The Big Party Proconsul Speaks

Crocker met with a small group of reporters and columnists Friday afternoon in a windowless conference room at the State Department. He ... downplayed the conflict with Congress over the Status of Forces Agreement. Democrats fear that the Bush administration will bind future administrations to long-term military obligations in Iraq without consulting Congress. "There is not going to be a valid objection," from Congress, he predicted. Democrats are not likely to agree. Strenuously. Crocker said he was struck, but not surprised, by the extent to which the Congressional hearings focused on the cost of the Iraq operation and how upset lawmakers were that the U.S. is still footing so much of the bill when the Iraqi government has cash to chip in. He said he got the message loud and clear but argued, as he did in the hearings, that the problem with progress in Iraq is not money, but the lack of infrastructure to improve quality of life at a rapid rate.

That's enough to be getting on with, Mr. Bones. A little bit of discomfort for everybody: R. Crocker is rather a dubious ornament to militant Republicanianty, but the Dove-Donkey Joint High Command is not covering itself with glory either by fixating on what aggressions and invasions and semiconquests cost nowadays. It does not occur to anybody at the DDJHC that making the victim pay the victimizers’ expenses turns "mere" assault and battery into robbery. Will Crocker Effendi actually make crude financial representations to poor M. al-Málikí when gets back to New Baghdád? Not probable. The Demoncrats can’t actually get at invasionites and their little foreign friends yet, not as long as Grant's Old Party can sustain a presidential veto, so most likely R. Crocker and N. K. (J.) al-Málikí will only share a laugh at the ineffectuality of their antagonists. Also their petty-mindedness -- for what is a mere thirty billion dollars annually between such good friends as Rancho Crawford and the International Zone neorégime have become?

But let us face facts, Mr. Bones: the pseudodiplomatic neocomrade wins that round if we score on the basis of IQ points. R. Crocker can loan that clever new infrastructure song-and-dance of his to the handlers of J. Sidney McCain as yet another excellent reason to hang around in the former Iraq through decades and generations to come, during which period Halliburton and Bechtel can either rebuild the whole joint from the subsoil up or, more likely, fiddle around aimlessly and bill outrageously. Ah, them pricey trainin’ wheels! (Poor M. al-Málikí will not be made privy to that Big Managerial joke, I suspect. In this case they are talkin’ about real money instead of chickenfeed.) R. Crocker may be cynical, but at least he is not compelled to engage in electioneering directly, an unfair advantage over mere mortal Congresscritters of either party. [1] The Demoncrats among them are reduced to the unsatisfactory argument that the 2003 aggression would have been OK, if not positively meritorious, had it indeed been a War For Oil™. They no doubt believe it and may convince a few swing voters by going on about it, but all the same, Mr. Bones, what icky spinach it is!

Then there is the SOFA: "There is not going to be a valid objection," from Congress, he predicted. Crocker Effendi is overreachin’ his expertise a little at that point, unless he only means that he personally and his Little Brother and their ideobuddy Professor Yoo &c. &c. will not concede any validity. Beyond that, I believe the Supreme Court still gets to decide such questions. That will take years, of course. Meanwhile, should J. Sidney fall short of election, one of the internal contradictions of Republican Party extremism may be exposed to daylight for a change. Little Brother has evidently announced in so many words that He expects to "lock in" His successor as regards the 2003 aggression and possibly as regards Kiddie Krusadin’ in general. But Hillary XLIV Clinton would inherit not just the proposed cuffs and shackles, but all those Yootiful precedents whereby George XLIII Bush established that nothin’ and nobody was ever gonna lock Him in! That would have been a fun show to watch, although I daresay Commanderissimo McCain will be an entertainment as well, at least if you live in the holy Homeland rather than in Peaceful Freedumbia or some other occupied boondock.

Moving onwards, here is the Proconsul schemin’ out loud for his Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology:

... the spiral won't begin the minute a new Democratic president calls for a withdrawal of troops, but perhaps a good deal earlier, as Iraqis make their bets on how the elections will turn out. Crocker described what would happen if Iraqis were to start thinking the U.S. was on the way out. "If the Iraqis think we aren't staying," he said, "then the spirit of compromise goes away because it gets too damn risky. People will start to worry about community survival." Worried that the Americans might leave, Iraqis at all levels will turn back to their local militias or tribal allegiances for protection. Or, Iraqis will cling more certainly to the comfortable tribal allegiances making reconciliation and power-sharing harder.

That’s clever and cynical, though well over the heads of Televisionland and the electorate. Also over the heads of certain "small group reporters and columnists Friday afternoon," to judge by how quickly J. Dickerson, whoever he is, reduces it to conventional dove-donkey wisdom:

It may be that if Iraqis read the field and bet on a Democratic winner, they'll snap into focus, as many of Bush's critics say only will only happen as the result of a pull out. Under withdrawal pressure, they might be motivated to support a government crackdown on the militias and make compromises. In that case, despite his predictions, Crocker's job would actually get easier in his final months.

Perhaps one neo-Iraqi subject of AEI and GOP and DOD in every ten thousand is capable of following the politics of the holy Homeland with adequate comprehension. "If Iraqis read the field and bet" is only duncery.

Nothing could be more conventionally wise than the "withdrawal pressure," so let us not call that part a rude name but merely point out that there has been so much yimmer-yammer about it already that poor M. al-Málikí would probably have enough common sense to wait and see, should J. Sidney show signs of falterin’. Núrí Kamál can always run home to London if the Brave New Former Iraq™ does not work out, after all. He need not even rush to make reservations, not even if he winds up stuck having to deal with Hillary XLIV Clinton. Would the hyperpowered palefaces really just pack up and walk away after throwin’ so much bad money into the bushogenic quagmire? Poor M. al-Málikí is a thorough OnePercenter, the opinion of most neo-Iraqi subjects about matters of State is ignorant trash and well he knows it. It would be natural for him to expect Hillary XLIV to take much the same view, and he would be right so to expect. (As I expect, that is.)

So in short this "withdrawal pressure" product endorsed by Miss Sappy [2] and Mr. Dickerson of Slate might conceivably work wonders if it were ever tried, but it is not going to be tried and thus we will never know for sure. [3]

Play it again, Sam: "So shall the world go on, / To good malignant, to bad men benign."

Happy days.


____
[1] Reading about it a second time, I notice that Crocker Effendi was not addressin’ Senators and Representatives when he made these remarks, but "a small group of reporters and columnists Friday afternoon in a windowless conference room at the State Department." So he more or less is electioneerin’ after all, though genteelly. But which select reporter or Party-friendly columnist do we get it through in Slate? Mr. John Dickerson himself, I suppose, whoever he may be.


[2] That's sapientia conventionalis as nicknamed by some of her nonenthusiasts.


[3] Probably just as well in the long run. To make a regular practice or theoretical policy of invasionizin’ other people's countries so as to exert pressure by threatenin’ to leave could easily be made to sound like clinical insanity. And obviously only a tiny portion of the planet could ever be weekly-standardised with a procedure so round-about and frightfully expensive as that one. But God knows best.