30 June 2008

‘Shames confirmed without elaborating’

Which shames are these, do you ask, Mr. Bones? Whose shames? Can we be entirely certain that these were not guilts rather than mere shames?

I respond that the immediate occasion of non-elaboration went like this, if you'll believe a single word that comes from so Celtic-surname-sounding a source as McClatchy :

Abdulhussein, who was not present during the raid, said his brother and three other bodyguards were at the home of [a] sister, their cousin, in a guard station attached to the main, two-story villa. Before dawn Friday, Abdulhussein said, the guards heard U.S. helicopters in the area. Abdulhussein said about 50 American ground troops in camouflage then stormed into Janaja. He said he still has no idea why they came to [that particular family] home. "(The troops) raided this room, the guard room, and detained the guards, including Ali, who'd memorized a few English words and tried to tell them, 'I'm police. I'm a [family] guard,'" Abdulhussein said. "They tied the hands of the three guards and took Ali to the room. Ten minutes later, they heard gunfire. The American forces killed Ali."


(( Not to get distracted, sir, but is it not slightly remarkable that ten minutes should pass after the break-in and the kidnappin’s and before the eventual murder? ))

The New York Times Company, bless its bottom line!, diselaborated this little human event pretty drastically:

[There have occurred] two recent attacks in which soldiers killed people who the government said were civilians. One death occurred during a raid by American soldiers on Friday near Karbala [and the other one elsewhere at a different point in time.] (...) Local officials in Karbala echoed [certain collaborationist politicians'] sentiments and the provincial police chief, Maj. Gen. Raad Shakir, said there had been no effort to inform Iraqi security officials about the raid. The American assault began at 12:15 a.m. Friday in the Janaja area south of Karbala, he said, “without coordination with the Karbala military operations command or with the general commander of Iraqi armed forces.” An American military spokesman said that in the Karbala raid, in which the Americans were hunting for Shiite militants, soldiers were acting in self-defense when they killed a local security guard who was holding an AK-47 against his shoulder as if to fire. “Coalition forces deeply regret the loss of life and are conducting an investigation,” said the spokesman, Cmdr. Ed Buclatin.

(( What ‘murder’ was that, Mr. McCloskey? Why, the alleged perps took a full ten minutes to decide in advance that it was strictly warrantable self-defense that they were actin’ in! [1] ))

Less polemically, Mr. Bones, thee may infer by conflating the two Narratives that the bodyguards who surround International Zone OnePercenters are technically classified as civilians by their own neorégime. Unless, to be sure, official corruption and malfeasance are being covered up here as well as coalitional incompetence. I suppose that issue boils down to whether the Hannibal of Da‘wa pays their salaries out of his own pocket or with petroleum revenues properly belonging to Them The People of the Former Iraq. Yet different cultures are well known to disagree about exactly where honest graft stops in such cases, so one cannot take it for granted that there are any guilts or shames at all associated with the financial aspect of this episode.

Anyway, that is most of the facts, ma’am. When it comes to the quest for shames, I vote we begin by noticing that the victim was a kinsman to Hannibal II. ‘Alí the Loser may even have worked as a civilian guard for nothing on that account, although I doubt it. More important is his exact relationship to Hannibal II, a point which is slightly obscure as McClatchy expounds it:

[T]he man described by the military as "a local security guard" was actually a cousin of Maliki's and served as the personal bodyguard of Maliki's sister, relatives and Iraqi officials said. Ali Abdulhussein al Maliki was killed at his guard post outside the villa belonging to Maliki's sister, said the guard's brother, Ahmed Abdulhussein al Maliki. The brother — referred to here without his tribal name to avoid confusion with the prime minister — was reluctant to speak about the incident, but allowed a few minutes for a visiting journalist in part because tribal custom deems it shameful to turn away a guest. Dressed in a dark-brown suit, he was presiding over the mourning ceremony and had long lines of sheikhs in flowing robes and traditional headdresses waiting for him.


Let's see: the scene of the uncrime belongs to Hannibal's sister. The victim of the uncrime, ‘Alí the Loser, was Hannibal's cousin, which is consistent with him being the son of the sister of Hannibal, but that is not necessarily the case. ’Ahmad ‘Abd al-Husayn (the Narrator to McClatchy) is brother to ‘Alí the Loser, and therefore presumably cousin to Hannibal in the same degree as ‘Alí used to be, unless perchance ‘Alí and ’Ahmad were only half-brothers, in which case . . . .

Well, I guess we do not have quite enough information to do a secure stemma, Mr. Bones, but if the word ‘cousin’ applies in anything like the Homeland sense, as one would expect when Mac tells us about the uncrime in English, the relationship was close. Of course that does not mean they liked one another, and the Badger-Lynx-Cartoonoclastes breed of goofball might even conspiratize that Hannibal II himself ordered the murd..., the liquidation, it would have been, I mean. Mac narrates that Hannibal was distressed about it, however:

Janaja residents said the prime minister's office privately has reassured them that Maliki is furious with his American allies but that he wanted to keep the ensuing diplomatic crisis out of the media spotlight. On Sunday, tribal leaders from throughout the south gathered under funeral tents to offer condolences and whisper about what went wrong.


At some risk of seeming excessively Levantine or Byzantine -- maybe even cartoonoclastic, let Father Zeus forbid! -- I would point out that Hannibal II could be angry about the uncrime without being sorry that it happened. It could, I believe, be imputed unto him as a shame that just as he was about to get rid of ‘Alí the Loser himself, his ‘allies’ stepped in high-handedly and did the deed. As if the Hannibal of Da‘wa were a small child who needs a (foreign!) nurse or nanny to wipe its own nose, don’t thee see, Mr. Bones?

That the Grand and Willful Coalition (AEI-GOP-DOD) actually did the deed is not seriously contested, according to Mac:

The U.S. military broke its silence on the incident Sunday, releasing a vague statement confirming that coalition forces had shot and killed "a local security guard" during operations early Friday that targeted special groups, a reference to suspected Iranian-backed militant cells. The statement, which did not mention the military branch or even the nationality of the force that conducted the raid, said the guard "exited a building in close proximity to coalition forces while brandishing an AK-47 held against his shoulder as if to fire. Perceiving hostile intent and acting in self defense, coalition forces shot and killed the armed man." Only later did the forces realize he was a local security guard. "Coalition forces deeply regret the loss of life and are conducting an investigation," the statement read. There was no other information about the target of the raid or whether the troops had made any arrests.


