4] A misallocation of comparatively scarce resources results, though neither gentlethug would think of the situation quite that way, not bein’ economists. [5]

In between Blimp's recondite eccentricities of Spiritual Militarism and the merest Big Party bilge, an intermediate category is distinguishable just as the scribbler approaches the bottom line:

To the extent that we have any social and legal problems from unchecked illegal immigration, it has nothing to do with the cynicism and corruption of the Mexican government that deliberately exports, exploits and profits off its own people. The problem is not the fondness for low-paid, off-the-books illegal labor among the upper-middle classes, nor the disdain for the law of illegal immigrants themselves, who crowd to the front of the immigration line. Instead, America's xenophobia, blame-casting and insensitive government have made it needlessly rough on 11 million arrivals who otherwise did us a favor by coming.

Well, at least it is a little different! Orthodox economic AEIdeologues wouldn't give neoxenophobia the time of day, but Blimp is prepared to boldly differ with his circumambient hive on the point. [6] Still, this seems a fairly tame and safe profile in courage, when after all a big majority of his Party's base and vile quite agree with him. Furthermore, Blimp may not think he's bein’ especially brave, he may fancy that he is tryin’ to be conciliatory, buildin’ bridges between the para-academic señoritos and all those dark peasant hordes that will have to vote for Commanderissimo McCain in November if the sky is not to fall.

In that case, one is liable to wonder if the good Rear-Colonel knows any more technicalities about Lee Atwater and Karl Rove than about Adam Smith and Freiherr von Hayek. The question is of no real importance here on Gore's green earth -- the Pope commands more divisions than V.D.H. Blimp sways votes -- yet one is liable to wonder.

BGKB. Happy days.

_____
[1] "Blimp was a satire on the reactionary opinions of the British establishment of the 1930s and 1940s. [David] Low described him as 'a symbol of stupidity, and stupid people are quite nice.'"


[2] "Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

Did VDHB fly all the way himself, or was he degassed, transported by sea, and reflated on arrival in the former colonies? Additional research is required.


[3] WC is so recent an ideological confection that it has not yet entirely stabilised itself. At Rio Limbaugh and Wombschool Normal University, odd and even conflicted notions of "Western" are entertained, as for example one of my personal favourites, the proposal to excommunicate the Old Euro heartland, more or less the Carolingian Empire, from WC and reassign it to the Eurabia™ of Mme. Bint Ye’or, at the same time accounting both Airstrip One towards the sunset, and the old Warsaw Pact countries, towards dawn and the evil Qommies, as admirably Westistání and even potential worthy of acquiring the Star Wars Protection™ product line.

Unless the Big Management Party neocomrades are merely confused, an assumption that logic does not demand and charity may disallow, brave new stereotypes suitable to the Kiddie Krusade Epoch have not yet altogether gelled. The definitive WC mishmash may or may not be satisfactory to jihád careerists or to xenophobes. Blimp flirts with the former crew, but has soldered himself to the latter, so he cannot lose altogether.

Even better, the Blimp stereotype itself will unquestionably be one ingredient in the WC pottage when finally served up, regardless of exactly what the neocomrades find themselves blimpin’ towards. "[P]ompous, irascible, jingoistic" are in like Flynn with the Big Party, come what may. Should Commanderissimo McCain be the thing that comes, so much the more cartoonish, but the Spirit of Blimp is bound to abide at beautiful downtown Wingnut City. Narcissus Dexter is very, very fond of what he happens to be good at, and what is Narky better at than militarism, I ask you? Even after the Chinese foreclose on his economy, Uncle Sam will still possess Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower, after all, so obviously S.R.H. must be the most important single element in the Health of the State, exactly as Mr. Randolph Bourne prophetically proclaimed in the days of St. Woodrow. Thus Blimpismus is already a settled matter, for what is it, essentially, but the Bourne Doctrine?

The Rear-Colonel himself may not be entirely satisfied with his own apotheosis in the event, because his dogmas include peculiar elements that go beyond militarism as such. The current cartoon happens to be a Geistesmiltarist, and his spirituality puts him at odds with almost all his Big Party neocomrades, who do not soar much higher than a Vince Lombardi Vulgärmilitarismus. It is natural that they should not, for there can be no questioning that the Party of Grant exists, and always has existed, first and foremost to serve Lord Mammon. Alliances of convenience with Mars and Bellona have been commonplace; a general abandonment of bucks for bayonets is not seriously to be conceived. Period.


[4] Lady Charity intervenes again, advising us to pass over the possibility that this pair of honourables and gallants may be panderin’ direct to their Party's base and vile with no higher motive than a trashy desire to become media celebrities. Her ladyship's wish being our command, we take for granted that Blimp and Spook behave like this exclusively in order to reassure less gifted AEIdeologues that they're really just two of the guys. Plus thoroughly loyal to Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology, of course.

In an extremely secundum quid fashion, therefore, one might call them "populists" with a straight face. "The People, Yes!" -- but for the moment it is above all the tank-thought people upon whom the spotlight shines.

Does the Rear-Colonel perhaps consider Heritagitarians and Hoovervillains intellectual plebeians compared to the dread Ivy League, mere para-academic wannabes?

Probably not if he ever thinks about it consciously. BGKB.


[5] Trailer-trash AEIdeologues presumably are economists, by and large, which sets up another hurdle between them and their militarists in residence. The union-bashin’ further down in Blimp's drool must be intended to get around that obstacle.


[6] Is "off-the-books illegal labor among the UPPER-MIDDLE classes" sheer econonic ignorance on Blimp's part, or is it twistification for Boy and Party?

Hard to tell. He certainly ought to be aware that the Harvard Victory School MBA classes -- flat-out UPPERS or economic OnePercenters, the salt of the militant GOP! -- like open borders better than almost anybody. Pretendin’ that neoxenophobia is mainly about yuppies' maidservants is great fun and of obvious use for agitprop, but all the same, the aneconomic Rear-Colonel may actually believe it.

"Make No Mistake," She Explained

Exactly why is it, Mr. Bones, that one does not think it advisable that the New York Times Company should undertake the general supervision of the universe? It is not, after all, as if dear Aunt Nitsy's perpetual Griff nach der Weltmacht were likely to be successful any decade soon.

