"incapable of imposing its will"

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

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

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

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

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

Happy days.


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

Wherein The Blessèd Hugh The Simple Explaineth Ex-Iraq

I bet thee does not know what is REALLY goin’ on in the depths of that bushogenic quagmire, Mr. Bones:

[J]ust look at Iraq, where we have now entered the stage where both Sunnis and Shi'a, and the various groups and parties and tendencies within each of the sectarian camps, tries to ingratiate itself with the Americans, and hopes that those fabulously well-equipped Americans will leave behind, and leave to their particular group or sect, so much of that equipment. And so they keep talking, as Hashimi did the other day, all about the "need for a stronger army." Hashimi, a Sunni, sees the army, not the police, as the place where the Sunnis who formed the officer corps under Saddam are likely to find their surest power base within the so-called "national institutions" -- if they are to do so at all. So he and the others go on about "greater security" -- which will, of course, only be insured by the Americans leaving those Humvees, those Bradley fighting vehicles, those tanks with special anti-I.E.D. devices, those guns, that night-fighting equipment, those helicopters, oh, and a few dozen planes would do nicely, and don't you want us to have a little bit of a navy to patrol off Umm al Qasr and help you contain Iran?

Thee gotta admit il est différent, sir!

Simplicissismus may not be very much in earnest about his latest brainstorm, though. If he was, wouldn’t he look up where -- on the turf of which "particular group or sect" -- the militant extremist GOP has installed its various Treasures of Progress? That way he could forecast whether it will indeed be M. Táriq al-Háshimí who dons the Mantle of Saddám, or somebody else entirely, such as, for instance, the Hannibal of Da‘wa, poor M. al-Málikí.

Attempting to fill up lacunae left by jerks in their jerkery seems an agreeable way to pass the Silly Season, so let us see if we can help little Hughie out a little on this new anti-Islamophalangitarian front that he alone is fightin’ on. M. al-Háshimí's TwentyPercenters, taken as a theocommunitarian collectivity, do have one big advantage: having shot at the armed operatives of the GOP far more than other invadees, it would be natural to expect that most of the AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP coalitional stockpiles and arsenals are located in Orthodox districts. The hillbillies do not require policin’ by the vigilante cowpokers of USIP & Co. at all, and the heretics of the South have required much less policin’, and also got part of their daily minimum requirement from the Redcoat Folk. A logistics zone from brave New Baghdád west through Abú Ghurayb and then up the Euphrates to the Syrian border logically ought to contain most of the Treasures of Progress. By no accident, this zone is also most of where Rear-Colonel Friedrich von Kagan originally proposed to concentrate his suRGin’, back before little Freddy read Stephan Leacock and decided to mount his HUMVEE and gallop off in all directions.

At the moment some real research would be required, I suppose. Hannibal Redux has ‘redeemed’ -- nice post-Civil War word, that one! -- Basra and Revolution City and Mosul and Amára and is alleged to be redeemin’ Diyálae even as I keyboard. All five of these glorious conquests are located in the ‘wrong’ direction from New Baghdád, an east-to-south direction in which there should not be much AEI-GOP-DOD hardware already present. Hannibal (exalted be He!) has managed to prevail in these immortal campaigns without a whole lot of actual fightin’, though, so it is entirely conceivable that the antecedently expected concentration of Treasures of Progress has not been seriously reduced.

Thus M. Táriq al-Háshimí may find most of the goodies that he (allegedly) wants to grab where he would prefer them to be, out there in the open spaces of the Wild Northwest, where never is heard a Free Kurdish word and the skies are not Shí‘í all day.

But M. al-Háshimí is not in like Flynn, Mr. Bones, not at all! The chief trouble is that the turf in question is no more Háshimí turf in particular than it is the turf of six dozen other parties and factions and factionoids and factionettes. The local yokels may all be TwentyPercenters and pious Sunninternis who read every missed link that Cartoono the Magnificent creatively and conspiratoristically restores with burbles of delight. Nevertheless, their effective degree of unity is negligible. The one proposition that they all agree on, a return of that venerable Sunní Ascendancy without which the former Iraq must -- O Unthinkable Alas! -- remain former forever, is no use for practical tawhíd purposes. Should Simplicissimus be right in guessin’ that the TwentyPercenters will scarf up most of the preowned matériel de la guerre, they will probably use it to shoot at one another. To be sure, some individual barracks-baser will presumably emerge as the new Nasser at the end of that weedin’-out process, but (1) the process may take quite a while, and (2) one cannot be perfectly certain that heretics and hillbillies will stand idly by waiting to see which TwentyPercenter jackal gets to lord it over them. [1]

--

Now I put it to thee, Bones, that all this jerkery is delightfully Fitzgeraldesque. Hugh the Simple takes it for an axiom that everybody Muslim is in cahoots with everybody else. Between that brain disease, or jihád careeerism, and a certain shortage of ordinary I. Q. points, the beatus can scarcely see the difference between Dr. Humpty Dumpty perched up on the wall as if he was Bob Cardinal Spencer explainin’ all about everythin’ to Miss Alice, and that unsightly mess on the ground that the joint royal cavalry and infantry have so far failed to be able to do much about.


___
[1] Intervention from the side of the Sunní International to assist some particular jackal cannot be ruled out, but why should they bother, after all? How can they bother? The Sunnintern does not possess any military forces that would be good at that aggre..., at that proäctive sort of caper.

Indeed, thee might maintain, Mr. Bones, that the Sunnintern does not have any military forces at all. Like the United Nations, it has member states that do possess fleets and tanks and biplanes and high-tech whizbangs &c., but these Treasures of Progress are not automatically at the disposal of the umbrella organisation. (Mostly not at their disposal non-automatically either.)

De Virtute Insipientium

"Dunce Virtue" I think we may call it in the language of invasions, Mr. Bones, though "the righteousness of the unwise" is not without a certain archaic charm. But "Dunce Virtue" wins because it abbreviates the same as Deo volente, reminding us that Father Zeus causes them to be like that -- for reasons that He does not always explain to thee and me humble.

Being Clever Does Not Make Thee Righteous!

I daresay thee know as much already, sir. I wish thee would have a word with the Senatorino from Illinois about the matter, however, before the escutcheon of Smartassèdness in America gets tarnished even worse than already.

North of the border, at beautiful downtown Goofville, the huntin’ and shootin’ and conspiratorialisin’ gentry have decided to go whole hog in illustration of the converse proposition,

Right[eous]ness Don’t Make You Smart!

which accordingly shall be text-in-chief for this morning’s sermonette. One could play it either way, for naturally when two variables vary independently, X is as indepent of Y as Y is of X. Partisans of X may assure thee that their product varies far more independently than the competition’s, but pay no attention when they do, Mr. Bones, or rather, pay enough attention to collect the specimen and file it away for future reference in the Insipientia Originalis section of thee’s memorandum book.

’Tis a vicarious embarrassment how extremely hog the goofballs go, Mr. Bones. Fortunately, however, this time the semi-demi-hemi-public e-display of Dunce Virtue does not require any character assassinations nearer to home that the tents where Mr. David Ignatius of the Baní WaPo dwells, and hangs out, and generally has his being. . Though that publicist manages to be both unsmart and disrighteous simultaneously, he is not likely to learn that he has been badmouthed, and even if he should notice, getting badmouthed happens to him frequently enough that he will not be broken-hearted by a little more of it. In their previous episode, Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes decided to persecute a couple of victims known to them personally. Of course no good was accomplished -- Does that approach ever accomplish any good? Is it possible under any circumstances whatsoever to successfully advise a moral agent over the age of about twelve that she cannot distinguish Right from Wrong accurately? -- and a number of feelings are still hurt, it looks like to me. And hurt pointlessly, it further appears to the same observer.

The silver lining to the present cloud is all that we need quote verbatim. "If you can’t say anything nice, . . .":

... the massive rejection by Iraqis of any continuation of the occupation and the bad faith of anyone who supports it ...

Hmm, I had thought there was a little more silver lining than that. To extract any more, though, would require complicated chemical processes to separate the silver from the insapience. A severe judge would find traces of unwisdom even here, for what can Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes LLC know for certain about mass rejections in the former Iraq? Why, the paleface invaders and their local levies cannot even conduct a basic census of religionisms, for Pete’s sake! Still, it the thought that counts. Maybe. The thought that eight or nine ex-Iraqis out of every ten or twelve reject occupation continuance, no matter how prettily it is packaged and presented, warms the heart, does it not? Perhaps we had better not look at such gifts through a microscope, sir. [1] Let us charitably assume that the Mu’ámara Junction gentry think so well of ex-Iraqis at large that they may attribute to them more than the ex-Iraqis really deserve. In contrast to the customary bitter paranoia of Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes LLC, here we meet a genial "antiparanoia" -- a Christian Science, almost! -- the delusion that (almost) everybody is conspiring together behind their backs for the good and true and beautiful. So pleasing a thought ought to count for at least a little something, no? Si non è vero . . ., well, and ’twas the thought that counts, begorrah!

