"McCain's willingness to take a chance"

Wherein Silly Season 2008 goes out with drums and trumpets and fireworks -- all provided at no cost to e-spectators by Signorino Guglielmo di Kristol, ideofootsoldier to Ruperto della Murdoch, capo di tutti capi:

A spectre is haunting the liberal elites of New York and Washington--the spectre of a young, attractive, unapologetic conservatism, rising out of the American countryside, free of the taint (fair or unfair) of the Bush administration and the recent Republican Congress, able to invigorate a McCain administration and to govern beyond it (..) a working woman who's a proud wife and mother; a traditionalist in important matters who's broken through all kinds of barriers; a reformer who's a Republican; a challenger of a corrupt good-old-boy establishment who's a conservative; a successful woman whose life is unapologetically grounded in religious belief; a lady who's a leader.

Ideally one would like to be able to decide that Kristol Minor is kidding, but alas! like most animals, he has no sense of humour at feedin’ time. And feedin’ is exactly what that drool is all about. There is scarcely a syllable of it that the bully boy genuinely cares about or believes in, but so what? Maybe bilge and Party cries and man’s incorrigible mind -- plus womankind’s Governess Sarah Putin (sp?) -- can make sure that Commanderissimo J. Sidney gets in, and that is all that matters.

Before we have more cheap fun with Bully Boy and his Boss, Mr. Bones, thee and I might pause to wonder exactly why electing J. Sidney should be all that matters to them. Why do they bet all their chips on black, and abandon red altogether? If le rouge should come up on 4 November -- not an absolutely impossible event -- they are certainly going to have to scramble on behalf of Team Aggression. There could be a stiff uphill struggle for the weekly-standardising cuckoos before they manage to evict the family and friends of the legitimate nestholder and make the Free World™ completely safe for Rear-Colonel Freddy von Kagan once again. If I was them, I should probably be pursuing an exactly opposite strategy on the theory that there will be no difficulties for Team Aggression if Cap’n M’Cain is installed, so the thing to do is to start corrupting B. Hussein Obáma and his entourage at once, so as to minimise the difficulties that might arise down that fork of Contingency Road. For surely the true Nirvana of Murdoch and Murdochites would be for it not to make a bit of difference to their own crew’s special interests which ludicrous mob of vulgar partisans "wins" in the electoral circuses? Yet here comes Bully Boy wearing a silly hat and whanging a noisemaker and generally doing his damnedest to make himself look like only another clueless clown from the Party of Grant and Hoover and Atwater.

I suppose Baron Rupert must have decided, after deep consultations with Miss Sappy Conventionalis, that the Commanderissimo’s fate depends on making sure that the Big Management Party’s ‘conservative’ base-and-vile actually go out and vote for him in sufficient numbers. His Lordship will then have instructed Bully Boy, who is technically a citizen of the United States, to do whatever he can in that direction. Thee and I are moved only to laughter, Mr. Bones, by the spectacle that Kristol Minor makes of himself trying to comply with his latest instructions from Kangaroo Centre. In the nature of the case, however, it does not matter what thee and I make of this clownish performance, but rather what the GOP base-and-vile make of it. Probably that will not be much either way, because I do not think Bully Boy interacts with them much. If the B&V are unaware that this clownin’ comes from a Weekly Standardiser and a wannabe Weltherrscher, they are unlikely to see anythin’ special about it. [1]

As thee will have seen if thee read that footnote, Mr. Bones, we may perhaps learn something about Team Aggression by scrutinizing Master Kristol’s drool; there is scant danger that we will learn anything about practical politics. Before I lose the thought, let me suggest that we can perhaps learn a little bit about the mind of Rupert Baron Murdoch as well: is not that baloney about Governess Putin likely to be His Lordship’s notion of the ideal customer of NewsCorp? Especially the ideal U. K. customer, because, as I have suggested already, His Lordship’s green tabloid thumb is not quite so green when it gouges the holy Homeland. And speaking of ‘holy’, the drool about "life is unapologetically grounded in religious belief" obviously applies to colonial North America exclusively. Airstrip One is not much like that.

But naturally it is the mind of Bully Boy himself that concerns us most. Since thee and I are not just seeking thrills, but serious instruction, we may start from the word ‘unapologetic’ and the phrase "taint (fair or unfair) of the Bush administration and the recent Republican Congress." Not being a pro rabblerouser, Bully Boy makes certain technical mistakes like raising that parenthetical fairness issue. He stuck that bit in to please himself, obviously, but the fact that Master Wm. Kristol happens to consider the reign of George XLIII Bush a tainted thing that needs to be apologised for does not belong in this particular scribble. Saying that has not the slightest tendency to inspire the GOP base-and-vile to flock to the polls in the path of J. Sidney McCain. If the B&V notice such a self-indulgence at all, it can only cause them to wonder who Bully Boy is and whether he is entirely loyal to Boy and Party and Dynasty and Ideology. Perhaps it is harmless, perhaps it is counterproductive, but there is no positive good in it, and accordingly it ought to have been omitted.

When pro rabblerousers seek the effect that Bully Boy appears to have been aiming at, their standard ploy is to equate distance from Washington City, literal and spiritual, with wisdom and virtue, [2] making no explicit mention of taints or apologies. "Accentuate the positive, / Eliminate the negative!" "Boost, don’t knock!" And for Pete’s sake don’t talk about yourself -- not unless you’re the candidate. Sheesh!

It seems to me possible that Bully Boy does not read much of this rabblerousin’ genre that he undertakes to work in. He really is not good at it. His Lordship really ought to have assigned this particular job to one of his other wage slaves, perhaps some up-and-comin’ neocomrade over at the Wall Street Jingo. [3]

But ’tis time for some more innocent merriment:

Millions of Americans--mostly but not only women, mostly but not only Republicans and conservatives--seemed to get a sense of energy and enjoyment and pride, not just from her nomination, but especially from her smashing opening performance. Palin will be a compelling and mold-breaking example for lots of Americans who are told every day that to be even a bit conservative or Christian or old-fashioned is bad form. In this respect, Palin can become an inspirational figure and powerful symbol. The left senses this, which is why they want to discredit her quickly.

