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.
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