In its way, even "bad faith" is a sort of silver lining. Errare est humanum, no doubt there are former-Iraqí neosubjects of AEI and GOP and DOD and USIP who are out for themselves rather than for their Heimatland. That is sad, of course, but remember that moral conditions could be far worse than LBC report: how if ex-Iraq were overrun with local natives who sincerely believe that having armed operatives answerable to the militant extremist Republican Party around is a good thing, a thing that ought to go on for another fifty or hundred years? That is to say, what if the International Zone neorégime collaborationists were collaborating with Hell and Crawford in good faith rather than in bad? Maréchal Pétain was not at all satisfactory, but Major Quisling was far worse, insofar as he genuinely believed in le Hitlerisme. An ex-Iraqi so degraded as to believe that the cowpoker vigilantes has a right to march in supralegally, and grab control (sort of), and make themselves at home, and now kindly offer to stay another century or two to make sure that their Willful Coalition brand of rightness does not perish from the earth . . . . No need for me to finish that sentence, Mr. Bones. "If you can't say anything nice," don't you know? The main thing is that we have been assured by Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes that no such degraded ex-Iraqis actually exist. Thee need not be a devotee of Mary Baker Eddy Thought to find that a sterling silver lining.


If I go one step farther in the same general direction, I may, or may not, lapse into mere Eddyfication. Thee must decide for thee’s self, sir. And may the Spirit of Rupert -- "We reports, thee decide!" -- be with thee!

Anyhow, it goes like this: even the main body of the Cloud of Insapience is perhaps not quite as black as it looks primâ facie. After their mass acquittal of ex-Iraqis, Ms. Lynx and Mister Badger and Cartoono the Magnificent and their peanut gallery naturally wind up defaming mainly citizens of the holy Homeland. Not only US, but ‘us’ as well. ‘Us’ like, for example, Mr. David Ignatius. Now of course I recognize that there are theoretical and Pascalian difficulties about calling that sort of thing "SELF criticism," a grave risk of lapsing into that peculiar pronoun of the first person plural that mysteriously manages to include neither the speaker nor the person or persons addressed. An exuberance like

... the 19th century atmosphere in clubhouse Washington, where military policy is debated at the US Institute for Peace, and where bad faith is still a scandalous idea and not to be mentioned

is clearly about U.S. Whether it has anything at all to do with the Mu’ámara Junction ‘us’ (inclusive) is not the easiest of questions. ‘Clubhouse’ rather suggests that it was not intended to, yet to suggest is not to dictate. [2]

That particular genre of exuberance always makes me wonder whether the badmouthers would really think any better of their patients if the latter were to come clean and frankly relabel their clubhouse the "Republican Party Institute of Aggression" or the like. The bad guys are never goin’ta do that, naturally, but if they did, how many points would they score with Goofville? The implication appears to be that the goofs consider insincerity worse than mere murder and kidnapping and invasion and occupation and genocide and double parking. No doubt believing that in good faith is psychologically possible, but do Lynx and Badger and Cartoono and their peanut gallery actually perform this trick?

On the other hand, why should anybody pretend to believe that pretending to believe is the alone Unforgivable Sin? Can thee answer me that one, Mr. Bones? Happy days.


___
[1] The LBC folks could, however, know their proposition 100.0% for sure if they shibbolethise it. If, that is, they decline to label any local native of the Mesopotamian provinces "an Iraqi" unless the specimen agrees with themselves about unconditional occupation continuance rejection. Let us hope that this is not the case, Mr. Bones, for obviously to play their hand that way would be no better than silly cheating. Their victory would be illusory and their winnings worthless.


[2] As with the Angry Ex-Iraqi over chez Cobban, it would be nice if this defamation were a little less unintelligible. No doubt the USIP Gang of Four -- Mme. l'Ambassatrice al-Rahím, Dr. Kahl, Dr. Knight, Big Management Party neocomradess K. Kagan -- never accused one another out loud of dishonesty, or even of subliminal insincerity, yet what does it mean, exactly, to announce that "bad faith is still a scandalous idea and not to be mentioned"? That ‘still’ gives me a notion Cartoono believes that Princess Posterity will eventually pronounce somebody at the Clubhouse guilty of mauvaise foi. But will all four of the above perps be indited on the Sartrean count and duly convicted and lynched, or only some of them?

Neocomradess Kagan is particularly difficult to take at other than her own word. She invites rehearsal of the late Mr. Lincoln's wisecrack, "If I did have another face, do you think I would wear this one?" But God knows best.

حكومة من حكومات الواقع آلإفتراضي

There Is No Joy In Goofville

(But as to actually admitting that the Mighty Muqáwama has struck out, what’s the rush?)

This statement by Aisawi is a model for all the participants in the political process and in the government of the occupation. It is a government of virtual reality , with no relationship whatsoever to actual daily life. The statement by Aisawi is ludicrous and sad at the same time, and so are the statements of the others on his list and in the government, and in fact some of them are starting to show signs of suffering from symptoms of addiction to these virtual-reality games and of mental slippage into a trance or a coma transporting them far from the Iraqi people and their tragedies and their aspirations. They will not awaken from this coma unless it is to the sound of the marching feet of the soldiers of the occupation as they gather together their equipment and their virtual game machines. Leaving behind them the sons of the occupation to face the actual reality of Iraq and the resistance of those who reject the occupation and its agents.

Cartoono the Magnificent has not, in fact, given up his usual shtik, Mr. Bones, he is just becoming a little sneakier. Do thee happen to know the South Sea-Might expression al-wáqi‘ al-’iftirádí, sir?

But we can play Dr. Cartoonoclastes’ cover game too -- literary criticism, that is, always assuming that agitprop transmitted via the Anglo-Arabian Press Trust qualifies as ‘literature’. Aisawi-The-Model is, as I guessed right the first time, more likely to be spelled I-S-S-A-W-I by invasion-language journalists:

The six ministers representing the country's main Sunni bloc the National Concord Front include Rafie al-Issawi, who was voted in as the Sunni deputy prime minister to Maliki, an AFP correspondent present in parliament said. Issawi was minister of state for foreign affairs between 2005 and 2007.

So then, M. Ráfi‘ al-‘Ísáwí. Of the Tawáfuq. [1] Vice quasipremier to the International Zone neorégime in the territory of the former Iraq.

M. al-‘Ísáwí vexed Dr. Cartoonoclastes as follows:

... the existence of efforts to draw up a road-map for the complementarity of the ministries that have direct contact with the vital necessities of the citizens of Iraq ...

That’s all there is, there ain’t no more. No more that Cartoono the Magnificent cares to cite, anyway. I believe we may safely presume that His Excellency is in favour of the existence of these efforts, even though we are not allowed to hear him say so. Less than thirty words, unless I have miscounted, far fewer than Cartoono shoots off pour écraser l’infâme:

Congratulations to all, both the living and the dead, in democratic pluralistic Iraq, not because the occupation and mercenary and militia forces have left, or because the age of corruption is over and those responsible for it have been called to account. No. The congratulations are in order because a member of the Iraqi Accord Front, an organization that was put together hastily to fulfill allocation-conditions, and that has been playing musical chairs for months, has now returned to the national-reconciliation government, and we have Rafie Aisawi, one of those appointed, according to the map of allocations, to the position of deputy prime minister, disclosing to us ["the existence ... of Iraq," as above]. A thousand congratulations to the people of Iraq, on whom it is now incumbent to await the success of the efforts to draw up a road-map which will permit the attainment of the basics of life, such as safe drinking water, some electrical power, and enough food for onesself and one's family to keep away the evils of hunger and the loss of self-esteem.

Outverbiaged five or six to one is poor M. Ráfi‘ al-‘Ísáwí of Tawáfuq and the I. Z. neorégime! [2]



___
[1] "National Concord Front" I do not recall encountering before. It sounds better to me than the usual rigmarole with ‘accord’ or ‘acordance’. But my judgment may be a Massachusetts or Chicagoland provincialism, with interference from Concord-and-Lexington-in-’75.


[2] However I remind thee, Mr. Bones, that we do not know how much attention Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes receive over at M. al-‘Ísáwí’s virtual fishwrap.

"from a racist partisan background, not from a national one"

"Talabani has dealt with the elections law from a racist partisan background, not from a national one. Accordingly, he's not qualified to lead Iraq and we demand the parliament to immediately sack him," MP Khalaf al-Alyan, the leader of the National Dialogue Council (NDC), told VOI.

Racist? Tusk, tusk! Can one not be a narrow, self-servicing chauvinist and tactful at the same time? Well, possibly one cannot, but M. al-‘Alyán ain’t even trying.

However, it is that "accordingly" that brings him within reach of Pol. Sci. M. al-‘Alyán obviously agrees with His Excellency, M. le Président de Tálebání, that whatever is hostile to NatRec (al-tawáfuq al-wataní, "national reconciliation") is automatically contrary to ... lemme see ... contrary to "the constitution's soul and essence, represented by the consensus principle to solve all problems, disputes, and differences among blocs and major components."

Part of the jolliness of the litigation is that Khalílzád Pasha’s Kiddie Konstitution never expressly says that NatRec wins all ties. It does not, for that matter, even announce unambiguously that its own Soul and Essence take precedence over anything merely set out in prose. Easterners being ever so much more geistlich than thee and me and James Madison, Mr. Bones, such a declaration may have been thought superfluous. On the other hand, I fear the Supremacy of Spirit may never have been thought of at all by such Venerable Neo-Framers as N. Feldman of Harvard and Z. Khalílzád himself (of AEI and GOP). Compared with what the Gang of Eighty-Seven came up with, the KPKK is a sad botch. Undoubtedly the perpetrators would have been well advised to make perfectly clear that their Kiddie Konstitution is not an attempt at bein’ Madisonian at all, but something radically different. (A wild stab at the provision of Crawfordite "trainin’ wheels" for the backward and benighted indigenes of Mesopotamia, perhaps?)

