| [T]wo things are particularly hard for the war-party to understand: (1) that the Sadrist approach does not assume a relationship of enmity between the Sadrists and the government forces, but rather a cooperative one, or at least one that has to become cooperative and will become cooperative in the process of purging the American involvement; and (2) general expressions respecting cease-fire and so on do not implicitly include the American forces, which first of all are not party to the agreement, but more important, since the Americans are in Iraq for an aggressive and destructive aim and no other, a cease-fire with them would be a contradiction in terms. The purpose of this post is merely to gather together the above links to earlier statements, so as to point up the consistency in Sadr's position in this. |
In light of the fact that impartial pro-Sunnintern conspiratorializers count differently from ordinary folk, we should probably start diagnosis with Point Three of Two, Dr. Bones. I mean the point where somebody or another alleged inconsistency in the Muqtadan stance. The precise way Dr. Cartoonoclastes has chosen to present his garnered harvest might puzzle even his fellow gentry a little, vastly superior to ordinary human beings though they be. Still, if we stick in an additional numeral and make it a zero rather than a three to suggest where amidst the two magisterial points Punctus III logically falls, well, how about this?
| And also (0) to point up the propagandistic character of the latest media theme, namely "Can Moqtada control his people"? The relevant question is not that, but rather (3) how the Americans will go about resuming their attack on, and exposure to, this anti-occupation group, and what happens then. |
Even for Cartoono, that analysis is remarkably unreality-based. It would be impolite, and probably inaccurate, not to take his mu’ámarí word for believing himself what he so graciously words for others, but it is a surprise to find him believing that the AEI-GOP-DOD coalition has done any "resuming" lately. If he is talking about the vigilante cowpokers resumin’ their anti-Sadr project from 2003-04, he ought to make that time-frame clear. If, what seems more likely, he is talking only about modern times, the weeks, not years, since the Hannibal of Da‘wa sallied forth knightwise to purify al-Basra of "criminal militia members," Cartoono achieves something like two-hundred-proof unreality-basing, for there has been no sign of resumption whatever. There may, or may not, have been a certain hesitation on the part of Team Aggression to jump in and back poor Hannibal up against the CMM Menace, but that is another story. [1]
And "latest media theme"?! Do Dr. Cartoonoclastes and Mr. Badger and Miss Lynx actually read much of that corporate media product that they so delight to dump on? It seems like we have been hearing about "rogue elements" in the Sadr Tendency and Army of the Mahdí for about the last hundred years. "Latest," forsooth!
The price of Rip Van Links fantasizing that that stale baloney shows "the propagandistic character of the latest media theme" is that he overlooks the real hot poop, stuff like this:
| An Iraqi soldier was watching over the concrete wall on Monday when a .50-caliber round ripped into his head. (...) The formal truce that was announced in the Green Zone with great fanfare on Monday has meant nothing here. Shiite militias have been trying to blast gaps in the wall, firing at the American troops who are completing it and [so forth]. (...) The Iraqi troops where the soldier had been struck in the head on Monday were holding their ground, but they were under attack again. It was Day 2 of the formal cease-fire, and the fighting was still on. |
The "propagandistic character" of the New York Times Company’s M. R. Gordon is flagrant. There is no doubt which side this individual Big Management Party operative is rootin’ for and no doubt that he wants his corporation’s customers to root for that team also. yet the propagandistic character of AEI-GOP-DOD agitprop is a permanent state of affairs, after all, or maybe a timeless tautology What varies from day to day with the phases of the moon and the state of the aggression is less prominent, as for instance that interesting word formal, which Neocomrade M. R. Gordon carefully recapitulates in his bottom line. (I have borrowed the first and last sentences of the scribble to frame the other passage where "formal" is deployed.)
This studied deployment of "formal" is not, I think, utterly unprecedented, but it is several orders of magnitude fresher than loud noises from the Rogue Elements Jazz Band. [2]
The MJ gentry being what they are, one can hardly begin to guess whether they admit the existence of rogue elements. The closest they have ever sailed to it, as I recall, was to notice (once) that some of their impartially chosen special friends amongst the TwentyPercenters of the former Iraq have a tendency to accuse the Sadr Tendency of Völkersäuberung, a tendency that rather interferes with the central MJ project of celebrating a virtual and vicarious watan-nationalism. That is to say, I got the impression that Cartoono the Magnificent would prefer that his clients did not make a big deal about it even if they are "formally" quite right about their facts. [3]
The firm of Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC means well as regards "the consistency in Sadr's position," I suppose, but they lay the alleged consistency on a bit too thick. Some sort of defense or explanation is required about the Sadr Tendency having agreed to be part of the International Zone neorégime instead of simply proclaiming it nájis and refusing to touch it with an eleven-foot pole. Oh, well ....
_____
[1] Non-hesitation (and non-resumption) can not be swollen into very much of a story, though, twistify who will. For once it seems needless to worry that nobody will ever know absolutely for sure until the Big Management perps tear one another to shreds in their memoirs. WYSIWYG, Mr. Bones: poor M. al-Málikí did not ask his mommy for permission before he started hannibalizin’, but when she saw what the brat was doin’, Mommy Crawford decided very quickly that she had to back her brat up -- and Mommy Crawford has been doin’ just exactly that ever since.
