The Plain People of Irockland

Yes, I know, Mr. Bones: there are scarcely any rocks worth mentioning in all of Twinriverdom, whereas in Hibernia, all that is not bog, .... I know, sir, I know. "Oppression is the worst pasture."

But come along, sir, do thee want ‘Iraqland’? With that ludicrously alien ‘q’ dead in the middle and never an ‘u’ to keep it company? Try to be serious, sir. One might as well set up to patronise "the plain people of Xzajjun" or some other dysphonious planet invented by the tin-earred sciencefictionist. Plain people cannot exist on Xzajjun. Plain people can scarcely exist in Erewhon, for Zeus’ sake! Although to be sure, their lives would have been even more complicated and elitist still, had their lives not-happened in some puristical *Erehwon.

If we are to follow in the path of Myles na gCopaleen, sir, -- him of the admirably Sassenach phony monnicker!", -- and to follow that path is my current resolve, sir! --, [0] we may not unreasonably require that our rhetorical patronisees inhabit a place with a plain name. The Plain of Jars, for instance, although that particular slot is already taken. MnagC could have occasional fun with his PP considered as denizens of *Eerie, or whatever it was that the alleged indigs used to call their Sore State of Errin’ back in good king Devil’s golden days, but if that sort of thing had been allowed to be more than occasional, he would not have been plain Brian O’Nolan / Myles na gCopaleeen / Flann O’Brien / Brian Ó Nualláin, he would have bordered on being James Joyce. [1] [2]

So forget ‘Iraqland"! If ‘Irockland’ still seems a bit unplain, sir, just think of it written as ‘iRockland’ to rhyme with ‘iPod’ and thee will be in like Flynn, sir. Thee can hardly account ‘Rockland’ less congenial to the dumb tongues of the WASP God Folk than ‘pod’ is. They have been sayin’ both of the above for centuries now.

"So what got him started on this kick?" Not a hard question:

The Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq, headed by Harith al-Dhari, the most important single spokesman for the Sunni resistance, issued a statement today that it introduced as follows: "The long-term agreement with the American occupation will have no weight with the Iraqi people, and the nationalist forces will take it upon themselves to reply to those responsible, and to hold to account those who are involved in it, and without a doubt there will be a new price to pay in the blood of pious martyrs"--but that ends with [some more twistitorializing from Cartoono].

But wait, that is only half of it, sir! Juan the Wicked had already put the National Populist gentlethug’s good advice into operation even before it was uttered, commenting informèdly yesterday

So the idea of a national referendum on any Status of Forces agreement seems to be spreading. In my view, one impetus for this adoption of a California-style referendum approach is that the Iraqi parliament is not seen as strong enough to express the will of the people.

I certainly never expected to encounter National Populism at the Ann Arbour Faculty Club, but there it is. To be sure, ’tis only second-hand or vicarious NatPop when Don Júan does it, unlike the Real Thing as vended by M. Hárith ad-Dárí. Strictly speaking, JC is on a par with Dr. Cartoonoclastes and Mr. Badger and Miss Lynx -- and with the ineffable Dr. Righteous Virtue as well. [3]

It adds notably to the fun, does it not?, that when MJ goofballs and Dr. Virtue and Prof. Cole all, mirabile dictû, agree on something, the thing agreed upon turns out to be as rare and far-fetched as engaging in National Populism on behalf of a nationalist people and populist nation that one has not the honour to belong to personally. Over on the other side of the trenches, the holy Homeland’s aggression faction has no product to match NatPop with. The closest AEI and GOP and DOD can come to vicarious National Populism is along the lines of Mr. Gladstone’s remark “There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and the other leaders of the South have made an army. They are making, it appears, a navy. And they have made, what is more important than either; they have made a nation.” Poor M. al-Málikí's navy does not get much press, but apart from that complete lacuna, one can occasionally spot invasionites who fancy their International Zone neorégime the same way the Grand Old Man once fancied the "Confederate States of America." In neither case does the lowly populace have anything critical to do with either the (supposed) accomplishment or the evaluation of it. [4]

Anyhow, there’s the whole lot of ’em, goofballs and Righteous Virtue and Don Júan Cole all standing up for THEM THE PEOPLE of the former Iraq. This is not a show thee can see every day, Mr. Bones!

The vicarious NatPop parties are perhaps not all three standing up for exactly the same THEM, but M. ad-Dárí [5] may not mind, who said

[A]ll of the political and social and tribal forces that stand up to the occupation and resist its presence--all are urged--today--to express their anger and their disgust in all the ways that are available to them, and to send messages of denunciation and clear statements of opposition and refusal of the taking such a step [as the proposed SOFA], because "the arrow does not return to the bow", and "oppression is the worst pasture."

It is not probable that M. ad-Dárí was thinking of thee and me when he thus orated, Mr. Bones, but we may seize the occasion nevertheless to express our anger and our disgust. In case anybody has failed to notice from our previous scribbles, let her be advised hereby that we consider it a Very Bad Thing to go about in the world invasionizin’ other people’ provinces like witless Bushies. Furthermore, we here and now call upon our Congresscritter and upon the two Senators from Massachusetts to do whatever they can by way of refusal of the taking of such a step. If Little Brother tries to get legislative approval, let it be denied him! If Little Brother attempts to evade his obligation to get legislative approval, in the Republic of Plato let him be impeached and tried and condemned and removed! In the sewer of Romulus, though, let the next non-GOP POTUS revoke and annul any such Big Management Party yoosurpation before sundown of her first day in office -- that is all that can be reasonably expected of mere mortals. [6]

For that matter, it is also not probable that M. ad-Dárí was thinking of the Lynx-Badger-Cartoonoclastes crew, or of Dr. Righteous Virtue, or even of Prof. Cole, whom an I. Z. collaborationist pol might conceivably be aware of, when he thus orated. M. ad-Dárí orates from a rather precarious platform, figuratively speaking. The real world is not altogether without agencies that might ward off the SOFA that he very justly dreads and loathes, but these agencies are almost exclusively located in central North America rather than anywhere near M. ad-Dárí’s own neighborhood. If he were perfectly well informed and perfectly serious about wanting what he claims to want, he would first go lobby on Capitol Hill, and then perhaps try to get some holy Homeland media attention in order to convey his concerns to Televisionland and the electorate.

The plan he has actually adopted seems to be to have all those political and social and tribal forces of his -- all strictly indig -- try to make the willful coalition’s Peaceful Freedumbia look so bad on the tube that the Homeland’s couch potatos will lobby Congress for him. M. ad-Dárí may figure that the eventual comeuppance of Sec. McNamara and Dr. Kissinger as regards "South Vietnam" has established the workability of this indirect approach. He is in some danger of making a logical error at this juncture. I should not venture to deny the workability, but that is not at all the same thing as supposing that the Vietnam mode of anti-warriorism can always be relied upon. Any event that happens once shows that such an event is possible, but as to its being probable or inevitable as well, who can say?

In the case at hand, it seems to me quite likely that NatPop will simply lose. For what does such a losing entail? No more than that eventually AEI and GOP and DOD will contrive to reduce the former Iraq to the same unhappy condition that all its neighbors in the Greater Levant find themselves in, with a régime in place that is despised by most of its subjects yet remains firmly seated chiefly because it has some good hyperpowerful friends at Crawford or Washington or both. The Vietnam Paradigm is perfectly possible, but so too is this paradigm, which might be dubbed the "Macedonian Paradigm," because Cassander seems to have invented it first to keep the Greek cities in line.

As my terminology is meant to suggest, the Macedonian Paradigm has a much longer track record of success than M. ad-Dárí's preferred alternative does. No doubt an unequal condominium of internal OnePercenter clients and external OnePercenter patrons does not ALWAYS prevail over "political and social and tribal forces that stand up to the occupation and resist its presence," but on the whole the Macedonian Paradigm has done far better than "The People United can never be defeated!" M. ad-Dárí is not, of course, to confuse IS with OUGHT and ditch his National Populism merely because nobody could possibly instantiate it in the former Iraq under prevailing conditions of aggression and occupation. That way lies only moral and political cretinism.

The way to be recommended is the Path of Pascal: let M. ad-Dárí endeavor to think well about his NatPop, to make as clear and distinct as possible in his mind both what he wants The People United to grab and what TPU is likely to be able to grab, not sacrificing either concept to the other. After he has done that privately, he must decide whether he wants to share his good thinking with his troops or feed them intellectual phony baloney for morale purposes instead. That is a separate issue, it seems to me, although I am not quite sure that M. Pascal would agree that it is.

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[0] Well, how would you punctuate two successive emm-dash interjectoids between subordinate clause and main clause?


[1] M. von Joyce could, and did, patronise his PP as well as any elitist ever, but his technique is such as to make it rather a zoölogical plainness than a geographical that the fake specimens get imbued with. ’Tis a perfectly legitimate line of commerce, that one, but it does not happen to be our own.

As to NB’O / MnagG / FO’B / %^#$!&, I am pleased to have remembered correctly that Brian used to spell ‘Brien’ with an ‘e’. That plan will have kept the PP of I in their place!


[2] "Sore State of Errin’" fits in nicely, but of course the state in question is not Irockland, but Texas. Or Greater Texas.


[3] Dr. Virtue altruistically natpops off as follows, for instance:

Today, the latest phase in the forced ethno-federalisation of Iraq is being played out as the Kurdish–ISCI ruling minority tries to fashion a provincial elections law that can suit its strategy of minimising popular impact on the elections results.

He differs slightly from Dr. Cartoonoclastes and from Juan the Wicked by concerning himself more with the wickedness of the wicked than with what the Children of Light are going to do about it. Yet at the end of a day, Dr. Righteous Virtue is a paleface planmonger too, even if he seems to expect his plans to be executed by swarthier types:

Stockholm could be an opportunity for a fresh discussion of to what extent the Maliki government’s line is truly representative of Iraqi public opinion and really constitutes a sound basis for a new political system in Iraq. Arab states could try to find a constructive position between full boycott and unconditional surrender to the ISCI-Kurdish blueprint for the new Iraq.

Dr. Virtue jumps in at the deep end of the Pol. Sci. tank, it seems to me, when he proposes that committees of foreigners are now to make sure that Ruritania and Paflagonia (and presumably every other statelet that cannot defend itself adequately) equip themselves with government lines truly representative of public opinion. This is not strictly contradictio in adjecto, Mr. Bones, although it looks like it at a casual glance. Exactly what the native Virtutite sophistry in defence of this detestable spinach may be, I cannot tell you, but an already familiar sophistry can do the trick required: simply suppose that R.V. has invented or discovered himself an external public whose opinion must ever be deferred to -- not to say ‘enforced’. That entity will be ontologically comparable to Dr. Toynbee’s "external proletariat," don’t thee know?