Often one more or less agrees with Nitsy. So even supposing the chances of her aggressions flourishing were in fact much brighter than they really are, why be displeased? The NYTC editorial persona is far less unreasonable than her customary antagonist, the Willful Coalition™, that tricephalous monstrosity of AEI and GOP and DoD. Tank-thinkers, and tank drivers, and the Fraternal Order of Sons of Atwater almost invariably dislike Nitsy. Many of their professional heroes of error are prepared to badmouth and swiftboat the NYTC at a moment's notice. If decent political adults were guided solely by the Big Management Party's knaves and fools and dupes and hangers-on, never examining the product for oneself, probably the sound portion of the holy Homeland would have installed Nitsy as chakravartin some time around 1945.

Unfortunately the nature of the Higher Fishwrap product line is such that to purchase samples of it and then not examine them makes no sense. Almost what one might expect of a militant GOP extremist, that behavior! It would therefore be fun to say something like "I always agree with the Times editorial board. That's because I never pay any attention to what they write." That game would be still more fun with a little editorial polish rubbed in to make an epigram that resembles Oscar Wilde more closely. Fun is all that is in prospect, however, [1] with or without spiff and polish. Even in the case of this morning's lead scribble, one shall get around to examining what Nitsy says eventually. Yet one need not rush headlong . . . .

The next intermediate stop is the party of Mr. Jefferson and General Jackson and the United States of America, of which Nitsy is far too often taken, at Rio Limbaugh and thereabouts, to be some kind of semiofficial spokesman. ("Semiofficial" is how the subjects of Gen. Mubárak refer to Al-’Ahrám and certain other régime-friendly journals.) It is natural that a donkey -- or a l*b*r*l fiend, for that matter -- should not care for this language or the arrangement it implies, having never conveyed any proxy or power of attorney whatsoever to the New York Times Company. Nitsy is, of course, a private-sectorian for-profit business corporation, no different from Crédit Mobilier and the Teapot Dome entities and Enron and ExxonMobilChevronGulf (may all these precious shadows be elongated!). [2] Nitsy is neither the Authorized Voice of the Donkeys nor any sort -- not even a semisort, by gum! -- of public utility. Most of the extremist neocomrades at Wingnut City are aware of this legal technicality, I believe, although they don't ever let it dampen then ardour when they sally forth in the Path of Atwater. (Rulalaw does not often dampen their Party warpath on other occasions either. Remember Impeachmentgate!)

Though it is natural enough that political good guys should be annoyed, there is not much case for being annoyed with Nitsy instead of with the Baní Atwater, is there?

To which I respond, unequivocally, No and Yes. No, Nitsy is not even semiofficial, and No, she does not pretend to be. Unfortunately her obnoxious pretensions are, so to say, superofficial ones. They also tend to be matters of tone and ambience rather than of words that can reliably used against her in court. The current pea under my own mattresses provides the title of this morning's scribble: "Make no mistake!" might do for some Dick XXXVII Nixon, or Commanderissimo XLIV McCain, not to speak of the superincumbent Yalie Lad. It does not become the New York Times Company to talk that way. [3]

But here is the specimen displayed in its actual environment, so each may decide for himself:

The Bush administration must also encourage Pakistan’s coup-prone military to work with the new parliamentary leaders, making clear that continued military aid will in part be conditioned on their respect for democracy. Mr. Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, deserves credit for ensuring that the military did not interfere in the elections. We hope that he continues that sound course. MAKE NO MISTAKE, Mr. Musharraf’s support for the war on terrorism was never as unstinting as Washington claimed. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have found far too comfortable a safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal regions. Still, persuading Pakistan’s new civilian leaders to sign on to the fight is likely to prove even more difficult.

My own ruling is in accord with the maxim, "When in doubt, leave it out." Omitting the three words does not change the sense an iota; all it does is make Nitsy sound less like one of the GOP's ever-apoplectic brain-dead white males, say Judge Baker at the Floridagate 2000 corral. Distinctly an improvement, that change seems to me to make, although I should not dream of disputing the NYTC's corporate taste, only of deploring it.

And God knows best. Happy days.


_____
[1] Strictly speaking, a little bit more than fun may be available with the physical fishwrap, though not the virtual.

A member of the Big Party base and vile might, for example, carry a copy of America's Moonpaper around with her as a sort of totem or proof of ideotribal identity. Farther up the great chain of wingnuts, ostentation of the Wall Street Jingo serves the same end still better. Rupert Presslord Murdoch is no doubt workin’ even as we keyboard to eliminate the qualitative distinction of these organs of reaction, but his project makes little difference when there is no call for the Boy and Party loyalist to actually read either Moonies or Jingos. A class distinction based on the former differences of provenance and competence will linger for a few more years, presumably. (This seems to me an ideal topic for Señorito D. Brooks to prepare one of his pseudosociological disquisitions.)

On the other hand, physical copies of either can be hard to come by outside a few centres of East Coast Elitismus, so the upwardly mobile or wannabe-noticed wingnut might be better advised to sprinkle her conversation with quaint and colourful Party bumper-stickers like "death tax" and "Islamophalangitarianism" and "Freedom Means Peace!" This second plan also requires less financial investment, which may be a consideration with such Party base and vile as are not (yet) economic OnePercenters themselves personally.


[2] A critic might criticise that Enron and WalMart and Arbusto Energy don't often vend, or even give away free, unsigned leading articles on the state of Cuba and Pakistan, or even on "the temptation for lawmakers to pander to the gun lobby."

This objection should be overruled, because they is nothin’ to prevent Daddy Warbucks from doin’ so if he decides to spend his corporation's allocated agitprop monies on customers at Succotash City rather than lobbyists at DC and Rancho Crawford. "It's still a free country, ain't it?" (I quote from memory.)