However that may be, the Venerable Neo-Framers did nothing of the sort, which leaves the beneficiaries of their gracious invasion-based wisdom with a foundational document that superficially looks like bad Madison, a grossly inferior performance in a well established genre. (I have toyed with the notion that the damn thing is a deliberate spoof, but that is highly unlikely.) There is nothing in it that warns the unwary not to try to use the Kiddie Konstitution as they would use the U. S. Federal Constitution of 1787. Nobody who sets out to construe the KPKK on that basis is ever going to get very far, but nobody is prevented from taking a whack at it.

M. de Tálebání and M. al-‘Alyán have perhaps never heard of that kind of a whack. If they were asked to explain what use constitutions are in civilised countries, I shudder to think of what they might say. It is not their fault that they are clueless -- how should they learn about things like that when they were subjects of the former Iraq? Turks after 1908 and Brits and Mecca Monarchs and patriot officers after 1958 and ‘Aflaqí Ba‘thís all came equipped with documents purporting to be constitutions. No self-respecting neorégime would be caught dead without one. But Mr. Madison is scarcely on speaking terms with the ringmasters of that sort of circus. Nobody in the Greater Levant has any reverence for circus constitutions. It is difficult to imagine any sane human anywhere being capable of revering them.

Under the circumstances it is natural enough that M. de Tálebání and M. al-‘Alyán prefer to pick up the Feldman-Khalílzád contraption by its "spirit and essence" end and say as little as possible about the crude and vulgar and Madisonian aspects. Geist und Wesen may be alarmingly hazy at times, but they are nonetheless reverable entities. The constitution-as-blueprint cannot be revered by anybody whose experience is only of Greater Levantine examples, bastard documents imported from afar that were merely decorative or, worse than decorative, were used as camouflage by and for those who rule strictly by force and fraud. Neocomrade Professor B. Lewis explains the general paradigm involved in a polemic called What Went Wrong? Few imported things have gone wrong worse in the Greater Levant that civilised constitutionalism. Other things have done more harm, since ‘Constitutions’ and Konstitutions do tend to become mostly mere decoration, but in terms of the distance between the original and the perversion of it, I am not sure any other Greater European product that Levantines and Semites borrowed and then wrecked can match the constitution-as-blueprint. But God knows best.

Still languishing under the yoke of AEI and GOP and DOD, M. de Tálebání and M. al-‘Alyán are in no position to simply reject Khalílzád Pasha’s Kiddie Konstitution. They do not know how to use it sensibly, but they understand well enough that they must praise the KPKK to the skies, and that it would never do them any harm to pretend to be constitutionalists, whatever strange breed of political animal that may be. And if thee and I had no more idea than they have, Mr. Bones, perhaps we would find ""the constitution's soul and essence, represented by the consensus principle to solve all problems, disputes, and differences among blocs and major components" more edifying than laughable. At a very deep level of Pol. Sci., their common absurdity could be defended: something like a "consensus principle" perhaps does have to exist first, if a constitution-as-blueprint is ever to be erected above it and made to work properly.

At the level they are actually on, however, M. de Tálebání and M. al-‘Alyán have about as much dignity as a frathouse food fight. These stout champions of Soul and Essence and Tawáfuq Wataní are simply trying to use the Feldman-Khalílzád contraption to clobber one another over the head with. The quasipresident thinks it his kiddie-konstitutional duty to veto anything contrary to his notion of NatRec, and the quasideputy thinks the quasipresident ought to be dismissed for not assenting to his notion of NatRec. Meanwhile, it is only too obvious what substantive rattle Tweedledumb and Tweedledee are really contending over. The decent political grown-up is likely to sympathize with the Monstrous Crow

more than with anybody else

in sight, I fear.

"probably least-well understood"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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


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

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

BGKB.

Uncle Jalál’s Cabin

’Aswát al-‘Iráq, "Voices of Iraq," has finally made clear whose voice it is, Mr. Bones. As we no doubt should have expected in a system of AGB, aggression-based democracy, the master voice turns out to belong to one who is a post-Iraqi only by courtesy or technicality, namely M. Jalál de Tálebání, head of ‘state’ to the International Zone neorégime.

VOI absurdly prints JT's manifesto as if it were the result of reporting, with "it added" and "it explained" and a dozen other variations stuck on at the end of each sentence. Here it is reconstituted and reassembled into paragraphs:

Since he has come to office, President Talabani has been doing his best to reinforce the stable bases of national unity, relying on national consensus and respecting Iraq's main constituents and all other popular groups interested in establishing a unified, democratic, and federal Iraq. Regarding all complicated issues, Talabani has abided by the constitution and principles that strengthen national unity as an approach that guarantees the country's higher interests, without any bias, divisions, or anything that weakens trust and mutual work for the sake of narrow interests and alliances that evacuate the national consensus from its essence and aims. Talabani never relied on partisan or sectarian positions, and never hesitated to make his general political behavior in compliance with his national responsibility as a symbol of national unity to encounter scattering, domination, elimination, and using majority to exclude other constituents. Relying on national consensus and respecting major constitutents, as essential principles embraced by society to solve disputes and differences, has played a very effective role in the country's democratic political process. This process has been crowned with an environment of reconciliation that was mirrored in the past few days, when the Iraqi Accordance Front rejoined the cabinet in an attempt to reinforce the principle of national unity. Within this positive environment and mutual trust, a provincial election law was enacted in opposition to the will of the second largest Iraqi constituent, and contrary to the national consensus principle, relying on a very dangerous constitutional violation that could be negatively reflected on what has be achieved and what will be accomplished. The constitutional violation reaches many constitutional articles, but the most dangerous is the one that touches the constitution's soul and essence, represented by the consensus principle to solve all problems, disputes, and differences among blocs and major components. A secret vote on the item related to Kirkuk province is a heresy that may result in new political alignments that do not serve the aims and content of the democratic political process. Sides that adopted an unconstitutional practice to enact the provincial election bill in the Parliament missed that all this contradicts their claims about rejecting sectarianism and racial discrimination, not to mention the protection of national and political rights.... In its current form, which is approved by these sides, the law supports sectarianism and ethnic segregation, and enlarges the circle of extremism and isolation. President Talabani, who has been guided in his political approach by the consensus principle among the three constituents [*] and their interests that reflect higher national interests, has abided by the constitution and its soul, and cannot proceed with a law that violates all this. Talabani does not accept a law that has been passed by 127 lawmakers, less than 50 percent of the legislatores. He hopes that the Presidency Council would not pass it, relying on the only constant in the constitution and political process, represented by consensus as a base for mutual work in the new democratic Iraq. The president is looking forward that political leaderships and heads of parliamentary blocs will have a responsible stance to correct this constitutional and political malfunction that occurred due to narrow motivations, and to restore trust between the country's three constituents. The president's office believes that the insistence on violating consensus and encouraging unprincipled alliances will heavily damage the national unity and joint political work.

[*] The one hint that VOI may not be entirely a mouthpiece for its Uncle Jalál is a gloss on "the three constituents" obtruded at this point. "(Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds)," decode the unjournalists. But pretty obviously JT himself codes it "(Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis)." Describing the quasiparliamentary background, JT speaks of "a provincial election law was enacted in opposition to the will of the second largest Iraqi constituent," which firmly establishes the Free Kurds in the second slot, constituentwise. And then "largest" means that the Twelvers must come first. Hence those poor, eternally put-upon TwentyPercenters bring up the rear.

Whether "largest" is strictly warrantable, who knows? Maybe the Free Kurds constitute twenty-one percent of the Mesopotamian subjects of AEI-GOP-DOD, with the brand-name TwentyPercenters really only nineteen percent. Maybe it is the other way around. For non-ex-Iraqis of any nationality other than the Free Kurdish, the order of precedence after Najaf's Number One is not a matter of concern. But naturally it is important for Uncle Jalál that his own theocommunitarian horse should place rather than show. And since he plainly proposes to set up as a mediator between those mobs of squabbling bedouin, perhaps it is fitting that the Free Kurds should fall between the two stools numerically.

In any case, the crux of Uncle Jalál’s Political Cabin is not which inhabitant of it is most obese, but rather that there are only and exactly three (3.00) inhabitants, a triunity of ‘constituents’ as he ventriloquizes VOI.

Thee should stop and think about that constitutent census for a couple of seconds, Mr. Bones, and not let it slip by unnoticed because thee have heard it a thousand and one times before. Observe that Uncle Jalál not only believes, but believes aggressively and proäctively, in what goofball gentry like Miss Lynx and Dr. Cartoonoclastes keep thundering against as ‘sectarianism.’ Observe further that it has never crossed the goofballs’ minds that M. Jalál Tálebání has any particular connection with wicked ‘sectarianism.’ They have to blame somebody for introducing this apple of discord into the Ba‘thí Garden of Eden, naturally, but they would much rather blame Senator Biden rather than Free Kurds. Until quite recently, the conspiratorializers seemed scarcely aware that Free Kurds so much as exist. That has begun to change as the question of who is to have Kirkúk warms up. The rigorously nondenominational Sunní-lovers are quite sure that the TwentyPercenters must have it. As you can see from his manifesto, that is not Uncle Jalál’s view of the case. It certainly looks as if those two narrow trains of thought are going to collide head on, and probably sooner rather than later. The gentry at Mu’ámara Junction see a large number of invisible specters, yet they did not see this crash coming. Neither did their factionette's favourite guru, Dr. Righteous Virtue. [1]

In any case, Uncle Jalál really believes what a large number of innocent victims are mistakenly accused of believing, that the first and really crucial thing to know about the former Iraq is that it is omnis divisa in partes tres. Where did he learn that lesson? Thee would think, from the elaborate fandango that he dances at VOI, that he gets it out of the Khalílzád Konstitution. But that is ridiculous, because theocommunitarian triunity is not in the Khalílzád Konstitution. Mr. Feldman of Harvard and Khalílzád Pasha of AEI-GOP certainly had no intention of imposing the effective konstitution that Uncle Jalál wants to head-of-state it under, the konstitution that features "soul and essence, represented by the consensus principle to solve all problems, disputes, and differences among blocs and major components." There is a vast deal too much "soul and essence" in the Feldmano-Khalílzádí document for my own taste, yet not a tenth as much as Uncle Jalál would like to squeeze out of it. Noah and Zalmáy did not thumb their noses at Mr. Madison and the Gang of ’87 to the extent of sticking any Principle of Consensus™ into their light-hearted neocolonial spoof. If M. de Tálebání wants a Principle of Consensus™ -- and obviously he does -- let him frankly supply one of his own, not saddling anybody else with responsibility for it.