As often, Pol. Sci. may be lagging behind political practice, inasmuch as Cartoono the Magnificent and the rest of the Mu’ámara Junction gentry pretty plainly conceive of the Sunnintern, which they firmly support contra mundum with that rigorous nondenominational unsectarianism that makes them so charming, as a Toynbeeo-Virtutian external internality. Don Júan does nothing the least bit like that, which must have a good deal to do with why the goofballs hate him. He may well be confused on more or less the same subject, but there have been no traces in the Colean chaos of anything ideological that is more recent than St. Woodrow Wilson.

Righteous Virtue himself speaks of "Arab states," which could be identical with the goofballs’ Sunní International, but probably means something more in the vein of Colonel Nasser. And God knows best what all these guys are up to, exactly.


[4] Mr. Gladstone became something like a populist at a latter point in his career, but naturally the recollection of ‘President’ Davis was merely an embarrasment to him by then. At all times he was far loftier-minded than the dupes and dupers of AEI and GOP and DOD are at present. Even when he misguidedly praised the CSA, he praised it as a thing in itself, disinterestedly, whereas of course the glorious Coalition of the Willful care nothin’ for poor M. al-Málikí except insofar as he serves their convenience and flatters their fatuous self-esteemin’. The 1863 Gladstone was a sort of "force nationalist," as it were, more interested in armies and navies than in elections and constitutions and "faith and family, blood and belief." But he was at his worst a vicarious force nationalist, not a grubby self-seeker.


[5] Cartoono calls M. ad-Dárí "the most important single spokesman for the Sunni resistance," which is mostly a question of goofball taste or ideology, but at least there is nothing the least bit disinterested or vicarious or altruistic about him.


[6] Notice that even at the Romulus level, constitutionalism matters to Wunnerful US in a way that must be blankly unintelligible to AEI-GOP-DOD subjects in the former Iraq.

M. ad-Dárí may or may not intend to inspire his theocommunity’s shootists to more and better effusions of physical force when he talks that way. Here in the holy Homeland, though, to recommend armed muqáwama against militant GOP extremism is simply off the scope. Steps far short of that, steps like impeachment of Little Brother or summoning the Big Party perps to account for themselves before an international war crimes tribunal, have only to be mentioned to make the mentioner of them seem a dotty crank. To talk in a Dárí-like way inside the frmework of a civilised State is counterproductive, so let’s not do it, Mr. Bones! We can be under no obligation to demonstrate our anti-Bushevik zeal by shooting ourselves in the foot.

For The Time Bein’

Sir Hugues de Fitzguerrière, a.k.a. St. Hugh the Simple, must be regarded as a general pain in the anatomy by the vulgar ruck of Kiddie Krusaders. Either he or about 99.99956% of the other kiddies must be makin’ a whole series of grave mistakes about against exactly whom they ought to be krusadin’.

This morning it brings out its little tin hatchet and proposes to take the scalp of Little Tommy Wobble (him of the Big Moustache) and the Cardinal of Noble Najaf’s scalp as well -- and all that is only a preliminary warm-up, because the main target of the idiot execration turns out to be somebody else entirely. Watch Huey practicin’ in the bull pen, Mr. Bones:

Al-Sistani, who doesn’t want jihad against the Americans for the “time being,” was, some will recall, "nominated" in print by excitable Tom Friedman, always-ready-to-declare-his-latest-enthusiasm Tom Friedman, grand-simplifier Tom Friedman, as a suitable candidate for a Nobel Prize for Peace. That neither latest, nor greatest, of a long succession of friedmanian ludicrous remarks (not too ludicrous apparently for him to continue to ask for, and receive, $45,000 per public appearance, for a collection of shallow plongitudes and endless platitudes, but so eager-beaverly presented, that some may come away complacently thinking that they have actually "learned something") was mocked here. Al-Sistani's listing of "najis" (unclean) things at his website -- you know, blood, sputum, sperm, feces, Infidels, dogs, that sort of thing -- must have gotten to Friedman somehow, for he promptly put a lid on his exploding enthusiasm for Al-Sistani, and we never heard from him again on the matter. But Al-Sistani was also deeply impressive to [Dr. Jerk].

Well, if there is guilt-by-association, why shouldn’t there be character-assasination-by-association as well? I take that to be Hugh the Simple’s nifty modus operandi. Tommy Wobble once praised His Eminence, and Tommy also once praised Dr. Jerk, and anybody who don’t think that is enough to ensure that the three of them will be chained to the same rock in West Hell forever is plainly unfit to talk about Kiddie Krusadin’ at all.

Those kiddies who are only IQ-challenged or ignorant, not clinically demented, cannot be expected to be very enthusiastic about anybody who works for the New York Times Company without editin’ a factional rag for Dr. Murdoch at the same time. Mr. Thomas L. Friedman must have exhausted the patience of anybody who cares about consistency in the first six weeks of his Levantine cavortings. That deadline passed about 107 years ago. Hugh the Simple, though, could not care less about consistency. He is not tempted by Prudence or Charity to take the view that the accused ought to be identified with only his most recent brainstorms. Not at all: Hugh the Simple goes through Thomas the Moustachio the same way his wingnut ideobuddies at the New Criterion go through the Publications of the Modern Language Association, on a snark hunt for This Month’s Worst Rubbish Ever. And once found, that becomes the true essence of Friedmanicity, or PMLA-think, ever after -- unless, of course, next month should provide some fresh rubbish even rubbishier still, and therefore better reflective sub specie aeternitatis of What Liberal Twerps Really Think.

In short, Hugh the Simple wants to nail its opponents down to the worst mistake or mistakes that they ever made and pay no attention to anythin’ else about ’em. That is exactly how it conducts its pseudo-prosecution of the jihád fiends, and if Mr. Friedman of the New York Times expects different and better treatment, why let him get rid of that terroristical facial hair of his first! (‘Alí Cardinal Sístání could do with a shave also, come to think of it.) Dr. Jerk, the real target of today’s Fitzguèrrierian tripe and baloney, wears beard and moustache both, so perhaps he is indeed located at the heart of darkness! When I get tired of mocking mental cripples, maybe I will see if I can find a mug shot of Dr. Jerk.

Having myself drawn a parallel with the behaviour of Kramer Major, I can not claim that Hugh the Simple invented its M. O. as thus exhibited. Less unintelligent zealots for Boy and Party and Ideology invented the "This Month’s Worst Rubbish Ever" shtyk long before it showed up. Nevertheless TMWRE does give a different impression when little Huey deploys it. The main difference seems to be that Hugh the Simple’s notions of the worst ever are, as we have noticed already, idiosyncratic. Very few of the other Kiddie Krusaders will consider Mr. Friedman’s unfinest hour to have been shoehorning Cardinal as-Sístání and the Nobel Peace Prize into the same sentence. Needless to say, Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh will never approve of rewardin’ any towelhead whatsoever with a distinction that plainly ought to be reserved for those whom Dr. Ratzinger (or whoever is in charge) has pronounced worthy representatives of Western Sieve. Still, even though His Eminence of Noble Najaf should not make even the long list in Scandinavia, His Eminence of Noble Najaf is not a positively bad guy. Or at any rate, H.E. of N.N. was not positively a bad guy before he recently started putting out rescripts against feeding operatives of militant Republican Party extremism when they are hungry in practice, or justifying muqáwama wataniyya with quibbles of scholastic theory. [1]

Little Huey’s detailed shtyk deployment for this specific skirmish may perplex its marks and dupes at Rio Limbaugh a little bit. It writes "Al-Sistani, who doesn’t want jihad against the Americans for the ‘time being’ ...." It might, by the way, have taken that take straight from Juan the Wicked. Regardless of whether thee and I agree with our personal favourite jihád careerist -- or with Don Júan either, for that matter -- we know what it is goin’ on about with its Time Bein’ riff. At Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh, however, does the average mark or dupe know what we and it know? Murdochnews &c. have not chosen to talk to the holy Homeland at large about the Cardinal’s recent pro-hunger and anti-neoliberation fatáwae, whether real or spurious or imaginary altogether. Unless I have missed something, Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly detect from the columns of Aunt Nitsy that His Eminence of Noble Najaf may have been up to something remarkable in the last week or so.

Hugh the Simple behaves curiously: it assumes that its intended marks and its actual dupes will recognise the sound of the Time Bein’ Jazz -- for why mention that noise at all if they will not? -- yet it does not make pro-hunger and anti-neoliberation counts the gravemen of its indictment of ‘Alí Cardinal Sístání. Perhaps these fresh and more intolerable outrages will be promoted to "This Month’s Worst Rubbish Ever" by the end of June, but as of 28 May, His Eminence’s TMWRE remains "you know, blood, sputum, sperm, feces, Infidels, dogs, that sort of thing" -- for purposes of communication with the Big Management Party base and vile, in any event.

A suggester might suggest that Hugh the Simple considers najása an indispensable bridge between badmouthin’ the Cardinal of Najaf and badmouthin’ Mr. Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times Company. She, the suggester, thereby grossly overrates its intelligence. Both of these fiends bein’ fort mauvais in general, plus of course Middle-East associated, would be quite enough for little Huey to be gettin’ on with. And when we eventually do arrive at the badmouthin’ of Dr. Jerk, najása is nowhere to be seen.

Because the badmouthin’ of Dr. Jerk has only metalogical Fitzguerrièrian connections with either the Rev. Sístání or Mr. Friedman, we may as well discuss it in a separate post.


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[1] The actual existence of these alleged responsa jurisprudentialia has not yet been established to my own complete satisfaction, Mr. Bones. As for Rio Limbaugh, I am not sure that anybody there has even heard of the allegations. And God knows best.

Dr. Cartoonoclastes Does Najaf

Cartoono the Magnificent does Noble Najaf like this:

[I]f there is any toughening or image-improvement by the Sistani group in Iraq, it is completely invisible. No attempt was made to put the implications of the AP story into the Iraqi news system. And as far as the Karbala office-opening is concerned, there isn't any suggestion of any "hinting at a tougher position" on the part of Sistani there either. In fact the brazenness of the Americans' idea of having their first big provincial ribbon-cutting right in the religious heart of Iraq suggests the Americans, for their part, don't think there's any such thing as a Sistani tightening, implicit or otherwise.

There is a lot more drool where that specimen came from, Mr. Bones, and maybe we will get to some of the rest later on. Naturally one prefers to begin with the drooliest drool in sight, however. There it is, behold it!