"Her smashing opening performance," eh? Master Kristol seems blithely unaware that just the other day his own crew thought they were scorin’ scads and scads of points with Televisionland and the electorate by presentin’ B. Hussein Obáma as a mere light-weight ‘celebrity’. And then there is "a sense of energy and enjoyment and pride," which in hostile hands could easily be made to seem contemptible psychobabble: the Sarah Putin groupies like her only because likin’ her makes them feel good about themselves -- and so forth, and so on. Bully Boy cannot be much of a chess player, given his patent inability to think for his opponent a couple of moves ahead.

One more lucky dip:

[I]f Palin holds her own against Biden, as she is fully capable of doing? McCain will then have succeeded in combining with his own huge advantage in experience and judgment, a politician of great promise in his vice presidential slot who will make Joe Biden look like a tiresome relic. McCain's willingness to take a chance on Palin could turn what looked, after Obama's impressive speech Thursday night in Denver, like a long two months for Republicans and conservatives, into a campaign of excitement and--dare we say it?--hope, which will culminate on November 4 in victory.

Apart from some additional Hope-and-Excitement gush for the ladies’ magazines, I detect here a gross overestimation of the importance of the Vice Presidency of the United States of America.

Most fascinating of all is "McCain's willingness to take a chance," which is a very two-edged sword indeed for Bully Boy to be brandishing. If the Big Party base-and-vile read Master Kristol at all (which they won’t), and if they understand the implications of those six words (which they would not have done), then the Senatorino from Cook County is in like Flynn (as of course he is not.) "McCain's willingness to take a chance" ought to scare the bejeezus out of any self-esteemin’ neo-narcissist of a ‘conservative’. This willingness is perfectly real, it is by no means a mere Marxo-Kristolio-Murdochoid ‘spectre’.

Allow me to expostulate with the sweet puppies a little, Mr. Bones:

"But look at the record, O base and vile! Every time your now Commanderissimo takes a chance, who does he take it with? Always with Demoncrats and unspeakable l*b*r*ls, no? And look at the polls: after he gets in, your now Commanderissimo will almost certainly be saddled with a Congressional and Senatorial majority consisting of Demoncrats and unspeakable l*b*r*ls. I.e., the people your J. Sidney has always taken his chances with will also be the people he must compromise with if anythin’ beyond a few additional aggressions and semiconquests and occupations and quagmires overseas is ever to be accomplished! What do you think is likely to happen under those circumstances, O base and vile? That your J. Sidney will always do just exactly the libertarian thing that former Governess S. Putin of Alaska would do if she were set up as sole and unobstructed Dictatrix over the holy Homeland? ‘If you believe that,’ O base and vile, why, ‘You would believe anything.’ " [4]

I wish thee Happy Days, Mr. Bones, trusting that a glance at Bully Boy’s scribble will make them a little happier still.

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[1] To be sure, sir, the second biggest reason why thee and I laugh from it is that in fact there ain’t anythin’ special about it. Here is a credentialled Master of the Unive®se (Second Class) performing services to Party and Ideology and Commanderissimo for which Neocomradess A. Coulter and Neocomrade M. Savage would be distinctly overqualified. Any militant extremist Republican Party clown whatsoever could drool that drool.

The first biggest reason why Bully Boy is laughable chez nous is his utter insincerity, a point on which he is indeed very different from rank-and-file Wingnut City clowns. But to appreciate the difference and enjoy the fun in full one must already have a reasonably clear notion of who Bully Boy is, and who he works for, and what he and his Boss think. If one is capable of that enjoyment and actually enjoys it, one quickly finds oneself in my own present condition, discussing the quirks and quiddities of Weekly Standardisation and Murdochite libido dominandi, matters of some interest, indeed, yet extremely remote from the main stream of human events in the holy Homeland.



[2] Given a Big Party ticket that need not appeal to anybody who lives east of the Rocky Mountains, Master Kristol ought not only to have adopted the standard anti-Beltway ploy, but laid it on with a dump truck. The Commanderissimo and Mme. Putin must be positively wallowin’ in wisdom and virtue on those terms!



[3] The Big Management Party base-and-vile don’t read the WSJ? Perfectly true, but then, the sweet puppies of Rio Limbaugh most assuredly do not read the Weekly Standard either. I believe His Lordship still owns the New York Post? Perhaps we should take a look over there to see what they have to say about Governess Putin.


[4] Duke of Wellington anecdote XVIII.

"Many Happy Returns (And Especially If You’re Elected, Sir!)"

Happy birthday, Johnny Mac! You're 72 now, a cancer survivor, and a presidential candidate who has said on many occasions that the most important criteria for picking a vice president is whether he or she could immediately step in if something happened to the president. Your campaign against Barack Obama is based on the simple idea that he is unready to be president. So you've picked a running mate who a year and a half ago was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 8,500 people. You've selected a potential leader of the free world who knows little or nothing about the major issues of the day beyond energy. Oh, and she's being probed in her state for lying and abuse of power.

Apart from the last sentence, which I am sure we will be hearing more about, Mr. Alter gives the natural first reaction of any decent political grown-up.

However he and the rest of them then get distracted from the true analytical path, as it seems to me, partly due to their fixation of the horse-race aspect [1] and partly due to taking the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EIB rather too strictly at his own word. Since not even a dumb Mugwump admires gambling games, we can correct both mistakes by attempting to look at things from J. Sidney’s own point of view, weird and uncongenial though it be.