Though basically a travesty of Mr. Madison, the Khalílzád Konstitution is not absolutely antimadisonian. Amidst all the pious wishes and edifyin’ declamations from the invasionites and their collaborators, amidst all those blanks to be filled in later, there are a few scraps of the KhK with enforcement mechanism attached. With or without Soul and Essence and Principle of Consensus™, then, it appears that Uncle Jalál can veto a bill if he happens not to like it. Let him do so, say I, and let him keep his mouth shut about why he has decided to holler ¡Nie pozwalam! next time he hollers.

This time around, the WHY is so blatant as to be positively obscene, even without solemn insincerities about "the law supports sectarianism and ethnic segregation, and enlarges the circle of extremism and isolation." If he can’t just shut up, though, M. de Tálebání might consider being frank: "I have decided to veto this legislation because it infringes the freedom of Free Kúrdestán" should do the trick. It is true, of course, that from seventy-nine (79) to eight-one (81) percent of Coalition subjects in the former Iraq do not give a significant hoot about the freedom of Free Kúrdestán. That is why silence beats frankness. But frankness would do Uncle Jalál no additional damage, I think. He would not make any new enemies by saying out loud what everybody knows he thinks. [2]






[1] Dr. Virtue's most recent revelation, dated 22 June 2008, reads as if he still can’t see it coming. The Virtutite account of the quasiparliamentary background is at least as eccentric as the Tálebánian,

In many ways, the current version of the law for the provincial elections serves to underline the growing confidence of a group of centralist Shiite politicians around Nuri al-Maliki. It challenges the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) with the ban on the use of religious places of worship in elections campaign, while at the same time does not give the Kurds everything they want regarding Kirkuk – Kurdish representatives ultimately abstained from the final vote, where some 127 out of 140 members of parliament reportedly supported the law. Interestingly, complaints about the voting procedure for the law itself prompted criticism from Kurds and UIA independent Khalid al-Atiyya alike, suggesting that the presidential veto may once more come into play in Iraqi politics in relation to this piece of legislation.

(Who could guess from that that Uncle Jalál thinks he is presiding over a Konstitutional Krisis?)


[2] An objector might object that M. de Tálebání ought to supply a Khalílzád-Konstitutional sort of WHY in conjunction with rejecting a bill presented to him by the quasideputies. Indeed, but the freedom of Free Kúrdestán comes much closer to being konstitutional than does any tripe and baloney about triune consensus. The not-so-great charter that Master Noah conceived and Sultán Zalmáy graciously vouchsafed does not go as far towards the absolute independence of Free Kúrdestán as Uncle Jalál and most of his hillbilly nephews and nieces desire, but it goes a pretty far piece towards it. And that in word and not Soul and Essence alone!

By contrast, the foundational document for post-Iraq says simply nothing at all about reviving the spirit of ancient Polish konstytucjionalizm. And, as a matter of fact, Noah and Zalmáy and their local native friends were not deliberately aimin’ to refurbish the zlota wolnosc of yore, even though nobody knowledgable would guess anything different from examining what they produced.

Aggression-based konstitutionalizers just happen to be extremely bad marksmen, don't you know? They aimed at makin’ quite sure that none of their neosubjects can tyrannize over the rest, but what they actually hit was Old Poland. It could happen to anybody -- and that is another excellent reason why nobody ought to dabble in invasionism.

Late Word From Bazzázestán

Almost too good to be true, innit, Mr. Bones? I especially like the way M. von al-Bazzáz avoids confusin’ his customers with any pro formâ option to the effect that "national" reconciliation in the former Iraq might not have failed.

But naturally the main reason to cherish it is that the Google Gibberish Machine has turned out something correct from end to end for once.

Happy days.

"highly paid symbolic analysts ... manipulating symbols"

The Party of Big Management -- political heirs to Gen. Grant and Dr. Hoover, spiritually guided from Below by the late Master Lee Atwater -- are no longer amused by the Barry O'Bama Show the way they used to be, Mr. Bones.[0]

This morning's fishwrap contains a couple of positively negative reviews. Take that of Neocomradess M. Gallagher , for instance:

What do you do when you're a lightly accomplished one-term senator, a former state legislator from Illinois, a Harvard law graduate who has no substantive record of accomplishments, and you are running against a war hero whom polls show that Americans overwhelmingly view as far more fit to be commander in chief? Pose, of course. What else can a guy like Obama do? So the man who would be president of the United States of America flies around the world in the middle of a political campaign, enlisting the U.S. military and the Berlin Wall as free campaign commercial backdrops, to lend him the emotional weight and substance -- the aura as a commander -- that he hasn't yet earned on his own.

Now of course if BHO had even a single shred of decency to him, he'd join former Gov. Dukakis on a Cape Cod beach to read about ... about town planning in Scandinavia, I believe it was. Unfortunately for the Big Managerial classes, BHO is no more interested in that sort of tedium than they are themselves, he'd much prefer to pull a Dubya and fly around the world enlistin’ this-’n’-that in his own little cause. Also unfortunate for the MBA Folk is the fact that their Cap’n M’Cain happens to look a little silly left on the beach exhibitin’ his full "emotional weight and substance" (also for campaign-commercial purposes) as if he were a Coriolanus who had changed his mind and decided to be more flexible and cash in on his war wounds a little. [1] Ah, Mr. Bones, how "Life is unfair!"!

The neocomradess is fightin’ in, or very near, the Big Management Party's last ditch when she can deploy no more effective agitprop than to declaim that Cap’n M’Cain deserves to be acclaimed POTUS ob cives servatos, whereas Barack the Bogus has earned maybe a couple of guest appearances at comedy clubs. [2] Here in the sewer of Romulus, all it takes to deserve an office of public trust is to have campaigned for it successfully. Other qualifications can be nice, but Success is the only one that is absolutely indispensable. [3]

It follows at once that what this neocomradess is really grumpin’ about is that Barry gets away with it. So, how does he do it? She borrows her explanation from outside the ranks of the Big Party:

NBC's Andrea Mitchell was the one journalist with the courage to name what she was actually seeing happen: Obama faking even being interviewed by the press. "Let me say something about the message management. He didn't have reporters with him, he didn't have a press pool, he didn't do a press conference," either in Afghanistan or Iraq, noted Mitchell on the air. Instead Obama manufactured "what some would call ‘fake interviews,’ because they are not interviews from a journalist," Mitchell went on. Mitchell understands very well that this contrived image management is powerfully all to Obama's political advantage. He's shameless when it comes to managing his own image. "Politically it's as smart as can be," she conceded before noting the big obvious truth nobody else in the media was bothering to expose: "We've not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before."

Neocomradess M. Gallagher is not the extremist GOP’s best and brightest bulb. The real bearing of Ms. Mitchell’s remark was quite different. She meant to inculcate the conveniently self-servicing dogma that a ‘real’ interview is one conducted by a pro journalist like herself; amateurs and blogghists (and network anchors) who attempt to cross-question the fiendish politicians are never going to accomplish anything worth attending to. Ordinarily Neocomradess M. Gallagher would have seized on that absurd analysis as additional ammo against the drive-bys. Only the accident that A. Mitchell's self-aggrandizement happened to be directed at BHO could lead M. Gallagher to take such a product seriously and even undertake to distribute it free of charge. [4]

Neocomradess M. Gallagher has entirely forgotten her lessons in Imperial Postreality Basin’. Or maybe she was sick that day?

McCain's approach is all so, well, cognitive. McCain thinks that reality is something that really exists, that has to be dealt with, instead of recognizing that we live in a Brave New World where highly paid symbolic analysts construct reality by manipulating symbols. [5]

She has also forgotten, or perhaps does not credit, the happy news announced by Dr. Limbaugh, namely that drive-bys like Andrea Mitchell simply don’t matter any more.

Finally, Neocomradess M. Gallagher makes a very poor showin’ as amateur MacLuhanite. What Bogus Barry has been retorting upon the Atwaterites could have been done back before we had fire and the wheel. "Highly paid symbolic analysts ... manipulating symbols" is two-hundred-proof tripe and baloney, as well as pleonastic.

__

Neocomrade C. Page is less fun than Mizz Maggie, but probably more important:

Obama gets more media attention than John McCain because, as we have heard over and over again, he is the rock star of today's political scene. McCain, by contrast, is an attractive candidate and war hero who is less intriguing precisely because, in a political world where fresh and new has become the highest virtue, we know him so well. Even liberals who disagree with him politically have a lot of affection for the Arizona senator as a man and a maverick, even when he's been talking a lot less maverick lately. But, running against Obama, he often brings to mind grumpy ol' Mr. Wilson chasing Dennis the Menace off his lawn.