[3] The same words could, theoretically, be taken to signify "Exhibit zero tolerance for factual errors, please, ladies and gentlemen." No native rhetor of Yankee ever deploys them to mean that, however; one is invariably to understand "Make no mistake!" as purely sentimental/performative: "Look here, buddy, we really, Really!, REALLY!! mean what we are yelling at you this time." (It is also frequently an occasion for wagging the finger at Ms. Buddy, I fear.)

When the substance of the thing so earnestly meant happens to be that "Mr. Musharraf’s support for the war on terrorism was never as unstinting as Washington claimed," the effect of the tasteless table-pounding borders on the grotesque. It is no accident, I'd say, that Nitsy does not go on to provide any instances of General Musharraf's alleged lukewarmness in the War on Global Tourism™ but merely repeats the charge with a bit less hyperventilation.

Problems of Aggression-Based Democracy (#34,019)

The human race has recently been put on notice not to huff about International Law, Mr. Bones. So take a look at this latest bloggiatura from the Naqshbandí Boy Wonder, sir, and mark the huffless jubilation:

Kosovo Recognition / The right decision. / by Stephen [Suleiman Ahmad] Schwartz Albanians [sic] and their supporters euphorically celebrated Sunday's declaration of independence by the republic of Kosovo. The sensation of liberty from Serbian domination was intoxicating.... George W. Bush gave his blessing to the newly-free country.... Lack of a UN seat has done little to deter Taiwan from achieving extraordinary prosperity and stability, even though that small democracy must contend with the disfavor of Beijing. A comparison with Taiwan is further appropriate because Serbia claims that it will enjoy support, in challenging the Kosovars [sic] and their allies... Kosovars distrust foreign police--except Americans.... One thing should be clear: President Bush has done the right thing. Albanians, although Muslim in their majority, are fanatics only about their appreciation for America. Albanian Islam is moderate, and constitutes a bulwark against radicalization of European Muslims. Albanians avoid conflicts over religion and are satisfied to allow each among them to choose how to, or whether to, practice the religion of their choice.

That passage has been heavily censored to omit the parts where Sully Steve badmouthes the bad guys. Boost don't knock, O Bones, boost don't knock!

At any rate, on my first pass through this drool, I found those age-old affinities and affiliations between Prishtinë KS and Rancho Crawford TX the most strikin’ twistification. Uncle Sam will be glad to hear that his idiot nephew is still somebody's favourite GloboCop. It seems a pity that Mme. Secretary of War Albright couldn't be with us, however. Nobody did more to make this crownin’ moment possible &c. &c.

To be sure, it would seriously complicate the neocomradely exposition if Sully Steve was to mention the iron lady's name. Due to some purely technical oversight, as I presume, she is still a jackass, having not yet formally apostasized to Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology. [1] Naturally the name of Clinton does not darken the webpage either. In beautiful downtown Prishtinë, I daresay the street people all consider it was the late Neocomrade Representative H. Hyde of IL who first created that national happiness of theirs that almost excels Taiwan's. Or somebody very like Mr. Hyde.

Speaking of IL reminds me that for analytical ends we do need to cite a certain minimum of Naqshbandí knockin’, at the expense of Rulalaw rather than the Land of Lincoln:

[M]uch of Europe sees a resolution of these issues in continued interference with Kosovo, through international control over local institutions in the republic. Kosovar independence, as presently conceived, will be encumbered by a foreign police and justice administration, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo or EULEX, made up of 2,000 foreigners and 1,000 locals.

"Marg bar EULEX! ¡Abajo la intellegencia! Viva la muerte! "

Sully Steve finds himself in twisteological straits. V-K Day makes him very happy, yet so many of the producers and directors of the show are distasteful to Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh. Benefits must come, it seems, but woe betide her by whom they come! [2] The late Ian Smith's brand of UDI will have been more the neocomrades' cup of tea, I guess. Mais où sont les neiges de Rhodesia?

Ah, but are we too in straits, Mr. Bones? When the set of {X and not-Y} is a contradiction, usually the set of {not-X and Y} is logic-challenged also. May one approve of Grotius and Puffendorf (MTSBE) and yet entertain doubts that EULEX has legitimately inherited their prophetic mantles? [3]

That trick is quite possible, I think, though not at the infimal Schwartzian level of discourse. Sully Steve barks and bellows at the Abominable Serbs, naturally, and scraps of tripe like "For his part, Putin schemes for reassertion of Russian power in the Balkans" may be spotted floating in the drool, but there is no indication of how the fiends argue for their fiendishnesses. Fiends don't have reasons, after all, unless "They hate us because of our Freedom" counts as a reason. The neocomrades don't take their favorite fortune cookie in that sense, however. It appears that a fiend reacts to AEI/GOP/DoD Freedom must as Count Dracula would recoil from a garlic frappe: thought has nothin’ worth mentionin’ to do with it.



____
[1] What's she waiting for, an engagement ring from Sen. Lieberman? (It's rumoured Mizz Madeleine is working for Mizz Hillary, actually.)


[2] Ev. Matt. XVIII:7: vae mundo ab scandalis necesse est enim ut veniant scandala verumtamen vae homini per quem scandalum venit.

(( My pet google just noticed one of the FREEP creeps referrin’ to Big Party neocomrade S. S. A. Schwartz as "the [I]slamist fifth columnist and Kosovo Albanian agent!!!!" Folks like that have no proper sense of measure, not even about punctuation. ))


[3] "May their shadows be elongated!" (What else?)

Sunday Morning With Cartoonoclastes

Here , M. Bones, is the Guru of the Mu’ámariyya on the subject of "bullshit," as he, perhaps a tad self-referentially, terms his subject matter:

The River of Disappearing Truths It is an amazing feature of the blogosphere that no one in the upper echelons ever corrects him- or herself, and the farther removed he is from his or her subject-matter, the more true that is. Imagine Matt or any of that ilk correcting themselves on the subject of Iraq. Of course, this is partly the effect of what somebody once explained as the essence of "bullshit", namely that it differs from lying or falsehood in that its truth or falsity was never in question.

A great deal more of that vein will flow burbling by, right before the blogging victim's tube, should she allow it to do so in her amazement. You may root most of the rest of it out for yourself, sir. For our immediate Sabbath-scholarly purposes, the main necessary preliminary is to classify this as part of the latest MJ offensive in the War on Juan. Know also that it is the River Heraclitus that flows through beautiful downtown Conspiracy City. [1] No surprise, that second item!