The blank labeled ‘Nationality’ may safely be filled in with the words "Militant Extremist North American Republican," then. (MENAR than thou are the Baní Crawford, O Bones!) No question about whodunnit, only about whatwuzzit they done, exactly. Mac tries to work the Exactly part out, but achieves no firm conclusion, which is not, under such circumstances, the least bit surprising:

A high-ranking member of the Iraqi government told McClatchy on Saturday that the raid was conducted by a U.S. Special Forces "antiterrorism unit that operates almost independently." Other U.S. and Iraqi officials speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the involvement of Special Forces. The U.S. military command in Baghdad declined to offer further comment. The U.S. military's muted apology, three days after the raid, still leaves plenty of questions for the residents of Janaja.


Plenty of questions about so memorable and diselaborated an uncrime as this one remain right here in beautiful downtown Zipcode 02139 as well, should any central Cantabrigians care to pass the Silly Season by asking them. I expect they mostly won’t, though, what with the former Iraq having been formerized off the holy-Homeland scope pretty near altogether.

Mac's interest in the case is 95% above praise, but unfortunately there is the other five percent. Nitsy and Alissa presumably want to hush the uncrime up because they have decided that Hannibal II is likely to survive and flourish amidst the radiant dawn of Responsible Nonwithdrawal™. Mac -- "Qassim Zein and Hannah Allam" and the McClatchy Washington Bureau -- are not in sympathy with that para-Bushevik spin, but they are not entirely spinfree. If Nitsy and Alissa want to make sure that the blood of ‘Alí the Loser does not stain their lovely new SOFA, Mac is not above hoping that by "cruel irony" [yuck!] it may do precisely that:

As Janaja grieves, Baghdad is still working through the diplomatic fallout from the incident, Iraqi officials said. In a cruel irony, officials said, the crisis could strengthen the hand of Iraqi negotiators who are involved in the drafting of a Status of Forces Agreement, a long-term U.S.-Iraqi security pact to govern the conduct of American forces in Iraq. Two of the main sticking points are whether the U.S. military can conduct independent operations and whether to grant immunity for American troops or security contractors who are accused of criminal activity. "If this changes anything, it will make the Status of Forces Agreement even more important," said Ahmed Shames, a media officer from Maliki's office. "It will definitely influence the negotiations and give the Iraqi negotiators even more to ask for."


It would do no harm if editors struck out that damn I-word every time a journalism school alumnus resorts to it. The chances that ‘irony’ is used respectably are negligible; getting rid of 9,998 verbal abuses at the price of one bingo and one arguable specimen makes excellent sense. Here I have not a clue what Mac meant by it. His own "cruel irony" may pass for a sly sarcasm considering how easy it is to see that he wants to "strengthen the hand of Iraqi negotiators who are involved in the drafting of a Status of Forces Agreement, a long-term U.S.-Iraqi security pact to govern the conduct of American forces in Iraq." Nevertheless, the absence of ‘irony’ would be better than its presence.

Mac concludes

SHAMES CONFIRMED WITHOUT ELABORATING that the guard who was killed was connected to the Maliki family's security detail, adding that the prime minister certainly "was not pleased" with what happened in Janaja. "You can tell he is upset by this," Shames said. "He hasn't been in a good mood since the incident.",
thus providing me with my scribble's title. As you see, it works on the same principle as one of Mark Twain's anti-German jokes ,

I translated a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" (Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a man's name.


"Ahmed Guilts, a media officer from Maliki's office" is not entirely impossible at the general level of the invasion-language press , but the McClatchy Washington Bureau would never mistransliterate quite that weirdly.

___
[1] Aunt Nitsy's other body-count reports from the semiconquered provinces of AEI-GOP-DOD seem to have been dragged in deliberately so as to help non-elaborate the McClatchy one. The one immediately paired off with it does no more than adumbrate an Arendtoid "Banality of Aggression":

[On Wednesday] three people described by the Interior Ministry as bank employees on their way to work were shot and killed near the Baghdad airport when they tried to pass an American convoy. (...) In the shooting near the Baghdad airport, the American military disputed the Interior Ministry’s account and described the three people who were killed as “criminals” who had fired on the convoy.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a car bomb in Salahuddin Province on Sunday killed seven policemen, and in Diyala Province the police shot a female suicide bomber. [&c. &c.]


Nitsy and Nitsy's Alissa J. Rubin then supply much more "[&c. &c.]" about that last affair than about either of the other two, after which we are treated to yet a fourth killin’ (and third red herrin’):

The intelligence commander for Basra, Brigadier Jabar Mujhed, was assassinated by gunmen while visiting Baghdad on Saturday, according to an Interior Ministry official, who asked not to be identified since he was not authorized to talk to the press.


It should be reckoned as an independent fourth red herrin’ that the International Zone neorégime's loss of poor M. al-Mujhid gets decked out in the journalistic claptrap usually reserved for fresh revelations from Major Leaker at Beltway City. To dignify the assassination of a mere indig secret state policeman with "not authorized to talk to the press" would be quite unaccountable if it stood alone. Ordinarily Nitsy and Alissa would have given their corporation's customers some indication why all of New Baghdád now clamours "Who killed Brigadier Jabar Mujhed?"

More exactly: they would have left it to the AP and Reuters and "Informed Comment" and Slogger City to commemorate that particular gentlethug, because the holy Homeland's fishwrap of record does not regularly double as the Tigris River City Daily Bugle and Bodycount.

But God knows best.

25 June 2008

Dead Center

The surge has reduced violence. We should all be thrilled about that--and honored by the brilliance of those who have served in Iraq. But what we're talking about here is whipped cream on a pile of fertilizer--a regional policy unprecedented in its stupidity and squalor.

To this point has Sapientia Conventionalis come, Mr. Bones. Thus far and no farther. Thus far and not an inch short of it.

Mr. Joseph Klein of Looseworld and CNN is an admirable index of Miss Sappy's views because he never mixes in anything idiosyncratic of his own. He is the new Bill Moyers, as it was, providing access to the journalistic-liberal position on every fashionable issue, the pure substance of it entirely untouched by human thought.

Mr. Klein does mix a little electoral sawdust into the present peruna, it looks like, but that is OK, because Sappy understands about Homeland elections too. One might interfere with the Illinois Senatorino's chances, after all, if one admitted out loud that one like's one's violence unreduced, or that one is not particularly wowwed by the brainiaccitas of Dr. Gen. David. [1]

Though at the end of the day Mr. Klein is going to leave Little Brother and Big Party in the same deep bushogenic doo-doo as ever, en route to the dungheap he graciously pretends to eat a small slice of crow in the sight of Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City: "As for me, I happily acknowledge that I was wrong about the surge."