Master Clarence sets out to goldwaterize preëmptively for Cap’n M’Cain: "In your hearts, you liberal fiends know he's nice." Setting aside that thee and me, at least, have no affection for dumb Mugwumps whatever, notice, Mr. Bones, that this neocomrade is behavin’ like one of those "highly paid symbolic analyst" fellas, settin’ up an Antithesis of Ike and Elvis. [6]

On the bright side, C. Page, like M. Gallagher, is not much into Imperial Postreality Basin’:

Besides, in McCain's case the under-coverage could be a blessing. Obama's trip took attention away from the Friday resignation of former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm as McCain's economic adviser. The old friend became a liability over his comments that we have become "nation of whiners" about the sluggish economy. It's not good to have an economic advisor who shows the bedside manner of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. And as the world watched and waited for any slips by Obama, the first gaffe of his trip went to ... John McCain! In an ABC interview he referred to the rough "situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border." Since the two countries don't share a border, McCain's foreign affairs expertise suddenly didn't sound so good.

Evidently Ike is so extremely likeable that a touch or two from Dr. Altzheimer does not matter. Well, we shall see. And God knows best.


___
[0] Neocomrades Gallagher and Page stand to Senatorino Obama exactly as the rigorously nonsectarian pro-Sunninterní folks over at Mu’ámara Junction stand to poor M. al-Málikí. Accordingly I recycle the cartoon / idol / icon.



[1] Speaking of emotional weight and substance, Mr. Bones, would thee happen to know the rest of the words to that song that begins "Bomb, bomb, bomb / Bomb, bomb Iran!"?


[2] The last notable success for the bad guys was their triumphant hushin’ up of Wesley Clark, who had shown questionable taste by pointing out that there do not, as a mere matter of fact, exist any cives servati obliged to J. Sidney Coriolanus for their preservation. Naturally there would not be, considering that the flyboy hero managed to get himself shot down whilst prosecutin’ a war that was eventually lost.

On that occasion, "Life is unfair" sided with the GOP geniuses pretty brazenly. What more could they want?

Not a hard question. Militant extremist Republicans want "Life is unfair" to be on their side always and invariably. From their own rather specialised perspective, they may well feel that they deserve to be on the receivin’ end of all unfairnesses whatsoever. Is it not they, after all, who champion the Unfairness Principle, that gallant Hamiltonian banner that doves and donkeys (plus Rum and Romanism and rebellion, most likely) are forever attempting to snatch from their hands and trample in the mire? Is it fair, sir, that the sworn enemies of Fairness should ever be the victims of Inequity and not the perpetrators thereof? (Explain your answer.)

In any case, Neocomradess M. Gallagher would be sincerely shocked to hear it said that Cap’n M’Cain is only posin’ as Patton-cum-Clausewitz. Let us therefore hope somebody says it to her early and often every day for the next four months.


[3] I am uncertain whether the Friends of Unfairness ought to find the Success Principle congenial as a matter of logic and abstraction. Any general principle whatsoever is tainted with fairness to the extent that it fails to have lots and lots of probative exceptions and lawyerly loopholes. On the other hand, Success scarcely exists except by contrast with circumambient Failure, and may thus be considered to have unfairness built into it conceptually. But then on the third paw, the MBA Folk tend to want their own success, if nobody else's, put down as well-deserved and not merely a lottery win.

Perhaps if their Master Lee Atwater had lived longer, he might have become the Freddy von Hayek of these questions. To bark and bellow "Life is unfair!" does not strictly entail that Death can never poach on the unfairness preserve a little.


[4] It is a very shoddy product, considered in isolation. Ms. Mitchell's knowledge of American history must be indistinguishable from zero if she seriously supposes that the idea of dodging hard questions was invented by or for B. Hussein Obama sometime last Friday afternoon.

Neocomradess M. Gallagher, for her part, belongs to the Party of HistoryIsBunk, and is certainly not goin’ to object on historical grounds. She might relish the antidemocratic implications of the Mitchell Doctrine, were it not that it privileges entirely the wrong sort of OnePercenters, graduates of journalism schools (which are little better than barber colleges, let’s face it!) rather than Big Managerial gentry properly equipped with MBA degrees from the Harvard Victory School.


[5] Compare and contrast with the following key Crawfordological text:

In the summer of 2002, after I [Mr. Ron Suskind] had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes. I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. [Neocomrade K. Rove?] He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

To be sure, the notion of B. Hussein Obáma also getting to play at We’re-An-Empire-Now could be made to seem a bit alarming. But obviously no such advanced norion as that has transited the brainpan of Neocomradess M. Gallagher.


[6] C. Page actually says "Madonna" instead of "Elvis," but it would be a remote detour indeed to go into his misogyny tactics at this point.

Goofballs Hoist On Own Petard

Yo netroots: [n]aturally you want Obama to win the US presidential election, as every sensible person does, and so there is a focus on any point that is in his favor. The Spiegel interview remarks were that, and so were the Dabbagh remarks yesterday (to the effect that yes, in fact, Maliki does like the Obama plan). Which is fine as far as it goes. But here's the problem: [i]n the course of establishing and buttressing a pro-Obama point in the election campaign (a good thing in itself), you have done so in a way that very seriously distorts what is actually happening in Iraq, namely the marketing of Maliki as an Iraqi nationalist, something he is not. It isn't just that this helps give the American people a distorted picture of what is happening in Iraq in theory, more particularly it means that the American people are being softened up to accept the conversion of one form of occupation into another more indirect occupation, on the basis that in any event this is a process that is being controlled by a bona fide Iraqi nationalist leader, a ludicrous idea you are helping to legitimize. You don't have to accept everything that is said on this score by the Sadrists or the supporters of the resistance (which you don't seem to read anyway, even when I try to help make it accessible). All you have to do is remember the mega-bases under construction in the country, and what is meant by the "withdrawal of combat troops."

Golly, Mr. Bones, Cartoono the Magnificent is even cuter when he gets mad!

’Twould take a heart of stone not to laugh at the Mu’ámara Junction gentry for failing to anticipate that pretty well anybody can set up as a vicarious watan-nationalist on behalf of the former Iraq. Including that unspeakable fiend, N. K. al-Málikí himself. Obviously.

As to softening up Ms. Vox Populi, we can talk about that if and when there is something to talk about.

Allow me to wish you Happy Days, sir!

(As good as those O'Henry stories where the conmen get conned and then puff themselves up against swindlin' like poisonous toads!)

"the real shape of the debate to come"

Comrade M. Yglesias understands how to make life very easy for himself and the doves and the donkeys:

On a schedule, the goal of our Iraq policy is to find a reasonable means of extricating ourselves from an awful position and leaving Iraq's fate in Iraq's hands. Without a schedule, the goal of our Iraq policy is to stay in Iraq indefinitely in defiance of the wishes of the American and Iraqi people alike. Both Obama and Maliki understand this distinction. (...) The real post-surge shape of the political debate [is] a tug-o-war between the imperial fantasies of the American right, and the joint desire of the Iraqi and American people to end U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

Nevertheless, life after Rancho Crawford may not be perfectly easy:

The Bush administration's success in getting Maliki to back away from his own policies shows that a President McCain could probably prevail upon Maliki to accept indefinite occupation.

It is an interesting scribble, Mr. Bones, though more informative about the l*b*r*l mindset than about colonial and imperial policy. You can see from what I quote, and even better from the whole megillah, that M. Yglesias treats poor M. al-Málikí as a wholly owned subsidiary of B. Hussein Obama Enterprises LLC. He acknowledges with his keyboard, to be sure, that he is not authorized to announce any such virtual incorporation:

For the Iraqis the indefinite presence on their soil of a foreign army unaccountable to Iraqi law is a recipe for an open-ended occupation and a neocolonial relationship with the United States. The solution, from an Iraqi perspective, is a fixed schedule for withdrawal that will buy the Iraq government continued military support ... while also asserting Iraqi sovereignty.

But the acknowledgment is in words alone -- and some of the words are pretty dubious as well, notably "on terms that are acceptable to the Pentagon," the contents of that little ellipsis that I stuck in. Also the words "For the Iraqis" at the beginning, which give the impression that to be invaded and semiconquered and occupied and neocolonialised happens chiefly in the mind of the patient, like a Phil Gramm economic collapse. Comrade Yglesias does not want to keep rudely reminding poor M. al-Málikí about the true Correlation of Farces, which is pro tanto a significant improvement over how Boy and Party and Ideology have been behavin’ since they first aggressed. But it is plain that this is good manners on the part of Obama Enterprises rather than serious analysis. For his own part, Comrade Yglesias does not object to "the indefinite presence on their soil of a foreign army unaccountable to Iraqi law." He leaves it to the violence professionals to insist on extraterritoriality and thus does not have to come out for it frankly himself:

[The "Prime Minister" of "Iraq"] would like some measure of continued American military support. But the American military doesn't want to give that support without an agreement with Iraq that continues to grant our forces broad immunity from Iraqi law and discretion in their conduct. Both are understandable positions ....