Now if thou or I hadst undertaken to bloghivate like that, O Bones, what would have come after the incipit? Would we not immediately have adduced as long a list as flesh and self-esteem can endure of our own mistakes and deceived expectations about the bushogenic quagmire, starting with the most vulgar and conventional communis error of all, which also happens to be the most comprehensive, namely that it utterly never occurred to us that the aggressonistas would still be tryin’ to nail their coonskin to the wall five years after 20 March 2003. Even if the Grand Coalition of AEI and GOP and DoD be reckoned as only one quarter of the population of the holy Homeland -- that half of the voting half of the populace that votes for the Party of invasions and occupations, it still consisted of eighty million willin’ invasionites to a mere thirty million patients in the former Iraq. Endowed with nearly three times the enemy's demographic base -- plus Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower to boot! -- they have nevertheless not been able to . . . (&c. &c. quantum sufficiat) . . . . Who'd 'a' think it?

In addition to that One Big Booboo, there are subordinate unthunk-of-heres that would loom quite large in isolation, as that (A) we did not dream that (nominal) power would not be handed over to natives drawn from the rootless cosmopolitan community as soon as the Mesopotamian provinces had been seized and secured. Possibly not to M. le Docteur de Tchélabi in person, despite all his advance billin’, but at least to somebody like him. Alternatively to somebody like Generalissimo Mubárak. Instead of either, "we" installed Sultán Jerry. (Maybe only Nostradamus could have seen that uncovenanted fiasco in advance, but the Sabbath-morning point is that we certainly did not.)

(B) We did not dream of the Khalílzád Konstitution. Even now, it flabbergasts that any crew so fatuously narcissistic as the Coalition of the Willful failed even to attempt to raise New Baghdád up and up until it was nearly on a par with Kansas City, politically speakin’. Who anticipated that after their cakewalk, the bozoes would prove so extremely uninterested in the cake? It was left to Noah of Harvard and Señorito Zalmáy of AEI and a few randomly assorted indigs with Homeland law degrees to play at being James Madison, coming up with that malicious travesty of proportional representation that makes quite sure that real power can not consolidate itself around any of the formal institutions of the imposed neorégime. Here one can at least bernielewisate and discern in retrospect What Went Wrong™, which is more than one can about the ineffable Neocomrade P. Bremer. All the same, who thunk it in advance? Neither thou nor I, Mr.Bones.

(C) Once accustomed to the stumblebumism of the Big Management Party stumblebums, we were blindsided by Rear-Colonel Kagan of AEI/GOP/TWS and Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point along with pretty well the whole non-GOP human race. Both Cartoonoclastes and Wicked Juan are blindsided still, to take them at their word, as why should one not? In this matter we have fallen off the other side of Martin Luther's drunk man's horse, Mr. Bones, for all the current jubilation of Boy and Party and Ideology comes down to little more than that we were not so mistaken the first time around: it appears that eighty million aggressors with Hyperpower actually can prevail over thirty million third-worlders on occasion. Big deal. Quelle surprise....

(D) Yet there is a bit of surprise in it, because neither we nor Freddy K. nor even the Dr. Gen. himself anticipated the beauties of the Bribe-a-Tribe™ gizmo. AEIdeologues and violence pros were expectin’ to gain their ends in the former Iraq by imposin’ plain old-fasioned martial law, which to some extent they have managed to do, yet Bribe-a-Tribe™ clearly differs from merely usin’ one's Hyperpower to do what any competent metropolitan police department does in the holy Homeland. It's a whole new thing, Bribe-a-Tribe™ is, a thing that Señorito Kagan neither invented nor anticipated, a thing that has no connection with the Petraeo-McNamaran dogmas of counterinsurgency from yesteryear.

Being taken by surprise so often and about matters so grave may undermine our solemn pretensions to guruship, Mr. Bones, but it can also be sort of fun, no? And while I'm up, allow me to toss in (E) that we would not have been totally astounded if Dr. Blix had been mistaken and the Heroes of Error had unearthed moderate quantities of nerve gas or anthrax spores in the former Iraq -- not enough to warrant their extremely courage-challenged frame of mind as they aggressed, of course--certainly no nukes!, yet moderate quantities of lesser WMD. Farther afield, and finally, there is (F), that we never dreamed M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí and the Rev. Mullah Omar would still be walking the streets (or prowling the caves) in the year of religionism 1429/2008.

So there are seven attempted self-corrections, Mr. Bones, the One Vast Booboo plus six lettered items of smaller consequence. Enough to be humbly getting on with, had we composed this cartoonoclastic scribble.

Needless to say, the scribble does not flow on in that direction at all. Whether or not the gentry at Mu’ámara Junction have been infallibly correct in fact and judgment and tea-leaf reading throughout the whole course of the aggression cannot be determined from the evidence at hand. This Sunday scribble is, after all, only a skirmish in the War against Juan, not the Confessions of Jean-Jacques or Gloomy Gus.

Now bear in mind, sir, that the man Cole is very outstandingly wicked:

The disappearing truth, and the river of these disappearing truths, are a form of what most people call propaganda, particularly when the perpetrator has some kind of a vague connection with established authority. The flow leaves a sediment, and the sediment has a particular odor. "Harith al-Dhari is wanted for criminal instigation of violence"; "Sadrists are motivated by narrow sectarianism"--and before you know it, like Liza Doolittle, you've got it! Iraq is the scene of a religious war; those who oppose the occupation are nothing but perpetrators of criminal violence for narrow sectarian aims. Thank [G]od for the occupation!