Joeklein is insignificant in himself, obviously, but it matters a good deal that Miss Sappy thoroughly agrees with his happy acknowledging. Princess Posterity may not be very forgiving about their brand of happiness. What serious moralist can be satisfied with frivolous amateurs who pronounce themselves pleased when the robbers get away with their swag? Televisionland and the electorate might plead that they are applying TV standards, that "Daddy's Dubya Takes On Global Tourism" is only a light entertainment, after all, and no fit occasion for anybody sounding off like Cato the Elder on either side, not Bob Cardinal Spencer and Blessèd Hugh the Simple from their cloister of phobias, nor thee and me from our blogspa, Mr. Bones.

They might so plead, but they don't. They see no need to plead, nothing to charge themselves with. It simply does not cross Miss Sappy's somewhat limited mind that she should not go about in the world giving the impression that she thinks lawless aggression is fine as long as it is successful, and especially not when the success of it involves points scored by her own holy Homeland. Patagonians and Latvians and Singhalese who approve of Greater Texas invasionizin’ the former Iraq on some general principle of their own, one that is not a cover for making distinctions of persons, are not in the same boat with Sappy and her court jester. Princess Posterity is unlikely to agree with their theories, but disinterestedness possesses a certain value in ethics independent of other circumstances. Sappy and Joeklein cannot seriously pretend to be distinterested when they "happily acknowledge ...."

The latter is willing to take a stab at unserious pretending, though, and that is what I find most interesting in his scribble: "The surge has reduced violence. We should all be thrilled about that." A thoroughly journalistic-liberal sentiment, that one. The Big Management Party's base and vile believe nothin’ of the sort, by and large. Dr. Limbaugh, for example, is pleased as punch with David and David's SuRGe, but not at all for Joeklein's silly bleedin’-heart kind of "should." I daresay Citizen Rush would be even better pleased than punch if the level of violence in the former Iraq were higher than it is --provided the additional violence were properly distributed. Wicked terroristical Bambi is not to scratch the noble hide of Godzilla von Crawford -- that goes without saying! But the other way around, who cares? Only little girls and other wimps would burble with joy about "reduced violence"! Everybody knows that.



___
[1] Electiontide compels Joe and Sappy to visibly -- or, if possible, ostentatiously -- cherish the brilliance of ALL those who have served in Iraq. But seriously: "I was, and am, a huge fan of counterinsurgency doctrine, and an admirer of David Petraeus" says Joe. The details of McNamarano-Petraean dogmatic theology are a little over Miss Sappy's head, I expect, but then they are over Joe's head also. Si tacuisses! Joe gives his ignorance away by insisting on a bluff when silence would cost less and work better.

Within the regulation 750 words here, we get two completely distinct joekleinian bluffs. Not just the Mil. Sci. one ("Some of his most effective actions were traditional kinetic assaults on terrorist strongholds"), but a See-Might Philology bluff tossed in at no extra charge a couple of sentences later, "The biggest break was the decision of the Sunni tribes to switch sides and oppose the taqfiri terrorists." [Read ’iqfárí, assuming JK meant "desolationist." Cf. Wehr (3) 781a.]

So just toss in the occasional 'Q' somewhere everybody else writes an unexotic 'K', Mr. Bones, and then Miss Sappy will swoon and mistake you for Theodor Noeldeke's favorite nephew on the spot!

Hmm, any number can play, and many of us numbers can even up the ante: "The quinetic apotheosis of Joeqlein," how about that, sir? Imagine it as the title of a Spanish Baroque painting, perhaps....

20 June 2008

Lyin’ for Boy and Party and Ideology

You may have heard it rumored, Mr. Bones, that honesty is the best policy? Yesterday there appeared a sort of paramilitary midrash on that which attracted the marginal attention of Abú Aardvark, the PubDip junkie : "Pat Lang on US claims about Shi'a responsibility for Baghdad bombing: ‘"In recent years the idea of lying to gain a propaganda advantage has become a popular concept among some people in the US armed forces. That is a bad idea for many reasons.’"

We had better begin with the fib itself, the "US claims" advanced in the interest of AEI and GOP and (perhaps) DOD, as Mr. Lang quoted them in a dispatch of the Washington Post Company
"US military officials on Wednesday accused a Shiite militant group of carrying out a truck bombing in northwestern Baghdad on Tuesday evening that killed at least 65 people, the deadliest attack in the capital since March. The accusation was startling because the bombing in the Hurriyah neighborhood had the hallmarks of earlier large-scale attacks in predominantly Shiite areas that had been attributed to Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq.


The startled Mr. Lang emphasizes the whole second sentence -- he blogs it in bloody red, begorrah! -- but he does not climb out on a limb to the extent of explaining whodunnit really. For that matter, the startled Mr. Logroño did not quite do whodunnit either. We who are not quite Aristotle can nevertheless work out that there is a little daylight showing between "A has the hallmarks of B" and "A is an instance of B." Those who further recall that it is the Greater Levant of which we keyboard will naturally reflect that the goofball gentry at Mu’ámara Junction can always point out that A looks a lot like B because C wants you to think that B did it -- with several permutations and combinations of the set { A, B, C } because the peculiar Lynx-Badger-Cartoonoclastes whims and prejudices are by no means the only materials available to conspiratorialise with. For practical purposes, though, it looks as if Mr. Logroño and Mr. Lang both assume that the TwentyPercenter pets of MJ ("Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq"), whereas the glorious AEI-GOP-DOD coalition prefers to lie (or PubDip) that

[As a] U.S. military spokesman said, intelligence reports indicate that Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi, the leader of a Shiite "special group," planned the bombing in an effort to fuel animosity toward Sunnis in the largely Shiite district. The U.S. military uses the term "special groups" to describe what it says are smaller Iranian-backed militias.


It is probably safe to omit most extraneous fantasy fodder and boil the Logroño-Lang startlement down to this: down at the ranch, Team Aggression knows, or strongly suspects, that the Orthodox salafiyya were responsible, presumably killing heretics and Safavid agents in their customary and, as it were, disinterested manner. What Team Aggression wants to propagandise, however, is that the evil Qommies were behind it. That is pretty much how we ourselves interpreted yesterday, is it not, Mr. Bones? It did not occur to us to make a major pother out of it or to profess ourselves especially startled.