I daresay the holy Homeland's colonels and generals do not find M. Yglesias being able to understand their position much more satisfactory than the I. Z. collaborationist politicians do. Conventionally wise l*b*r*l*sm does have a broader tendency to fall between two stools like that, does it not, Mr. Bones? Comrade Yglesias, or Mrs. Roosevelt, can understand one's position, but she makes plain that he knows of other positions that are to be preferred. "Damning with faint praise," I believe this ploy is called. It may, on occasion, influence people, but I doubt it wins friends often. [1]

As you would naturally infer from the way our protagonist frames these things, Mr. Bones, on Planet Yglesias one also runs across positions that are NOT understandable. We have already passed by one of these, namely "the goal of our Iraq policy is to stay in Iraq indefinitely in defiance of the wishes of the American and Iraqi people alike." That might make sense if one took the object of the exercise to be to put Ms. Vox Populi firmly in her place and monopolize policy and power under the thumbs of Those Who Know Best®. In the absence of any positive sign that Comrade Yglesias meant it that way, however, I can only guess he thinks that the militant extremist Republicans are nuts on the subject of the former Iraq.

That is what I complain of by saying that M. Yglesias has a tendency to make political life too easy for himself. He’s prepared to damn the torpedoes and steam ahead without possessing any theory worthy of the name about what makes the perps perpetrate. Incidentally, this insouciance aggravates the problem about getting patted on the head and informed that M. Y. finds one's position understandable (though of course he must reject it). That shtik is bound to seem even more patronizing after the client learns how little importance Don Matteo in fact attaches to understanding other folks’ positions. Unless the patient is desperately eager to be reassured that she is not crazy, -- quite a rare condition! -- there is not much to be said for Yglesian assurances of understandability.

Finally, consider the case of the understandability of poor M. al-Málikí in particular. We have seen that Don Matteo can not only understand the quasipremier's recently attested conduct but also a different hypothetical future conduct, that implied by "President McCain could probably prevail upon Maliki to accept indefinite occupation." As I said above, this conventionally l*b*r*l scribbler certainly does not intend to be rude to NKaM, or rude about him either, yet he manages to give the impression that the quasipremier might be prevailed upon to do pretty well anything. Very likely that is an accurate analysis, and it would be an intellectually respectable analysis as well if it were spelled out in crude correlation-of-forces terms. Instead of that, though, we get the Yglesian understandability stuff, which may be warm and cuddly but is not much more. Anybody and her brother-in-law understands already why weakness caves: one need not subscribe to the The American Prospect to learn about that, for Pete's sake!

But God knows best. Happy days.


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[1] Some of our less unintelligent wingnuts have speculated that B. Hussein Obama Enterprises LLC may disappoint certain foreigners, mostly Old Euros, who at the moment expect to be friends with it. Should they discover that Himself consistently pronounces their positions ‘understandable’ but has hyperpowerfully resolved to do something quite different, they may not remain Obama groupies long. Mais nous verrons.

Speaking of Lesser Breeds Without

Speaking of Lesser Breeds Without, Mr. Bones, how about this one?

Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption. Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards. Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Bar this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland. Some Iranians may believe that this is a worthwhile gamble if the prospect is Israel’s demise. But most Iranians probably don’t.

Why on Gore's green earth should a private foreign person, a subject of the Tel Aviv statelet, [1] appear in the ever-august columns of the New York Times Company to utter threats of violence that his neorégime obviously ought to make for itself officially?

Alio modo, has Aunt Nitsy suddenly decided that her proper rôle in life is to serve as a message drop, a glorified Whittaker Chambers pumpkin?



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[1] "Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University, is the author, most recently, of 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War."

Christoph Peters on La Démocratie en Amérique

A "judicious indifference to the Opinions of Mankind" must ever be our primary rule, of course.

Yet what good is any rule without a couple of probative exceptions? Maybe, once in a long while, somebody out there beyond Cape Cod says something worth attending to. Maybe.

For reasons of ethical cleanliness and good thought and, above all, narcissism avoidance, however, one must always be cautious about citation of the Lesser Breeds Without. One is not to go about ballyhooing this or that exotic observation, picking up some striking passage like, for example,

George W. Bush’s contempt for the rules and institutions of international politics, his revival of preventive war, with all its unforeseeable consequences, his abrogation of the rule of law in his own country, and his ignorance of every issue related to environmental conservation have become, for me and for the vast majority of Germans, synonymous with a high-handed, ugly America

merely because one happens to wish one had written it oneself. Exactly what purpose the rest of the world serves by existing is far from clear, but the theory that it is meant as a mirror to look at and admire one’s own silly face in can be ruled out, having been refuted by Copernicus. Or was it Dr. Kuhn of MIT?

Anyhow, a little examination of a gift horse's teeth never comes amiss (does it?) and may even reveal definite evidence that the Universe is not actually revolving around Oneself. In the case at hand, it does so. Herr Christoph Peters followed up imediately with a sentence which it would be grossly indecent to wish that Oneself had written:

"This state of affairs has provoked not only rage and horror, but also great sadness, for the United States has always been the symbol of freedom, democracy and law."

Gentlemen do not care to be flattered, and philosophers do not approve of inaccuracy. Accordingly, that slice of baloney starts out with two strikes against it.

There may be a third strike as well, depending on whether one chooses to disentangle blackmail from flattery. It is a fairly common ploy, and maybe with Old Euros especially, to butter up our poor old Uncle Sam with all that "freedom, democracy and law" jazz in hopes of (not merely receiving a tip, but actually of) dictating policy. Judge for yourself -- or go ask Rupert Murdoch -- whether or not Herr Peters is suavely threatening even as he lays on the b------t with a dumptruck: "If you folks don’t do something about the militant extremist GOP and do it pronto, why, I and the vast majority of Germans may be obliged to procure ourselves some other FD&L Symbol to venerate in future." [1] I detect that note in Herr Peter's little op-ed sonata, but perhaps I am mistaken, confused by recollection of previous works in the same genre?

Power being what it is, and Hyperpower bein’ even more so!, it would be silly and ungracious for Uncle Sam to object to flattery and even blackmail attempts from the Lesser Breeds Without. Sillier still, though, for Wunnerful US to take such oblique tributes to our Pentagon at face value. Without seeming impatient or ungrateful, Wunnerful US ought always to try to figure out what the LBW are up to, what they really and substantially want when they take to buttering up and laying on. I find Christoph Peters simpático and am willing enough, maybe too willing, to suppose that he wants more or less what he says he wants, a USA that looks and behaves less like Greater Texas, though perhaps not exactly reproducing More's Utopia and Plato's Republic straightaway either.

Alarm bells go off at once when I notice that what Herr Peters calls for is (mostly) what I want myself. A "judicious indifference to the Opinions of Mankind" is admirable, but a "judicious indifference to the Opinions of Oneself," so to rephrase the rephrasing, is mandatory as well for those who take M. Pascal seriously about travaillons donc à bien penser: voilà le principe de la morale. Judiciousness and high-quality thinking might be served in this case by being three times, or five times, less indifferent to the opinions of Frau Merkel (that one rejects) than to the opinions of Herr Peters, which are, in part, almost indistinguishable from what one had already thought for oneself without his assistance. [2]


___
[1] I notice that Dr. R. Limbaugh or Mlle. A. Coulter might have written those words, only meaning them to be enunciated sarcastically with the implication that Wunnerful US is -- obviously! -- the only, or the only acceptable, "symbol of freedom, democracy and law" product presently available on The Market. On that view, either Herr Peters is bluffing, or he is a mere left-wing infant and imbecile who doesn't know any better.

Neither estimate of him is credible chez moi, but I do suspect that he may not be 100.0% sincere and frank about his symbol worship. Any alien admitted to the columns of the New York Times Company is likely to be a big enough boy intellectually to dispense with idols and icons, adoring Freedom and Democracy and Law unembodied in concrete imagery.

At a lower level, isn't it likely that when Herr Peters discusses us Yanks in ordinary political conversations, his F-D-L trinity turn up mostly per contra? I find it difficult to imagine even his dubyaphile Chancellor, Frau Merkel, going on about Wunnerful US in that civics-textbook strain at any length. But God knows best.


[2] Two members of Peters’ own F-D-L trinity encourage a Pascalian measure of self-distrust:

(1) Democracy means that the People (not Oneself) is to rule.

(2) The Rulalaw slogan can mean pretty well everything and its opposite, yet in some sense if "Law rules," then necessarily Oneself does not rule.

Put like that, however, Democracy and Rulalaw look to be incompatible. Furthermore, Freedom could hardly be introduced as an anti-Oneself principle by anybody but a satirist. One might emulate the move that most eleutheromaniacs are eventually reduced to and solemnly announce "The only TRUE Freedom is OTHER PEOPLE'S freedom!" -- a formula that clearly relegates Oneself to its proper humble place.

That soundbite even sounds sort of edifying, dunnit? But of course it cannot possibly pass the bien penser test.

"He impugns his own party's leadership as corrupt"

Señoritismo, "young-fogeyism," does not infest the Party of Atwater alone, Mr. Bones.

The party of Gen. Jackson and thee and me has a few señoritos of our own to endure, and here comes Comrade J. Chait of the Formerly New Republic to remind everybody political about the epidemiology of Original Sin:

The best aspect of a McCain presidency is that, while it would probably follow the policies of George W. Bush, it would ________________ .

After a ‘while’ like that, what could anybody fill in the blank with so that, on balance, the sentence works out in the Flyboy Hero's favor? Do all the same brain-dead OnePercenterly things as George XLIII, but do them for some quite different reason? Who on Gore’s green earth would want to order that?