Briefly: (1) JSM certainly approves of Mme. Sarah Putin (sp?) on grounds entirely independent of whether or not she will help to get him installed. No courageous self-profiler would be caught dead actin’ on naked self-interest like that. Your generic Mister Profile would rather perish rather than appear self-interested in the slightest. The specific J. Sidney McCain is surrounded with Big Management Party operatives who would like to win the election in the worst way -- in the Lee Atwater way -- so he could not indulge his dumb mugwumpery altogether without stint or limit. The hired handlers managed to talk him out of Sen. Lieberman, at least, but I suspect he made a deal that they were not to say ‘boo’ about the exact identity of Anybody-But-Holy-Joe. [1]

(2) That was J. Sidney’s mugwumpery in action. His dumbness was active as well in the selection of Governess Putin, in the sense that the man is not clever enough to understand his own motives and express them accurately. Accordingly, he had different and stronger subliminal or ‘unconscious’ reasons for this exuberance than will have appeared in his own words and thoughts, even the campaign-confidential ones.

The thing to do, I’d say, is to work backwards from the undeniable public act to the ideally best possible set of J. Sidney McCain private motives for such an act and the best possible JSM private understanding of the act’s context -- without relying too heavily on the perp’s own testimony, let alone on his hired handlers’ or his Party neocomrades’ spin-ridden testimonials.

As follows, approximately:

Q. GIVEN that Mme. Sarah Putin, extremist Republican governess of the great state of Alaska, is the best possible runnin’ mate for Cap’n M’Cain, what colour is the sky in M’Cain World? A. (forthcoming)

But God knows best. Happy days.


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[1] And then some of ’em probably did say ‘boo’ even after promisin’ not to. But that would be perfectly OK with J. Sidney. Additional evidence that other mortals are not up to his own self-profiled mark can never be entirely unwelcome. One cannot play the rôle of Coriolanus without a large supporting cast of vulgar importuners continually whisperin’ vile things about "whatever it takes to win!" into one’s imperial ear. To get mad at them for importunin’ would be silly as well as indecorous.

The Impression Created

Impression must depend, to some extent, on what sort of mud one’s boot was impressed upon. Thee remembers the scholastic tag, Mr. Bones? that one about quidquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipientis? In the case at hand, the boot is reasonably familiar, but the mud is exotic, fetched from the farther shores of Airstrip One and the outlying parish of Torygraph Regis:

The impression created this week was not one of a unified America going bravely into the future that Mr Obama talked about: it was one divided on rudimentary levels on class grounds, in which (as used to be the case in the old Labour party) the working man and woman are there to be revered and looked after and the rich (which most Democrats seem to agree is anyone on a salary of more than $250,000, or £135,000 a year) are there to pay for it. Mr Obama’s good ol’ boy running mate, Joe Biden, unwittingly emphasised these divisions in his speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination, and again in his impromptu appearance before the Obama speech. Mr Biden seems to be occupying the constitutional position in American politics that used to be filled in Britain by John Prescott: he is designed to be at the right hand of an elitist, slightly effete head of government and to be charged with mentioning, in every speech he makes, how wonderful blue-collar workers are. The inference that all other Americans are there to pay taxes for these people’s benefit is something the Republicans need to get after next week, and continually until the election.

Master Mudd, who uses the nom de guerre "Simon Heffer," is far-fetched and torygraphic and Sassenach-parochial indeed, and accordingly difficult of access for those of us who have not a clue about who John Prescott has (had?) the dishonour to be. Still, Mudd does sort of gloss his hard words for us, does he not, Mr. Bones. At any rate, it is tolerably clear what axe he grinds against the Demosthenes of Delaware even without a footnote about Mr. (Lord?) Prescott.

Speaking of impressions, Master Mudd wishes to be mistaken for St. George Orwell, or perhaps, less improbably, he wishes to create an impression of being the great man’s ideological great-grandnephew. Unlike Senator Biden and Prescott Who, Master Mudd knows where the TRUE best interests of the toiling masses are located. [1] Furthermore, he, too, is credentialled to discuss the ins and outs of class warfare at levels far above the rudimentary.

Unlike Mr. Orwell, however, Master Mudd is distinctly IQ-challenged. How else account for his shocked complaint that the Obama-’n’-Biden Show did not resemble "a unified America going bravely into the future"? An explicitly partisan event somehow failed to create an impression of nonpartisan unity upon Master Mudd: Quelle surprise! And "What is the world coming to? I ask you!" Maybe this little laddie will amount to something when he grows up mentally, but I fear we shall have to wait a while. He has a long way to grow.

As a reflective medium for the recording of impressions, this exotic mud is not totally defective, to be sure. BHO and JRB reaffirmed the traditional values and interests of the American Democracy, which La Contradémocratie en Amérique began detestin’ and denouncin’ as imported-from-France "class warfare" even before the contra gentry first congealed in party-political opposition to General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren. After eighteen decades of it, to speak of "an old song" seems pretty warrantable to me. Were it not for the wombschoolin’ and Niederdümmung that have prevailed in the holy Homeland since August 1968 or perhaps January 1969, we natives and locals might find the song so old as to be tedious. Fortunately, from the entertainment perspective, the empowered and emboldened contrademocrats have more or less had they way with their Big Management Party maxims "History is bunk" and "That was THEN, this is NOW!" The Big Party’s wombscholars and downdumbees have only a vague notion who Andrew Jackson was, and as to knowledge of his thoughts and actions -- surely you jest? Thus the BHO/JRB/LBJ/JFK/FDR fight song renews its youth. For those who never heard it sung till last Thursday evening, it might -- almost -- as well have been composed last Thursday morning as way back in the 1820's.