We may well have been mistaken, sir: this may be a potherworthy mendacity by and for Boy and Party. Once you notice what Mr. Logroño is up to, you find that he does not explain what is supposed to be so startling about it, although he could have if he chose. It is stale news that the hormone-basers zig and zag and hem and haw about exactly which set of fiends they are worst terrorized of and most eager to be at ‘war’ against this week. (M. von Murdoch’s upmarket fishwrap is well named. Naturally his neocomrades do not literally churn out a new standard Big Management Party line every seven days on the dot, but they certainly do keep comin’ up with new reasons for old AEI-GOP-DOD mistakes all the time.)

For the week of 14-21 June 2008, the neocomrades wannabe at ‘war’ with Eastasia rather than Eurasia. Big deal. Only one of the Big Party’s own fever-swamp dwellers can get excited about the latest twitchin’ between Sunnies and Shadies. The Feverswamp Folk mostly lecture mainstream Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City about the dangers of Asiofascism all across the board. The jihád careerists and their dupes are at least as tedious as their more twitchable neocomrades are, but they do not much matter a tenth as much for purposes of makin’ the aggression and occupation policies of Boy and Party and Ideology, because "Kill them all, God will recognise Her own!" falls well short of the dignity of policy.

Mr. Logroño has thus no reason to be startled that this week the Busheviki have always been at war with Eastasia and the evil Qommies. The remarkable thing about this PubDip ploy is not a question of WHO? but one of HOW? Here we find it lied that the Shadies have taken to killing their own people in order to provke disorders. Coming from the MJ goofballs, who have degraded themselves to think like Greater Levantines, or from people who actually are Greater Levantines, this, too, would be scarcely worth talking about: "OF COURSE it was Jewish Statists who launched the Pentagon-WTC attacks! Don’t you understand how cui bono? works, yá Zayd?" Amongst the Sea Mights of the Greater Levant, nothing could be more regular and acceptable in polite circles than committing atrocities against oneself in hopes of passing them off as the work of unsp**k*ble THEM. (Or anyway, one assumes that THEY act like that all the time.)

When the cowpoker vigilantes of AEI-GOP-DOD finally sink to that miserable indig or wannabe-indig level, however, it is news. It is, indeed, startling news. Mr. Logroño has every right to say so. One must, however, wish that he had said so rather more strikingly. He does not say a word about what startled him, so one does not even know for sure that he perceives the full outrageousness of the Big Management Party’s latest spiritual degeneration. What else he could have been startled by is hard to conjecture, though. Ernesto Logroño would be a hopeless rube if he was actually surprised to find the militant extremist Republicans assignin’ blame without botherin’ to have any particular evidence. That syndrome is what lured them into their neocolonial quagmires to begin with, obviously. After almost seven years of thrashin’ and splashin’ about in the bushogenic mire, it would take a Rip van Winkel to be unaware of that deficiency in them. But that they have now sunk to positively S*m*t*c levels of conspiratorializin’ and vilification is genuinely new. There is not much farther for the cowpoker Saladins to sink, I don’t think, except to draw the obvious lesson that Big Management can play the auto-atrocity card as well as anybody. Maybe they can even play it better, with a little assistance from their Harvard Victory School MBA types. Fas est et ab hoste doceri!, "All's fair in Love and ‘War’!"

Like Mr. Logroño, Mr. Lang fails to make clear why he was so startled that he decided to bleed all over the screen. Look at it again, Mr. Bones, the bit Lang stigmatises: The accusation was startling because the bombing in the Hurriyah neighborhood had the hallmarks of earlier large-scale attacks in predominantly Shiite areas that had been attributed to Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq. Well, I suppose "fails to make clear" cannot be sustained. It is quite clear that Logroño says that he was startled by the mere fact that the Big Party creeps took a human event that looked like the work of A and attributed it to B without any better grounds then their own druthers. I am reduced to tentatively supposing that neither the journalist not the blogmonger identified what had startled him accurately and mistakenly attributed it to some very tame old stuff. It is not likely to be an accident that something really startling was in fact present, surely? But God knows best.

Mr. Lang emphasises the DOD vertex of the Triangle of Aggression, as naturally he might, so I suppose he, though not Mr. Logroño, may have been startled that hired-hand colonels and generals should allow themselves to be complicit in the detestable chickenhawk creepinesses of AEI and GOP. But that seems pretty improbable as well. This whole megillah does not obviously invite special consideration from the viewpoint of the violence profssion. Lang calls his piece "Who are the Target Audience?," but, like jesting Pilate, he never gets around to answering his own question. It makes no sense that I can perceive as a rhetorical question, however, and taken straight, it seems quite a difficult problem.

I do not, off-hand, have any notion why the Big Management cowpokers should prefer this week to have been always at war with Eastasia rather than with Eurasia. It is easy to guess that they are crankin’ up all their Party and Pentagon apparatuses in preparation for a Cakewalk to Qom, but that is so easy a guess, and so obviously no better than a guess, as to be worthless. If they were really doin’ that, the signs of imminent AEI-GOP-DOD aggression would be quite unmistakeable. These creeps are thoroughly incapable of creepin’ up on anybody unexpectedly, to judge from their track record since 1991. Naturally she who disposes of her Uncle Sam’s Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower need never think it indispensably necessary to achieve surprise at any level, tactical, operational, strategic or geopoliticsitarian. Like the late President of Iraq, the evil Qommies would spot the GOP Juggernaut comin’ weeks and months in advance, but they would not be able to do a thing to stop it. (Maybe.)

07 June 2008

Embrassez L’Infâme!

Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki on Friday [6 June 2008] said religious awareness would end “terrorism” in Iraq, applauding the role of Iraq clerics in fostering Shiite-Sunni ties. “Religious awareness promoted by clerics and religion scholars would end terrorism (...) clerics educating correct jurisprudence are the state backers in combating terrorism and outlaws”. He stressed the importance of “fostering Sunni-Shiite alliance after ending sectarianism”.

Just a touch of cupboard love
there
, possibly? Poor M. al-Málikí (the Hannibal of Da‘wa!) more or less is L’ÉTAT, out there amidst the bushogenic shambles of the former Iraq. Naturally he would like to have as many statebackers as possible, and as few statebashers. Do most subjects of Núrí Ibn Dubya share his peculiar tastes? I wonder.