Perhaps we ought to cite Dr. Cartoonoclastes’ preliminary observations on "toughening or image-improvement," especially because (1) Cartoono collaterally blames Juan the Wicked -- big surprise! -- and (2) because we ourselves have been known to joke about being a "Cole Patrol," and (3) especially because one wonders whether an avowed cartoonoclast supposes that anything short of total breakage can improve an image. So, then,

[T]here are really two main families of theories about the AP story and the surrounding Sistani news: (1) The ... "challenge to Sistani" theory, .... (2) Another theory is that the AP story (and a supporting item Juan Cole dug up this morning in Farsi, to the effect Sistani has banned sale of food to the American forces) represent first and foremost a move by Sistani and his circle to start hinting at a tougher position against the Americans, in implicit support of the Sadrist position. This might represent "real" toughening, or merely "image improvement," but the main point of this family of theories is that the stories are mostly being initiated by the Najaf side, not by the challengers.

We had better begin by passing over how Cartoono the Magnificent passes over any question about the accuracy of the AP story. Let it be stipulated that ‘Alí Cardinal al-Sístání has in fact told a number of persons that armed resistance to aggression and occupation by operatives of the AEI-GOP-DOD Grand Coalition is warrantable. Whether these persons were seeking a formal responsum jurisprudentiale is not very important for political and moral purposes, and neither is the question of whether such guidance was intended for the inquirers alone. The paleface invasionites have every reason to be alarmed to hear that His Eminence approves of anybody at all shootin’ back at ’em under any circumstances whatsoever. If H. E. deviates from Gandhian passivity and Quakeroid ‘quietism’ at all, the exact degree of deviation is immaterial to the Aggression Faction here in the holy Homeland, and almost equally immaterial to the International Zone neorégime of poor M. al-Málikí.

When it comes to Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes , however, degrees of deviation from Gandhi and Cobham are all important. What is the first passage quoted, if not a shriek or moan that Cardinal al-Sístání refuses to deviate enough to suit the firm of LB&C? Being themselves perfectly impartial, as is of course only to be expected from rigorously nonsectarian cheerleaders for the Sunnintern, LB&C long ago decided that the I. Z. neorégime is illegitimate and to be opposed by any and all hooks and crooks that may come to hand, with those hooks and crooks involving physical force rather favoured over wimpier ones. By this point the Mu’ámara Junction gentry will take anything they can get, I daresay, but ideally they would not have to accept the expulsion of AEI and GOP and DOD at the hands of a heretical pontiff. Such a pseudoliberation would not, obviously, restore the former Iraq to the luster that it once enjoyed under Aaron the Orthodox , or even to the subluster more recently allowed it under the Ottomans and the Brits and the Mecca Monarchy and the Patriot Officers (and even under the‘Aflaqí Ba‘th). Were His Eminence of Najaf to prove the Fidel Castro of Twinriverdom at last, the Natural Masters of Mesopotamia would still be left out in the cold, and that might prove even a worse chill than the present one. [1] [2]

Thee will notice, Mr. Bones, how Juan the Wicked gets involuntarily recruited for "the Najaf side, not by the challengers." Thee will recall that Cartoono the Magnificent knows about the bahá’iyya business but prefers not to talk about it. Quite apart from that, Prof. Cole of course knows a thousand times more facts about the duodecimal heretics than MJ goofballs or real Sunninternis and TwentyPercenters usually do. By a sort of tertiary-academic equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome, there is a certain tendency for folks like Juan the Wicked to become advocates of the indigs that they happen to know lots of facts about. It will not do to deny this flatly, but as against Dr. Cartonoclastes, there is no need for denial. JC could stockholmize just as well by rooting for Muqtadae as by rooting for His Eminence. Or indeed, by rooting for both the Sadr City team and the Noble Najaf team equally. Only if a fan’s two pets were playing one another, would she have to choose between them.

Has it come to that? At Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC they think so, obviously, but do they think what is so at LB&C?

I should guess that they do not. By thinking this particular thing that is not -- viz. that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the Rev. Señorito al-Sadr and ‘Alí Cardinal al-Sístání -- the goofballs manage to misunderstand everything that is Shí‘í-political triumphantly. His Eminence is still doing business at the same old stand: "Let everbody Twelver stick together, the Sadr Tendency most emphatically included!" After five solid years of Responsible Nonwithdrawal on the part of AEI and GOP and DOD, one may reasonably begin to wonder whether that is the best possible line of business to be in. What if the alien gentlethugs never go away at all? That is a good question, in my judgment, but my judgment is worth nothing worth mentioning except insofar as it is shared by actual neo-Iraqi subjects of the extremist GOP. And there is no clear sign that either Sadrists or ‘Sistanians’ have begun asking this question yet.

His Eminence of Najaf’s alleged responsa jurisprudentialia could be taken to point in exactly the opposite direction from that in which Cartoono’s crew choose to look. To agree -- (only) in private, and perhaps (only) in theory as well -- that the Sadr Tendency, or the Army of the Mahdí, or particular individual believers, may possess a Divine-Law right to resist invasion and occupation might be understood as an attempt to keep the hotheads in the fold, not at all to excommunicate them from it. To create a really unbridgeable gap would seem to require that H. E. declare political and military collaboration with the forces of AEI-GOP-DOD harám, a step which would obviously be the death knell for "Let’s all stick together!" One could have inferred from the ’Áyatalláh’s external behavior to date that he must internally consider that Divine Law does not forbid either collaborationism or muqáwama, and likewise that it makes neither of them mandatory.

Perhaps times have changed and that henotic view should be changed as well. Perhaps it will be changed. We shall see. Meanwhile, though, there is no evidence worth mentioning that it actually has been changed, not in the Associated Press article or anyplace else that I know of. Cartoono the Magnificent assumes what it makes him feel good to assume, adequate evidence not required.

Juan the Wicked offends against M. Pascal’s First Moral Principle as well, though only in a curious proleptic fashion. JC is quite sure that the Rev. al-Sístání is going to endorse muqáwama and ditch collaborationism one of these days, but he is also quite sure (and quite correct to think) that it has not happened yet. [3]



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[1] The MJ goofballs and their Sunninterní clients (or patrons) cannot be expected to agree with my speculation. It is totally inconceivable to them, as far as I can ascertain, that anybody but the TwentyPercenters should rule the former Iraq in the absence of extraterrestrial intervention from Planet Kennebunkport-Crawford.

Dr. Cartoonoclastes may even know that His Eminence ‘knows’ that scrap of knowledge as well as the goofballs and the TwentyPercenters themselves, in which case there would be no mystery about why H. E. is not exactly ablaze with zeal in the matter of pseudoliberation. Sic vos, non vobis, mellificatis apes: why on earth should the Cardinal wish to see the backs of the militant Republican Party extremists, if they are merely to be replaced with the fronts of militant Sunninterní extremists?

H. E. is not a military gentleman. It is improbable that he conceives of the correlation of forces in any such terms, not even in terms of joint hillbilly-heretic militias (d.b.a. the ‘National’ ‘Army’ of ‘Iraq’) keeping the Natural Masters down indefinitely rather than vice versa, as Cartoono expects. Perhaps the Cardinal simply does not think about "what if" scenarios for after AEI-GOP-DOD finally go away at all? This whole fuss might be explained as a misunderstanding of what business H. E. is actually in: what was intended as a scholastic juridical ruling on the "right of armed resistance," so to slightly miscall it, may have turned into concrete political and military schemings of the sort that excite the pulses of goofball conspiriatorializers. (But God knows best.)


[2] Mere abstract logic keeps pointing towards an alliance between the TwentyPercenters on the one hand and the Glorious Coalition on the other. AEI-GOP-DOD would find themselves -- as often in the annals of the holy Homeland, as elsewhere in the Greater Levant -- supportin’ a minority indig régime that most likely could not survive on its own. History grievously interferes with rationality from both sides, however: the Natural Masters are not open to the idea that their mastery may have to be propped up by alien outsiders from now on, while the alien outsiders are stuck with the notorious fact that it was they and nobody else who saddled the former Iraq with the I. Z. neorégime in the first place.

For all his thrillin’ Hannibal Redux impression of recent weeks, poor M. al-Málikí remains about as poor as ever. He falls between the same two stools as ever. He is not a Natural Master and will never be accepted as equivalent to one, least of all by the genuine article. That leaves him with only the Khalílzád Konstitution to fall back on, and unfortunately the KK makes all mastery impossible for everybody. For a while poor M. al-Málikí and his belligerent buddies down at Rancho Crawford can make do with Núrí (Jawád) Kamál more or less alone as the indig ‘minority’ to be imposed upon the former Iraq by colonializers and imperialists. In the long run, though, a one-man base is ridiculously tiny and precarious. I do not know what authoritative Pol. Sci. considers the minimum size for a collaborationist native minority to be, but surely it must be a good deal larger than this one.


[3] Since this is an anti-goofball scribble, Mr. Bones, we need not go into the question of exactly what Don Júan is doin’ at this moment. But to give you a brief preview of the coming attraction, I suspect Prof. Cole is really playing holy-Homeland political games when he talks like that: UNLESS B. Hussein Obama gets in and cancels the worst excesses of AEI and GOP and DOD, Cardinal al-Sístání will eventually find himself forced to . . . et cetera.

Starving Out the Baní Crawford

For some inscrutable Middle Western reason, Prof. Cole has suddenly decided to look in the Persiphone press for anti-GOP zingers about the former Iraq, and, as I speculated the other day, it looks as if they do exist to be found:

Fars News reproduces in Persian on May 24, 2008, another anti-American fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. It says that its correspondent in Najaf reports that an Iraqi Shiite submitted the following to Sistani: 'I sell foodstuffs. Sometimes the Occupying Powers or their associates come to my establishment. May I sell them foodstuffs?' Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani replied: ' Selling foodstuffs to the Occupying Powers is not permitted.'

"And the daleel for that is, Your Eminence?"

