| Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite, lashed out Wednesday at the militiamen, whom he accused of using civilians as human shields. He vowed to disarm all militias, Sunni or Shiite. "There is only one army, and that is the army of the state," he told reporters at a news conference broadcast on state-run television. |
Wow! The Hannibal of Da‘wa is a whiz at Pol. Sci. as well as Mil. Sci., Mr. Bones. But . . .
... but one possible catch is that some of his more retrograde subjects may consider his ingenuities a bit westoxicated. That resonant Weberian declamation, for instance, might be understood to imply that the Expected One (hasten the glad advent!) is not to have any army at all when the Time comes. Presumably poor M. al-Málikí only meant to tell the Rev. Señorito as-Sadr "I knew the Twelfth Imám, boy, and you are no Twelfth Imám!"
Before we plunge into the murkier depths, though, notice that the Los Angeles Times manages to prove that the invasion-language press is not completely hopeless: they got "human shields" right, as Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC did not. [1]
On to the murk! If we take His Excellency seriously, as why should we not?, it follows that all those armed operatives of AEI and GOP and DOD cannot constitute a proper army either. Exactly how the Petrolaeus Boys are to be classified is far from clear. Hitherto Hannibal II has treated them as a sort of Foreign Legion of the Islamic Da‘wa Party, the moral equivalent of Badr and Peshmergá. Since the IDP evidently lacks local levies of its own, that was reasonable enough from a Mil. Sci. point of view. It is not so reasonable, though, if "There is only one army, and that is the army of the State" is now to be the Party line. I presume His Excellency does not regard the former Iraq as completedly subsumed in Greater Texas, with Marvin the ARVN (the Iraqi organisation) soldiering for that State rather than for the I. Z. neorégime.
He might have worried a little about the Superstate, it seems to me, although admittedly nobody else seems to. Is it not the Parliament of Man that occupies and regulates the former Iraq, most recently under the auspices of Security Council resolution #1790 ? If Hannibal was tryin’ to be strictly accurate, his slogan should have run "There is only one army, and that is the Army of the International Community!" Yet neither in Peaceful Freedumbia nor down at Rancho Crawford do the invasion-lovers much care to dwell on that aspect of the bushogenic quagmire. No more do most principled opponents of invasionism, who are often under the cheerful delusion that the Parliament of Man might somehow end the occupation and semiconquest, and therefore very reluctant to notice that the PoM has authorised and empowered and emboldened AEI and GOP and DOD ever since Day Two of the aggression.
Objectors will object that this "Army of the International Community" is almost as imaginary as is the Army of the Mahdí. Let them believe so if they choose, but on that basis they can have little to say about the loftier heights of Pol. Sci. Hannibal of Da‘wa and Weber of Weimar think that legitimacy matters. The vast majority of theorists in Western Sieve have traditionally thought so too, though they were usually not completely unaware that oftentimes legitimacy and five euros will procure a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Peaceful Freedumbia remains bogged down in Oriental Sieve, however, a fact which conditions my own reaction to Hannibal’s press conference. What kind of sense does it make to sloganize "There is only one army, and that is the Army of the State" in Arabic and before an audience of natives? Apart from abstract issues and remoter history, does not that sound rather alarming like the noises lately made by the ‘Aflaqí Ba‘th? Dr. Gen. Petraeus and Party Proconsul Crockerius and Little Brother Himself will be edified by talk like that, or think themselves so, but will the typical neo-Iraqi subject? "What has the State ever done for me?" is mere anarcholibertarian moonshine straight from Planet Dilbert if asked inside the context of Greater Europe, but to ask the same question at Basra or Takrít is not instantly absurd. In the course of the last two centuries Hannibal of Da‘wa’s new subjects really do appear to have got most of the drawbacks of statism with few of its advantages. This is no doubt historical contingency and certainly affords no theoretical warrant for Rand-Nozick smash-the-state malarkey, [2] but it does seem to be a fact, maybe even an important fact.
____
[1]
| Maliki accused the Mahdi Army of being a group of outlaws, and of taking human hostages during the Sadr City fighting. [This could be in view of the fact that the latest post-March 25 death toll is 925*, not around 400 as previously reported. So there needs to be spin for that]. * 925 was reported on Wednesday as the death-toll for Sadr City, but Azzaman on Thursday describes the figure as for Sadr City and Basra together, and AlHayat also implies it could be a global figure for the period since the campaign started on March 25. |
"Human hostages" is agreeably goofy, though, insofar as it backhandedly suggests the potential existence of cow hostages, and rhododendron hostages, and who knows what else?
Back in the real world, Hannibal II was only required to spin the collateral damage to human life and limb, not the total damage. Insofar as callin’ in AEI-GOP-DOD air strikes on his own subjects kills and maims authentic "criminal militia members," he is all for it and would not dream of apologizin’ any more than Max Weber would have apologized. Hoc voluerunt!
Even the Google gibberish machine gets "human shields" right. That fact, however, is basically only another sign of NKM’s westoxication. The phrase in question is a cliché in Greater Texan, so in Modern Literary Arabic it naturally sticks out like an imported sore thumb.
[2] Unwarrantable in the opposite direction is Prof. Cole’s celebrating the fifth aniversary of V-IQ Day (1 May 2003) with "Wolfowitz and other Bush officials depicted Iraqis as secular and downplayed the possibility of ethnic violence in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Baath Party."
Can JC be attempting to live down to Cartoono’s travesty of him?
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