Still, it is relentless OnePercenters of whom we speak, Mr. Bones, both the self-obtruded palefaces of AEI-GOP-DOD, and their swarthier spiritual brethren and ideobuddies native to the International Zone. [1] Whether the ninety-nine percent would prefer to bash or to back is a question of restricted interest. Not quite of zero interest, however, because somehow the Crawfordite aggression has brought majoritarianism to the notice of many ex-Iraqis. When the Supreme Hakemes, and Hannibal of Da‘wa himself, are accused of ‘sectarianism’ by troublemakers, which only happens about 132,809 times a day now that Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and Party Proconsul Crockerius have got everythin’ colonial all straightened out with Bribe-a-Tribe™ and whatnot, the real objection is very often factual or demographic rather than religionistical at bottom. Is the Imámí theocommunity of Peaceful Freedumbia to possess (nominally) sixty percent, maybe even one hundred percent, of such political power as Little Brother and Big Management graciously delegate to mere natives on the basis of constituting a bit over six-tenths of the population?

In our own holy Homeland, Mr. Bones, it is easy enough to find antimajoritarians. We have AEIdeologues, and Hoovervillains, and Heritagitarians, and Catoholics -- and these hobby-horsemen of the Apocalypse are only the merest beginning of an exhaustive enumeration. Indeed, I should say that the most fundamental commitment of the Big Management Party, taken as a whole and as a historic phenomenon, is to the proposition that dollars ought to be allowed to vote as well as citizens. Though all dollars are created equal and more dollars invariably beats fewer, as far as I know, yet the whole traditional AEI-GOP shtyk is bound to seem antimajoritarian to Mr. Jefferson and Gen. Jackson and Mrs. Roosevelt and thee and me, to the party of America as opposed to the Party of Grant and Hoover and Atwater.

Nevertheless, nobody, not even Sen. Calhoun long ago, has ever dragged the Peaceful Freedumbian type of ‘sectarianism’ into the dispute. As far as Soc. Sci. knows, dollars are sect-free, [2] and, although human persons are not, yet in the holy Homeland only cranks drag any one sect’s sectarianism into political debates. The Big Management Party’s neocomrade R. J. Neuhaus, dancin’ that wild and crazy "Naked Public Square" fandango of his , may or may not deserve to be dismissed as a crank. Even our champion First Estate enthusiast, though, stops short of explicitly demandin’ extra votes for everybody with any sort of sectarianism to show for herself.

Unsectarianism in America would, it seems, be put down by informal social pressure rather than by interference from Big Government, should Neocomrade Neuhaus ever get his druthers. Poor M. al-Málikí is on a completely different wavelength, obviously: "Clerics educating correct juriprudence are the state backers in combating terrorism and outlaws."

Though I stumbled into a Málikí-Neuhaus comparison by accident, ’tis a felix culpa at the end of the day, because contrast with the conventional pieties of Wombschool Normal U. and the neo-eccentricities of First Things magazine brings out some of the suchness and inscape of His International-Zone Excellency’s bloviation. Did thee ever expect, Mr. Bones, to find Muslim or neo-Muslim religion professionals celebrated as natural allies of State and Statism? Is that not very odd indeed? Maybe it is so odd that it is not really there. The Hannibal of Da‘wa might conceivably only mean that, like the comparable VC crew in Western Sieve, mullas and muftis and mujtahids can -- usually -- be counted on to come out for elementary law and order rather than for pushing the envelope of muqáwama. There is a good deal to be said for being able to cross the street without being shot at, but when somebody stands up and says it, does that make him a whole-hearted ally of the Wicked State? I think not, and, being a wicked statist myself, I may possibly have some idea what I am talking about when I claim that the religion pros of Islam are not card-carrying members of the Statist Conspiracy.

Another way to avoid taking Hannibal II perfectly seriously on this topic is to notice that he talks this talk in conjunction with a state visit to the evil Qommies. If Khomeinianity were the only surviving form of Islám, perhaps one could indeed orate with a straight face that "Clerics educating correct juriprudence are the state backers in combating terrorism and outlaws." In the real world, of course, that is like pretending that most of recorded human history has taken place in Western Sicily since two weeks ago next Thursday -- i.e., it is a really ridiculous exercise in tail wagging dog. At Tehrán, though, there may well exist audiences of beards and turbans who would not bat an eye at such stuff. The Islamic Republic does, in theory, repose itself upon "educating correct juriprudence," even if no majority-Muslim state ever did so before in anything like Hannibal’s sense. And Hannibal would, in practice, certainly be pleased if somebody authoritative could put Sadr Tertius in his place, closing all the laddie’s kangaroo courts and persuading the soldiers of the Expected One to submit to IDP and the Supreme Hakemes and AEI and GOP and DOD until Himself actually shows up personally to direct otherwise -- plus obliterate the Wicked State forever, presumably.

Though that seems plausible superficially, I am really not so sure about it, Mr. Bones. It is not easy to imagine that Hannibal II can seriously suppose that the evil Qommies are authoritative for the Sadr Tendency and the Mahdí’s troops. Or that Hannibal would wish Safavid religion pros to be authoritative over the Twelvers of the former Iraq, were such a thing possible. Being a westoxicated OnePercenter, a rootless cosmopolitan native of the International Zone, head of a (fragment of a) party in exile that decided to break with the beards and turbans, poor M. al-Málikí may have only a vague and cloudy notion of the system of superstition that he nominally adheres to. Yet surely there are limits? Hannibal II must know at least a little something about ‘his’ religion, no?

It is really hard to tell, Mr. Bones. How much did Ike know about his religionism when he sounded off with

Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."

To compare Dwight David Eisenhower with M. Núrí (Jawád) Kamál al-Málikí of the Islamic Da‘wa Party of Peaceful Freedumbia in political or military talent would only be ludicrous. However a narrow comparison as regards Superstition and Enthusiasm may not be entirely a joke, since Islám and neo-Islám have yet to sink to the depths of Norman Vincent Peale, which is obviously the level where Ike’s own deep faith feelin’s tended to congregate. The Hannibal of Da‘wa may be very ignorant of the Ithná‘ashariyya, but one can be quite sure that his ignorance does not take the form of entertaining some grotesque private-judgmental travesty of the publicly attested system.

And Hannibal definitely beats Ike if we go by political religionism alone. The practical advantages of having the International Zone neorégime prayed for from every pulpit from Zakho to Fao -- and, better still, obedience to it inculcated! -- is manifest. Whereas no amount of Norman Vincentism present or absent could have made any detectable difference to the Eisenhower Administration.

But God knows best.


____
[1] Think of the International Zone figuratively, sir, as a state of mind and a corruption of values. Like the Hell of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, sir. I am well aware that nobody above the age of five can be IZ-born in the clinical or hospital sense, not Hannibal Redux himself, nor M. le Docteur A. Tchélabí, nor M. le Prof. Dr. K. Makiyya, nor ... (a number of others).

