Individual ("fragmentary") facts are not the MJ gentry’s strong point, though, it is rather for picturesque arrangements of facts and improbable deductions from arrangements of facts that one applies to them, if one is aware. The first step in fact arrangement goes like this:
| ... exculpatory statements from American officials to the effect that (1) The Americans are only following the lead of the Iraqi forces (which is manifestly not true) and (2) the whole Sadr City operation is nothing more than an attempt to protect the Green Zone from rocket attacks, the American forces subsequently having been "drawn into" [2] full-scale urban combat. |
Cartoono professes to have discovered rather than invented that fact arrangement. It will have been GOP and DOD that actually did the arranging. The second part can be admitted without quibble: it has been a very long time since anybody respectable in Greater Europe aggressed except in strictest self-defense. "Following the lead of the Iraqi forces," however, is a point of some interest. To begin with, "Iraqi forces" are presumably not bound by Old Euro tribal taboos. Even if they were so bound, they appear to be aggressing against their own subjects, a domestic affair that the taboo does not cover in any case. Take, for instance, Gen. Reno at the siege of Waco: was that memorable human event anybody’s business except Uncle Sam and Aunt Janet’s? No, of course it wasn’t.
I am sorry to have to report that Cartoono the Magnificent has oversimplified the prosurgent position. "The whole Sadr City operation" consists, obviously, of an AEI-GOP-DOD component plus an IZ collaborationist component. Not only are the two sectors distinguishable on the ground, they are distinguishable in the press release as well. Poor M. al-Málikí and his leading Iraqi forces do not restrict themselves to "an attempt to protect the Green Zone from rocket attacks." They do not even begin to pretend to so restrict themselves. Operation Knights’ Stampede is manifestly conceived of as part of Operation Rulalaw [3]. Those "criminal militia members" that have suddenly sprung up wherever one looks in Peaceful Freedumbia are not to be allowed to play with fireworks at all, even if they don’t come within a hundred miles of the International Zone with them. The Hannibal of Da‘wa wants to make his neorégime’s writ run everywhere that the old maps say "Iraq" used to be. This project is no secret, which perhaps explains why the goofball gentry are not much interested in it.
All this is mere preliminary skirmishing, however. Cartoono’s unmatched instinct for the capillaries inspires him to launch his main offensive on quite a different sector of the front:
| Daily airstrikes and heavy-weapons and tank-supported warfare in this densely populated urban area represents a major shift in US military strategy. (A major shift, that is, compared to what we were told the new strategy is). You don't need to be a military expert to see that. You can read any of the accounts of the US military's new "COIN" (counterinsurgency) doctrine, to see that the strategy--supposedly--is to avoid bombing urban areas and similiar massive-force tactics, and instead to concentrate on winning the hearts and minds. Explanatory material about this "progressive" approach was a very popular genre at the time of the Surge and the appointment of Petraeus. One of the main popularizers of the doctrine was Colin Kahl, now a Democratic Party foreign policy consultant of some description. But while he (and others like him) trumpeted the doctrine when it was introduced, now that it is being abandoned and the policy is gradually reverting to the barbarism of the 19th century, they have gone back into their shells and are saying nothing. |
Juan the Wicked had better not assume that he is off the hook altogether now that the hapless C. Kahl has been specially selected for impalement. [4]
____
[1] One can pluck the shoot-the-messenger plums out of the broader conspiratorialist pudding without too much difficulty:
| ... on the level of what is actually taking place in Sadr City, the reports of conditions there are fragmentary, minimized by the corporate media except for their "parental-guidance" type of entertainment value--CNN currently has a clip with the Hollywood PG rating attached to it--and except for the endless interpolations about how the US forces are merely following the lead of those crime-fighting Iraqis. (...) These reports in the corporate media--all of them--are in the form of fragments interspersed with exculpatory statements from American officials ... Now that the use of massive force against civilian areas is upon us, the whole policy establishment has gone silent on this issue. All that is reported in the news are the fragments like those noted above, interspersed with phrases of exculpatory jargon. |
Bow wow, arf-arf, grrrrrr!
Pretty tame stuff, actually, and that tameness is not too surprising. The utterly unbiased Sunniphiliacs have been shooting the messenger so long that who will wonder their hearts (not to speak of their minds) are not in it the way they used to be. Even thee and I could give them pointers, Mr. Bones: why don’t they mention that all this fragmentation and exculpation and parent guidancing is happening perhaps ten kilometres from Mlle. Messenger’s hotel room, not down in some remote Bible-belt hole of an al-Basra?