Cartoonoclastes can't possibly be drawing us a verbal cartoon here, Father Zeus forbid that anybody should think any such thought as that! But there is not much resemblance to the announced topic either. To go as far as sanity permits in the direction desired, Prof. Cole might be indited as an accessory after the fact to the Big Management Party's crimes of aggression and breech of contract and occupation, though scarcely as a principal. Don Juan appears on stage mediis in rebus, as it were, with the former Iraq already broken into and entered and subjected under the yoke of Crawford, inhuman events that had nothing to do with him. He merely hopes to take advantage of the situation a little now that it exists anyway. "The hapless indigs are being imposed upon already, so why not impose something sensible, like for instance the Ann Arbor Plan, revision 13.4?" Thus Don Juan may plausibly be imagined to soliloquize, whereas putting "Thank God for the occupation!" into his mouth is travesty.

In addition to thinking the culprit's alleged offense far less felonious than Cartoonoclastes misrepresents, I take it to be a different type of offense qualitatively. I pick up Juan Cole by his paleface planmonger end, and at once want to poke a little fun at the instability of his planmongering with some mild spoofery about "revision 13.4". Cartoonoclastes wants this monster burned at the stake for telling defamatory lies about the former Iraq. That is to say, he disagrees with the professor's analysis, which is not so important to me as the professorial celebrity's policy suggestions. [2] Not that the latter are of crucial importance either: Don Juan has zero effective impact on the willful coalitionites who frame Uncle Sam's aggression and occupation policy, exactly as much effective impact as Cartoonoclastes and you and I have, Mr. Bones. Exactly as little.

After that, Cartoonoclastes ascends into the radiant empyrean like many other sermonizers and Sabbath-morning lecturers. "The sins of Ann Arbor are the sins of you all" may, or may not, be what he goes on about. Rather to his credit, Cartoonoclastes is not entirely sure himself what he is going on about:

[The desirability of listening to people different from yourself and trying to see what it is they have to say[,] I never thought it would be necessary to explain why you should do that, but now when the social "scientists" go about "coding" utterances and counting them and manipulating aggregates of them mathematically and the whole dipsy-doodle, I guess it is. Unfortunately, I'm not up to it. Having peeked into the abyss, I think I'll take a few steps back.

Seeing that recoil from his own Blick ins Chaos throws Cartoonoclastes straight into the ideological arms of the late M. Foucault, maybe you had better go take a look at the whole show for yourself, Mr. Bones, and then give me an account of what it comes to rather than vice versa. [3]

Happy days.



_____
[1]

Juan [exemplifies] the hard type (...) Hard bullshit is when you say the Sadrists "spearheaded" the recent de-Debaathification Law, and that they were against the amnesty law. There isn't any evidence for that, rather what drives the assertions is that they fit a particular world-view. (...) [The hard bullshit artist perpetrates] something like "Informed Comment". You're making a claim about the truth of it, but it is a special kind of truth--a "disappearing" truth that you don't have to defend or adduce evidence for, and that for two reasons: (1) access to that world is supposedly limited to the specifically "credentialed" guy who made the claim in the first place; and (2) the author of it is so busy that today's truths overwrite yesterday's truths, so what's lacking in verifiability of individual claims is made up for via the whirligig of linked claims that never ends. It is a river of truths, and as we know you cannot step into the same river twice.

[2] I incline to suspect that the Ann Arbor analysis wobbles to support the Ann Arbor plan du jour, and that the wobbles in planmongering have a great deal to do with what George XLIII happens to be up to at the moment. Indeed, the wobbles display so much correlation with Crawfordological considerations that I discount them a good deal as Greater Levantine area studies. "Whatever Bush does must be wrong" may be a defensible maxim or a laudable rule of thumb, but as a guide to what's factually what on the ground in Occupied Mesopotamia, it is likely to be defective for reasons we need not go into here.


[3] "Abroad is a foreign country, they do things differently there" seems scarcely a worthy bottom line to all the cartoonoclastic fuss and feathers. Still, for a Sabbath morning harangue, perhaps a tautology is as good as any other text? God knows best.

Spook Shoots Self in Foot

The "Why do They hate US?" topos usually languishes over in the political gutter over to the right of the road, so it is interesting to watch a certified Big Management Party tank-thinker [1] take a whack at it:

"Among Democrats and even many Republicans, it is by now accepted wisdom that the war in Iraq brought huge numbers of holy warriors to the anti-American cause. But is it true? I don't think so. Muslim holy warriors are a diverse lot, reacting with differing intensity to the hot-button issues that define contemporary Islamic militancy. For many fundamentalists, what is seen as an unrelenting Western assault on Muslim male honor and female virtue is the core infuriating offense. For others it may be the alienation that second-generation young Muslim men encounter in an immigrant-unfriendly Europe. And for still others, Iraq, Afghanistan, the tyranny of U.S.-backed Muslim rulers and the Palestinian resistance can all come together to convert individual indignities into a holy-warrior faith."

I assume that the AEIdeologue has listed his buttons in descending order of temperature, which makes it striking that Palestine should come last. Wouldn't almost any anti-GOP Arab or Muslim (without some direct personal grievance) start from there? Come to think of it, wouldn't most of direct personal grievances be filed under the next-to-last finisher, "tyranny of U.S.-backed Muslim rulers"? Is somebody's whole megillah upside down and backwards, then?

Though this spook actually knows quite a bit about the Middle East, the ambience at AEI (plus perhaps the Pentagon/WTC attack) has rotted his mind sadly of late. It is therefore possible that he is not up to anything more interesting here than disseminating a familiar Party line to the effect that the Arabs don't really give a hoot about the things they blame Uncle Sam for. Precisely because the fiends talk more about 1948 and all that than about anything else, Wingnut City analysis feels entitled to put it far down the list.

Dr. Gerecht sins technically here, he violates an obvious canon of analysis by mixing causes with reasons, Soc. Sci. (or Freudianity) with politics. He also sins extremely tendentiously, in that all the causes come first and all the reasons only afterwards. The objective of that maneuvre is easy to conjecture: if The Arab Mind™ is what makes them be like that, two ideological benefits are instantly available: (1) none of it is the fault of Wunnerful US, and (2) the patients are unlike to get better for generations or centuries, which helps enable Sen. McCain and the jihád careerists to have their Kiddie Krusade or Hundred Years' War Redux. Blaming social conditions in Eurabia™ [2] is almost as satisfactory from the tank-thought perspective: nobody in the holy Homeland is culpable, and probably Dr. Rowan Williams will keep right on leading the Old Euros straight to Jahannam/Gehenna, no matter what Uncle Sam says or does. I.e., the same twin advantages are obtained for Wunnerful US in only a very slightly diluted form: no burden of guilt for AEI and GOP and DoD to shoulder, plus a vista of Huntin’tonian Clashin’ ahead as far as the eye can see. (Now there's a twofer for 'em!)