Master Mudd is not unfamiliar with the tune of "Yank Class Warfare," but he prefers a markedly contrademocratic verson of the lyrics: "All other Americans are there to pay taxes for these people’s benefit." THAT tripe and baloney does not date back to the 1820’s, obviously. How could it, when the Big Managers were not crushed by taxation until a far more recent date, more or less 8 December 1941? [2] Prior to that, they had lots of reasons to be contrademocratic, but immediate peril to their investment portfolios was not among them. (Who knows, perhaps if Airstrip One had been callously abandoned to its fate seventy years ago, Daddy Warbucks would still not have to place the Internal Revenue Service at the top of his enemies list? But God knows best about contrafactual history!)

In addition to being neoteric and right-wingnutty, Master Mudd’s version of the lyrics to the "Yank Class Warfare" melody seems to be inaccurate. Contrademocrats who actually have to live in the holy Homeland do not moan and whine about "pay taxes for these people’s benefit" in the sense according to which Mudd takes "these people." The main offense is that really obnoxious class of persons that the Bidens and Obamas and Clintons and Carters and Johnsons and Kennedies and Trumans and Roosevelts insist on handing their taxation loot over to once they have stolen it. The received hieroglyph or stereotype here used to be "welfare queens," and that soundbite should still convey the contrademocratic notion clearly enough, although perhaps Big Management’s hired spinsters have moved on to some different cliché. ("Union thugs" seems to me to be making a come-back lately; any fool can see why Big Managers would not care for them! ) If the Demoncratic uppers would be content with brandy and cigars -- and yachts and limousines and châteaus at Kennebunkport ME and ranches at Crawford TX and ‘educations’ at Yale and . . . -- strictly for themselves alone, vastly less tax loot would be required. [3]


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[1] For Yank toiling masses in particular, the best interests are located in Minneapolis-St. Paul startin’ Monday, don’t you know? Literaliter, in the Party of Grant and Hoover and Atwater.

I hope Master Mudd will be able attend the Grant Party’s big quadrennial human event also and get himself an additional impression created when the other boot drops. I shouldn’t dream of whining about torygraphic attitudes or Airstrip One ignorances, if Master Mudd hates Yank donkeys, why, he hates us, and that is that. He should certainly be encouraged to explain why, though, since we might possibly learn something from even such a señorito as this one.

The present specimen of Muddly politics criticism should have been pruned by some kind friend less unfamiliar with the colourful folkways of the holy Homeland, because to blame donkeys in particular for things that all Americans do when in convention assembled is of no value as instruction or reproof. Making mistakes of that nature merely encourages less thoughtful donkeys to write Master Mudd off as a Brit ignoramus whose impressions could never be of any importance. Under that rubric, his editor ought to have included everything Mudd scribbled in the vein of

I have wondered whether, instead of watching a crucial meeting of the main opposition party of the world’s leading power, I had wandered in on a soap opera, a poor Hollywood film, or a dire reality TV show.

To abuse my poor long-suffering Uncle Sam as proprietor of the United States of Bad Taste is an admissible parlour game too, naturally, and one with a long and venerable history. But it is not the same parlour game as Bash-the-Demoncrats. When Master Mudd confuses the two recreations, he is open to the objection once made to M. Prokofiev that "he steps on the throat of his own song." He also violates Herr von Kirkegaard’s canon about Purity of Heart™.

Half or more than half of this nastygram to B. Hussein Obáma and J. Robinette Biden and to us humble dupes and marks thereof establishes only that Master Mudd does not much enthuse for the Heimatland Gottes or for Modern Times. One has no problem with that, but one detects no salience in it either. Considered as political journalism reported from an undisguisedly partisan event, Expugnetur! is the chief impression it creates on me.


[2] Talk about "a day that will live in infamy!"


[3] I am not discussing how the holy Homeland actually works, only how it is alleged to work in partisan agitprop.

"complete alienation of the Iraqi street"

This just in from from the Goofville Pretzel Corporation:

Ultra-low voter-registration, with a particular drop in support for the Islamic parties, seems to be consistent with the overall point of view expressed by the Al-Qabas op-ed writer (see prior post) [*] namely that the government (supported by the Islamic parties Dawa and the Supreme Council) feels obliged to keep on putting out these recent tough-sounding statements on the bilateral negotiations, because it is "going through a difficult situation in which it is threatened with the complete alienation of the Iraqi street..." [*] [Cartoono detects a] "confusing yes/no pattern of Iraqi assertions of a withdrawal-schedule followed inevitably by the US denial .... [Snip summatorial from al-Qabas] It is in response to this intense pressure [from watan-nationalists] that the Maliki administration continues to make these would-be reassuring statements about agreement with the occupier ...."

COMPLETE ALIENATION OF THE IRAQI STREET must sound like a really splendid idea to Miss Lynx and Mister Badger and Doctor Cartoonoclastes. The student will note, however, that it makes a good deal of difference exactly what the noble and heroic Street Arabs are alienated from. And it makes at least some difference, though perhaps not quite as much, which way the heroes and nobles jump towards when they jump away from X. There can be no question of Goofville approving of itineral alienation simpliciter, as can be established by a thought experiment that is not difficult. Imagine the attitude of the Mu’ámara Junction gentry to an IQ Street that should have the impertinence to be alienated from themselves after they finally gain control of the former Iraq. Or rather, when their native and local ideobuddies are restored to that natural mastery of Mesopotamia that they have unaccountably been deprived of for over half a decade.

Now the student will have observed for herself a major point that Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC probably will never be caught drawing her attention to: COMPLETE ALIENATION OF THE STREET is the accepted everyday condition of all the other political rackets in the Greater Levant. Life in the former Iraq is rapidly becoming ... -- well, perhaps not exactly "better, comrades, ... more cheerful" but at any rate, more normal. [1] What hath Petraeus wrought? [2]

That is only a major point about ex-Iraq, however. More important is today’s quite different major point about Miss Lynx and Mister Badger and Doctor Cartoonoclastes, namely that COMPLETE ALIENATION OF THE IRAQI STREET is the very first time that they have condescended to mention the existence of an "Iraqi street." (Unless I missed something, naturally.) I had thought they considered it somehow demeaning to their belovèd TwentyPercenter clients and their ideobuddies of the Sunnintern when invasion-language journalism talked that way. Apparently I was mistaken.