If thee will but apply a little majâz to my words, Mr. Bones, thee may appreciate that the more important question is whether these such westoxicated OnePercenters as these have ever set foot outside the International Zone since the day they were hatched.

I thought thee understood my reasons for calling the focus of extremist Republican Party militancy in the former Iraq by the name that the bozos themselves officially prefer. To repeat: if one sneers at their "Green Zone," one means only that the Big Party bozos and their indig pets are not absolutely safe holed up inside it. Bozodom still is not altogether safe, as it happens, yet there is no reason in principle why it should not come to be so eventually. Only a technical question can arise about any zone’s level of greenness.

To sneer at their "International Zone" is much more promising. What kind of sovereign independent constitutional democracy can exist as the emanation from an "International Zone"? Only a phony-baloney one.

Furthermore, internationality is a "non-natural property," like The Good of Principia Ethica. Internationality is not distributed on any hit-or-miss bell-curve basis, as literal green -- and allegorical safety too, to a large extent -- is distributed. Hannibal’s home zone is 100% international by fiat, just as every human creature possess perfect and total dignitas humana according to the neomythology of Vatican City. Perfectly secure against moths and rust and thieves [Ev. Matt. VI:9] is the Dignity of the Human Person™, and the internationality of M. Núrí's zone. (The price of this transcendency may be noted in passing, though, namely that such edifying Cloudcuckooland imports are of no use at all when a crisis breaks out down in the sewer of Romulus. Oh, well, one can’t have everything simultaneously, not even in Peaceful Freedumbia!)



[2] I suppose somebody might drop Max Weber’s name as that of one who thought Prod dollars ought to count for more than Papist dollars, or, at any rate, that they did so count in Greater Europe at a certain period not extremely remote. That name is bound to come up in short order in any serious discussion of the correlation of farces as between statebackers and statebashers, even way out in the exotic boondocks of Peaceful Freedumbia. However I think for a couple of reasons that Weber had little of pertinence to say: (1) he was not much interested in democracy and its mechanisms, and (2) the entire Geist of his economic Calvinism assumes that the Urcalvinismus of Superstition and Enthusiasm had already become passé centuries ago in the circles he chose to single out, though scarcely in Western Sieve generally.

It was picturesque when, as thee will remember, we came across a Yank wingnut who professed himself a theological Maxweberian, supposing in effect that the correct answer to Cur Deus homo? runs "Why, in order to instantiate Chamber-of-Commerce capitalism, of course!"

Though splendid fun, that was obviously mere Wombschool Normal University fodder and nothing to do with the historic St. Max, who took for granted that when Rational Capitalism is present, there cannot be much (irrational) sectarianism around in its immediate neighborhood.

02 June 2008

A Further Step Toward Square Circles

Once a byword for torture and disgrace, the American-run detention system in Iraq has improved, even its critics say, as the military has incorporated it into a larger counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to avoid mistreatment that could create new enemies. But these gains may soon be at risk. Thousands of detainees are to be turned over to the Iraqi government, some perhaps as early as the end of the year, a further step toward Iraqi sovereignty. Yet however tarnished America’s reputation may be for its treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the reputation of many Iraqi prisons is worse.

Our prole flagwavers, and our jihád careerists and, above all, the gentlethuggish Weekly Standardisers -- who are not exactly OURS, them bein’ more like a subsidiary to Baron Rupert and Count von Herzl -- exist in a permanent fit of petulance against the New York Times Company. Whenever Aunt Nitsy decides to countenance their wingnuttiness a little, they either do not notice or else they regurgitate Leninist barf about "Even our enemies are compelled to admit that XYZ." There is naturally no question of anybody Bushevik compelling Party neocomradess A. Rubin to emit this morning’s particular XYZ. Not even the abstract exigencies of Finanzkapital demand that such a dubyapologetic piece appear. Her corporation’s newspaper may be bleeding to death economically, but that is not because of anybody’s views on how AEI and GOP and DOD have been conductin’ themselves out in the colonial boondocks. [1] Printing a few kind plugs for the Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ product cannot matter much. Even supplementing Kristol Minor’s economic subsidies from Planet Murdoch (and his sentiment subsidies from Tel Aviv) is not going to sink or save the NYTC.

Indeed, Mr. Bones, the lady’s corporation has more liberty than ever to publish whatever it likes about Peaceful Freedumbia, because nowadays fewer and fewer customers care. Thee and I are tempted, sir, to fall into a pale facsimile of the factious goofiness of Dr. Cartoonoclastes and become angry at the New York Times when it does not stand up for what we wish it would. More exactly, we risk ending up like Prof. Richard Falk of Princeton, who scribbled a whole book against Aunt Nitsy for having the shameless audacity to ‘betray’ a banner, that of International Law, that Nitsy had never actually enlisted to serve under in the first place.

A. Rubin has it in for International Law, obviously. To reconcile the Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ product with so-called "traditional international law" is flatly impossible, merest circle-squarin’, and even to convince oneself that Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ is compossible with some version of neoteric UN-centric international law calls for challenging mental gymnastics. The journalistic neocomradess does not even try to go through the required calisthenics, and that laziness may well be what ticks off poor Prof. Falk the most about A. Rubin’s employer’s customary contra- or supralegal stance. If the New York Times Company would come out of the bushes for once and actually argue against Rulalaw in war and diplomacy, we who disagree materially could at least respect that business corporation’s seriousness and integrity and so forth and so on. Aunt Nitsy and her idiot niece Alissa do not come much closer to vulgar argumentation than to murmur "Kindly allow me to know best" and bat their figurative eyes a little. [2] [3]

The idiot niece accordingly scribbles "a further step toward Iraqi sovereignty" without fear and without research and without rememberin’ that the International Zone neorégime (all hail!) has now become one hundred percent sovereign on half a dozen different occasions. It has turned out that four quarters and 600% sovereignty can be readily exchanged for a one-dollar bill any time, but what Big Management Party neocomrade or neocomradess will rush into print to make that point?

---

Rulalaw never gets argued against, and, logically enough, rule of the Ersatz that Alicia and Nitsy prefer never gets argued FOR. It is present here, but one must pay attention to detect it, or rather, to deduce it and name it and classify it from "these gains may soon be at risk. Thousands of detainees are to be turned over to the Iraqi government... However tarnished America’s reputation may be for its treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the reputation of many Iraqi prisons is worse."