Back in the Greater Levant, few of Them frankly say "We loathe Yank so-called civilisation because it outrages male honor and female virtue" or "I just can't help terrorizing them, Doctor Gerecht, not after that godawful immigrant childhood in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises."

As as not uncommon, the AEIdeologue thinks he is risin’ as he sinks -- risin’ higher than "many secular Westerners," at least, for whatever that may be worth:

These complexities [sc. the previous quotation] may help explain, at least in part, why so many secular Westerners seek relief in more easily understood explanations for jihadism (the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being the usual favorites) -- explanations that don't probe too deeply into Islamic history and the militant Muslim imagination.

("Deep Probe, allow me to introduce Deep Throat!" Islamic history does not come in at all, actually, but perhaps the Washington Post dropped a passage out. And God knows best!)

Anyhow, Deep Probe is not difficult to satisfy with himself, assuming the wares he just displayed are thought to be other than easily understood. I guess DP hopes to bully the customers of the Washington Post Company into accepting him as an expert first and then into accepting his Big Party apologetics as expertise. An old song, that one.

After a tolerably sensible exposition of the well known fact that Peaceful Freedumbia is not awash with outside faith-crazies, Dr. Gerecht turns to unabashed dubyapologetics:

In Iraq, as we have seen with the anti-al-Qaeda, Sunni Arab "Awakenings," Sunni extremism is now in retreat . . . . [T]he much-quoted statements made by former Sunni insurgents about the positive actions of the United States in Iraq, have caused a great deal of intellectual turbulence in the Arab world . . . . If bin Ladenism is now on the decline -- and it may well be among Arabs -- then Iraq has played an essential part in battering the movement's spiritual appeal . . . . Iraq could well become America's decisive victory over Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all those Muslims who believe that God has sanctified violence against the United States.

AEIdeology rots the brain. That's the simplest explanation of this sudden derailment. Deep Probe began rather elegantly, setting up that nifty twofer we remarked, but then he rushes to throw half of it away. If AEI and GOP and DoD have already achieved decisive victory, why, even the Big Management Party base and vile are likely to wonder whether the Long War of the jihád careerists or a perpetual state of Huntin’tonian Clashism is really obligatory.

Rear-Colonel R. M. G. Spook shoots his own argument in the foot, for reasons not easily understood.


___
[1] "Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former case officer for the CIA."


[2] The first trademark belongs to neorabbi R. Patai, the second to Mme. Bint Yeor.

Cartoonoclastes and Clausewitz

Very happily for the student of Widerkriegskunst and bilge and party cries, Mr. Bones, today's subject-matter conveniently arranges itself for examination of its own accord. First one of the backbenchers at Mu’ámara Junction inquires "Is X what we are doing, then, Your Excellency?". To which H.E. replies "Yes, my pretty child, X is 'basically' what we are doing, and furthermore Y is how we do it."

That self-inflicted format of theirs is almost as good as if one had asked the questions oneself. Why, in seven years since the Big Bang, no communiqué even half so perspicuous has emerged from the command bunker at Rancho Crawford! But onwards, let's have this gem in the original:

X1. The CHELA, in perplexity at a previous magisterial apophthegm

"The old standby Sunni-versus-Shia story is getting a whole lot less plausible as the interpretive key to understanding Green Zone maneuvering." In other words, you're saying that things seem to be heading towards a pro-occupation and anti-occupation separation? Which would be politics along political and not sectarian lines, which is good. Am I understanding you correctly?

X2. The GURU, confirming the Nature of the Good

Basically. In the GreenZone. Which is "good" to the extent any breaking down of sect-defined positions is good for the country. Whether the "opposition" group will actually end up with meaningful "anti-occupation" positions is a different issue.

Y. The GURU, indicating the Path towards the Good

Naturally, for the resistance, this is a mug's game, and the only bone fide position is to stay out of GreenZone deals of any kind until there is a withdrawal-commitment.

What a lovely specimen, sir! One is left with no need to guess from incompetent execution what was intended to be executed, and then guess further, on an already shaky basis, what on Gore's green earth the Original Intent™ might have been. The BIZG, "Basic International Zone Good," corresponding to what invasion-language Clausewitzians would call the objective, is that there should be neither sectarianism, tá’ifiyya, nor appearance of sectarianism in the native politics of Peaceful Freedumbia. The PIZG, "Path to International Zone Good," or Clausewitzian strategy, is to rearrange the natives' politics for them on a simple nonsectarian Manichee basis, separating the sheep from the goats. A sheep, needless to say, would like to see the backs of the militant Republican Party invaders and occupiers as soon as possible, whereas deluded goats are positively looking forward to one more year under George XLIII and then a hundred years of Commanderissimo McCain.

His Excellency the GURU wisely and prudently admonishes his disciple that to identify the Good is by no means the same as to attain it. The BIZG may or may not be a possible state of affairs. Judging from other oracular deliverances, however, I am confident that H.E. expects to get there eventually, probably sooner rather than later. Cartoonoclastes remains positively Panglossian about the prospects of the Blessèd Muqáwama, as a matter of fact. Although he used the occasion of yesterday's scribble for reopening the Great War on Juan, he is at least as unwilling as Professor Cole to give the slightest indication that he understands why AEI and GOP and DoD (plus naturally the running-dog mainstream media) take the view that "we" are now at last "winning" in the former Iraq. I certainly would not go to the stake, or even to the witness box, for the wisdom and prudence of either Prof. Cole or Dr. Cartoonoclastes, yet it seems highly likely that both honourable and gallant antiwarriors are only pretending to be ostriches in order to keep up the morale of their troops.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though, Bones, because if the Occupyin’ Party ever does go away, whether expelled by the Muqáwama (MSBP), or by the Democrats, or by an "implosion of the military," or by mere change and decay of some less foreseen sort, then I.Z. sheep and goats could not be distinguished on the proposed cartoonoclastic basis. There wouldn't even be an I.Z. any longer -- think of that, sir! Oh happy day, and hasten the glad advent of it! But meanwhile Mu’ámara Junction is scheming to reorganize collaborationist politics with "a pro-occupation and anti-occupation separation," which Cartoonoclastes admits may prove to be no cakewalk in itself: "Whether the 'opposition' group will actually end up with meaningful 'anti-occupation' positions is a different issue."

