| The UAE president's friendly remarks on the occasion of announcing the debt-relief decision are another mystery. If this is a turnabout in Gulf-state policy with respect to the Maliki administration, it isn't at all clear what the trigger was. |
I assume this sudden attack of vulgar ignorance must be weather-related, Mr. Bones. But is that a proposition about meteorology, or only about ideology and sentimentality? Perhaps the recovery time will provide a clue. The upscale conspiratorialisers at Mu’ámara Junction cannot go triggerless for long, and indeed, in his one subsequent revelation, Cartoono already begins to show signs of recovery -- well, of autodemystification, at any rate. If he can get over his temporary aporia that fast, say in forty-eight hours or fewer, then it was only another Silly Season phenomenon that need not be taken too seriously.
Cartoono speaks of another mystery: his first one was only about "the arrests ... (of the president of the Amara provincial council and other senior people)." Chickenshit stuff is that, compared to whether all the little Gulfies have suddenly decided to enlist as militant extremist Republicans. I am not sure I understand why the gentry should feel that there is any mystery requiring them to forge themselves a trigger given merely a few kidnappings of Sadrists, misbehaviour which could easily be predicted or retrodicted on the basis of mere inertia in the established trajectory of the sectarian fiends. [1]
In his distress, Cartoono allows one to watch him thinking out loud, which, as might be expected, is rather like a visit to the sausage factory in its effect on one's esteem for the finished product:
| This is only a thought: (1) "Unity of Iraq" would be an attractive theme to the Gulf states if it meant abandonment of the Supreme Council's Shiite super-region project for the South and Center of Iraq. |
Not a very good thought, is it? Mere mortals without elaborate factional scaffolding or knowledge of cuneiform chickentracks are capable of that move. Indeed, they make that move all the time. That is to say, they fit whatever just happened into their own prepared agenda more or less as they would attempt to overpack a physical suitcase. At Mu’ámara Junction it would be pronounced fort mauvais if the Supreme Hakeemes were ever to rend the sacred garment watan-nationalism in the former Iraq by establishing that godawful nine-headed Southern Confederacy of theirs. Cartoono's first panicky thought was only that the Gulfies must think so too. Must they really? [2]
| (2) The stress here isn't on rooting out "gangs and outlaws", but on protecting the "unity of Iraq", which makes sense if you take the Bush-type world-view and assume that those who oppose the government oppose the unity of Iraq, suggesting perhaps the idea of abandoning externally-supported Sunni groups as a quid pro quo for Maliki going after the Sadr trend. |
That is a little more like it. It would appear that the eagle-eyed Miss Lynx has finally noticed that George XLIII thinks he is a vicarious watan-nationalist for the former Iraq too, and has advised her more analytical male colleagues, Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes, accordingly.
Amour-propre tends to interfere in cases like this, and so it does. The MJ gentry are never, ever going to grant that minions of AEI-GOP-DoD have quite as much right as they themselves do to chauvinise vicariously about ex-Iraq. (As much right as Dr. Righteous Virtue, the ne plus ultra of chauvinistic vicariation, possesses, even!) Hence a red herring like "the Bush-type world-view" must be dragged across the trail at once to confuse the thoughthounds, though it will remain obvious at once to anybody who cares to try to think well that the fact that Busheviki believe so-and-so is only a fact, a thing located altogether outside the Big Management Party swiatopoglad.
That AEI and GOP and DoD suppose poor M. al-Málikí rather than the more ferocious TwentyPercenters to be the best friend the "unity" of "Iraq" ever had is not much more surprising than spotting a sunrise off to the east. Cartoono & Co. take for granted that NKM is really a wolf in sheep drag, "a conscious and dedicated member of the [schizomaniac] conspiracy." They take it for granted to the point of not considering the plausibility of "those who oppose the government of Paflagonia oppose the unity of Paflagonia" as an abstract proposition in Pol. Sci. Like their Bushevik enemies, the Mu’ámariyya suffer from a severe case of HIBS, History-Is-Bunk Syndrome. Anybody who cares to try to think well is free to remember that the national unity of ninety-nine Paflagonias in every hundred owes more to the efforts of Paflagonian government than to any other single factor. [3]
Continuing his recovery, sort of, Cartoono resorts to second-hand Crawfordology in his latest oracle:
| Al-Hayát cites a "prominent political source" who says the scheduled-withdrawal concept (via a "Memorandum of Understanding") in fact has met with the approval of the American side, for two reasons: (1) They don't like the risk of an abrupt change of policy under a putative Democratic administration, so this will be a smoothing mechanism; and (2) They aren't keen on the idea of a battle between Bush and Congress in the final months of his administration. |
The Gulfies appear to have vanished, though orthodox cartoonoclasm probably denies that they are independent of AEI-GOP-DoD even in the slightest. On that basis, once the Big Party perps had reasoned as just explained, correspondin’ talkin’ points will have been dispatched to Abu Dhabi forthwith, along with instructions to forgive poor M. al-Málikí the debts of Saddám.