I’m not sure that that brain disease has ever been adequately diagnosed and discriminated, although it is common enough. The application of the principle is that paleface invasionites can run the former Iraq better than swarthy indigs can be expected to run it and therefore that the former should run it, Q.E.D. An old song indeed, in colonialisin’ and imperialisin’ circles, but not a song that has ever acquired a single title universally recognized. It is, of course, one consequence of Mr. Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism, but there are so many other unrelated consequences of that nifty system that one can scarcely apply the unadorned U-word. Back during Secretary Albright’s War, certain neo-Euros who approved of that aggression invented the term "Military Humanism" to apply to this sort of thing. That coinage has not caught on. In any case ‘humanism’ is not the ideal word inasmuch as it suggests that the aggression fans are thinkin’ far more of how good their aggression makes them look spiritually than of any material benefit to patients or victims. For that matter, ‘military’ is not entirely suitable either, since surely at least some opportunistic benefactions to the Lesser Breeds Without will not involve physical force.

To speak of "Opportunistic Benefactionism" would put Aunt Nitsy and Neocomradess A. Rubin in exactly the right pigeon-hole, but such a monnicker is stylistically impossible. If we assume that the brain disease matters more than its name, though, we may notice that ‘benefaction’ gets in the kindness of "Kindly allow me to know best!" on one front, and also, more importantly, ‘opportunism’ indicates why this product is radically incompatible with Rulalaw, why this scribble provokes me to mention round squares. There can, of course, be no rules or laws or canons or criteria or guidelines laid down in advance about exactly what is to count as an Opportunity. Everybody knows that. [4]


____
[1] I should guess that the decline of the Times to be mainly due to the state of department stores &c. on Manhattan island, although a whole degeneration and more of wombscholarship and Niederdümmung since the days of Barry Goldwater -- or, if you like, since the annus horribilis of 1968 -- has certainly at least a little something to do with it.


[2] The ascent of Commanderissimo McCain may interact with this eye-batting shtyk at the NYTC in an interesting way. Can two opposing teams both rely on "Kindly allow me to know best"? J. Sidney has prevailed over the rest of the Stupid Party, as it seems to me, not because he is one iotum brighter or better than Dr. Limbaugh or Neocomradess Coulter, but because he almost always sounds reasonable, no matter what tripe and baloney he talks in substance. Prof. Chomsky deploys the same shtyk for his team and Prof. Falk’s -- which team, however, is far too weak numerically to signify in the politics of the holy Homeland.

But no, I am only being silly, Mr. Bones. It must be the Senatorino from Illinois, not the New York Times Company, who sets the tone on the anti-McCain side. There is a great gulf fixed between ""Kindly allow me to know best" and "YES WE CAN!!!"


[3] Neocomradess A. Rubin’s core paraphrase of "Kindly allow me to know best!" (in conjunction with the matter at hand) goes like this:

Still, a reporter’s visits to Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca, the two main American detention facilities; interviews with American military officers in charge of the facilities; and conversations with former detainees and human rights advocates make clear that the system has been changed in several important ways,
,

where the stuff bein’ swept under the rug with that ‘Still’ was

Outsiders are forbidden to interview detainees. The International Committee of the Red Cross has regular access to the facilities, but the United Nations and human rights groups say they have not been permitted to enter.


A cartoon version would be more to the point. If "Classics Illustrated" were still around and improbably decided to exalt A. Rubin to the pantheon, her whole dubyapologetic shebang could be boiled down to "Doug Stone is a good guy. I like him and trust him, even though some of his patients do not seem to. YOU should like and trust him as well!"


[4] "Opportunistic benefactionism" is not possible, but if it were, it would have the small incidental merit of conveying the de haut en bas ethos involved. The Lesser Breeds Without may be no worse off for lacking Rulalaw, but unless they lack somethin’, the whole racket as conceived by Nitsy and Nitsy’s Rubin is unintelligible.

This observation does not apply to most of Mme. Rubin’s Big Party neocomrades, however. The general AEI-GOP-DOD notion of an Opportunity is very narrowly about what is good for oneself. Sinn féin go bragh! That Lesser Breeds should also get a little somethin’ out of an Opportunity is unobjectionable to mainstream aggression fans, usually, but it is by no means a necessary condition for their aggressin’.

Both the New York Times Company and neo-Euro military humanists do make common benefit a necessary condition. Whether Mme. Alicia Rubin does so for herself individually is not quite clear to me, but few things in the world matter less.

01 June 2008

Halfway Back To Normal

At the middle of the polemical line segment that connects goofy vicarious chauvinism with greedy narcissist cowardice , at a point equidistant from Cloudcuckooland and Hell, stands Mr. James Denselow ("Who?") aboard Airstrip One, saying

The protests in Iraq over the US attempt to secure a bilateral Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) provides an opportune moment to assess the continued occupation.


Suppose, then, Mr. Bones that we assess the status of the AEI-GOP-DOD coalitional aggression as indicated, "halfway back to normal"? Could thee do better than that in four words, sir?

Chronologically, who can tell? Will ALL the scum be off the pond by sixty-two months from now, August of 2013? Probably not, if that deliverance be interpreted as the total physical absence of conscious and dedicated Kiddie Krusaders from the confines of the former Iraq. But the presence of a few thousand paleface operatives of AEI-GOP-DOD would not, as I judge, necessarily set the ton decisively. Gen. Mubárak does not have to put up with garrisons dispatched from Tel Aviv and Crawford and Brussels, the Two-Shrine Cardboard Kingdom has been more or less deinfidelised once again. The essential nature of these rackets would not be changed, though, if there were a few battalions answerable to the Weekly Standard lurkin’ around amidst the unhappy subjects of these rackets. The rackets would still be what they are, taken individually. Taken collectively, they would be the canon of normalcy for the Greater Levant, exactly as they are already.

Considering that pseudomonarchy is not likely to be reintroduced into the former Iraq, pseudomonarchy being a form of political claptrap more suited to retarded bedouin than to political grown-ups, thee may reword my slogan with a different four words if thee like, Mr. Bones: the invasionite creeps have already crept "Halfway home to Husní!" It would have saved everybody a great deal of tear and wear, if the creeps had simply handed their Mesopotamian booty over to the General immediately. Naturally I realize that my original suggestion to that effect would not have been acceptable for P. R. reasons: Little Brother and the Big Managers would not have thought it amusin’ to be perceived as havin’ semiconquered all those provinces merely in order to hand them over to persons less infallible and pure of heart than themselves. It has not, to be sure, been a good five years for the Purity and Infallibility of AEI and GOP and DOD, yet if the clowns had known exactly what was comin’ at ’em, I bet they would have preferred the whole dismal saga to relinquishin’ control to anybot at all, let alone to some humble indig. [1]

As to predicting the main show, Mr. Denselow seems reasonable and moderate enough to me:

[T]he US is unlikely to listen to ... protests when so much "blood and treasure" is at stake. Just as the British people were ignored when directly opposing the decision to go into the Iraq, so Iraqis will be denied the chance to peacefully oust an occupying army from their smouldering wreck of a state.