Last I knew, the US military in Iraq does not buy its food from Iraqis but rather imports it, for fear that Iraqi nationalists might poison it. (( Ahem! )) So the fatwa has no immediate effect. But if Sistani is laying the grounds for a Gandhi-style non-cooperation movement, he certainly could put a crimp in the American military's style in Iraq. I can't imagine US troops could function in the Shiite south or much of Baghdad without Shiite cooperation. Sistani still has a great deal of moral authority, and would be backed by less cautious clerics such as Muqtada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Jawad al-Khalisi. (( Who? )) This fatwa is significant in light of the reports that Sistani has been orally permitting attacks on US troops by Shiite militiamen loyal to the Shiite religious authorities in Najaf. Then an Iranian news service reported yesterday that Sistani is also coming out against the proposed mutual security agreement between the United States and Iraq that is intended to serve as a Status of Forces Agreement after the United Nations Security Council authorization for US troops to be in Iraq expires in December. The report says: "The Grand Ayatollah has reiterated that he would not allow Iraq to sign such a deal with 'the US occupiers' as long as he was alive, a source close to Ayatollah Sistani said. The source added the Grand Ayatollah had voiced his strong objection to the deal during a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday." Sistani may have been forced to take a stand on this issue because his clerical peers and rivals are coming out vocally on it. The man some consider the 'fifth Grand Ayatollah of Iraq,' Sayyid Kadhim al-Ha'iri (who resides in Qom, Iran because he cannot abide the Occupation regime in Iraq) has denounced the proposed security agreement in no uncertain terms. Fars News had reported in Persian on May 22 that al-Ha'iri (Haeri) rejected the security agreement. "Every [schoolboy] knows that America intends to legitimize its illegitimate presence in our country," so as, he said, "to loot its wealth and spreak poverty and deprivation." Haeri argues that the US is hoping to use the new bilateral security agreement to escape from Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which subjects its actions in Iraq to the authority of the UN security council.

"Subjects its actions" is good. ‘Spreak’ looks like a Humtydumptyian portmanteau for ‘wreak and spread’, though God knows best. Plus notice the blatant swipe from Rúholláh Cardinal Khomeiní in the next paragraph:

Haeri said that the US wants to ensure that "even American dogs in Iraq are reassured and protected from any threat of being tried by the state or the people, while all political institutions and courts, including the president of the republic, the prime minister, the representatives in parliament and the populace of Iraq must be answerable to the Americans." He called on Iraqis to work toward their liberty and said that America had never honored any of its treaties. He warned Iraqis against so humiliating themselves, quoting a saying from the Prophet Muhammad, "Beware abasement!" He called on Iraqis to unite against the conspiracies of the enemy. On Friday, arch-conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami of Iran weighed in on the debate, saying in a sermon: "American forces will keep the ministries of defense, interior and intelligence under their supervision for 10 years . . . Iraqi tribunals will not be able to judge American military personnel and employees of firms who work for the US military ... It is open-ended slavery. It is the worst humiliation… Any hand that signs such an agreement will be considered by Iran as a traitor to Islam, to Shiism and to the Iraqi people...."

(Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln . . . ?)

So Sistani no doubt feels he has to make himself heard on all this or become irrelevant.

JC is worth attacking seriously about that bit of amateur wheeling-dealing. For the rest, he fills in some non-gaps for the convenience of Rip Van Winkle:

The agreement will specify how many bases the US may have in Iraq, where, and for how long. It will probably also grant US troops extraterritoriality, that is, a guarantee that they will not be tried in an Iraqi court for any crime committed on Iraqi soil. The extraterritoriality of foreign troops was a common legal feature of colonial arrangements in the region. It was one of the things the nationalist movements campaigned about, and typically they abrogated it as soon as they came to power. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made the legal immunity of US troops in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s a plank in his platform of revolution against the Shah. Both the US and the Iraqi government appear to recognize that US bases in Arab Iraq are likely to be contentious, and apparently the thinking is now increasingly to site most of them in Kurdistan, where the population is more welcoming. That scenario, however, seems to me to have severe drawbacks. Iraqi Kurdistan is harboring guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who have frequently hit Turkey and provoked strong Turkish reprisals. You want to put US troops in the middle of that? The bases would have to be provisioned via Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey, so the Turks could always blackmail the US military into supporting them against their Kurdish hosts! Kurdistan is landlocked and surrounded by potentially hostile powers-- Iran, Syria, and and the arab provinces of Iraq. Is that the sort of place it is wise to site thousands of US troops?

Cole’s Free Kurd baloney comes from an English-language Gulfie source , a much less promising place to look for secret clues about the sinister Safavids. M. de Barazanji below obviously thinks the Safavids very sinister indeed, and especially when they disguise themselves as neo-Iraqi subjects. Yet his ill-informed notion that militant extremist Republicans are ever goin’ta do anythin’ for anybody but themselves suggests that disappointment for the Magnificent Mountaineers is just around the next bend in the tunnel. JC really should have been able to figure out that what M. de B. wants for Free Kúrdestán tells one nothing about what AEI and GOP and DOD are likely to do about their own problems.

US and Iraq set to seal security accord 05/24/2008 07:24 PM | By Basil Adas, Correspondent Baghdad: The Iraqi and US governments are to sign a long-term military cooperation agreement within a framework of strategic friendship and cooperation that will be complete in about two months. These negotiations seem to be very difficult for Iraqis because Americans have rejected the restrictions and conditions which the Iraqi government intends to impose on American forces operating on its territory, according to the Iraqi Parliament Security and Defence Commission's Vice Chairman, Abdul Karim Al Samarai. Samarai told Gulf News: "There are disagreements with the Americans about the number of military bases that the Americans want to build and their locations, in addition to the power and authority that forces can enjoy inside Iraq." Al Samarai said the Iraqi and American sides both agree about the importance of these military bases, but during negotiations another problem has emerged. Americans seem to be putting off the Iraqi government's demand for a US pledge to take all practical steps to lift the international trusteeship on Iraq. That would mean releasing Iraq from the seventh item of the United Nations Charter which recognises this tutelage. According to sources in the Foreign Ministry, the Iraqi side consists of a joint committee of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the presidency and the premiership, and the American side consists of representatives of US forces in Iraq, the US Department of Defence and representatives from significant security services in the United States with the CIA at the forefront. The commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, Jaafar Al Barazanji, confirmed that there is a serious American approach to establish military bases in Iraq's northern region of Kurdistan. He told Gulf News: "The existence of the military bases is so essential for Iraq's security and therefore there must be American bases in Kurdistan, middle and south of Iraq. The Iraqi armed forces do not seem to be able to protect borders and address terrorism ... therefore the American bases should exist for the next 15 or 20 years." Al Barazanji affirmed that there are internal risks to Iraq's democratic future and there is a large flow of Islamic fundamentalist organisations in the Middle East which requires an American commitment in any long-term agreement to defend Iraq's security and its ongoing political process.

Can’t you just hear the native pol explaining the beautiful mutual convenience of it all to the Crawfordites, much as A. Chalabí and K. Makkiyya and others of that ilk did not so long ago? Before them, the Diems and the Nhus and the Kaisheks and .... "Come put me and my buddies in power, Sam, and then -- WOW!" Life can really be unfair: how come this scam seems to work for every nationality of selfseekers on earth save Free Kurds?

Some political sources close to the Iraqi government confirmed that Kurds have accepted establishing most of the US military bases on Kurdistan's territory, if the controversy continues over allocating them in Shiite southern or Sunni western provinces. These bases may justify the continuation of the armed Iraqi resistance in these territories. Hashim Hassan, a professor of media and information at Baghdad University, warned about the consequences of the US military bases' long-term presence in Iraq. He said to Gulf News: "The presence of these bases will fragment the Iraqi internal front because these military bases will be in the interest of one party. Besides, it can be a factor of concern for some regional countries close to Iraq, as Syria and Iran could use these bases to strike them. As for the Gulf states and Egypt's concern, there would be the possibility of using bases for political and moral pressure to accept implementing American democracy in the region."

Prof. Dr. Hassan overlooks the obvious point that once the former Iraq has been entirely restored to Levantine normalcy, there will exist only One Party that matters. One Party at most, that is, since often the local cardboard King or tinhorn Colonel-President can manage fine with zero parties. Naturally the palefaces of AEI and GOP and DOD will be allied with His Majesty or His Excellency against pretty well every other indig in sight, but that arrangement is preëminently workable and has been ever since Cassander of Macedon invented it two dozen centuries ago next Wednesday. If the good professor is seriously worried about "political and moral pressure to accept implementing American democracy," I know a gentleman who can sell him insurance against being struck by a meteorite. Sancta simplicitas!

Spurious Erudition Watch

Since it is only by chance that I recall the passage adduced, Mr. Bones, it has seemed best to the Muses and myself not to annoy Prof. Cole as follows:

In yesterday’s peanut gallery , Doug@1739 struck me as on to something when he worried about pesky little technical details: Is there a meaningful difference between a fatwa permitting attacks on foreign soldiers and a declaration of Jihad? Is the fatwa likely to be conditional and specific? Now of course "Blogging is therapy, not journalism." And even at the loftier level of journalism, it can get annoying to find foreign news about situation S reported again and again as if each story was the first mention of S ever. To leave the former Iraq out of it, I used to dislike reports about occupied Ulster that insisted on beginning with St. Patrick and the expulsion of the snakes or thereabouts. More than five years after V-IQ Day, 1 May 2003, every human being subject to Rancho Crawford ought to know approximately what the words fatwá and jihád mean. So much the worse for "ought," though, because plainly millions remain unaware that one does not "declare jihád" in the Old Euro style of Napoleon III sending a formal note to Berlin, and that even if one could, the document involved would definitely not be a fatwá. This ignorance is not altogether innocent, because it suits a good many extremist Republicans and a few Lieberman Democrats to encourage the notion that fatwá is a sort of Mafia ‘contract’ and jihád the ordinary Arabic word for ‘terrorism’ -- or possibly "holy terrorism." It is saddening to discover that Wikipedia has succumbed to the Higher Misinformation: A fatwa ... in the Islamic faith is a religious edict or a ruling on Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. However, contemporary usage in Western countries often connotes an Islamic law pronouncing a death sentence upon someone who is considered an infidel or a blasphemer. Entirely apart from the blatant rightwingnuttiness of the second sentence, ‘edict’ is definitely the wrong word, and ‘ruling’ at least in need of some careful glossing. The article as a whole is not that bad, but whoever wrote it knows about the Shí‘a only by hearsay. So it looks as if somebody really ought to go back and start with the damn snakes. Prof. Cole is reluctant to volunteer: As for the London representative of Sistani, Sayyid Sa`id al-Khalkhali, he said he thought it unlikely that Sistani would issue such fatwas, and insisted that if they actually existed he would know about them. He also disputed AP's report that the fatwas were private and oral and therefore secret. He said that fatwas are public and bear the jurisprudent's seal. Al-Khalkhali is not on the scene, however, and he is just saying what he thinks likely. His point is correct, that what the AP described was a set of private conversations in which an opinion was expressed, not a fatwa, which must be written down and sealed. But what you call the opinion is not the most important thing. It was not, however, the Associated Press that unilaterally made this correct (?) point: So far, al-Sistani's fatwas have been limited to a handful of people. They also were issued verbally and in private — rather than a blanket proclamation to the general Shiite population — according to three prominent Shiite officials in regular contact with al-Sistani as well as two followers who received the edicts in Najaf. All spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. As to questioning the correctness, Sistani’s Sharh ‘Urwat al-Wuthqae Article III (taqlíd), Question 36 quotes Áyatulláh al-Yazdí, The legal responses (fatáwae) of the mujtahid are known / recognized / recognizable by one of the [following four] matters: (1) that one has heard it from him orally; (2) that two upright [witnesses] report it; (3) reports of a single upright (‘ádil) [witness] -- more exactly: reports of a single trusted person whose saying [so] makes calm assurance obligatory are sufficient even if he is not [technically] ‘upright’; (4) conscientious awareness (wijdán) of his [written] manual, when there is no question but that it has been secured against mistake[s]. Sistani evidently disagrees only about (3), saying "There is cause for doubt whether calm assurance can be arrived at on the basis of [a single trusted person not ‘upright’]." [Note 38.]

