What Cartoono Was Trying To Point Out

What I was trying to point out in the post today was mainly that (1) Bush in a player in all of this, even if we don't have the transcript of the phone calls, and even if the NYT, Cole, and the info-ops people try and draw a curtain over that; (2) the process he's involved in is one of shrinking the Iraqi participatory process, not expanding it.

Have you ever noticed, Mr. Bones, that the Mu’ámara Junction gentry’s favourite [English] word is "point"? Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes are forever pointing out points for the benefit of us less evolved. In isolation or from an unknown source, such a sentence might only reveal that the scribbler of it did not convey her original intent well and is taking a second shot at it. But Cartoono was perspicuous enough to be getting on with the first time, as it seems to me:

Abdulaziz al-Hakim took a phone call from President Bush yesterday afternoon ... and ... convened a meeting of United Iraqi Alliance .... Then ... a delegation of senior Dawa and Supreme Council people was sent yesterday to Tehran for talks. (...) The purpose of this obviously Bush-instigated delegation? Naturally it would be hard to say, but here's the context. Recall yesterday's stunning press-conference remarks by Maliki about fighting the Mahdi Army until it is exterminated; and threatening the members of the multi-party opposition group--"whether they are members of Parliament or even members of the government"-- with charges of inciting to violence if they don't shut up about this, reported verbatim by Al-Jazeera and passed over in silence by the NYT this morning. It is as if Maliki had decided he was able to run his government without being too concerned about broad-based political support, relying rather on some other, perhaps more authoritarian, basis.

The radical goofiness of conspiratorialism is present undiluted. George XLIII cracks the whip, and the International Zone menagerie performs instantly. "If you believe that, sir, you would believe anything." The substantive view from the goof’s eye was scarcely to be missed. To gloss it with "(1) Bush in a player in all of this, even if we don't have the transcript of the phone calls, and [so on]" is, as it were, to offer plot summary up as literary criticism. Anybody who bobbled that ball the first time is unlikely to pick it up on the rebound.

With "(2) the process [poor M. al-Málikí is] involved in is one of shrinking the Iraqi participatory process, not expanding it" the perspicacity of Cartoono soars above events to the analysis and summatorializing of events, but the perspicacity itself remains beyond reproach. Those unfortunates who can’t translate "to run his government without being too concerned about broad-based political support" into "shrinking the Iraqi participatory process" unassisted have no business discussing the former Iraq at all. They must have lots of problems nearer home, being lucky if they can cross the street without assistance from a nurse or a mounted policeman.

Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC might, no doubt, have been even more pellucid still. Of whom but M. Gustave Flaubert, however, might that not be observed? A three-point rehash would have been slightly superior. To (1) "Dubya done it," and (2) "Núrí Kamál is no Andy Jackson," might have been addded (3) "[T]he NYT, Cole, and the info-ops people try and draw a curtain over [pretty well everything of any importance]." It is possible that Mu’ámara Junction modestly decided not to summatorialize that point under a separate head because it is presupposed in all of their scribbles. They obviously do not in principle mind repeating for dummies what was dummy-comprehensible enough to begin with, yet when that might sound rather like insistently blowing their own horn, they may forego it. It would not be remarkable if this gentry, like others, is more distinguished for taste and elegance and sensibility and sentiment than any steel-claptrap logical rigour.

Notice again "Naturally it would be hard to say." Naturally one takes that formula chiefly to mean that the MJ gentry believe that they know a thousand times more about the former Iraq than their customers are likely to, yet they are not such boors as to rub it in with salt. All proper Mandarins used to refer to themselves as "this coarse and illiterate gentleman," did they not? [1]

Yet Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes do not behave like manor-born aristocrats. The quotation can easily be expanded -- put in context, as it were -- to "Naturally it would be hard to say, but here's the context." That version is close enough to Lord Murdoch’s "We report, you decide" to smack of Philistia and Thatcherdom at least a little. Also Sgt. Joe Friday: "Just the facts, ma’am."