Well, sort of reasonable and moderate. As regards both Airstrip One and Peaceful Freedumbia, he passes over in silence the question of what "the people when directly opposing" is to count for in human events, and how the counting of it is to be organized. Neither the UKoGBaNI nor the International Zone neorégime are formally committed to holding plebescites and referendumbs as a regular thing every time a grave question arises.

I trust the student of Pol. Sci. and human events may notice this fact and yet avoid accusations of wishing to deny anybody her fair chance to oust? I’m all in favor of the particular ousting, myself, naturally, but for analytical purposes it seems more important to wonder why Mr. Denselow takes for granted without discussion that the I. Z. quasiparliament will not vote down poor M. al-Málikí's SOFA when they get a shot at it. Does he think that the quasideputies won’t get a shot at it? Does he think that the quasideputies would not dare to reject Hannibal of Da‘wa's non-treaty?

We know for sure that this analyst thinks that

perhaps the greatest danger for Iraq [is] that the US military presence in the country becomes an unchallenged normality, permanently delegitimising a national government and fanning the flames of conflict in a region that has been burning for far too long.


Obviously we have not the honour to agree with Mr. James Denselow completely, having just argued that the presence or absence of troops from Tel Aviv or Crawford or Brussels is by no means the cardinal point. Gen. Mubárak has none, yet he is as westoxicated as anybody at Wingnut City or Rio Limbaugh can wish. [2] A contrariwise example does not exist at the moment, yet in principle there might be fifty or a hundred thousand of J. Sidney McCain’s finest stationed out in the desert somewhere without any detectable impact on the native politics of the International Zone. Westoxication would, of course, be axiomatic inside that political framework, but, as far as I can make out, westoxication is axiomatic in the former Iraq no matter what. It is not just AEI and GOP and DOD that will not stand for a neorégime at Baghdád as hostile to all the AEI-GOP-DOD schemes and values as are the evil Qommies or the no-’count Venezuelans. Normalcy in the Greater Levant means Westoxication.

To put it other way around, if the existing rackets at Cairo and Riyadh &c. are not "permanently delegitimised as national governments," there exists nothing in all the world of politics that answers to that description. When I maintained that the Party of Hardin’ is halfway back to normalcy in their Peaceful Freedumbia, I meant halfway to achievin’ a secure establishment of both illegitimacy and westoxication, a neorégime of OnePercenters that would not last a week if the other 99% of locals had a word to say about the question, yet a perfectly secure neorégime of native OnePercenters as long as support from the paleface OnePercenters of Tel Aviv and Crawford and Brussels remains ultimately available to it. Immediate availability, the physical presence of armed Kiddie Krusaders for Western Sieve amongst the hapless indigs, tends to create more problems than it solves. [3]

____
[1] In Cloudcuckooland, the theory is that Hell actually did relinquish control of the former Iraq. Not to the natives, Zeus forbid!, and not to anybody like Gen. Mubárak -- who might have been practically helpful -- either, but to the Security Council of the United Nations.

Needless to say, that nominal malarkey has had no practical impact whatever, helpful or adverse, on the actual condition of the former Iraq. If it matters at all, it matters for relations between Rancho Crawford and Turtle Bay, and might be sloganised "Lone Ranger to Tonto: Drop Dead!" I do not understand why Tonto should be forced to butt out on 1 January 2009 rather than any other date several years either way. Hell can not possibly -- well, not sanely -- be afraid that the U.N. is actually going to start checking out what has been done in its name by vigilante cowpokerdom.

Miss Sappy has started scribbling lately as if the International Zone neorégime being "in Chapter Seven" implied a recognition of the political bankruptcy of AEI-GOP-DOD. That is just silliness. The neocomrades from Hell have long since thinkin’ about their colonial and imperial policies systematically. At this point, what matters to them is that their Peaceful Freedumbia should not become a permanent blot on the escutcheon of the Party of Hoover. If they were thinkin’ generally and with their hormones leashed for once, they would never set up a neuere Weltordnung in which that unguided missile, the Parliament of Man, gets to decide which political rackets are to count as "failed States" and thus become aggression fodder. Unless that level of determination is exclusively reserved to Little Brother and Big Management, it would be no fun worth mentionin’ to possess Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower. One might as well fancy the invasionite bozos repentin’ and amendin’ and betakin’ themselves to a monastery, for Pete’s sake!

In theory -- which is to say, at Cloudcuckooland -- the Security Council could impair the eternal lustre of Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology by examining their mandated performances in the former Iraq, and then severely condemning. Though strictly in accord with the letter of International Unlaw, that is quite as funny a joke as the one about the Feiths and Wolfowitzen and Oberfeldmarschalls von Rumsfeld findin’ themselves in the dock at the Hague some rainy Monday mornin’.

About ten thousand times more likely would be for the GOP geniuses to miscalculate how dearly their neo-Iraqi subjects love them, and so permit a plebescite about sellin’ the former Iraq to Crawford Inc. lock, stock and barrel, and then be shocked (shocked!) at the negative results. They have already done essentially that in Peaceful Freedumbia itself (December 2005) and in Gentile Palestine (January 2006), so one can confidently affirm that they are quite dumb enough to do such a thing. Doin’ the same dumbness three times in a row, however, may be more than one should expect even from alumnuses of Yale College and the Harvard Victory School.

They might conceivably make another referendumb mistake, however, whereas to empower and embolden the [exp. del.] United Nations is just plain off the AEI-GOP-DOD stupidity scope altogether.


[2] I disregard the fever swamps of Hyperzionism and jihád careerism.


[3] An analyst might plausibily analyse that it is the immediate availability of so many armed operatives of AEI-GOP-DOD to the collaborationist pols of the I. Z. neorégime that must prove their undoing at last.

Mr. James Dindelow manages to sit on both sides of that fence at once in a most remarkable way: "the US military presence in the country becomes an unchallenged normality ...." Ah, but what will this unchallenged normality consist of? Not a hard question! It will consist of "permanently delegitimising a national government and fanning the flames of conflict."

Thee will remember the lady in the joke, Mr. Bones, the one who agreed that the end of the world is just around the corner, but expected that we will all get along without it easily enough?