We’ll get to what Master Jonathan filled his own blankness up with shortly, but before that, let us discuss whether or not his sentence inadvertently furnishes us with the Platonic Form of Señoritoïsm, or at least a frame that all young-fogeyism fits into comfy. "Setting aside substance," the little laddie begins to orate, headed towards some such eventual bottom line as "And that is why I still kinda like J. Sidney McCain." [1]

Of course a señorito who took substance into reverential account would not be a señorito at all, unless by chance purely chronologically. But two quite different things might be going on when one hears an op-ed noisemaker begin by despising substance. She could be Beau Brummel, dancing a fandango on the grave of substance to honour the Golden Calf of Style. That, and that alone, is the wahre Señoritoismus. On the other hand, she could, in theory, be a sound Peripatetic who wishes to clear Matter out of the way as a preliminary to edifying and philosophical meditations upon Form. Given that it is the silly season at the moment, and given what we know already about J. Chait and the Formerly New Republic [2], the odds are stacked heavily in M. Brummel's favour, but we do not know absolutely for sure, now, do we?

Master Jonathan is resolved to sound frivolous, "[T]he upside to a candidate who changes his philosophical orientation as often as McCain is that he could always switch back." On the other hand, maybe that crack is not so frivolous, but reflects a deep contempt for all philosophical orientations? But then on the third tentacle, is not such contempt itself a manifestation of the Higher Frivolity? Read the whole thing through, Mr. Bones, and assess for yourself. My own impression is that this laddie really and truly does not give a hoot what the Commanderissimo Presumptive may do after he takes the helm. That attitude is only about 95% frivolous and señoritoly, the odd five percent consisting of a patriotic assurance that Uncle Sam has nowadays become so secure that even a decerebrated Mugwump cannot do any damage of significance.

And maybe that odd 5% is the proper attitude to adopt? I should consider it myself if nothing beyond the affairs of our holy Homeland mattered to me. Anybody who cares even a little bit about the Lesser Breeds Without, though, would be foolish to "still kinda like John McCain." Unsurprisingly, Master Jonathan has not a single word here about foreign and aggression policy. To give the Cap’n himself due justice, his shameless Horace Greeley ego-trippin’ never took him abroad (that I recall) until he started croonin’ about a new Preëmptive Retaliation™ adventure that would co-star the Islamic Republic. [2]


___
[1] What I just quoted, sorta, is the subtitle of the scribble, probably supplied by some editor from amongst the Baní Peretz and perhaps misrepresenting the nonsense of the actual scribbler.

Jonathan himself splashes down as follows:

The idea that McCain could establish a reputation as a maverick by standing up to his party on numerous issues, win back his party's support by abandoning nearly all his heterodoxies, then prevail by portraying himself as an unwavering man of principle is nauseating. Yet somehow the idea of a McCain presidency itself doesn't terrify me. What can I say? Bush has lowered my standards.

[2] Background information admits a (very remote) third possibility about what Jonathan is up to here. Suppose the full monnicker is "Jonathan Chait Wannabe-Swift" and that JCW-S is elegantly spoofing Sheikh Al-Peretz, husband to the proprietoress of the Formerly New Republic, and surely the only member of the Confraternity of St. Joseph Lieberman with an occasional good word to emit about B. Hussein Obáma. M. von Al-Peretz is, as often, positively beggin’ to be mocked; one striking way to gratify the wish would be to pose as the Boss's mirror image, as a Peretzoid ‘supporter’ of Cap’n M’Cain.

In favor of the hypothesis is that Master Jonathan does not plan to actually tug a lever for JSM -- "I'd vote for an obnoxious, pampered phony who shared my beliefs over a charming war hero who didn't" -- just as Mynheer Martin van Peretz will not be votin’ for BHO. (Unfortunately, background information about JC reveals that he is no Dean Swift.)



[3] A Formerly-New Republican like Señorito Chait may consider that JSM crooned wisely and well on that topic. I have in fact no idea whether he agrees or disagrees with Sheik Al-Peretz about Hyperzionism and all that jazz. It would be easy to find out, I daresay, but who cares? Master Jonathan Chait's views on policy are not worth learning; whatever he is, there are zillions interchangeably like him.

He might have been a contributor, though, if he had used this opportunity to explain psychologically why he is a sucker for Mugwumps. He does nothing of the sort, beyond making it clear that he always enjoys watching the show when a militant extremist Republican decides to bite the Invisible Hand. Thee and I like that spectacle too, of course, without having ten seconds’ patience with Cap’n M’Cain’s contemptible moral striptease.

Though fun for a brief while, the Mugwump Circus gets tedious and even barf-inducin’ very fast. But cheer up, Mr. Bones! Hath not Holy Writ assured us that "Reformers [Are] Only Mornin’ Glories"?

Long live Afternoon!

But What Says Dr. Cartoonoclastes?

Sweet mercy me. The New Yorker has offended Barack Obama, John McCain, the New Republic, Jake Tapper, the Huffington Post, and the sensibilities of thousands—maybe millions!—of Americans. The source of all of this injury is not daring exposé or cutting criticism by a New Yorker writer but one of "them damned pictures"—to quote Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, who bled pints every time he was poked by Thomas Nast's pen. "I don't care so much what the papers say about me," Tweed said of Nast's work. "My constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see pictures!"

Well, of course nobody normal ever heard of Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes. Not even in Dubuque. Mu’ámara Junction, considered as a geographic rather than a geistlich topos, is located somewhere up around Baffin Bay, I believe. The goofball gentry despise figurative cartoons so rabidly that there might be a medical emergency should one of them ever ran into the crude thing itself. On the other hand, all their constituents can read -- though preferably in Old Norse and Nonsectarian Kufic and Inuit.

I doubt we will be hearing from Cartoono the Magnificent about this particular Silly Season fuss, Mr. Bones, although he is never to be counted upon entirely. Over and above despising them damned pictures, Cartoono despises us damned Democrats, us being the schizomaniacal Party of Biden, don’t thee know? If B. Hussein has been individually excused from the guilt of that association, either by Dr. Cartoonoclastes himself or by his ideobuddy Dr. Righteous Virtue, I missed the official announcement. One gets the impression that the MJ/RV goofballs consider all donkeys -- plus most Heimatlandisch doves, say nine in ten -- antecedently hopeless. [1]



___
[1] To be sure, at Mu’ámara Junction they do not care for the Commanderissimo Presumptive either. But I take it J. Sidney is accounted less of a threat, too obvious and clumsy to be really dangerous. JSM pretty much lays his cards on the table and admits fair and square that he is conspirin’ against goofball values and gives not a hoot for rigidly nondenominational Sunnninternophilia. The "Straight Talk Express," remember, O Bones?

America's party, on the other hand, urgently demands to be unmasked and discredited, for we Bidenites have the impertinence (or Satanic skill and malice) to pretend to be on the same side as the goofball gentry are. It would be rather easier to be this crew's enemy than any sort of ally or parallel force. That way one could at least manage to avoid the knife in the back!

Yet of course decent political grown-ups do not pick sides on the basis of considerations so peripheral as that one. And no matter what side one picks, there are bound to be some others on it one wishes would defect straightaway.

"Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses"

Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.

That, Mr. Bones, comes from "Theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson" .

Any fool can see why the slaves of Murdoch and Mammon accounted the passage "notable and quotable." Yet do they and their masters really prefer that the lower orders take to worrying about social injustice -- or even about nukes and toxic messes -- rather than about the pretended global warming?

Considering the average level of prudence exhibited by the Harvard Victory School MBA classes, probably these junior journalistic jingos are perfectly serious and sincere. They are also none too bright, not bright enough to notice that the other three phenomena mentioned are egregiously plutocratogenic in nature, whereas the weather can, with some show of plausibility and reasonable hopes of credibility, still be blamed on Father Zeus acting alone.

The kiddies’ inconsiderate imprudence liked the idea of highjackin’ Dr. Dyson, and the fact that he will squirm to read it must have made it seem even a niftier idea. Though generally unintelligent, the HVS MBA's are not so far down the Great Chain as to suppose that this victim is anythin’ but a victim. Nobody who uses a firebrand soundbite like "social injustice" without sarcasm is a true friend and ideobuddy to Jingodom. Obviously.

Thus the HVS MBA crew were attemptin’ a somewhat delicate polemical maneuvre here, quotin’ one of their faction’s enemies to insinuate that rank-and-file enemies of their faction are imbeciles. Their ploy logically required that Dr. Dyson himself be portrayed as a non-imbecile, so that his testimony about what jerks the rest of ’em are has some weight attached to it. So far, so good -- good, if one sympathizes with the juvenile jingo faction -- but then they run off the rails. Having set up Freeman Dyson as a non-imbecile, the kiddies quite needlessly inform their masters' corporation’s customers exactly which -- in context, presumptively non-imbecile -- things he thinks should be worries about more than anthropogenic climate change. Anybody with half a brain worth tyin’ behind her back would have simply omitted the words "including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice."

Mammon and Murdoch will suffer no harm at all from the vague suggestion that something is more worthy of concern than the pretended global warming. Indeed, M&M must think that themselves. But there was no reason whatever to put Dr. Dyson’s subversive ideas about exactly which things these are into their customers’ head. [1]

But God knows best. Happy days.


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[1] An objector might object that Wall Street Jingo customers can be counted on instantly to despise and reject such enemy poison gas as "problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice." I daresay many of the lemmin’s are perfectly reliable in that department, and the kid scribblers do actually rely on that knee jerk pretty heavily. But in this instance it will not do its usual trick. Should the customers decide that Dr. Dyson must be the kind of professorial imbecile who believes in "social justice," why on Gore’s green earth should they pay attention to anythin’ he says?

Dr. Cartoonoclastes and the Smokeless Trigger

The UAE president's friendly remarks on the occasion of announcing the debt-relief decision are another mystery. If this is a turnabout in Gulf-state policy with respect to the Maliki administration, it isn't at all clear what the trigger was.