Though the present jewel be perspicuous, it is obviously not long enough to explain all the details in full. In addition to the wisdom and prudence of His Excellency the GURU anticipating that the sheep-and-goats gizmo might fail, the MJ crystal balls evidently show one or more scenarios in which it fails in a particular way, with such an antisectarian separation nominally in existence, yet not "meaningful." God knows best what that bit's about, exactly, although one might guess that it forebodes goats in sheep's clothing who bleat in public that they want the militant extremist GOP to depart, but flock secretly to the Proconsular Palace of the Party by night to assure Neocomrade Ambassador R. Crocker that they are only kidding.

Probably you will think that speculation not unworthy of wisdom and prudence, Mr. Bones, since it resembles our own stuff to some extent. So it does, but taking it in light of the plenitude of Mu’ámariyyan ideology and factionalism as elsewhere disclosed, I'd say it is quite a different product at bottom. Cartoonoclastes is, as we have noted, a fan of the Blessèd Muqáwama(MSBP), as you and I are not. If worst comes to worst, His Excellency the GURU believes that he can dispense with I. Z. collaborationist pols altogether. Suppose every single one of them a detestable Crawford-loving goat, all of them foul traitors to their traditional nonsectarianism, yet the good guys shall prevail on an extraparliamentary and insurgential basis all the same. It may take a little longer that way, but Cartoonoclastes does not doubt the ultimate happy event, and he certainly does not expect to have to wait out a whole century of McCainism before he beholds it. He may or may not be playing ostrich and whistling as he walks by the graveyard of the Ever-Glorious Surge of '07™ in order that his weaker brethren and sistern should not lose heart unduly, but if Cartoonoclastes secretly believes that the three-headed monster of AEI and GOP and DoD might actually win the whole campaign and not just one small and pooh-poohable skirmish, then I am Marie of Roumania, Mr. Bones, and you are Marilyn Monroe.

Accordingly, that potential detail of a meaningless "anti-occupation position" is not the same thing at all at Mu’ámara Junction as it is chez nous. Cartoonoclastes and Dr. Pangloss must expect that, being meaningless and insincere and sectarian and generally a very bad thing, it could not possibly last. Gloomy Gus and you and I know better, and worry that the Commanderissimo may actually get his Hundred Years' War, because pretty well every country in the Greater Levant has a régime predicated on the same sort of meaninglessness.

General Mubárak, for example, was going on without detectable signification the other day about what a misfortune the AEI-GOP-DoD occupation of the former Iraq has turned into. [1] The general been emitting noises of that sort personally for a whole generation now, and it is largely the emission of such noises that has made him the foremost Pillar of Stability between the Atlantic and India. A "meaningless" anti-occupation, or at least anti-imperialism, position is sine quâ non in the modern Middle East, and has been since 1967 at latest. Should it be successfully institutionalized in the former Iraq -- as why should it not be? -- forty years of sacred stability might break out there as well, with all the wishful thinkings of Mu’ámara Junction postponed to 1470/2050 or afterwards.[2]

"Why should it not be?" Cartoonoclastes and Pangloss do not often explain the ultimate bases of their wishful thinking. Instead they "preach to the choir," they address themselves predominantly to those who already take the same happy thoughts for granted that they take for granted themselves. Perhaps this reflects a wisdom and prudence on their part superior to that of Juan the Wicked, who recently attempted a defense of the unqualified general proposition that war does not work, in defiance of the plain fact that choirs of Quakers and Gandhians are few and far between compared to those of the Sunnintern and even what little is left of le Tiersmondisme.

Cartoonoclastes may not have the wisdom of the serpent completely mastered, however. Even assuming all his tendentious and factional assumptions, I'd say there are still difficulties about the strategy recommended. "[T]he only bone fide position is to stay out of Green Zone deals of any kind until there is a withdrawal-commitment." He seems not to have considered the possibility that AEI and GOP and DoD might tell fibs about what they are committed to, or uncommit themselves unilaterally afterwards, withdrawalwise, if they were honest at first. Would Carl von Clausewitz overlook such a gaping loophole as that one? I think not.[3]

Happy days.


_____
[1] Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Monday [11 February 2008 that] the presence of U.S. and other foreign forces in Iraq was attracting terrorists and threatening security and stability in the region, state news agency MENA reported. (...) "President Mubarak warned against the continuation of the American presence in Iraq," the agency said.


[2] Why not wait until 1530/2110 with Neocomrade J. S. McCain? To be sure, there do exist limits to how long meaninglessness can be protracted as the basis of Greater Levantine normalcy. Most notably, once the oil finally runs out, what imperializer will care to take the trouble to keep the existing racket up? But that date is still very far removed, unless I am badly misinformed geologically.


[3] The precise narrowness of Cartoonoclastes' own factionalism is also at issue in that sentence. It seems to me, Mr. Bones, that he speaks as if none of the TwentyPercenter collaborationist pols who hold office under the yoke of Crawford are on the MJ team at all. They have all make at least the minimal "deal" of agreeing to be quasiministers or quasideputies or whatever in the neorégime that poor M. al-Málikí (and the Free Kurd M. Tálebání) nominally preside over.

In theory, one could accept quasioffice saying "I agree to be what you call a 'deputy' in what you call a 'council of deputies,' but I do not thereby either endorse your nomenclature or recognize the legitimacy of your invasion-based 'government'." But it would be fantastic to suppose than anybody whom Cartoonoclastes might care to claim as a noble and patriotic (wataní) sheep actually behaved like that. If some sheep had attempted such a stunt, doubtless some sectarian goon would have kicked her out of the Quasichamber instantly, oath unregistered.