Meanwhile, (1) and (2) seem to be one and the same invisible trigger. More threateningly, the pistol seems to be invisible as well. Is it actually a fact that the good folks down at Rancho Crawford don't object to poor M. al-Málikí's latest vivacity, not even in the slightest? That they may have suggested it to him themselves, even? 'Twere pity if the learnèd Dr. Cartoonoclastes was to conspiratorialise brilliantly about human events that did not take the trouble to come to pass.
The inimitable -- God willing! -- Sabrina Tavernese describes the state of the pistol as follows:
| Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki publicly confirmed Monday that his government was leaning toward concluding a short-term security pact with the United States instead of a broader agreement that would last for years. (...) With elections nearing in both countries and opposition likely from the Iraqi Parliament, Iraqi leaders seemed to be opting for a narrower and short-term pact. Mr. Maliki’s office said in a statement that the “current trend is toward reaching a memorandum of understanding” that would extend the presence of American troops for a period of time. While the statement used the words “scheduled withdrawal” about American troops, it did not seem to mean that a precise timetable for troops to depart was being negotiated. |
Lesser intellects than that of Cartoono the Magnificent will find that account a bit puzzling, very likely. Would their puzzlement go away if they learned of the "smoothing mechanism" and the "aren't keen on the idea of a battle"? Those invisible triggers fit the pistol at brave New Baghdád not at all badly, but unfortunately they were originally concocted to fit a pistol at Crawford TX. The New York Times Company must discuss that end of the stick elsewhere, since Mizz Sabrina says not a word about it. The competition does better :
| Haider Abadi, a Dawa member and political insider, said Maliki did not believe Iraqis should be pressured into making long-term arrangements with an outgoing administration. "No one can guess which way U.S. policy will go after the election," he said in a telephone interview. "We cannot go on discussing an agreement that may never materialize. There is too much at stake." Abadi said the Iraqi military's recent successes against militants in the cities of Basra, Amarah and Mosul and in Baghdad's Sadr City district had inspired new confidence in the security forces. "Are we going to be at the mercy of some sort of decision in the White House that we have no control over?" he asked. Abadi said the government was proposing that the U.S. finish handing over responsibility for security in all 18 provinces within six months and pull out most of its troops in two to three years. Nine of the provinces are already under Iraqi control. According to Abadi, U.S. negotiators have been receptive to the idea, but have proposed a five-year timeline. |
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[1] On the other hand, perhaps the drain-bamaged do not admit the conceptions of "mere inertia" or "established trajectories"? The MJ gentry may hold to a para-Aristotelian political physics, according to which no apparent action at a distance can ever really be happening. Immediately behind every human event must come an impetus impellens. If we assume in addition that in nine cases out of ten, the I. I. will be invisible to the naked eye, or perhaps rather to the pure mind, do we not arrive at a plausible account of this patient, Dr. Bones? There is no way to tell whether such a diagnosis is Popperianly TRUE, I admit, but it is sufficiently ben trovato to be getting on with, it saves the the crucial and distinctive appearances of cartoonoclasm.
"Quasi-Cartesian" might serve in place of "para-Aristotelian." M. Descartes' vortices worked the same way, unless I have been misinformed.
On the other hand, chickenshit is chickenshit, with or without vis inertiae.
[2] If their owners were close students of Signore Machiavelli (as of course they are not), the kardboard kingdoms of the Gulf of Petroleum might not find "Najafistán" altogether unattractive. Any former Iraq that falls to pieces can't be ALL bad. Not for an intrinsically rich but defenseless corrupt racket located in the immediate vicinity.
To consider the question from the Gulfies’ standpoint is only a distraction from diagnosing the Cartoonoclastes case, however. The gentry at Mu’ámara Junction give even less of a hoot than the Kennebunkport-Crawford gentry do what those folks think or want. Should either crew ever be able to impose its Comprehensive Vision of the Middle East, the Gulfies will swiftly get what's comin' to 'em, but either way, there would not be any silly nonsense about askin' 'em whether they want to get it or not.
[3] Were I in a mood to make concessions to infatuate error, I would probably reword "Paflagonian government" as "government in Paflagonia," to make clearer that colonial and imperial neorégimes count too. Certainly the unity of the former Iraq owed a lot to Turks and Brits, and owed at least a little bit to the Mecca monarchy as well.
It would be waste of breath to dispute with Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC about the substance of this matter, when obviously they'd be perfectly happy about the "unity" of "Iraq" provided only that a (rigorously nonsectarian) Arabophone Sunni Ascendancy is handed total control of the Baghdad Fedguv once again.
As polemic and rhetoric, though, Cartoono and his ideobuddies might do better to deny that poor M. al-Málikí is connected with "the government of Iraq" at all -- and that not de jure alone, but de facto. I daresay the MJ gentry really think that NKM is neither legitimate nor actually in control of anything much, but, as you see from the above, Mr. Bones, they are willing to give ground about it verbally. If they could think better, they probably would not do that. But God knows best.
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