"probably least-well understood"

The point that is probably least-well understood by consumers of the corporate media and other coverage of Iraq is point #4. (4) The Kurdish-party leadership says what happened was a rejection of the whole basis and foundation of national reconciliation (meaning they see national reconciliation as something built on this inter-bloc agreement). Mutual solidarity respecting the two "federalist region" projects is something the Kurdish parties see as essential to the whole Iraqi political process. AlHayat: The statement said that Talabani and Abdul Mahdi "agreed officially on the veto of the law, because it includes constitutional and procedural violations which ruin the atmosphere of national consensus, and which blow apart the initiatives upon which the political process has been based." (...) The UIA held a meeting led by Abdulaziz al-Hakim which...advised the Presidential Council to reconsider [the Kirkuk issue] in a way that is consonant with the constitution and with the national agreements. This came after statements by Kurdish leaders which implicitly doubted the reliability of their alliance with the UIA on account of the clear direction of some of the Shiite deputies in taking positions abandoning the principles of the Shiite-Kurd alliance signed in 2006, and the "four-party alliance" set in mid-2007.

Dupes of Murdoch though thee and I be, Mr. Bones, we have noticed something of the sort. To understand everything exactly the way that roll-your-own conspiratorializers come up with would be too much to expect, but we are in tolerable agreement with the Anglo-Arabian Press Trust, are we not? Indeed, we even analyze a bit to the ‘left’ of al-Hayát, maybe. M. de Tálebání's own manifesto as published at VOI said plainly that NatRec is a Khalízád-konstitutional principle of the I. Z. neorégime, not merely "essential to the whole Iraqi political process." That is to say, His Free Kurd Excellency considers that the anti-NatRec tendency of the bill gave him technical juridical grounds to exercise his liberum veto over the attempted doings of the Arabophone flatlanders. Only a child or a goofball ideologue could fail to notice that the main reason for his ¡nie pozwalam! was that H. E. thought the bill was not good enough for the Free Kurds, but there was no need for M. de Tálebání to say that out loud. There was not even any indispensable need to muck about trying to show that the secret ballot of quasideputies was Khalílzád-unkonstitutional. A point like that is so technical and ‘legalistic’ that it is not likely to count for anything much in politics, whereas to be able incidentally to make one’s opponents out as enemies of NatRec whilst acting on ‘constitutional’ grounds oneself is sheer manna.

We have, to be sure, not considered M. de ‘Abd al-Mahdí's liberum veto. [1] The AAPT says "Mutual solidarity respecting the two ‘federalist region’ projects is something the Kurdish parties see as essential to the whole Iraqi political process," which suggests that the schizomaniacs of Najaf do not see the alleged solidarity as quite so essential. Given that there are three times as many Twelvers as Free Kurds in the former Iraq, that makes sense. Macchiavelli must explain somewhere in the Discourses why the weaker party to a deal always insists louder on pacta sunt servanda, trying to make up with rhetoric for a shortage of centurions and Kalashnikovs. Usually unsuccessfully, I expect, although I don’t recall that any social-scientizer has ever made a statistical investigation.

Circumstances alter cases and probabilities, though, and one circumstance that leaps to mind is that the Free Kurds basically just want out of the ‘Iraq’ racket altogether. In note [1] I just noticed that M. al-Háshimí might be wiser to treat the Khalílzád Konstitution as a nuisance that will be around for a while. M. de Tálebání is in the opposite case, as it seems to this keyboard, and although his konstitutional gamesmanship is pretty nifty, one finds it difficult to believe that His Excellency deeply cares how the bedouin govern themselves after the Free Kurds escape altogether. This means that the Macchiavellian à priori is not applicable. Free Kurds and icky sectarians may well have about the same level of interest in a solidarity "respecting the two ‘federalist region’ projects." If M. de ‘Abd al-Mahdí consciously reckons in that the Free Kurds are likely to vamoose the first chance they get, he might conclude that he needs them more than they need him, or at least that he should try to use them as much as he can while he has them. On that basis, he logically ought to unite himself with M. de Tálebání's veto. Working backwards, then, the fact that he did so unite himself may be evidence that he calculated along the lines suggested. One cannot be sure, but it is a plausible guess.

How do Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Cartoono the Magnificent guess? Well, see if thee can make it out, Mr. Bones, because I have failed to:

The reason the point isn't well-understood is that the two-party nature of this agreement is in blatant conflict with the US government/media PR position to the effect it has been supporting the Iraqi political process as a national project, not a Kurdish/SupremeCouncil one.

From the goofball perspective, "supporting the Iraqi political process as a national project" must mean failure to notice that poor M. al-Málikí remains as icky a sectarian as ever, though recently dressed up in watan-nationalist drag politically and become the Hannibal of Da‘wa militarily. I daresay the goofballs expect all that displeasing nonsense to collapse like a house of cards eventually, and probably sooner rather than later. That is not a completely unreasonable scenario, though far from a sure thing. But what has it to do with schizomaniacal fiends and two-party conspiracies? Poor M. al-Málikí has never been an all-out fiend, and the general trend of his recent successes and victories, as long as it lasts, is rather away from fiendishness than towards it.

Naturally one would have to be an ’Abú Aardvark, a worshipper at the shrine of St. Max Weber, in order to find Núrí Kamál perfectly and radiantly satisfactory merely because he has been gradually making his neorégime's writ run in a lot of places where old maps of the former Iraq imply that it ought to. Still, a goofball with any brains might scheme how to take advantage of events rather than just lie down and moan. [2] Why not let poor M. al-Málikí reunite the scattered fragments of the former Iraq on the basis of icky sectarianism and even on the basis of factious schizomania -- to the extent that such strange tricks prove possible -- and then snatch it away from him and give it all back to Sunní Ascendancy II? The goofballs would not get the immediate satisfaction that they crave by playing their cards that way, but there is no way on Gore's green earth to play the Sunninterní / TwentyPercenter hand and make a grand slam in the next ten minutes. "Softly, softly, catchee monkey!"





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[1] Or that of M. Táriq al-Háshimí either. For completeness’ sake, let it be noted that I cannot think of a single non-technical reason why he would want to veto the bill.

If he were very clever indeed, he might veto on (fake) technical Tálebánían grounds, attempting to help establish it as an axiom of Khalílzád konstitutionalism that anything contrary to NatRec is automatically strengst verboten. He needs to be able to throw procedural monkey wrenches into the machinery more urgently than either Free Kurds or icky sectarians, because his TwentyPercenters are much the weakest theocommunity in sight. But, like the rest of his pack, he does not seem to realise how weak the TwentyPercenter position is and takes for granted that someday soon normalcy will return to the former Iraq, with the Natural Masters of Mesopotamia securely in the saddle once again, booted and spurred and all set to saddamize.

Of course a Sunní Ascendancy restoration would be entirely contrary to both letter and spirit of the Khalílzád Konstitution, which no doubt leads M. al-Háshimí to despise the document and makes it extremely unlikely that he will insidiously try to use it for his own factious ends rather than frankly get rid of the damn thing as quickly as possible. Thinking like that, he has no technical reason to veto either. But God knows best what he actually calculates.


[2] Could it be that the gentry at Mu’ámara Junction have somehow become incapable of conspiring for themselves while developing their really outstanding ability to fantasize other people's conspiracies?

I daresay there would be a certain poetic justice in that: sic vos non vobis mellificatis, apes!

BGKB.