But God knows best. Happy days.

The Premature Antibushevik

Juan Cole, a U.S. expert on Shiites in the Middle East, speculated that "al-Sistani clearly will give a fatwa against the occupation by a year or two [from now]." But he said it would be "premature" for the cleric to do so now.

Our esteemed oracle the WGAS(e) [1] really ought not to be dabbling in other people’s ‘theology’ like that. To be sure, as founder and sole member of the Reformed Congregation of the Neo-Bahá’iyya, my proposed guideline would lead him with pretty well nobody’s theology to dabble in at all. Yet next time M. Hendawi or his equivalent calls up asking for free advice about the inscrutable duodecimal natives of Peaceful Freedumbia, Don Júan might mention the scribble I quote from and explain to the inquiring journalist what theology is and why it has little to do with the contents of fatáwae. Should the pupil show signs of profiting from that lesson, JC might toss in an account of what a bayán or a hukm has going for it that a mere lowly fatwae lacks. The Clark Kent kiddies cannot reasonably be expected to learn such things if nobody ever troubles to instruct them. [2]

Ann Arbour Faculty Club gentry are, perhaps, capable of anything, yet I doubt that Don Júan can read the mind of His Eminence of Noble Najaf so clearly and distinctly as to be able to project exactly when H.E. will finally lose patience with the invasive Crawfordite palefaces altogether. Two years ago -- three full years after V-IQ Day, 1 May 2003, and "Mission Accomplished" -- would have seemed mature enough to me. [3] The only obvious difference between now and "by a year or two" is that Don Júan anticipates, quite possibly in error, that effective management of the AEI-GOP-DOD aggression will have fallen into the hands of President B. Hussein Obáma. That woud be nice, of course, but is it really very likely that Ali Cardinal Sistani attaches the same importance to it that we denizens of the holy Homeland must?

We could do with some detailed ’adilla and istinbát from Shaykh al-Kuhl, it seems to me, in support of whatever his private-judgmental ruling about ‘maturity’ may be. I get the impression that Don Júan would have accounted it fort mauvais if Cardinal Sistani had drawn his line against the cowpoker vigilantes at any point in time before yesterday afternoon at the earliest. That is all very well, perhaps, yet who can tell for sure without any indication of Sir Oracle’s reasoning processes? Blind taqlíd may be traditional for the theological dodecaphones of Mesopotamia and Írán, but in these Western parts it is customary to give the customer some glimpse of the rationale behind each oracular deliverance. [4]

____

[1] World’s Greatest Area Student (ever).


[2] If thee insist, Mr. Bones: the fatwae is responsum iurisprudentiale, a "legal rescript."

Accordingly it is (1) about a point of law, not of abstract superstition/enthusiasm on the one hand, nor of concrete mythology or Church history either, and (2) it is directed to a particular inquirer or inquirers, not urbi et orbi after the fancy-Dan VC fashion.

In the instance at hand we are only informed vaguely that responsa from Ali Cardinal Sistani supporting the (potential?) right (or obligation?) of resistance to the AEI-GOP-DOD aggression into, and occupation of, the former Iraq exist. We do not possess the exact wording of them, and we know nothing of the individuals to whom they were worded apart from one scrap of tendentious-looking exegesis:

Most of those seeking al-Sistani's views are young men known for their staunch loyalty to al-Sistani who call themselves "Jund al-Marjaiyah," or "Soldiers of the Religious Authorities," according to the Shiite officials. Al-Sistani's new edicts [sic] - which did not specifically mention Americans but refer to foreign occupiers - were in response to the question of whether it's permitted to "wage armed resistance," according to the two Shiites who received them. Al-Sistani's affirmative response also carried a stern warning that [the] "public interest" should not be harmed and every effort must be made to ensure that no harm comes to Iraqis or their property during "acts of resistance," they said.

Perhaps thee can tell me, Mr. Bones, why M. Hendawi should want to put quotation marks around "acts of resistance" but is content to leave "foreign occupiers" naked? The tertium quid, "wage armed resistance," is less obscure, although I should think there are better orthographic and lexicographical resources available to guarantee that the Associated Press customer perceives a heavy stress laid on the word ARMED. BGKB.

Be that as it may, the above paragraph (three paragraphettes in the original, or after the Guardian got hold of it) is hermeneutically complex. AP’s Majors Leaker, "the Shiite officials," find themselves in roughly the same position as Weigel, S. J., does when he graciously explains for the VC lay sheep Dr. Ratzinger’s notions of the Iraq aggression considered sub specie belli iusti. The authority of Ali Cardinal Sistani must be scrupulously respected, naturally, yet the Leaker twins, being loyal members of poor M. al-Maliki’s apparat, must really wish that His Eminence had not brought the distressing subject up. They cannot, I fear, be trusted to provide M. Hendawi and his corporation and his corporation’s customers with a commentary that H.E. would entirely endorse.

M. Hendawi was, I presume, on the same wavelength as the Majors Leaker when he tossed in "stern warning" on his own authority. To be sure, it is not absolutely impossible that all these glossators are accurate and that H.E. laid such stress on public utility that resistance to an Occupyin’ Party with crude physical force is excluded in all but the rarest circumstances.

At the same time, however, if the fatáwae not entered in evidence are plausibly to be summarized that way, then the whole tone and ethos of M. Hendawi’s scribble become problematical. If Cardinal Sistani revealed nothing more exciting than that, does it make much sense for there to be an AP wire story about the event at all?


[3] Mais que sais-je?


[4] Whether the Occidental customer is capable of grasping the rationale in full -- or even of grasping it at all -- is beside the point, as it seems to me. Rationale should always be offered as a courtesy, even to militant GOP geniuses and to servile wombscholars of the Big Management Party, good folks who can have no use for rationale whatsoever. We "owe it to ourselves," to our own liberality and liberalism to provide rationale, so to speak. Neither we good guys nor Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh suffer any positive damage if the bozo classes throw rationale away unexamined.

Reality Seeps In (?)

Dr. Cartoonoclastes and Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger -- plus or minus the whole Mu’ámara Junction peanut gallery, marching band and bottle-washers -- have moderated their immediate expectations and sharply curtailed their Panglossianity as compared with six or eight or ten weeks back, when they had Dr. Gen. Petrolaeus and Party Proconsul Crockerius packin’ their bags to decamp to the airport, if not quite modo Saigonensi then at least modo Basorensi. They have been reduced to merely konstitutional and ‘parliamentary’ hopes of triumph for perfectly impartial Sunní-lovers of all ages -- a sad decay:

Azzaman this morning says the idea of a GreenZone coalition of non-reconcilables, including Sadrists and Alyan's group along with others, is still under discussion. (...) The item in question focuses on the refusal of the Iraqi List to rejoin the government, in spite of invitations by Maliki, and the explanation given by their spokesman Osama al-Najaifi, namely that Maliki hasn't been "serious" in his offers in this regard, but also because of the following: "He explained that the Iraqi list is working on discussions and agreements with leaders of the Fadhila party and the Sadrist trend, along with the Dialog Council led by Khalaf al-Alyan, and the Arab Dialog Front of Saleh al-Mutlaq, the aim being a unification of our positions. He said 'the results of our discussions with these political blocs encourages us to continue, and what we are trying for is the creation of some kind of parliamentary coordination.' " It will be recalled ... that among their common "nationalist" aims were opposition to privatization of the oil sector, and opposition any further Clause 140 procedures as demanded by the Kurds on Kirkuk. What today's reports seem to indicate is that this idea of a "nationalist"-oriented parliamentary opposition is still alive, in some form. And the fact that one of its proponents, Khalaf al-Alyan, is also a leader in the IAF has been a roadblock (or one of the roadblocks) to an agreement on IAF rejoining the government.

Thee are to observe the full extent of this ignominious collapse, Mr. Bones, though the self-esteemism of the MJ goofballs naturally prevents them from spelling it out in full. Instead of Cannae or Hattin or Waterloo, they will now settle for "parliamentary opposition still alive in some form." Only parliamentary opposition under the Khalílzád Konstitution, mark thee: Cartoono & Company don’t expect their "‘nationalist’-orientationism" even to be able to produce a majority in the Chamber and thus a new quasiministry for the International Zone neorégime, one from which Islamic Da‘wa and the Supreme Hakemes (and all other fiendish schizomaniacs, if there exist any such) shall be banished.

It would not do anybody much good if these paltry things were possible, to be sure. The things would constitute Dame Victory herself in an authentic parliamentary system, but Peaceful Freedumbia has been saddled by the willful AEI-GOP-DOD coalition with a Khalílzádo-Feldmanite travesty of the real thing. The question of who is nominally in charge of all the nominalities, all the Bagehotian dignifications, is of scant importance. Still, so reality-based a consideration as that one is antecedently unlikely to occur to the staff and management of Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclases LLC. One should therefore score them a few points, Mr. Bones, for not wasting their own time and energy or presuming on their customers’ patience with political arithmetic about the native IZ quasideputies and their blocs and their parties and their factions and their factionettes and how a three-vote margin for ‘nationalist’-orientationism might conceivably be obtained by adding 37 + 14 + 23 (?) + ... + of course the Virtutites down at Basra + . . . .

On the other hand, my knowledge of rigorously nonsectarian backers of the Sunní International is admittedly limited. Maybe Cartoono & Co. were never tempted by that parlour numbers game at all, but are sound neo-Maoists who won’t take any Victory that does not emerge from the barrel of a gun? On that hypothesis, they would be hesitant on morale grounds to admit that at the moment the Hannibal of Da‘wa is doing pretty well, gunbarrelwise.

On the third tentacle, though, how about the Parmenidean detachment of the mu’ámariyya goofs from mere delusive appearances? If it looks as if poor M. al-Málikí is consolidating his position and may shortly make himself almost as well established as Nguyen Van Thieu used to be, well, doesn’t that parade of shadows on the cave wall eo ipso go to prove that something else entirely must REALLY be going on in the former Iraq? And hopefully something a little more pulse-exciting than "parliamentary opposition still alive in some form"? Over in Mubárakistán, after all, the ’Ikhwán have that, and they can use it any time to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, should they chance to have ten dollars in cash as well.