I assume this sudden attack of vulgar ignorance must be weather-related, Mr. Bones. But is that a proposition about meteorology, or only about ideology and sentimentality? Perhaps the recovery time will provide a clue. The upscale conspiratorialisers at Mu’ámara Junction cannot go triggerless for long, and indeed, in his one subsequent revelation, Cartoono already begins to show signs of recovery -- well, of autodemystification, at any rate. If he can get over his temporary aporia that fast, say in forty-eight hours or fewer, then it was only another Silly Season phenomenon that need not be taken too seriously.

Cartoono speaks of another mystery: his first one was only about "the arrests ... (of the president of the Amara provincial council and other senior people)." Chickenshit stuff is that, compared to whether all the little Gulfies have suddenly decided to enlist as militant extremist Republicans. I am not sure I understand why the gentry should feel that there is any mystery requiring them to forge themselves a trigger given merely a few kidnappings of Sadrists, misbehaviour which could easily be predicted or retrodicted on the basis of mere inertia in the established trajectory of the sectarian fiends. [1]

In his distress, Cartoono allows one to watch him thinking out loud, which, as might be expected, is rather like a visit to the sausage factory in its effect on one's esteem for the finished product:

This is only a thought: (1) "Unity of Iraq" would be an attractive theme to the Gulf states if it meant abandonment of the Supreme Council's Shiite super-region project for the South and Center of Iraq.

Not a very good thought, is it? Mere mortals without elaborate factional scaffolding or knowledge of cuneiform chickentracks are capable of that move. Indeed, they make that move all the time. That is to say, they fit whatever just happened into their own prepared agenda more or less as they would attempt to overpack a physical suitcase. At Mu’ámara Junction it would be pronounced fort mauvais if the Supreme Hakeemes were ever to rend the sacred garment watan-nationalism in the former Iraq by establishing that godawful nine-headed Southern Confederacy of theirs. Cartoono's first panicky thought was only that the Gulfies must think so too. Must they really? [2]

(2) The stress here isn't on rooting out "gangs and outlaws", but on protecting the "unity of Iraq", which makes sense if you take the Bush-type world-view and assume that those who oppose the government oppose the unity of Iraq, suggesting perhaps the idea of abandoning externally-supported Sunni groups as a quid pro quo for Maliki going after the Sadr trend.

That is a little more like it. It would appear that the eagle-eyed Miss Lynx has finally noticed that George XLIII thinks he is a vicarious watan-nationalist for the former Iraq too, and has advised her more analytical male colleagues, Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes, accordingly.

Amour-propre tends to interfere in cases like this, and so it does. The MJ gentry are never, ever going to grant that minions of AEI-GOP-DoD have quite as much right as they themselves do to chauvinise vicariously about ex-Iraq. (As much right as Dr. Righteous Virtue, the ne plus ultra of chauvinistic vicariation, possesses, even!) Hence a red herring like "the Bush-type world-view" must be dragged across the trail at once to confuse the thoughthounds, though it will remain obvious at once to anybody who cares to try to think well that the fact that Busheviki believe so-and-so is only a fact, a thing located altogether outside the Big Management Party swiatopoglad.

That AEI and GOP and DoD suppose poor M. al-Málikí rather than the more ferocious TwentyPercenters to be the best friend the "unity" of "Iraq" ever had is not much more surprising than spotting a sunrise off to the east. Cartoono & Co. take for granted that NKM is really a wolf in sheep drag, "a conscious and dedicated member of the [schizomaniac] conspiracy." They take it for granted to the point of not considering the plausibility of "those who oppose the government of Paflagonia oppose the unity of Paflagonia" as an abstract proposition in Pol. Sci. Like their Bushevik enemies, the Mu’ámariyya suffer from a severe case of HIBS, History-Is-Bunk Syndrome. Anybody who cares to try to think well is free to remember that the national unity of ninety-nine Paflagonias in every hundred owes more to the efforts of Paflagonian government than to any other single factor. [3]

Continuing his recovery, sort of, Cartoono resorts to second-hand Crawfordology in his latest oracle:

Al-Hayát cites a "prominent political source" who says the scheduled-withdrawal concept (via a "Memorandum of Understanding") in fact has met with the approval of the American side, for two reasons: (1) They don't like the risk of an abrupt change of policy under a putative Democratic administration, so this will be a smoothing mechanism; and (2) They aren't keen on the idea of a battle between Bush and Congress in the final months of his administration.

The Gulfies appear to have vanished, though orthodox cartoonoclasm probably denies that they are independent of AEI-GOP-DoD even in the slightest. On that basis, once the Big Party perps had reasoned as just explained, correspondin’ talkin’ points will have been dispatched to Abu Dhabi forthwith, along with instructions to forgive poor M. al-Málikí the debts of Saddám.

Meanwhile, (1) and (2) seem to be one and the same invisible trigger. More threateningly, the pistol seems to be invisible as well. Is it actually a fact that the good folks down at Rancho Crawford don't object to poor M. al-Málikí's latest vivacity, not even in the slightest? That they may have suggested it to him themselves, even? 'Twere pity if the learnèd Dr. Cartoonoclastes was to conspiratorialise brilliantly about human events that did not take the trouble to come to pass.

The inimitable -- God willing! -- Sabrina Tavernese describes the state of the pistol as follows:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki publicly confirmed Monday that his government was leaning toward concluding a short-term security pact with the United States instead of a broader agreement that would last for years. (...) With elections nearing in both countries and opposition likely from the Iraqi Parliament, Iraqi leaders seemed to be opting for a narrower and short-term pact. Mr. Maliki’s office said in a statement that the “current trend is toward reaching a memorandum of understanding” that would extend the presence of American troops for a period of time. While the statement used the words “scheduled withdrawal” about American troops, it did not seem to mean that a precise timetable for troops to depart was being negotiated.

Lesser intellects than that of Cartoono the Magnificent will find that account a bit puzzling, very likely. Would their puzzlement go away if they learned of the "smoothing mechanism" and the "aren't keen on the idea of a battle"? Those invisible triggers fit the pistol at brave New Baghdád not at all badly, but unfortunately they were originally concocted to fit a pistol at Crawford TX. The New York Times Company must discuss that end of the stick elsewhere, since Mizz Sabrina says not a word about it. The competition does better :

Haider Abadi, a Dawa member and political insider, said Maliki did not believe Iraqis should be pressured into making long-term arrangements with an outgoing administration. "No one can guess which way U.S. policy will go after the election," he said in a telephone interview. "We cannot go on discussing an agreement that may never materialize. There is too much at stake." Abadi said the Iraqi military's recent successes against militants in the cities of Basra, Amarah and Mosul and in Baghdad's Sadr City district had inspired new confidence in the security forces. "Are we going to be at the mercy of some sort of decision in the White House that we have no control over?" he asked. Abadi said the government was proposing that the U.S. finish handing over responsibility for security in all 18 provinces within six months and pull out most of its troops in two to three years. Nine of the provinces are already under Iraqi control. According to Abadi, U.S. negotiators have been receptive to the idea, but have proposed a five-year timeline.

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[1] On the other hand, perhaps the drain-bamaged do not admit the conceptions of "mere inertia" or "established trajectories"? The MJ gentry may hold to a para-Aristotelian political physics, according to which no apparent action at a distance can ever really be happening. Immediately behind every human event must come an impetus impellens. If we assume in addition that in nine cases out of ten, the I. I. will be invisible to the naked eye, or perhaps rather to the pure mind, do we not arrive at a plausible account of this patient, Dr. Bones? There is no way to tell whether such a diagnosis is Popperianly TRUE, I admit, but it is sufficiently ben trovato to be getting on with, it saves the the crucial and distinctive appearances of cartoonoclasm.

"Quasi-Cartesian" might serve in place of "para-Aristotelian." M. Descartes' vortices worked the same way, unless I have been misinformed.

On the other hand, chickenshit is chickenshit, with or without vis inertiae.


[2] If their owners were close students of Signore Machiavelli (as of course they are not), the kardboard kingdoms of the Gulf of Petroleum might not find "Najafistán" altogether unattractive. Any former Iraq that falls to pieces can't be ALL bad. Not for an intrinsically rich but defenseless corrupt racket located in the immediate vicinity.

To consider the question from the Gulfies’ standpoint is only a distraction from diagnosing the Cartoonoclastes case, however. The gentry at Mu’ámara Junction give even less of a hoot than the Kennebunkport-Crawford gentry do what those folks think or want. Should either crew ever be able to impose its Comprehensive Vision of the Middle East, the Gulfies will swiftly get what's comin' to 'em, but either way, there would not be any silly nonsense about askin' 'em whether they want to get it or not.


[3] Were I in a mood to make concessions to infatuate error, I would probably reword "Paflagonian government" as "government in Paflagonia," to make clearer that colonial and imperial neorégimes count too. Certainly the unity of the former Iraq owed a lot to Turks and Brits, and owed at least a little bit to the Mecca monarchy as well.

It would be waste of breath to dispute with Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC about the substance of this matter, when obviously they'd be perfectly happy about the "unity" of "Iraq" provided only that a (rigorously nonsectarian) Arabophone Sunni Ascendancy is handed total control of the Baghdad Fedguv once again.

As polemic and rhetoric, though, Cartoono and his ideobuddies might do better to deny that poor M. al-Málikí is connected with "the government of Iraq" at all -- and that not de jure alone, but de facto. I daresay the MJ gentry really think that NKM is neither legitimate nor actually in control of anything much, but, as you see from the above, Mr. Bones, they are willing to give ground about it verbally. If they could think better, they probably would not do that. But God knows best.