| U.S. officials contacted by Newsweek said Chalabi's ouster was triggered by his ongoing relationships with pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq who, in the eyes of the Maliki government, are trying to destabilize the country. 'He was once again operating in that same gray zone that he always has,' said [a] former U.S. intelligence official who is close to several figures in the Maliki administration. 'There was enormous friction inside the Iraqi government over this.' |
"Pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq" is not an easy blank ____________ to fill in. As a generic label for everybody whom the vigilante invasionites of AEI-GOP-DOD find really and truly detestable, "Pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq" is admirable. Unfortunately when one tries to reduce it to the proper level of insider tittle-tattle by supplying the names of known individuals, nobody seems to qualify well. Republican Party Proconsul R. C. Crocker comes to this keyboard’s mind instantly, for example. But THAT can’t possibly be right, can it?
The ambassador of Rancho Crawford had better watch his step in any case, though, lest he suddenly discover that his boss’s ever-immortal words
| Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history” |
may have been not-aimed at R. Clark Crocker quite as much as they were not-aimed at B. Hussein Obama. (BHO himself may be as pro-Iranian a figure as the day is long, but he cannot sanely be classified as "inside Iraq." So our mystery blank is not for him either.)
Turning to indig figures, M. le Président de la République Jalál Tálebání is the strongest candidate for a true and disinterested pal of the evil Qommies. But why would M. le Docteur Tchélabí want "an ongoing relation" with him? The Hero of Error™ has various other deficiencies, but strictly on the IQ side he is sound enough. A U of C grad can hardly have failed to work out that the "presidency" of "Iraq" belongs to what Mr. Bagehot once distinguished as the dignified rather than the efficient sector of the International Zone neorégime’s constitution.
Consider the position that the H of E™ was -- or, as the case may subsequently prove to be, was not -- ousted from:
| The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with backing from U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus, named him to head a committee charged with restoring essential services, including electricity and public safety, to Iraqi communities. "He was going to be the guy to turn the lights on in Baghdad," said a former U.S. intelligence official.... |
Dr. Chalabí seems to have profited, up to a point, from his stay in Cook County. He plainly knows enough to go for efficiency rather than dignity. Anybody whose soul is eaten up with personal ambition would of course do far better to become notorious as the Lightbearer of New Baghdád rather than merely "president" or "prime minister" or the like of "Iraq." (No political gossip suggests that Dr. Chalabí may have been dismissed because as a matter of fact he has not borne much light. That view is reasonable enough, because the H of E™ is certainly no run-of-the-mill tedious ‘technocrat’ such as the conventional claptrap is forever recommending as salutary for the former Iraq. Whatever the great statesperson was (or wasn’t) fired for, average kilowatt hours per day will have had little to do with it.)
If we attempt to guess the future from the past, reservations about "up to a point" are significant. Dr. Chalabí is bright enough to go for the political jugular, for Efficiency rather than Dignity, but unfortunately his leaps fall short. Had he thoroughly mastered the black arts of Tammany Hall and the Daley Dynasty of Chicagoland, Dr. Chalabí would have become parens patriae by now, the Fulgencio Batista or Vidkun Quisling -- or, best parallel of all, the J. Edgar Hoover -- of his longsuffering fatherland. Not because the glorious coalition of AEI and GOP and DOD might have handed him colonial supremacy on a silver platter, but because he grabbed -- or claimed to have grabbed, which could be made to suffice -- many of the records of the Ba‘thí secret state police. Thus fortified, Dr. Chalabí should have been able to dictate from behind the scenes who is employable in the Brave New ‘Iraq’ and who is not, up to and including ‘presidents’ and ‘prime ministers.’
Obviously the Hero of Error™ managed to blow his potential Hooverdom, somehow. To become Lightbearer of New Baghdád, though thoroughly satisfactory from the Bagehot perspective, would be only a pale shadow of the supremacy that he has already bobbled and lost. Perhaps one might venture to call that electrical sort of triumph ‘Herbert Hooverdom’ as opposed to the J. Edgar variety? ’Tis a far, far better thing for the ambitious and greedy than any mere technocracy, yet almost equally far down the great scale of politics from the sort of Universal Spiderdom that Dr. Chalabí has already missed.
Major Leaker must be correct when she refers to "enormous friction inside the Iraqi government over this" guy Chalabí. As Jimmy Carter and others have discovered, being the smartest person in every room that you ever find yourself in is a somewhat mixed blessing in politics. The other suits present may not be able to consciously work out that is the fundamental correlation of forces, but there will probably be subliminal displeasure and resentment all the same. Amongst former Iraqis prominent in the International Zone neorégime, only the Rev. ‘Abd al-‘Azíz al-Hakím can seriously be compared with Dr. Chalabí, best-and-brightestwise.
Speaking of whom, the conventional claptrap (and the esoteric claptrap of Dr. Visser as well) will of course nominate Badr and the Supreme Hakemes as likely "pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq." Being allies of Rancho Crawford, their candidacy raises the same sort of difficulty that Big Party neocomrade R. C. Crocker’s does. The claptrap tribe make a sort of post hoc ergo propter hoc mistake at this point. Is it really all that we need to remember about SCIRI/Badr that whatever they did during the Good War against Saddám was done in the Islamic Republic of Iran? I should guess that by 1429/2008 most inscrutable Orientals have caught up with the Wicked West of 1266/1849 and "Austria will astonish the world with its ingratitude" [sc. to Russia for help in getting Hungary under Habsburg control again.]
Conceivably the Hakeemites ought to feel themselves so obligated to the sinister Safavids as to rush to do whatever will please the latter best, quite without regard to the ‘national’ interest of the I. Z. neorégime, or even to the private and factional interests of the Supremes themselves. Anybody who really believes that the real world of human events works like that (very often) runs a serious risk of believing just about anything at all. It is thoroughly edifying, in a Sabbath-morning school or Cloudcuckooland fashion, to prate so, but with reality-basing it has not much to do. The beards and turbans of ‘Iraq’ are no more likely to run the joint for the benefit of the evil Qommies than the native lay sheep are.
Everybody in ‘Iraq’ without exception, including the paleface operatives of AEI and GOP and DOD, is graciously willing to let the evil Qommies benefit themselves. Of a corresponding desire to do something in return, however, there is hardly any trace detectable. Maybe the most remarkable feature of the situation is that the evil Qommies do not seem to notice that nobody whatsoever wants to lift a finger for them. Or perhaps they do notice it and don’t mind? Either way, the key to the mystery seems to be located somewhere in the psychological fastnesses of the Islamic Republic, in regions that I should not pretend to be informed about.
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