One can never be entirely sure with pretzelmongers, I daresay, yet it LOOKS as if for once the LBC crew take a view of the present correlation of farces not altogether different from my own. That is, as if "the Iraqi street" is an entity that has just recently congealed or clotted or otherwise come into being. An expression that was quite unsuitable six months ago has now become useful and convenient and not too misleading. Perhaps these Parmenidean personages do not really believe anything so crude as that. As a mere grovelling Aristotelian, however, I shall take a low WYSIWYG view as usual and assume that even appearance-despising pretzelmongers are really up to what it looks like they are up to primâ facie until that hypothesis proves completely unviable. Dr. Cartoonoclastes used the words "seems to be consistent with" in the declamation quoted, so let us hypothesize that the recent emergence of a ‘street’ in the former Iraq seems to be consistent with the way Cartoono has modulated his own verbiage.

To be sure, what has most strikingly emerged in the former Iraq of late is the Hannibal of Da‘wa. Cartoono’s "consistency with" is consistent with the Metamorphosis of Málikí™ being the stimulus that has caused a Post-Iraqi Street to congeal at last. Applied to the actual matter of his sentence, though, there may be slight difficulties of the lucus a non lucendo sort: are we to say that "ultra-low voter-registration, with a particular drop in support for the Islamic parties" is evidence for the existence of a Post-Iraqi Street? "I am, therefore I decline to register to vote"? Easy to see why a Parmenidean pretzelmonger might think so, but can decent political grown-ups go along for that ride?

Well, perhaps. Our own underlying guess is that ex-Iraq has been reverting rapidly towards Greater Levantine normalcy of late, and it is quite possible to view the Street Arabs in general as a negativity, as the ragamuffin ninety-nine percent who JUST SAY NO to the Palace Arabs, to the empowered and emboldened OnePercenters. Just saying NO does not have any detectable effect on Arab Palace policy and governance, most of the time, but it could nevertheless be the key to all Arab Street mythologies. We are not in Kansas any more, after all. Unfortunately.

As soon as I assemble my own sketchy notions into something like coherence, I discover, not very surprisingly, that Miss Lynx and Mister Badger and Doctor Cartoonoclastes, along with their faithful clients and zealot ideobuddies, cannot possibly agree very extensively. Being naturally low-minded and Aristotelian and WYSIWYG, I make a verbal cartoon of it: now that Hannibal Redux has erected some preliminary facsimile of a Post-Iraqi Palace, 99% of his (nominal) subjects respond by paving a Post-Iraqi Street around it. Quite apart from the vulgar idolatry of it, the pseudocartoon must displease at Goofville because the gentry are not open to the idea that poor M. al-Málikí has actually accomplished anything the least bit palatial. [3]



___
[1] Good cheer bordering on a flat-out goofiness almost worthy of Cartoono the Magnificent himself is not absent from the former Iraq, if the Associated Press knows what it speaks of:

Iraq is calling on companies to submit designs to build a giant Ferris wheel in Baghdad — the latest in a string of lavish proposals painting the capital as a leisure friendly city. The Ferris wheel ... will soar more than 650 feet over the city and feature air-conditioned compartments that would each carry up to 30 passengers, Baghdad municipal spokesman Adel al-Ardawi said Wednesday.

This development deserves separate treatment, however. Its implications are fathomless and extend below and above and generally far beyond the parochial frontiers of ex-Iraq in every geographical direction and conceptual dimension. Meanwhile, a second AP story from 27 August 2008

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) — The city's first airport is weeks away from opening, but already a bigger one is talked about. Land prices are soaring. Merchants say they don't remember business ever being so good. Four years ago, Najaf was an urban battlefield with American troops fighting Shiite militiamen loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Today, the Shiite holy city is a hot spot of a different kind thanks to improved security, a free-for-all market economy — and a direct pipeline to the Shiite-led government. The boomtown buzz in Najaf is more remarkable for .... [1]

indicates that the capillaries are co-prospering with their jugular. At least, some of the capillaries do.

The student had better read that gem through as well, though ever mindful that the cheer of Most Noble Najaf must necessarily be merely sectorian in nature as compared to the cheer of Brave New Baghdád.


[2] Not a rhetorical question. Although we have already supplied the answer several times, here it is again: Petraeo-McNamaran counterinsurgency hath wrought (1) that the big battalions once again look likely to win, and (2) martial law is shown to remain a perfectly workable scheme in Century XIV/XXI. (This is not as big a deal as AEI-GOP-DoD-USIP-EIB groupies like to make it out, but it is a long way from contemptible all the same.)


[3] They still think their team is winning, even. (Golly, let the student think of THAT!)

In nineteenth-century England , a fierce quarrel once broke out between two women shouting at one another from second storey windows on opposite sides of the street. An Anglican bishop, passing by with friends, predicted, ‘These women can’t possibly agree; they are arguing from opposite premises.' In [discussion of the former Iraq], for similar reasons, the debates rage on.

"Save it for 2050"

How Mark Sidney McPenn shall now go on to crush Osama ’n’ Biden:

[Spinster Mark Penn] made the ... suggestion to target Obama’s “lack of American roots”: "All of these articles about his [Senatorino Obama’s] boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. "Save it for 2050. "It also exposes a very strong weakness for him—his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president DURING A TIME OF WAR who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values. He told the people of NH yesterday he has a Kansas accent because his mother was from there. His mother lived in many states as far as we can tell—but this is an example of the nonsense he uses to cover this up. "How we could give some life to this contrast without turning negative: "Every speech should contain the line you [Senatrix Rodham-Clinton] were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century. AND TALK ABOUT THE BASIC BARGAIN as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back. "Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t. Make this a new American Century, the American Strategic Energy Fund. Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds."