I daresay all conspiratorializing or conspiracy-mongering, mu’ámariyya, simply as such is compelled to talk Mr. Gradgrind’s lingo. If once caught in the act of attempting to get away from facts and contexts, the firm’s good will would be lost, perhaps lost irretrievably. It does not much matter -- obviously! -- whether the conspiratorializers have accurate facts, but it mandatory that they have factual or factual-looking facts.

No, wait a minute, Mr. Bones, that is not quite right. We must bear in mind always that at Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes the staff and management are vicarious conspiratorializers. The vile skullduggeries that they corporately exist in order to unearth and expose are not aimed directly at themselves. In the Greater Levant, where conspiracy detectors take for granted that they themselves are being targeted, mere facts and contexts count for a great deal less than with the LBC gentry. Here in the holy Homeland we have Levantine-style conspiratorializers of our own, zealous Kiddie Krusaders and stalwart foes of Islamophalangitarianism who are convinced that all the Catilines of the world are in league against precisely themselves. Plainly Mu’ámara Junction is not like that. [2]

After all, Mr. Bones, the greatest charm of the MJ gentry is that they are not really very much like anybody else in sight. [3] Their subject matter overlaps heavily with that of avowed Sunninterní propagandists, but the underlying form, the underlying mental mold or Gestalt that facts and contexts get poured into to cool and solidify is so different as to reduce even that great resemblance to secondary or tertiary importance.

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Cartoono did in fact make himself a little bit clearer in one small zone with the following exuberance:

To cut to the chase, here's what throws me. Bush needs a bilateral security agreement by year-end. He needs it to be as credible as possible under the circumstances, so it would be nice to have a broad-based cabinet to sign on to it. Instead Maliki's base is shrinking and he doesn't seem to care. And we have the Badr et al delegation to Tehran. So what's the new strategy for a bilateral agreement and does Iran fit in somewhere? And where does Iran fit in the War on Sadr?

At the moment, then, the prime fact/context du jour at Mu’ámara Junction is the impending SOFA. As Crawfordology, that primacy might be defensible, but MJ is not seriously interested in Crawfordology, not interested enough to explain why Little Brother should be urgently in need of such a thing or why a thoroughly implausible, but Hyperpower-enforced, version will not serve. The gentry are not much interested in the evil Qommies either, I fear. Once both Safavids and Crawfordites have been discounted, it would not be too amazing if there were simply not enough facts and contexts available in the former Iraq and with the Sunní International to fadge up any very satisfying conspiracy.

One can make out easily enough that the Sunnintern thinks a SOFA likely to be fort mauvais as tending to perpetuate the current International Zone neorégime indefinitely, "sectarianism" and all. Yet to grasp why conspiratorializers need a conspiracy theory does not of itself dictate what that theory shall materially consist of. [4]

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[1] Very likely they did nothing of the sort, but the tale is ben trovato for rhetorical purposes. Who but a nerd zoölogist cares how ostriches really behave when they are scared?


[2] It would be odd if it were, because our autoconspiratorializers would certainly regard Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and even the Cartoono the Magnificent himself, as "useful idiots" or worse, if they had ever heard of them. MJ’s unremitting (and officially unnoticed) War on Juan may have something to do with the fact that Prof. Cole is prominent enough to be attacked by Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh, whereas Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes still languish in the narcissism of petty differences. But God would know best about that.


[3] Apart from Dr. Righteous Virtue, that is. Needless to say.


[4] In an exceedingly loose way, both Qom and Crawford might be accused of preferring the perpetuation of the I. Z. neorégime on an "as is" basis to any alternative feasible just at the moment. This, however, cannot be Cartoono’s view, not unless he has swerved from his doctrinal position that the Supreme Hakeem fiends are all agog for a radical remodeling, for a partition of the provinces of the former Iraq in all but name, and perhaps eventually in name as well. BGKB.