But no, if the MJ gentry could think of that angle, doubtless they would instantly conspiratorialize that Mlle. Messenger wants the International Zone secured for her own private convenience as well as for her corporation’s nefarious purposes. And indeed, if the lady -- very improbably -- had encountered Dr. Cartoonoclastes’ attempted clausewitzism from a couple of weeks ago in which he foresaw Petrolaeus and Crockerius and poor M. al-Málikí and all their camp followers forcibly expelled from the I. Z. and forced to camp out at the airport, and if Mlle. Messenger had managed to work out that she personally was one of the camp followers, --- well, you see where that is headed, Mr. Bones.
I daresay a real Mil. Sci. whiz would omit both Cartoono and the lady as vulgar and anecdotal, powerpointin’ out less vividly, but more professionally, that the barrage of unguided missiles intended for the I. Z. collaborationists has a collateral damage aspect to it. A Mil. Sci. whiz who was on the side of the good guys, if such a creature be possible, might even advise the propaganda arm to claim that the collaborationists are "hiding behind shields of Western journalists" or "behind the skirts of" ditto. Mlle. Messenger’s zeal for the cause of the Supreme Hakeems and the IDP may be so great that she does not mind this arrangement one bit, but her consent should not matter under the current rules of engagement. Nobody cares to inquire whether the "human shields" of South Lebanon and East Baghdád are taking their chances voluntarily. It is assumed for agitprop purposes that they, the shields, have no choice in the matter, period. So in turn the Fursán as-Sawla have no choice but to ask AEI and GOP and DOD to conduct daytime airstrikes on their obstreporous villeins.
[2] Cartoono is secretly quoting the Monitor story at this point:
| It was the barrage of what the US military calls "indirect fire" on the Green Zone that drew it into the fighting in Sadr City – a fight that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki started in late March as part of his stated goal of disarming Iraq's Shiite militias. In reality, that has meant a fight with Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and other militants more or less loyal to him. |
"His stated goal of disarming Iraq's Shiite militias" -- the Eddyites do not seem to me to be all that fragmentary about what Hannibal of Da‘wa is up to. Not only do they give the ostensible rationale, they distinguish it with an invidious "in reality" from authentic original intent, i.e., the disarmament of Muqtadae and Muqtadae's Mahdí alone. It would be more plausible to object to this as indecorous editorializing than as suppressio veri.
As to AEI-GOP-DOD, that is quite another affair. Some particular Party or Pentagon operative must have informed the reporter that the Coalition of the Willful would not have become involved were it not for "indirect fire." We wind up with what is even formally a direct quotation but no clue where it came from. Maybe the seminaries of journalism teach that technique, but they shouldn’t.
If the MJ gentry had their druthers, a second "in reality" would have been appended to make clear what hooey the invisible operative was purveying, that unquestionably AEI and GOP and DOD are quite as keen for poor M. al-Málikí’s unstated goal as he is himself. Yet Mlle. Messenger, the Eddyite journalist, left herself no proper hook from which to hang another "in reality." She does not seem to swallow her War Department’s line quite whole, writing later on
| The US military has tried to avoid being drawn into a fight with Sadr, recently limiting its references to the Mahdi Army and instead blaming the Sadr City fighting on "criminals" and "special groups" that it says are armed and trained by Iran. But almost daily American involvement in the fighting, usually to back up Iraqi forces who have sometimes been overpowered by the militants, has brought US forces into skirmishes with Sadr supporters. Last week, Sadr confirmed in a statement that his fighters are authorized to fight what he considers the "occupying forces." |
There is lots and lots of newsitorializing there, even if it be not exactly to our own taste, Mr. Bones, nor to the taste of rigorously nonsectarian Sunnintern fans. Mlle. Messenger’s personal view is not without nuance. She grants that Hannibal of Da‘wa started it, but considers that the Rev. Señorito deserves whatever he gets, now that he has authorized non-Gandhian countermeasures. Well, au mois il est différent. Not just different, but maybe even different in a specifically Eddyite way, begorrah!
As against the firm of Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes, though, the main points are (1) that Mlle. Messenger is not typical, and (2) that she is not egregiously in cahoots with AEI-GOP-DOD.
[3] Sawlat al-Fursán and Fard al-Qánún respectively.
[4] The ratfink does not actually admit on his C.V. to being "now a Democratic Party foreign policy consultant of some description." On the other hand,
| Obama also draws expertise from a more centrist Washington policy shop, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), which has issued a plan envisioning up to 60,000 troops in Iraq for several years, though with an increased training role. Danzig is a CNAS board member, and its fellows include Colin Kahl, who leads Obama's Iraq working group. (The group is a semi-formal assemblage of ten to twelve experts who distill information and assist with tasks like debate preparation, Kahl says, rather than make policy.) Kahl is a proponent of the middle-ground concept of "conditional engagement," which incentivizes and rewards the political progress by Iraqi leaders with a larger U.S. troop presence to help them provide security. |
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