___

If thee will look over thee’s shoulder, Mr. Bones, towards Lebanon, thee may join me in wondering why Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Cartoono the Magnificent are not throwing a party for the God Party of the Rev. Nasralláh. Inside the Beirut statelet, the Hizb have now achieved a good deal better than "parliamentary opposition still alive in some form," have they not? Why should scrupulously nondenominational Sunníphiliacs churlishly refuse to celebrate?

(...)

Well, sure, it might have something to do with the unmentionable factor that thee mentions, sir, but let us see if we cannot in charity do them a little better.

Perhaps LB&C reflect to themselves that the recent success of the God Party, though real enough, amounts to giving Lebanon a stiff dose of Khalílzád-Feldman pills. With eleven ministers out of thirty, "the opposition" can make sure that "the majority" (as the Seedier Revolutionaries prefer to misrepresent themselves verbally) cannot do anything dangerous. But of course with sixteen ministers out of thirty, noble ganders can keep silly geese in line also. ("Where there's a will, there's a won’t," says St. James of Thurber.) Nobody will be able to get anything much done at all, thereby exalting the Beirut statelet to the windswept heights of anarcholibertarianism, where it joins ancient Poland and modern Peaceful Freedumbia.

Now thee and I and the late Miss Rand of St. Petersburg and the late Mr. Nozick of Harvard Square have at least a few words of praise to spare for the liberum veto and the zlota wolnosc of yore, but, let us face it, sir, most of our contemporaries do not. ’Abú Aardvark with his stern preference for the statism of St. Max Weber [1] is far more to the vulgar taste in this year of religionism 1429/2008. Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes have gone out of their way to make themselves disagreeable to AA, but that seems to have little to do with the educationalist’s statism, which LB&C would probably find entirely satisfactory if only it subserved their own "‘nationalist’-oriented" purposes instead of ’Abú Aardvark’s distinctly different purposes. [2]

To speak after the manner of The Philosopher: AA is obnoxious to LB&C by defect of their preferred bologna (watan-nationalism) rather than by excess of his own stuff (Weberian violence-monopolizing).

The picture is rendered even more picturesque in that most Anglophone persons who profess and call themselves "nationalist" nowadays do not make the distinction in question at all, and may accordingly be thought of as watan-statists if thee like, Mr. Bones. Outside the Greater Levant and Latin America, the primary discrimen rerum is between favoring and disfavoring watan-nationalism taken as an indivisible atom. Only in exceptional regions where one encounters rather more ’awtán than seem logically or historically required does the issue joined between Prof. Lynch and the Mu’ámara Junction goofballs arise with any urgency. It certainly did not arise in the Indochina of Sec. McNamara and Sec. Kissinger, not unless one somewhat perversely maintains that these two gentlethugs were proposing to introduce it when they attempted to rally native and international and holy-Homeland support for ‘So. Vietnam’. (I digress a little, admittedly, but clobbering Vietnam analogies is a very worthy cause.)


_____


[2] These purposes apparently revolve chiefly around getting a policy job for himself in the next Demoncratic administration. But God knows best what he is up to.

JSOU? Jesu!

Might we not coin a word ‘Goebbelsology’ (rhymes with ‘Kremlinology’ and ‘Crawfordology’) to describe the dispassionate and tertiary-educationalist investigation of political and moral pond scum like the following?

[I]nformation strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities [0] and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust. An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.

_____
JSOU -- "Joint Special Operations University" -- clearly resembles WNC-RL, Wombschool Normal College at Rio Limbaugh, far more than it resembles the Princeton of Jonathan Edwards and of Big Management Party Neocomrade Dr. Gen. D. Petraeus.

It would not hurt to strangle this vile brat in its cradle all the same, though, so as to ensure that the future of the Pre-Decisional Future Concept Briefin’ concept is as brief as possible. "King Herod, call thine office!"

While we wait for the exterminators and garbage collectors to do their duty, Mr. Bones, notice how deeply unimaginative and Rio-Limbaugh-worthy junior tank-thinkers J. Kinniburg and D. Denning are. The ninth-rate neocomrades’ first notion is whatever seems to look like it is workin’ best for their crew at the moment, at present [05/22/2008 05:45AM] that nifty Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme in Peaceful Freedumbia. And then their second notion comes straight from Hollywood: "Hey, guys, how about let's ‘make’ ourselves a Tokyo Rose the same way Don Corleone makes a ‘soldier’?" Yuck.

Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison

____
[0] That tiny scrap of et ab hoste doceri is cute, but it remains highly unlikely that neocomrades JK and DD are elegant spoofsters instead of plain vanilla GOP-AEI-DOD coalitional jerks.

Dr. Triangle and the Crack of Doom

... a likely Democratic pickup of five seats, with an eight-seat gain possible, and, in a partisan wipeout, a 12-seat shift. Mon dieu! In all likelihood, the filibuster will still remain a theoretical Republican option, but, in practical terms, may be beyond reach, especially if Obama wins the White House. (...) In the House, the incredible three Democratic bi-election victories, combined with the retirements of so many Republican incumbents, indicates that the GOP may be facing disaster there as well. This is not a good year to be a Republican.

"Sticks And stones / May break my bones / But"

But of course words are the REAL menace.

Q. Everybody knows that, doesn’t she?

A. She sure knows that if she possesses the señoritoly mind of a National Review groupie.


Naturally one should bear in mind, Mr. Bones, that Mizz Provvy -- Mme. Proverbial Wisdom, if thee feel the need to genuflect -- did not mean her sound bite to refer to little wingnuts feelin’ courage-challenged about their own words deployed against others. The original intent was plain: now that Modern Times have arrived, decent political adults are not required to rush out and sue for damages at the drop of an epithet. Our señorito classes still think that remains a swell idea -- on a few selected special occasions. Take for instance the occasion when thee, being a Muslim or Muslima or neo-Muslim or neo-Muslima, chance to encounter a cartoonic vivacity, or a bullet-riddled codex of Sacred Scripture, or a tiefgehend scribble from the keyboard of Neocomrade Doctor R. Scruton (fhkt). Thee are, under such circumstances as those, to remain cool and collected and perhaps deliver a brief sermonette in favour of the two dozen centturies of Western Sieve that deliberately allow such granules as those to pass through the mesh. O nos admirables, "Wow! Wunnerful US!!"

Thee may (or, indeed, must) also shrug off verbal attacks directed at theeself personally, Mr. Bones, as long as they come from Neocomrade Dr. R. Limbaugh or Neocomradess A. Coulter or the op-ed page of the Wall Street Jingo and the like. The ‘like’ in question here may be specified in quasi-juridical terms that fit in nicely with the señoritoly Weltanschauung at large. Thee are to consider it right and proper that brand-name Swiftboaters® should swiftboat® thee, sir, -- and swiftboat® anybody else they choose, for that matter -- whereas it would obviously be an outrage if others were to infringe their hard-earned monopoly. Needless to say, thee shall never attempt to swiftboat for theeself, for that would be like setting up to sell dubious amateur stuff that thee have brewed in thee’s own basement as authentic Coca-Cola® or Power Point®. Fort mauvais, that plan! Civilisation as we know it might not survive if everybody started to misbehave along those lines.

I am confident that Mizz Provvy intended her sticks-and-stones fortune cookie to apply to silly goose and noble gander alike. Almost all her ouevre is conceived that way. One might even maintain with primâ facie plausibility that the adjective "proverbial" contains a built-in implication of semper et ubique et ab omnibus. All that even-handedness and catholicity is utterly alien to the señoritoly mind as we have diagnosed it, Mr. Bones, but we have never pretended that all the little wingnuts and wingnuttes are clinically insane, nor even that an isolated few of them may not be worthy aspirants to the toney up-market rôle of Friends of Eddie Burke. "Sticks and stones" understood in terms of the law of patents and monopoly rather than in terms of the law of slander and libel is not intellectually contemptible. [1]

"To the civilized man, the Right to Property is more important than the right to life." [2] Dr. Reaction did not, that I have heard of, ever go on to explain which Right or right or ‘right’ comes in third in the philosophical sweepstakes, but clearly reputation or "sacred honour," whatever it may be that libel and slander and defamation detract from, cannot do better than show, given that Property wins and life places. [3] Accordingly, the señorito element exalt the importance of "Sticks and stones" when they creatively misread it as havin’ to do with monopoly rights rather than with reputation. Monopoly rights are NOW, reputation and honour were then.

In short, the wingnuts’ and wingnuttes’ stuff may be ethically puke-inducin’, Mr. Bones, but let us not make things too easy for ourselves by pretending that it is beneath contempt in all respects.

The immediate application of all this is of course the ‘appeasement’ of B. Hussein Obáma as alleged by señoritas and señoritos. I happened to start from Big Management Party neocomrade R. Lowry:

Not all talking is created equal. Which is why it’s folly for a presidential candidate to make a blanket promise to negotiate personally with adversaries (...) he’s tried to elevate his ill-considered improvisation into foreign-policy gospel.

And so forth and so on. The mills of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh are grindin’ out that sort of baloney sausage all across the fruitèd plain, a very standardised dupe fodder, so there is no point in picking on Señorito Lowry individually. He’ll do as a run-of-the-mill specimen, though it would be silly to consider his talkin’ points specially touched by human thought. He does go through the motions, sort of:

The act of talking is, in itself, not appeasement. True enough. But neither is talking a substitute for strategy. [Exemplum of Comrade M. S. Gorbachev and Neocomrade R. W. Reagan] If a President Obama handles relations with Iran as deftly, maneuvering the clerical regime to its doom, he’s worthy of his hype. Nothing suggests that he even conceives of his desire to talk in these terms. To do so, he’d have to develop some appreciation for the concept of leverage.

Deftly maneuverin’ the evil Qommies -- or in general, whoever it may be that offends militant Republican Party extremism -- to their doom is the señoritoly notion of non-appeasive talkin’. I have already made that diagnosis. I cited the ineffable Dr. Triangle yesterday in support, and here is Señorito Lowry this morning. Rather than heap up further evidence of how well the Big Management Party agitprop machine works, let us look the notion over and kick its figurative tires a little.

It is not quite what one would expect, perhaps. Or rather, the neocomrades are not in fact broadcastin’ altogether on the same wavelength. Their señorito element bein’ comparatively upscale, non-appeasive diplomacy is admitted to be possible, though of course there is no chance whatever that B. Hussein Obáma will ever engage in it. Down in the gutters of Rio Limbaugh and the slums of Horowitzville, non-appeasive diplomacy is a nonsense, a pernicious snare and delusion. THEY will always hate Wunnerful US, no matter what we do, certainly no matter what talkin’ we do.