There is one obvious, though minor and technical, difficulty: the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EIB was unfortunately born a purty fur stretch from the geographical centre of the holy Homeland:

John McCain was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone to naval officer John S. McCain, Jr. (1911–1981) and Roberta (Wright) McCain (b. 1912). At that time, the Panama Canal was under American control.

As the Wikipædiatricians mention, J. Sidney’s natal turf was Homeland-controlled as of 29 August 1936. [1] There are, of course, no more strictly legal questions about J. Sidney’s U. S. citizenship than about B. Hussein’s. Yet in both cases there is undoubtedly a certain peripheral quality for Spinster Penn to avail himself of in the path of the Senatrix for New York and from the North Side of Chicago. [2]

This triviality may be slightly less trivial than it appears. The natal turf of JSM is not, after all, under Homeland control at the moment and has not been so for a number of years. A hostile analyst might point out how this detail fits in with the Commanderissimo’s personal contribution to our splendid triumph over North Vietnam in -- what year was it? Anyhow, it is notorious that JSM managed to get himself shot down. Why, he does not deny that rumor himself! No one, I trust, questions J. Sidney’s strenuous devotion to Success and Victory, but his devotion does appear to be offered only from afar in certain respects. [3]

Apart from that, the Commanderissimo can take over where the Senatrix left off so smoothly that the Osama-’n’-Biden forces might not even notice that the enemy is under new management apart from reading about the transition in the papers.

I have emphasized two high points of the McPenn Method, of which DURING A TIME OF WAR scarcely needs more discussion than it gets already. TALK ABOUT THE BASIC BARGAIN, on the other hand, borders on obscurity. What on Gore’s green earth is this "basic bargain" that the Commanderissimo and the Senatrix have agreed to, but the Senatorino has declined? Spinster Penn does not explain his own allusion, and neither does the journalist I here follow, one Joshua Green employed by the Atlantic Monthly.

Mr. Green has systematically looted the Senatrix’s campaign headquarters and published his booty in more than two dozen different dribs and drabs. My pet google comes back numerous quotations of precisely the passage in need of elucidation but nothing that obviously tends to elucidate it. That negative result means that all the political scribblers must think they already know what The Basic Bargain™ is, in which case I suppose I know too. Or at least I know half of it, the protasis, the half that runs "If you work hard and obey the rules, . . . ." As to the apodosis, well, I seem never to have heard that clause spoken so clearly that it registered. In context, something like ". . . then you will get the President of the United States that you want." A swell deal THAT would be, if only one could find it! Worded that way, the Basic Bargain™ is merely ridiculous, but I am really at a loss to see how else to word it.

If one closes the shortest short circuit between the Basic Bargain™ (in the McPenn Spinster School recension) and the former Real World™ and says "If you work hard and obey the rules, then you DESERVE to get the President of the United States that you want," it stops being a bargain at all, it dissolves instantly into a mush of moralism. But 99.9% of the time that one comes across Basic Bargain™ fans, they are not discussing the Presidency of the U. S. A. In that case, though, one is stuck with a fortune cookie like "Work hard and obey the rules and then you will get what[ever it may be that] you deserve and want!" Princess Cassandra and Dr. Pangloss and Pollyanna and even Mrs. Eddy were gloomy grinches compared to anybody damnfool enough to buy that product!

Something funny is goin’ on here, and it smells funny with a whiff of that brand of narcissism and self-esteemism peculiar to Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City. I suspect the reason why I cannot remember the apodosis exactly is that the apodosis is an insinuation, a wink-wink-nod-nod, rather than anythin’ a Basic Bargain™ fan would ever care to put in writin’. In the case of the Commanderissimo and the Senatrix and the Senatorino, as spun by Master Mark Penn, a naked spellin’ of it out would, as I conjecture, yield "If you work hard and obey the rules, then you will at least be far better than Osama ’n’ Biden ’n’ their [exp. del.] supporters are."



Less restricted by context: "If you work hard and obey the rules, then you may pat yourself on the back in public ever after."

In the decent obscurity of an extinct language and an abandoned superstition: gratias ago Tibi quia non sum sicut ceteri hominum. [4]



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[1] Though e-rudite, that mention may well be a mistake or misunderstanding, in that JSM’s claims to be accounted estadounidense do not repose themselves upon political control of the colony in question.


[2] "Hillary Diane Rodham was born at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois."

It appears that the Edgewater Hospital is located at 5700 N. Ashland St., about five miles south of the True Omphalos, which is, needless to say, one’s own birthplace.

It further appears, that like the Commanderissimo’s Canal Zone, the Senatrix’s Edgewater Hospital must be spoken of in the past tense.

¡Eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume!


[3] Now, if I was to take up spinstering in the manner of the Mark Penn School, I’d suggest we suggest to Televisionland and the electorate something like this:

"Cap’n M’Cain is a jinx and a Jonah. It is no fault of the man’s own that he happens to have two black thumbs, of course, and doubtless we would have lost control of the Canal Zone even if he had been born somewhere else. Similarly, we would no doubt have succeeded almost as well in Indochina if Cap’n M’Cain had been the holy Homeland’s very own Red Baron. Nevertheless, I ask you, my fellow Americans: would it be wise to elect such a person to lead us DURING A TIME OF WAR? Did not Napoleon say that luck is the most valuable attribute a general could be endowed with?"

[4] Ev. sec. Luc. XVIII:11.

"this framing actually follows"

Maliki is casting this [campaign against the Bribe-a-Tribe™ pensioneers] as another step in the "law and order" campaign, with the refrain of no arms in the hands of militias familiar from earlier campaigns in Basra et al. IRONICALLY, this framing actually follows what I've advocated for well over a year - establishing effective state sovereignty, which the U.S.-backed Awakenings project undermined."