Fired the Cannon

Sunni clerics condemn Muredi souk bombing Baghdad - Voices of Iraq Friday , 15 /02 /2008 Time 8:02:10 Baghdad, Feb 15, (VOI) – The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) condemned Thursday's bombing attack that ripped through an outdoor souk (market), which killed and wounded 32 civilians, adding it reflected "the conflict of those who have ambitions about Iraq." "The AMS, denouncing the criminal act perpetrated against the people of Iraq, is holding the occupation forces, the incumbent government and other parties that benefit from this chaos fully responsible," read an AMS release received by Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI). The blast occurred by a car bomb at the Muredi souk in the predominantly Shiite area of Sadr City, formerly known as Saddam City, coinciding with the 1st anniversary marking the launching of Operation Fardh al-Qanoon, or law imposing, to enhance security in Baghdad and its environs. The AMS, the largest grouping representing Sunnis in Iraq and is headed by Harith al-Dhari, criticized Fardh al-Qanoon. "The plan was not to impose law inasmuch as it was meant to settle accounts with political opponents and others and to practice sectarian and ethnic cleansing for the interest of the occupation forces and other well-known sides," the AMS said in its release. "The bombing came within the context of a conflict over influence in the area among parties that have ambitions about the land and wealth, particularly with the talks scheduled to be held soon between the occupation forces and some neighboring countries over the security conditions in Iraq," added the release, in reference to talks between the United States and Iran in Baghdad next week.

Other well-known sides?

I Assure You That Dr. Pangloss Still Runs This Asylum, Madam!

Anthologia Coleana for 3 Safar 1429

I'll bet the shredders are working overtime in preparation for the arrival of the [Democrats] in power early next year . . . .

So who manufactures those damn things, Mr. Bones? Buy us some stock now!

US civilian contractor deaths were up 17% in 2007, which is, according to experts, an "incredible" statistic. Makes a person suspicious that the fall in US military deaths was a little artificial and that contractors were sometimes sent in, instead, and that their deaths do not garner the same attention as those of US troops.

That one is not mere hyperoptimism, there's a whiff of Badger's Syndrome present as well. As rhetoric I rather like it, Mr. Bones, 'a little artificial' for mu’ámarí jidd.an is nicely understated, don't you think? [1]

Where the Secret Partisan Truth™ should be insinuated, however, there lurks nothing more unbelievable than that "at least 353 civilian contractors working for the U.S. government were killed, up from 301 in 2006, [as] Labor Department records show," i.e., not quite one Big Party merc or mercatrix shredded per diem.

If the WGAS were to allow himself to make up more copy without finding somebody else to quote from, his obvious next move would be to question whether the Department of Labor is tellin’ the whole truth. That organization is answerable to the little lad from Yale with the Harvard Victory School MBA, after all.

Meanwhile, over on the attention-garnering front, you'll notice, Bones, that I am the one who has to single out the following statistic:

Less than 3 percent of convoys rolling through Iraq are coming under attack, Brooks said, down from about 20 percent a year ago.

If we've got any Humvee stock, you better sell it, I guess. Uncle Sam won't be in the market for so many replacements. [2]

Paul George says of the Iraq War, "It's the oil, habibi, the oil," quoting IC which in turn paraphrased Muqtada al-Sadr's similar comment about the fighting in Kirkuk.

"Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I."

No further comment. Next? [3]


Happy days.



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[1] "Garner" smells of Journalism College, though. Subtract half a point.


[2] "World's Greatest Area Student," don't you remember our abbreviation, sir?

As to your idea that the Department of Transportation might very well be fibbin’ and shreddin’ and misunderestimatin’ for Boy and Party also, that is certainly not impossible. Still, shredded vehicles do not interest journalists and Televisionland nearly as much as shredded mercenaries do. Only an insurance adjuster would prefer to discuss the former.

Of course there's also the late Paul Elmer More, "To the civilised man, the right to Property is more important than the right to life," but that is a counsel of perfection that few Party neocomrades strive towards seriously when it's a question of their own life.



[3] The WGAS's petrolaeocentricity comes and goes, waxing and waning in accordance with Luna or Uranus or who knows what. One could "prove" equally well from him that the Dread Neocon Cabal is solely responsible for the bushogenic quagmire.

Presumably the common root of both errors is a confusion of why the Aggression Faction invasionized the former Iraq in the first place with their subsequent rationales for never gettin’ out. Cheap fuel and Hyperzionism had very little to do with original caper, yet they have subsequently become two great pillars of Responsible Nonwithdrawal. To top off his analytical confusion, the WGAS seems to be under the impression that irresponsible withdrawal will start instantly in January 2009 and then proceed relentlessly. Not bloody likely.

To top off the Aggression Faction's confusion, there is the tolerably plain fact that they do not absolutely need to garrison Peaceful Freedumbia indefinitely for the sake of oil and Hertzlstán, although no doubt they sincerely think that they do.

Communication between the aggressionites and Prof. Juan Cole is further obstructed because the former are in earnest about bein’ at War against Global Tourism -- counterterror, of course, is the third and greatest Pillar of Aggression. The WGAS simply can not take the Big Party's Kiddie Krusadin’ seriously, and considered as a thing itself, it does not merit being taken seriously. Nevertheless, it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder, not to appreciate that the militant brats really do believe in their own brattiness, which is by no means mere camouflage for selfish manipulations by Exxon-Mobil or aggrandizement of the Tel Aviv statelet.

Neither of these traditional villains has actually gained anything much from George XLIII's colonial campaigns, and they may even have lost ground. Petroleagineous tycoons and Jewish Statists are, taken collectively as factions, both a good deal brighter and clearer-headed than the Crawfordite clowns have been; both could certainly have done better for themselves than the Big Party stumblebums have done for them. It would be suicidal for either crew to be openly at odds with whoever commands Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower in the world. So that is out. Yet the fact that they can't get out of the Car of Juggernaut does not mean that they are driving it, or that they endorse the way Master Dubya has been drivin’.