The practitioners of jihád careerism march out of step with both their señoritoly neocomrades and their dittohead neocomrades. Pipesovitches and Kramerides and the like are clever enough to assign a reason why THEY must hate US, but since that reason is ’Islám, discussion and negotiation are precluded quite as effectively as in the Big Party gutters and slums. Deftly maneuverin’ all the Muslims and neo-Muslims of the world to their doom -- to apostasy or death -- is about as reasonable a scheme as was M. Fourier’s project to convert the North Atlantic to one vast gin and tonic. It might be nice if the world worked like that, but unfortunately it does not.

The Big Party’s base and vile (BV), and the Big Party’s señorito element (SE), and the Big Party’s jihád careerists (JC) thus consitute a conceptual or ideological triangle, although these three vertices are not at all equivalent quantitatively or politically. JC and SE are the less unintelligent parties and recognize that coëxistence will have to be possible, even if negotiation is not. JC and BV are united as against SE in takin’ for granted that negotiation is impossible. The principle of unity as between SE and BV is that they know and care nothin’ about anybody except themselves, whereas not even a GOP genius can be a jihád careerist and a solipsist or two-hundred-proof narcissist simultaneously.

The JC’s are thus slightly less displeasing ethically than the rest of the neocomradely pack. Maybe they deplore that there should exist a world elsewhee, but at least they acknowledge that it is there. On the other hand, the señorito element are slightly less displeasing intellectually, in that they adhere more rigorously to the traditional core of all Republican Party extremism -- puttin’ themselves first and after that, who cares where the rest are put? The poor bedraggled base and vile have nothin’ goin’ for ’em at all, except possibly the consolations of Enthusiasm and Superstition and the National Rifle Association. [4]


___
[1] Señoritismo is, to be sure, ethically contemptible, and that on two accounts.

(A) Wingnuts and wingnuttes are almost always in violation of M. Pascal’s canon, Travaillons donc à bien penser: voilà le principe de la morale. Even when they can pass themselves off as ideobuddies to Mr. Burke, their level of bien penser ascends no higher than Eddie’s own. This altitude restriction is perhaps not surprising.

(B) If not individually, then as a faction of pols and herd of lemmin’s, the señoritas and señoritos of the Big Management Party come equipped with an anti-Pascalian canon of their own, namely the late Buckley Minor’s Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

That, as you will not fail to perceive, Mr. Bones, is essentially the Monopoly Principle that I have attributed to them above in Chicagoland English masquerading in an extinct language so as to catch the eye of a Yalie jackdaw. His neo-Papish neo-Latin was not the authentic legal Latin of Justinian. He never made the slightest attempt to elucidate that licet, and the omission is what one would antecedently expect of so exemplary a señorito. It is plain enough that Buckley Minor in practice supposed himself and his neocomrades to possess the licet of Jupiter by inheritance. Children of cows are bovial, children of Father Zeus are jovial.... ’Tis all basically a matter of breedin’, don’t you know?

It is not at all plain how the señorito element suppose their Father Zeus to have come into His monopoly rights in the first place. Fortunately for them, the señorito element do not give a hoot about that point. Are they not further equipped with secondary anti-Pascalian canons like "History is bunk" and "That was then, but this is now"?

Ideobuddy Eddie wrote this point up for the señoritos somewhere, though I am too lazy to send out a google in pursuit at the moment. To quote from memory: if one were so rash and tasteless and generally Rousseauvian as to insist on digging up the exact details of where Marie Antoinette’s plumage came from, the results would almost certainly be unedifying and make useful ammo for Tom Paine. The mere lapse of time is not so "mere," for it has done much to surround Sacred Prescription with its present -- still present in the year of religionism 1205/1790, anyway -- nimbus.

That amounts to "‘Shut up,’ she explained" even though it sounds much better in Eddie’s woozy pre-romantic write-up than in mine. Perhaps poor Bessie’s traditional problem in politics was only that "Shut up!" sounds neither explanatory nor otherwise impressive in the mouth of a cow? Festooned with Eddie Burke’s wooze, however, "Shut up!" has become almost de rigeur for the modern señorito. Bein’ backed up with Little Brother’s Uncle Sam’s sole remainin’ hyperpower further endows "Shut up!" with a certain sort of impressiveness, for those whose timber happen to run to the Kantian sort of crookedness.


[2] Palaeocomrade P. E. More, quoted from memory and from the late Big Management Party Neocomrade R. Kirk-rhymes-with-‘jerk’.


[3] In theory or Bloomian strong reading, Honour might win the race, Property show, and life come in third. But the chances that P. E. More thought so are negligible. He was not a real aristo, after all, only a Third Estate wannabe.


[4] The Senatorino from Illinois got himself into trouble talking like that, Mr. Bones. Reflect what a pleasure it is that thee are never going to run for public office! Like health, this sort of negative benefit should not be allowed to pass unappreciated.

The Christian Zionist Unmasked

"The president was himself, finally. Maybe because this is the end of his political career," said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister and now a lecturer at Birzeit University. "This is actually him. This is George Bush the human being, not the politician. . . . I always thought he was a Christian Zionist and a fundamentalist ideologue."

Inside their dream-and-mortar palaces, Arabophony OnePercenters like M. Khatíb say a lot of funny things, Mr. Bones. Most of their sayings are more remote from the crude sentiments of street Arabs than this one. Caveámus ígitur.

It would not be wise to buy any political used cars from such a shark merely because of that handwritten note on the windshield proclaiming "I always thought." If you looked sufficiently like hoi polloi to him, I daresay M. Khatíb and his ilk would have been willing to share their -- their "deep-felt but rarely uttered personal" -- reservations about the Little Brother of Big Management with you at any moment since you and they first learned enough about the Yalie lad to badmouth him.

What the collaborationist ilk murmur to one another inside their Alhambras and Zisas and World Economic Forums in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik is vastly more to the point, unless they have managed to get so totally out of synch with their own subjects that they begin to fear the Dread Curse of the Pahlavids. Ninety-nine percent of the time, however, the Palace Arabs are not only subjectively fearless but objectively secure, both on their home front and on their Holy-Homeland front. Like right now, for example. If collaborationism in the Levant has anything serious to worry about at the moment, I can not off-hand think what it is. [1]

"Maybe because this is the end of" Little Brother’s "political career," M. Khatíb runs no risk at all when he amuses himself by amusing (?) his street Arabs with "Christian Zionists" as a monicker for his own fundie ideobuddies. Bow-wow; arf-arf; GRRRRR! Marg bar Elmer Gantry!

Can M. Khatíb seriously believe that motives of Enthusiasm and/or Superstition impelled Little Brother to burble such euphonious bulbulshit to the assembled OnePercenters?

I strongly believe that if leaders like those of you in this room act with vision and resolve, the first half of 21st century can be the time when similar advances reach the Middle East. This region is home to energetic people, a powerful spirit of enterprise, and tremendous resources. It is capable of a very bright future -- a future in which the Middle East is a place of innovation and discovery, driven by free men and women.

"Christian Zionism," forsooth! It has always been obvious enough that Little Brother serves Lord Mammon first, and serves Lord Mammon second, and then perhaps he serves King Caesar as revealed to St. John of Yoo a little on occasion. [2] Anythin’ "ideological" about the godless Busheviki beyond that is out of the money altogether. The oration well reflects the authentic sentiments of the militant extremist Republican Party. It would only be ridiculous to complain "Bush lied!" about that performance, sir.

The good news is that M. Khatíb, and hopefully the rest of his ilk, are not at all likely to start actin’ with vision and resolve of the Mammono-Caesarian brand that the ghostwriters of Rancho Crawford so eloquently summon them to.[3] They have plenty to do already, what with (1) just keepin’ themselves personally on top inside their palaces and then (2) keepin’ the mean streets in subordination to the dreamy palaces. Arabophony OnePercenters are, as I said, snug as a bug in a rug, about as safe as safe can be for mortals -- but that does not mean they have a great deal of energy to spare for ill-judged and far-flung Kiddie Krusades or Wars on Global Tourism.


_____
[1] The dreamy ilk may conceivably find B. Hussein Obáma a little bit alarming, merely because they know nothing of him. Considering that President Presumptive J. Sidney McCain is the one who will make it to the top of the greasy pole, thee and I may laugh at such groundless concerns.

Like everybody else, M. Khatíb ought to be alarmed about the JSM menace to Global Stability: a dumb Mugwump might do pretty well anythin’. There are simply no precedents for J. Sidney, not in all the annals of the Party of Atwater. Yet ’twere pointless to try to explain that to a Little Foreign Friend of Global Stability who would not know a mugwump from a curmudgeon at ten paces and may not even be quite sure who Señorito Lee Atwater used to be.


[2] Scilicet, George XLIII serves George XLIII. "Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I."

My suggested formula -- 95% Mammonolatry plus 5% Yoosurpation -- might for convenience be identified with the Big Managerialism of Harvard Victory School MBA’s, even though the latter is a rather broad range of related products that happens to include the Christian Zionism of Little Brother.

Any connection with, or even resemblance to, the former Christojudaeanity is of course entirely accidental.


[3] Not to lay too much stress on the eloquence, though. It looks as if the better quality hired help has already drifted off to fresh woods and pastures new in light of "the end of his political career." Fortunately the same address, in all essentials, has already been delivered at approximately 145,709,318.072 after-dinner meetin’s of the Chamber of Commerce all across the holy Homeland since 1865, so it has been polished up pretty spiffy by now.

Dr. Triangle on Appeasement

President Bush is absolutely right to criticize sharply direct negotiations with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Barack Obama’s embrace of the idea of direct negotiations is both naïve and dangerous and should be a big issue in the campaign. The reason not to negotiate with Ahmadinejad is not simply to stand on ceremony or some kind of policy of non-recognition. It is based on the fundamental need to topple his regime . . . .

Ah, the bozos admit it! What did I tell thee, Mr. Bones?

I told thee

It is fun to catch the bad guys out in contradictions, of course, but would we really be better off if they were perfectly consistent and refused to negotiate with those whom they ultimately propose to obliterate?