Just when one begins to worry that journalists and publicists and agitprop engineers have run out of ingenious and improbable things to do with ‘irony’, along comes M. Quelquechose with that specimen, which is as if the sorcerer's apprentice were to cringe and whimper "Ironically, they didn’t stop when I told them to, sir."

S-’n’-M

Have thee heard about St. Steve and the Archangel Mike, Mr. Bones?

the Washington spin machine seems to have gone into neutral, with the Ambassador continuing to tout security improvements, while the news reports nothing but renewed violence. The uncertain direction of the spin is leading to signs of unusual disunity in the Washington "policy community": STEPHEN, it seems, is breaking with MICHAEL and THE OTHER GUY over some aspect of Iraq policy. And the hottest question of all: Was COLIN Kahl too optimistic?

"The other guy" can only be Neocomrade K. M. Pollock, Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy to the Brookings Institution (may the shadow thereof be lengthened!).

Goofville suffers from swollen head as well as delusions of triumph, and I fear we may be partly to blame, O Bones! Are not thee and I those who feigned an Omniscient Triunity of Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes? Enough to go to a certain class of self-esteem artist’s head, that sort of thing! True, we sufficiently understand the less entertaining reality of impotent lone goof plus keyboard plus Arabic dictionaries all along, but what is the Use of Phantasy™ [1] if one cannot get a little farther out of one’s own box than that?

Be the cause what it may -- and perhaps we ourselves are blameless for a change -- Cartoono the Magnificent seems to have worked himself up into a late summer snit against Stephen and Michael and Colin and Quartus, those more empowered sort of whippersnappers whose keyboards might conceivably have a detectable impact upon the unhappiness of the former Iraq. [2]

Party Proconsul R. Crockerius, mark thee, does not get the buddy-buddy treatment. Even goofs possess a sort of grudging respect for Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower and its credentialled reps, I daresay, that holds them back from fake-casually referring to that Imperial worthy as "Ryan." [3] However, with his boss lady just recently in town, perhaps we too may pass Ryan over, spinmachinewise, and go straight for the particular capillary that Dr. Cartoonoclastes has singled out, the WPC, "Washington ‘policy community’ ".

The S-’n’-M (‘Stephen’ and ‘Michael’) gossip goes like this, giving Steve’s side of things first

"We want to have our cake and eat it too, support Maliki and the Sons of Iraq. . . . Maliki wants to make that as hard for us as possible. He wants us to choose him," said Stephen Biddle, a Council on Foreign Relations defense expert who has served as an advisor on strategy to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq. "What it looks like we are getting is a Maliki government that won't behave itself and wants to crush the Sons of Iraq." [4]

Mike, not without Ken, presumably thinks eating the cake that one has is a perfectly feasible operation.

Presumably. I fear the source that Dr. Cartoonoclastes ‘borrows’ from [5] does not actually quote any WPCer who disagrees with Stevie. (Collie is quoted as agreeing with Stevie; we will get to that in a moment.) So strictly speaking one cannot derive a Sign of Unusual Disunity -- of any disunity at all -- from the tea leaves as presented. Still, if we look rather at the substance of what Neocomrade S. Biddle told the Los Angeles Times, we may guess that some of the WPCers would pick poor M. al-Málikí on his own terms if forced to choose, whereas others, like Stevie and Collie, would opt for some post- or at least extra- Málikiyyan option or another, if givin’ the distinguished statesperson a sound kick in the head or two does not cause him to straighten out and fly right. Though Dr. Cartoonoclastes be pleased for goofball reasons of his own to assume and assert "unusual disunity," is it not much more likely that all the WPCers want to try the kick-in-the-head method first, and disagree only about what should come next if that approach fails?

An objector might object that some of the WPCers may account poor M. al-Málikí’s head quite kickproof and therefore propose to omit a step than cannot be successful. This is not impossible, but it is the sort of question that one needs better than random cartoonoclastic evidence to pronounce upon. While waiting for such evidence to turn up, let us listen to Collie supporting Stevie:

... Colin Kahl of CNAS ... is also reconsidering his former optimism ... "There's even some evidence that he wants to start a fight with the Sons of Iraq. Al-Maliki doesn't believe he has to accommodate these people. He will only do it if we twist his arm to the breaking point." Kahl -- noting the slowdown in absorption of Sunni militia members into the Iraqi military and the assignment of humiliating jobs to those who were being incorporated into the central government's payroll - stated "The last time we humiliated thousands of these guys is back in 2003, and we got the insurgency."

Collie probably was not deliberately tryin’ to be oracular there, but he manages to achieve it. Does "to the breaking point" anticipate that the Hannibal of Da‘wa will give in at the last moment before his humerus snaps or that he will not give in? It is an important point, surely, for what paleface planmonger can wish to have poor M. al-Málikí around in a condition too badly damaged for him to be able to help her impose her own chosen druthers on the former Iraq? Still, Collie may not know himself what would happen. Like Stevie, Collie seems to think it an experiment worth lookin’ into.

It is antecedently probable enough, perhaps, that other WPCers rule that sort of experiment in political vivisection out on principle. However our general impression of Mikey (not without Kennie) does not suggest that he/they would take that line. And indeed, the antecedent probability question is not altogether easy in general. None of the WPCers have any conscientious objections to invasionism as such, let alone to opportunistic impositionism in the wake of an aggression disapproved of. For the head of poor M. al-Málikí to be perfectly immune from kickin’ by X, X would have to seriously believe in the Four Pillars of Piffle, namely the sovereignty, independence, democracy and constituitionalism of the International Zone neorégime. None of the WPC kids are in Mister X’s case. Mikey and Stevie and Kennie and Collie might advise the Powe®Pointe®s proper that it would be inadvisible for thm to be seen too plainly to regard all that as piffle, but there can of course be no question at all of honourin’ one’s own piffle at face value.

Does the Hannibal of Da‘wa realize this? Now there’s a really hard question! Let us skip it and ask rather with Dr. Cartoonoclastes, "Was Colin Kahl too optimistic?"

