| [J]ust look at Iraq, where we have now entered the stage where both Sunnis and Shi'a, and the various groups and parties and tendencies within each of the sectarian camps, tries to ingratiate itself with the Americans, and hopes that those fabulously well-equipped Americans will leave behind, and leave to their particular group or sect, so much of that equipment. And so they keep talking, as Hashimi did the other day, all about the "need for a stronger army." Hashimi, a Sunni, sees the army, not the police, as the place where the Sunnis who formed the officer corps under Saddam are likely to find their surest power base within the so-called "national institutions" -- if they are to do so at all. So he and the others go on about "greater security" -- which will, of course, only be insured by the Americans leaving those Humvees, those Bradley fighting vehicles, those tanks with special anti-I.E.D. devices, those guns, that night-fighting equipment, those helicopters, oh, and a few dozen planes would do nicely, and don't you want us to have a little bit of a navy to patrol off Umm al Qasr and help you contain Iran? |
Thee gotta admit il est différent, sir!
Simplicissismus may not be very much in earnest about his latest brainstorm, though. If he was, wouldn’t he look up where -- on the turf of which "particular group or sect" -- the militant extremist GOP has installed its various Treasures of Progress? That way he could forecast whether it will indeed be M. Táriq al-Háshimí who dons the Mantle of Saddám, or somebody else entirely, such as, for instance, the Hannibal of Da‘wa, poor M. al-Málikí.
Attempting to fill up lacunae left by jerks in their jerkery seems an agreeable way to pass the Silly Season, so let us see if we can help little Hughie out a little on this new anti-Islamophalangitarian front that he alone is fightin’ on. M. al-Háshimí's TwentyPercenters, taken as a theocommunitarian collectivity, do have one big advantage: having shot at the armed operatives of the GOP far more than other invadees, it would be natural to expect that most of the AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP coalitional stockpiles and arsenals are located in Orthodox districts. The hillbillies do not require policin’ by the vigilante cowpokers of USIP & Co. at all, and the heretics of the South have required much less policin’, and also got part of their daily minimum requirement from the Redcoat Folk. A logistics zone from brave New Baghdád west through Abú Ghurayb and then up the Euphrates to the Syrian border logically ought to contain most of the Treasures of Progress. By no accident, this zone is also most of where Rear-Colonel Friedrich von Kagan originally proposed to concentrate his suRGin’, back before little Freddy read Stephan Leacock and decided to mount his HUMVEE and gallop off in all directions.
At the moment some real research would be required, I suppose. Hannibal Redux has ‘redeemed’ -- nice post-Civil War word, that one! -- Basra and Revolution City and Mosul and Amára and is alleged to be redeemin’ Diyálae even as I keyboard. All five of these glorious conquests are located in the ‘wrong’ direction from New Baghdád, an east-to-south direction in which there should not be much AEI-GOP-DOD hardware already present. Hannibal (exalted be He!) has managed to prevail in these immortal campaigns without a whole lot of actual fightin’, though, so it is entirely conceivable that the antecedently expected concentration of Treasures of Progress has not been seriously reduced.
Thus M. Táriq al-Háshimí may find most of the goodies that he (allegedly) wants to grab where he would prefer them to be, out there in the open spaces of the Wild Northwest, where never is heard a Free Kurdish word and the skies are not Shí‘í all day.
But M. al-Háshimí is not in like Flynn, Mr. Bones, not at all! The chief trouble is that the turf in question is no more Háshimí turf in particular than it is the turf of six dozen other parties and factions and factionoids and factionettes. The local yokels may all be TwentyPercenters and pious Sunninternis who read every missed link that Cartoono the Magnificent creatively and conspiratoristically restores with burbles of delight. Nevertheless, their effective degree of unity is negligible. The one proposition that they all agree on, a return of that venerable Sunní Ascendancy without which the former Iraq must -- O Unthinkable Alas! -- remain former forever, is no use for practical tawhíd purposes. Should Simplicissimus be right in guessin’ that the TwentyPercenters will scarf up most of the preowned matériel de la guerre, they will probably use it to shoot at one another. To be sure, some individual barracks-baser will presumably emerge as the new Nasser at the end of that weedin’-out process, but (1) the process may take quite a while, and (2) one cannot be perfectly certain that heretics and hillbillies will stand idly by waiting to see which TwentyPercenter jackal gets to lord it over them. [1]
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Now I put it to thee, Bones, that all this jerkery is delightfully Fitzgeraldesque. Hugh the Simple takes it for an axiom that everybody Muslim is in cahoots with everybody else. Between that brain disease, or jihád careeerism, and a certain shortage of ordinary I. Q. points, the beatus can scarcely see the difference between Dr. Humpty Dumpty perched up on the wall as if he was Bob Cardinal Spencer explainin’ all about everythin’ to Miss Alice, and that unsightly mess on the ground that the joint royal cavalry and infantry have so far failed to be able to do much about.
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[1] Intervention from the side of the Sunní International to assist some particular jackal cannot be ruled out, but why should they bother, after all? How can they bother? The Sunnintern does not possess any military forces that would be good at that aggre..., at that proäctive sort of caper.
Indeed, thee might maintain, Mr. Bones, that the Sunnintern does not have any military forces at all. Like the United Nations, it has member states that do possess fleets and tanks and biplanes and high-tech whizbangs &c., but these Treasures of Progress are not automatically at the disposal of the umbrella organisation. (Mostly not at their disposal non-automatically either.)
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