Happy Lynx Are Here Again

Cartoono the Magnificent, in the company of all perfectly impartial Sunni-lovers amongst the paleface Anglosaxophone community, has some reason to be pleased this Monday morning :

Both the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes have concluded that the Palestine-Israel talks are dead ... an undiplomatic and possibly historic Mubarak-Bush dust-up at a Sharm-el-Sheikh conference ... [Jordan might] do well to seek out a better relationship with Iran ... Bush, in order to cover the fact that the Palestinian talks were a failure, started blathering about the promotion of democracy in the Mideast ... the Arab nations will not be providing cover for any agreement that does not satisfy the Palestinians ... Bush [has been unmasked] as "a failed president", and his speeches as "fatuous" (or "idiotic") ... the combination of Bush-policy failures in Palestine and Lebanon both ....

Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC could even have tossed Peaceful Freedumbia into the gloating pot along with Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon -- were the gentry willing to risk seeming to agree with Juan the Wicked , that is:

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has dismissed the general in charge of the Second Division in Mosul, and has appointed in his place Gen. Abdallah Abdul Sattar. He is said to also be replacing the commanders of brigades within the division. Personally, I don't take this report as a sign that things are going well in the current campaign in Mosul. You don't change horses midstream when things are going well .

You don’t, eh? Gosh! Don’t thee wish thee was a West Pointer sometimes, Mr. Bones, to be able to hand out tactical-operational-strategic fortune cookies like that one with a straight face? Still, perhaps one should defer judgment about Hannibal of Da‘wa’s latest stellar performances, partly on exitus probat acta grounds [1] and partly because they do not immediately involve egg on the face of Little Brother and Big Management.

If I am not as pleased as Cartoono the Magnificent is about these trends -- and I am not -- it is chiefly because he relapses when cheerful into that facile Palestinocentricity that has afflicted the Sunní International for decades. Once he wanders off onto that moonbat tangent, he forgets about the comparatively adult and responsible part of his own day-to-day conspiratorializing. All of a sudden, the good Arab Palace folks are not half so bad as street Arabs usually account them: "Come home, little Husní, all is forgiven! (As long as you trip Dubya up in Palestine, that is.)" [2] [3] Yuck.


_____
[1] Unbadgered press reports advise that Hannibal has already kidnapped over a thousand Criminal Militia Members in and around Mosul. That sounds an impressive achievement, until thee remember, Mr. Bones, that there are still about two million potential CMM's left walking the streets.


[2]

The Al-Quds al-Arabi reporter explained [that] when an Arab leader of the experience of Mubarak says a thing like that [about not providing cover], you can take it as an anticipatory death-certificate for any further negotiations; and more particularly that the remark "reflects information confirming that the talks have reached a dead-end". And the Al-Quds reporter notes that the semi-official Egyptian paper Al-Jumhuriya described Bush as "a failed president", and his speeches as "fatuous" (or "idiotic"), something that paper would not have published without a green light from the powers that be. Egyptian authorities clearly hoped he will not be back, ever, the journalist adds.

[3] To be fair, Cartoono does not go so far as to say anything nice about Messrs. les altesses royales du Ryad. He could easily do it, too, provided the scrupulous gentry of Mu’ámara Junction do not mind appearing to agree with an unsigned editorial of the Wall Street Jingo that it counts as more egg on Little Brother’s chin that Himself should be forced to go beg and plead with the masters of the Gulf of Petroleum -- to go and beg and plead pretty much in vain.

Here again there is no direct Palestine connection, however, which may sufficiently explain the omission by itself. On the other hand, Cartoono is by way of being a free-lance Huntin’tonian Clashist who thinks broadly that economic motives are dreadfully passé and infra dignitatem in this year of religionism 1429/2008. The precise subjective motives behind Dr. Cartoonoclastes’ vicarious chauvinism on behalf of rigourously unbiased Sunníphilia remain agreeably obscure and inaccessible to conjecture, Mr. Bones, and who does not enjoy a mystery? Yet is it not obvious that our hero is ten times closer to Clashism than to Marxism? Huntin’ton of Harvard undoubtedly gave the impression that the FFBB, "faith and family, blood and belief," that all the world would start clashin’ about so as to assure plenty of careers for defence intellectuals forever would be one’s own F and F and B and B. Uncle Sam himself never actually spelled the restriction out, though, and it is no small part of the Magnificence of Cartoono that he shows how easily it may be dispensed with.

God, however, knows best.

Introducing PIFII, "pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq"

Dr. Chalabí's lawyer says there has been no ouster, but nevertheless

U.S. officials contacted by Newsweek said Chalabi's ouster was triggered by his ongoing relationships with pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq who, in the eyes of the Maliki government, are trying to destabilize the country. 'He was once again operating in that same gray zone that he always has,' said [a] former U.S. intelligence official who is close to several figures in the Maliki administration. 'There was enormous friction inside the Iraqi government over this.'

"Pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq" is not an easy blank ____________ to fill in. As a generic label for everybody whom the vigilante invasionites of AEI-GOP-DOD find really and truly detestable, "Pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq" is admirable. Unfortunately when one tries to reduce it to the proper level of insider tittle-tattle by supplying the names of known individuals, nobody seems to qualify well. Republican Party Proconsul R. C. Crocker comes to this keyboard’s mind instantly, for example. But THAT can’t possibly be right, can it?

The ambassador of Rancho Crawford had better watch his step in any case, though, lest he suddenly discover that his boss’s ever-immortal words

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history”

may have been not-aimed at R. Clark Crocker quite as much as they were not-aimed at B. Hussein Obama. (BHO himself may be as pro-Iranian a figure as the day is long, but he cannot sanely be classified as "inside Iraq." So our mystery blank is not for him either.)

Turning to indig figures, M. le Président de la République Jalál Tálebání is the strongest candidate for a true and disinterested pal of the evil Qommies. But why would M. le Docteur Tchélabí want "an ongoing relation" with him? The Hero of Error™ has various other deficiencies, but strictly on the IQ side he is sound enough. A U of C grad can hardly have failed to work out that the "presidency" of "Iraq" belongs to what Mr. Bagehot once distinguished as the dignified rather than the efficient sector of the International Zone neorégime’s constitution.

Consider the position that the H of E™ was -- or, as the case may subsequently prove to be, was not -- ousted from:

The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with backing from U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus, named him to head a committee charged with restoring essential services, including electricity and public safety, to Iraqi communities. "He was going to be the guy to turn the lights on in Baghdad," said a former U.S. intelligence official....

Dr. Chalabí seems to have profited, up to a point, from his stay in Cook County. He plainly knows enough to go for efficiency rather than dignity. Anybody whose soul is eaten up with personal ambition would of course do far better to become notorious as the Lightbearer of New Baghdád rather than merely "president" or "prime minister" or the like of "Iraq." (No political gossip suggests that Dr. Chalabí may have been dismissed because as a matter of fact he has not borne much light. That view is reasonable enough, because the H of E™ is certainly no run-of-the-mill tedious ‘technocrat’ such as the conventional claptrap is forever recommending as salutary for the former Iraq. Whatever the great statesperson was (or wasn’t) fired for, average kilowatt hours per day will have had little to do with it.)

If we attempt to guess the future from the past, reservations about "up to a point" are significant. Dr. Chalabí is bright enough to go for the political jugular, for Efficiency rather than Dignity, but unfortunately his leaps fall short. Had he thoroughly mastered the black arts of Tammany Hall and the Daley Dynasty of Chicagoland, Dr. Chalabí would have become parens patriae by now, the Fulgencio Batista or Vidkun Quisling -- or, best parallel of all, the J. Edgar Hoover -- of his longsuffering fatherland. Not because the glorious coalition of AEI and GOP and DOD might have handed him colonial supremacy on a silver platter, but because he grabbed -- or claimed to have grabbed, which could be made to suffice -- many of the records of the Ba‘thí secret state police. Thus fortified, Dr. Chalabí should have been able to dictate from behind the scenes who is employable in the Brave New ‘Iraq’ and who is not, up to and including ‘presidents’ and ‘prime ministers.’

Obviously the Hero of Error™ managed to blow his potential Hooverdom, somehow. To become Lightbearer of New Baghdád, though thoroughly satisfactory from the Bagehot perspective, would be only a pale shadow of the supremacy that he has already bobbled and lost. Perhaps one might venture to call that electrical sort of triumph ‘Herbert Hooverdom’ as opposed to the J. Edgar variety? ’Tis a far, far better thing for the ambitious and greedy than any mere technocracy, yet almost equally far down the great scale of politics from the sort of Universal Spiderdom that Dr. Chalabí has already missed.

Major Leaker must be correct when she refers to "enormous friction inside the Iraqi government over this" guy Chalabí. As Jimmy Carter and others have discovered, being the smartest person in every room that you ever find yourself in is a somewhat mixed blessing in politics. The other suits present may not be able to consciously work out that is the fundamental correlation of forces, but there will probably be subliminal displeasure and resentment all the same. Amongst former Iraqis prominent in the International Zone neorégime, only the Rev. ‘Abd al-‘Azíz al-Hakím can seriously be compared with Dr. Chalabí, best-and-brightestwise.

Speaking of whom, the conventional claptrap (and the esoteric claptrap of Dr. Visser as well) will of course nominate Badr and the Supreme Hakemes as likely "pro-Iranian figures inside Iraq." Being allies of Rancho Crawford, their candidacy raises the same sort of difficulty that Big Party neocomrade R. C. Crocker’s does. The claptrap tribe make a sort of post hoc ergo propter hoc mistake at this point. Is it really all that we need to remember about SCIRI/Badr that whatever they did during the Good War against Saddám was done in the Islamic Republic of Iran? I should guess that by 1429/2008 most inscrutable Orientals have caught up with the Wicked West of 1266/1849 and "Austria will astonish the world with its ingratitude" [sc. to Russia for help in getting Hungary under Habsburg control again.]

Conceivably the Hakeemites ought to feel themselves so obligated to the sinister Safavids as to rush to do whatever will please the latter best, quite without regard to the ‘national’ interest of the I. Z. neorégime, or even to the private and factional interests of the Supremes themselves. Anybody who really believes that the real world of human events works like that (very often) runs a serious risk of believing just about anything at all. It is thoroughly edifying, in a Sabbath-morning school or Cloudcuckooland fashion, to prate so, but with reality-basing it has not much to do. The beards and turbans of ‘Iraq’ are no more likely to run the joint for the benefit of the evil Qommies than the native lay sheep are.

Everybody in ‘Iraq’ without exception, including the paleface operatives of AEI and GOP and DOD, is graciously willing to let the evil Qommies benefit themselves. Of a corresponding desire to do something in return, however, there is hardly any trace detectable. Maybe the most remarkable feature of the situation is that the evil Qommies do not seem to notice that nobody whatsoever wants to lift a finger for them. Or perhaps they do notice it and don’t mind? Either way, the key to the mystery seems to be located somewhere in the psychological fastnesses of the Islamic Republic, in regions that I should not pretend to be informed about.