| Azzaman this morning says the idea of a GreenZone coalition of non-reconcilables, including Sadrists and Alyan's group along with others, is still under discussion. (...) The item in question focuses on the refusal of the Iraqi List to rejoin the government, in spite of invitations by Maliki, and the explanation given by their spokesman Osama al-Najaifi, namely that Maliki hasn't been "serious" in his offers in this regard, but also because of the following: "He explained that the Iraqi list is working on discussions and agreements with leaders of the Fadhila party and the Sadrist trend, along with the Dialog Council led by Khalaf al-Alyan, and the Arab Dialog Front of Saleh al-Mutlaq, the aim being a unification of our positions. He said 'the results of our discussions with these political blocs encourages us to continue, and what we are trying for is the creation of some kind of parliamentary coordination.' " It will be recalled ... that among their common "nationalist" aims were opposition to privatization of the oil sector, and opposition any further Clause 140 procedures as demanded by the Kurds on Kirkuk. What today's reports seem to indicate is that this idea of a "nationalist"-oriented parliamentary opposition is still alive, in some form. And the fact that one of its proponents, Khalaf al-Alyan, is also a leader in the IAF has been a roadblock (or one of the roadblocks) to an agreement on IAF rejoining the government. |
Thee are to observe the full extent of this ignominious collapse, Mr. Bones, though the self-esteemism of the MJ goofballs naturally prevents them from spelling it out in full. Instead of Cannae or Hattin or Waterloo, they will now settle for "parliamentary opposition still alive in some form." Only parliamentary opposition under the Khalílzád Konstitution, mark thee: Cartoono & Company don’t expect their "‘nationalist’-orientationism" even to be able to produce a majority in the Chamber and thus a new quasiministry for the International Zone neorégime, one from which Islamic Da‘wa and the Supreme Hakemes (and all other fiendish schizomaniacs, if there exist any such) shall be banished.
It would not do anybody much good if these paltry things were possible, to be sure. The things would constitute Dame Victory herself in an authentic parliamentary system, but Peaceful Freedumbia has been saddled by the willful AEI-GOP-DOD coalition with a Khalílzádo-Feldmanite travesty of the real thing. The question of who is nominally in charge of all the nominalities, all the Bagehotian dignifications, is of scant importance. Still, so reality-based a consideration as that one is antecedently unlikely to occur to the staff and management of Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclases LLC. One should therefore score them a few points, Mr. Bones, for not wasting their own time and energy or presuming on their customers’ patience with political arithmetic about the native IZ quasideputies and their blocs and their parties and their factions and their factionettes and how a three-vote margin for ‘nationalist’-orientationism might conceivably be obtained by adding 37 + 14 + 23 (?) + ... + of course the Virtutites down at Basra + . . . .
On the other hand, my knowledge of rigorously nonsectarian backers of the Sunní International is admittedly limited. Maybe Cartoono & Co. were never tempted by that parlour numbers game at all, but are sound neo-Maoists who won’t take any Victory that does not emerge from the barrel of a gun? On that hypothesis, they would be hesitant on morale grounds to admit that at the moment the Hannibal of Da‘wa is doing pretty well, gunbarrelwise.
On the third tentacle, though, how about the Parmenidean detachment of the mu’ámariyya goofs from mere delusive appearances? If it looks as if poor M. al-Málikí is consolidating his position and may shortly make himself almost as well established as Nguyen Van Thieu used to be, well, doesn’t that parade of shadows on the cave wall eo ipso go to prove that something else entirely must REALLY be going on in the former Iraq? And hopefully something a little more pulse-exciting than "parliamentary opposition still alive in some form"? Over in Mubárakistán, after all, the ’Ikhwán have that, and they can use it any time to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, should they chance to have ten dollars in cash as well.
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If thee will look over thee’s shoulder, Mr. Bones, towards Lebanon, thee may join me in wondering why Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Cartoono the Magnificent are not throwing a party for the God Party of the Rev. Nasralláh. Inside the Beirut statelet, the Hizb have now achieved a good deal better than "parliamentary opposition still alive in some form," have they not? Why should scrupulously nondenominational Sunníphiliacs churlishly refuse to celebrate?
(...)
Well, sure, it might have something to do with the unmentionable factor that thee mentions, sir, but let us see if we cannot in charity do them a little better.
Perhaps LB&C reflect to themselves that the recent success of the God Party, though real enough, amounts to giving Lebanon a stiff dose of Khalílzád-Feldman pills. With eleven ministers out of thirty, "the opposition" can make sure that "the majority" (as the Seedier Revolutionaries prefer to misrepresent themselves verbally) cannot do anything dangerous. But of course with sixteen ministers out of thirty, noble ganders can keep silly geese in line also. ("Where there's a will, there's a won’t," says St. James of Thurber.) Nobody will be able to get anything much done at all, thereby exalting the Beirut statelet to the windswept heights of anarcholibertarianism, where it joins ancient Poland and modern Peaceful Freedumbia.
Now thee and I and the late Miss Rand of St. Petersburg and the late Mr. Nozick of Harvard Square have at least a few words of praise to spare for the liberum veto and the zlota wolnosc of yore, but, let us face it, sir, most of our contemporaries do not. ’Abú Aardvark with his stern preference for the statism of St. Max Weber [1] is far more to the vulgar taste in this year of religionism 1429/2008. Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes have gone out of their way to make themselves disagreeable to AA, but that seems to have little to do with the educationalist’s statism, which LB&C would probably find entirely satisfactory if only it subserved their own "‘nationalist’-oriented" purposes instead of ’Abú Aardvark’s distinctly different purposes. [2]
To speak after the manner of The Philosopher: AA is obnoxious to LB&C by defect of their preferred bologna (watan-nationalism) rather than by excess of his own stuff (Weberian violence-monopolizing).
The picture is rendered even more picturesque in that most Anglophone persons who profess and call themselves "nationalist" nowadays do not make the distinction in question at all, and may accordingly be thought of as watan-statists if thee like, Mr. Bones. Outside the Greater Levant and Latin America, the primary discrimen rerum is between favoring and disfavoring watan-nationalism taken as an indivisible atom. Only in exceptional regions where one encounters rather more ’awtán than seem logically or historically required does the issue joined between Prof. Lynch and the Mu’ámara Junction goofballs arise with any urgency. It certainly did not arise in the Indochina of Sec. McNamara and Sec. Kissinger, not unless one somewhat perversely maintains that these two gentlethugs were proposing to introduce it when they attempted to rally native and international and holy-Homeland support for ‘So. Vietnam’. (I digress a little, admittedly, but clobbering Vietnam analogies is a very worthy cause.)
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[2] These purposes apparently revolve chiefly around getting a policy job for himself in the next Demoncratic administration. But God knows best what he is up to.
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