"incapable of imposing its will"

... in Iraq in and since 2003, even though the US was able to defeat and entirely disband the Saddam-era armies it has still been incapable of imposing its will on the Baghdad government....

"Paper will stand anything," the proverb for that kind of thing used to run, Mr. Bones.

Nowadays one would need to mention keyboards or screens, no doubt. Plus everything should come with a datestamp, so future researchers can establish exactly when Publicist P3407-C105 decided that poor M. al-Málikí was not a Pétain or Quisling or Thieu or Pinochet after all, but a stalwart and successful champion of the "national" cause of "Iraq" whom not even Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower could ever successfully bring to heel. [1]

Yet no mere datestamp can banish the sub-Orwellian tinge: "We have ALWAYS been at war with the Baghdad government!" Including when Sultán Jerry Bremer was presidin’ over it, naturally. Well, at least that bit would explain some otherwise dark corners of Crawfordology!

"What went wrong?" asked Prof. Dr. Bernard Lewis. "Not a hard question," the blogamuffin boy replied. "Anybody who starts off by supposing that the GOP geniuses have, or ever had, some definite Will to impose on their neo-Iraqi subjects was bound to run off the rails eventually. Furthermore, Publicist P3407-C105 analyses as if the impossibility of nailing jello to the wall meant there must be something wrong with the concept of the hammer. P3407-C105 has never had any use for hammers and would be really pleased, ideologically and sentimentally, to demonstrate that hammers do not work. That hammers CAN not ever work! That conclusion is so attractive that if it takes moving the goalposts a little to get a ‘demonstration’ of it, well, why not?"

Happy days.


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[1] The metamorphosis is extremely recent, dating from some time in the last four to six weeks.