It's A Jugular Out There

In response, during the hearings, Petraeus told Lugar, "We've got to continue. We have our teeth into the jugular, and we need to keep it there." The general clearly likes that phrase, because he used it twice more [at a private séance with Mr. Broder and the Washington Post]. I can see why Bush admires his aggressive tone. And I can understand why his troops revere their commander. But when I asked him if there was a better answer to the question Lugar raised -- is there such a strategy [one that "that recognizes the time limitations that we face and seeks a realistic outcome designed to protect American vital interests"], -- his answer was murky. He began with the comment that "there has to be a regional approach," and he went off the record for a time, then came back with many references to Iran. When a colleague asked if we had a plausible strategy for engaging or persuading or coercing Iran to cooperate in that elusive regional solution, the answer was: We're working on it at many levels. Meantime, Petraeus' suggestion is that we focus "less on an exit strategy from Iraq and more on an engagement strategy." I think the answer to the challenge Lugar raises will have to come from the presidential candidates, not the general. It certainly won't come from this president.

The Washington Post Company having re-reconsidered, they and their organ of journalism must for the moment be counted as generally in support of the 2003-2??? aggression. Mr. Broder himself perhaps knows better, but then again, maybe not. You can tell from the concluding microparagraph, Mr. Bones, that he will not be voting for J. Sidney McCain, but that is quite consistent with an underlying quest for more efficient and profitable invasionism down the road, the M. Albright aggression product rather than that of P. Wolfowitz, so to say.

Dr. Gen. David H. Petrolaeus of Princeton and GOP and DOD was not addressin’ a hostile audience, then, when he lunched with some of the hired-hand WaPos. It fits in nicely that Mr. Broder should burn a little incense to Big Party neocomrade R. Lugar -- "The Indiana Republican, one of the real wise men of foreign policy and an ally of the Bush administration." For lo! St. Dick gets the whole first half of Mr. Broder's column, in the form of "five ‘premises’ that he said should guide discussions on future U.S. policy." D. Hannibal only shows up afterwards to be judged by the Lugar Criteria and found at least slightly wantin’, as shown in Exhibit A above.

Why does Mr. Broder place inverted commas around the ‘premises’ of R. Lugar? Probably merely because the neocomrade used that very word. Hope is faint that Mr. Broder noticed, and tried to object to or subvert, the "Kindly let me know best!" aspect of St. Dick's premises. There's really no evidence, however, that Mr. Broder, and the Washington Post Company, and quite a number of other non-Party invasionites are not entirely content to have their discussions of Uncle Sams future invasions and occupations so guided. Viewed from that angle, perhaps D. Hannibal deserves some mild commendation for refusin’ to go along quiet: Let us "focus," said he, "less on an exit strategy from Iraq and more on an engagement strategy." [1]

What was it that turned mild-manered Dr. Gen. D. Hannibal Petrolaeus of Princeton (and elsewhere) into Jugular Joe? Well, according to Broder of the Baní WaPo, the immediate stimulus was this:

According to those premises, Lugar said, the questions before Congress and the country are much different now from those being asked when the surge strategy was launched. "Today," he said, "the questions are whether and how improvements in security can be converted into political gains that can stabilize Iraq, despite the impending drawdown of United States troops. Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient. Debate over how much progress we have made and whether we can make more is less illuminating than determining whether the administration has a definable political strategy that recognizes the time limitations that we face and seeks a realistic outcome designed to protect American vital interests."

St. Dick can be rather a jerk, it looks like, Mr. Bones. What does that tripe amount to if not a touchin’ly poignant lament that R. Lugar cannot figure out what the [exp. del.] his Little Brother is up to in Peaceful Freedumbia, so perhaps D. Hannibal would like to take a shot at helpin’ him guess what it might be? (Yuck. Who elected these people?)

Trottin’ out anythin’ at all, even a jugular, would be better for D. Hannibal than to respond to that foolishness in its own terms. It is not for the ’umble likes of him to "determine whether the administration has a definable political strategy." As a matter of fact, D. Hannibal probably makes the AEI-GOP-DOD semiconquest and occupation policies more than anybody else does in this phase of the Mesopotamia caper, but technically he is not even a member of the Brat Administration, let alone a responsible spokesman. The Dr. Gen. can go do what he is told without worryin’ about whether his chickenhawk betters have a clue what they are doin’. R. Lugar does not seem to, that’s for sure.

On the other hand, Responde stulto iuxta stultitiam suam does apply here after a fashion. R. Lugar blathers as if he was runnin’ against his own Little Brother for the top job, so D. Hannibal blathers as if he was runnin’ himself. [3] Fair enough, although D. Hannibal comes off lookin’ a little better if one belives in "Boost, don’t knock!"

And again I say, "Yuck."

____
[1] DHP, who thinks with steel-claptrap mind in PowerPoint® instead of Greater Texan, may have seemed somwhat more ‘murky’ to WaPo prosemongers than he really is. For him, Policy and Strategy and Operations and Tactics are four clean different things that ignorant chickenhawks tend to muddle up even when they ask him to lunch or to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. An "exit strategy" from Peaceful Freedumbia, then, or alternatively an "engagement strategy" inside the bushogenic quagmire, exists at a different level of the chart than "the challenge Lugar raises."

Plainly Mr. Broder takes his Level Two remark as an answer to St. Dick’s Level One ‘premisses’. And plainly that is a boo-boo, even if D. Hannibal in fact wants to go for the Policy jugular as well as the Strategy jugular. Until the Ivy League’s Jugular Joe actually starts campaignin’ to put himself rather than J. Sidney in the White House, his fellow Americans probably will not know for sure where he stands on Kiddie Krusadin’ as a general ("Level One: Policy", cell A69) proposition.

Strictly or Princetonianly speaking, then, all D. Hannibal does in Exhibit A is decline to be evaluated by the Premises of Lugar. Whether he agrees or disagrees with them or just covers his best-belovèd ass by dodgin’ ’em right or wrong cannot be ascertained from Mr. Broder's account. It may tentatively be inferred, however, that D. Hannibal considers "exit strategy" rather than "engagement strategy" on Level Two to follow from the Premises of Lugar up on Level One. Even we lay sheep can make out why a braniac violence pro might think that, Mr. Bones: St. Dick’s oracles II through V all suggest that the way of the aggressor in the former Iraq is not expected to get easier any time soon.

Neocomrades more heartily loyal to Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology than the Indiana Solon might well find the Premises of Lugar decidedly unsatisfactory as a guide for discussions on future U.S. policy, were they clever and diligent enough to notice. (They are not.) Mr. Broder treats the Premises of Lugar as if every slave of Ms. Sapientia Conventionalis must agree with them. That may be a slight misunderstaning of the actual situation, as I'd conjecture. The truth may be that all of Miss Sappy's devotees will be about equally displeased by the Premises of Lugar, a distinctly different proposition.


[2] Mr. Broder's fancy is antecedently disposed to the running-for-President shtik, which may be why this scribble exists at all.