It is does not even feel particularly precarious to guess at Mommy’s motives, though of course knowledge of them can never be as securely attained as knowledge of outward behaviour. The lustre of the Party of Hoover and the ideology of W. G. Sumner was already on the line: if militant extremist Conservatism and its chief political organ fail to salvage Peaceful Freedumbia, they will be in deep doo-doo.
Exactly what salvage entails is not an easy question, and one must remember that even easy questions are difficult for GOP geniuses to cope with, yet Team Aggression has decided, reasonably enough, that they will require more in way of Success and Victory than a tombstone for the Kiddie Krusade inscribed "At least they meant well." Mizz Condoleeezzza at one point shortly before the suRGe of ’07 seemed willin’ to settle for little more than that, but she was not, and is not, typical of the pack that she runs with. Obviously now that Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and Crawford and West Point has bubbled to the top of the coalitional pot, scarcely any neocomrades or (unretired) violence pros can be found who do not want a good deal more than recognition of their good intentions. So much the whole invasionite crew have concluded in general, and the particular application is that the Hannibal of Da‘wa can not be allowed to fail. Unless the Kiddie Krusaders can triumph signally and triumph in alliance with their self-inflicted Hannibal, the good name of their whole "Iraq" caper is doomed.
The reputation of Amazing Force is not up for grabs to anything like the same extent as that of Grant’s Old Party, naturally, but nevertheless the Doctor General’s achievements in rehabilitation of the elementary will not preserve themselves by sheer inertia, and Divine intervention tends to be unreliable. Martial Law is still a viable scheme, and the bigger battalions with more high-tech whizbangs still tend to prevail. No serious student is likely to think otherwise no matter how incompetently the Harvard Victory School MBA’s conduct their invasions and occupations.
On the other hand, Quantillâ sapientiâ!: there is an immense mob of unserious nonstudents around in our alien and bewildered world, not to mention an organized Pangloss Movement dedicated to the feel-good proposition "War never settles anything." Not every violence pro is a certified braniac like the Doctor General, and thus it is unremarkable that a few of David’s weaker siblin’s should worry that Amazing Force is in danger of discreditation, even though Mr. Mencken’s conspiracy of kittens is a thousand times more likely to overturn the Washington Monument than feel-gooders to dislodge Mars and Bellona. Naturally the intellectually and ethically weaker sistern at the Pentagon tend to be extremist Republicans and Murdochnews "conservatives" in their private capacity, which leads them to confuse a perfectly genuine threat to their Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology with mere forlorn Quixotisms against Amazing Force as such.
All this seems pretty WYSIWYG to me, Mr. Bones, and one proof of that is that it seems to be záhir even to poor M. al-Málikí, who cannot be expected antecedently to know anything much about Crawfordology. He calculated that if he once started hannibalizin’, his Mommy down at the ranch would have to help him do it and make sure that he didn’t stub his toe too badly, no matter how much she would have advised against it had he been fool enough to ask permission beforehand. So he calculated, and so it is.
I’d say that was more and better than a lucky guess, Mr. Bones, though, to be sure, God knows best.
[2] Aunt Nitsy’s new magic F-word turns up in today’s slender story about Lebanon , which begins
| Lebanon’s governing coalition on Wednesday night formally reversed two decisions that had provoked the militant group Hezbollah, bringing the country a step closer to resolving the week-old political crisis that set off the worst factional violence since the nation’s 15-year civil war. |
Since newspapers do have editors and have been known to enforce particular Confucian or Parteichinesisch rectifications of language, there may be something more than coincidence going on here.
One does not want to fall off the other side of horse, though, and become a Mu’ámara Junction goofball straightaway. Let us temperately speculate, Mr. Bones, that if this is not happening by accident, the twistifiers probably want their marks to understand "formal" as more or less equivalent to "unimportant."
Hannibal of Da‘wa and M. de Siniora of the Beirut statelet are both "formally" committed to engagements with the Forces of Evil that will not be relished at Rancho Crawford and Tel Aviv. (Actually Hannibal is not committed, but M. R. Gordon thinks that he is, and that determines the wordin’ that MRG and NYTC adopt.) If somethin’ underhanded is goin’ on here, it will most likely be that the consumer of corporate media is to understand -- wink, wink, nod, nod -- either (1) that M. al-Málikí and M. de Siniora have no sincere intention of meetin’ these engagements or else (2) that they have no bindin’ obligation to do so and (probably) that the NYTC hopes that they will not.
With hoi polloi "formal" tends to be a word of dismissal, Mr. Bones. Our own Aristotelian view that Form Trumps Matter is far off the journalistic scope.
[3] "Can Moqtada control his people?" is ambidextrous. Can he keep them from dabbling in ethnic cleansing? Can he bind them to a cease-fire agreement with the U.I.A.? Both Crawfordites and Sunninterní conspiratorialists have reason to utter the verbal formula, but they may not agree at all in their substantive concerns.
Thee and I are tempted to like the Sadr Tendency, Mr. Bones, in part because the Rev. Señorito is not a total control freak. Mais que savons-nous?
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