Of course he was. They all were, and I refer to an ALL vastly more comprehensive than just the WPC. Almost everybody from the most gung-ho Occupational Therapist to the goofiest goofball tiersmondiste has been far too optimistic about the benefits of pandering to the TwentyPercenters. Of the few of us who never cared for that conventionally wise malarkey, most were, naturally enough, interested parties, Free Kurd hillbillies or Twelver heretics who would have to be taken from in order that the TwentyPercenters might be given unto more abundantly.

The moral of the tale, valid against thug planmongers and goof planmongers alike, is perhaps that of M. de Kirkegaard: "Purity of heart is to will one thing." At any rate, willin’ percentages and proportions is what has created so many pesky little problems of success for Team Aggression and so much goofiness from Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes. (Not even to mention the Righteous Virtue of Reidar Visser!)

The former Iraq might theoretically have been returned to normalcy by restoration of the old Sunni Ascendancy IN FULL, but nothing can come of mucking about with mere Affirmative Action™ schemes. The Natural Masters of Mesopotamia naturally (I suppose it is) want mastery, not just two-and-a-half votes instead of one. Some sort of Vast Cartoonoclasm was bound to occur eventually, though not necessarily the sort of cartoonoclasm that seems to be going on at the moment, which consists in the Hannibal of Da‘wa having become strong enough (he figures) to insist that it is not ‘fair’ that the TwentyPercenters get two-and-a-half votes apiece. Alternatively, there might have been a Bushie-Ba‘thí Pact of Steel, prominently featurin’ a Pipesovitchian "pro-democracy strongman" less implausible than poor M. al-Málikí. Yet that plan would not have worked in practice either, because the TwentyPercenter theocommunity has been smashed to smithereens. The Natural Masters almost certainly could not have held up their end of the traditional racket even with Château Kennebunkport and Rancho Crawford solidly behind them.

Least troublesome for everybody would have been to give poor M. al-Málikí -- or rather, the heretical theocommunity as a whole -- more or less what he has recently started to grab for himself, a plan which never crossed the mind of Sappy Conventionalis and her countless fans. As matters stand at the moment, the "not invented here" syndrome will probably kick in and make sure that Hannibal II does not get very far in the direction he is headed, while also making sure that nobody else gets very far in her direction either. [6] Were I a conspiratorialising goof, I might conclude with Cartoono the Magnificent that the saps must be acting sappy on purpose:

On the underlying question of the Awakenings, the funny thing is that the "policy community" isn't drawing any connection between the Maliki crackdown on the one hand, and American attempts to get him to sign a bilateral security agreement on the other--involving, for instance, possibly giving Maliki the green light for a purge, on the idea that this will not only please Maliki as part of the bargaining, but will also generate feelings that perhaps the American troops are in fact needed for just a little longer, depending on circumstances of course.

But it will not do to suppose what the gentry of Mu’ámara Junction suppose about the character and motives of AEI and GOP and DoD and USIP and EIB and . . . . Team Aggression are simply not bright enough to come up with the ingenious schemes that Goofville keeps attributing to ’em. [7]


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[1] Thee are to imagine an unread and perhaps unreadable poem from Century XII/XVIII thus entitled to match The Pleasures of the Imagination .


[2] ("He’s jealous.")


[3] Thee might alternatively conjecture that the Lynxes and Badgers and Cartoonoclastes of our alien and bewildered world do not seriously respect anything much that is not a PowerPoint.

Too prolonged an immersion in rigorously nondenominational pro-Sunnianity might have that tendency also, since both the TwentyPercenters of ex-Iraq and the ever-august Sunni International more broadly are rather fonder of "Clubs are trumps" than seems quite decent to Königsberger wimps like thee and me.



[4] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-sons23-2008aug23,0,2435302.story
begat http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/08/malikis_aproach/ begat Cartoono’s latest, linked too from the e-roof of our own humble abode.


[5] The second URL in note [4] above.


[6] That Kiddie Konstitution krafted by Feldman of Harvard and Khalílzád Pasha of AEI and GOP is of great importance in this connection. Cartoono is not interested in such things, and neither are Mikey and Collie and Stevie and Kennie. So much the worse for them!


[7] Cartoono is very weak on Crawfordology. In addition to not being intelligent enough to come up with any of his nifty scenarios, the cowpoker vigilantes usually would not behave like that even if they thought of it.

Joe Biden Meets the Moonbats

Senator Biden was rather a nine hours’ than a nine days’ wonder here at La Casa del Chipo de Silicio, Mr. Bones. By Labor Day it will be impossible to think of him and the silly yawpin’ about him from the direction of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and Radio Free Enterprise without irritation, so let us try to be serious about the poor man briefly before impossibility sets in.

The less unintelligent members of the señorito element invite Televisionland and the electorate to conclude that the anointment of J. Robinette Biden ‘means’ above all that B. Hussein Obáma thereby effectively ‘admits’ that he does not know anything much about foreign and invasion policy. That is close enough to the truth as seen at LCCS to be a bit dangerous. Fortunately the vast majority of GOP geniuses and of Big Management Party base-and-vile, both alike, are not up to exploitin’ the real weakness of it properly. The bad news, of course, is that the Commanderissimo Presumptive of GOP and AEI and EIB and NATO and Heritage and Hoover and America’s Moonpaper can probably be installed successfully quite without reference to anybody’s second bananas.

The gutter is never an inappropriate place to begin when considering the Party of Atwater, so let us hear a little kiddie analysis from the employees of His Christokorean Effulgence:

The Democratic Party elite and grass-roots members are all raving about their presumptive vice presidential nominee Joe Biden in between letting everyone know the talking point of the week -- the number of homes and condominiums that John McCain owns. The Democrats, now able to stop panicking about Barack Obama's slide in the polls, can live it up in Denver. Or can they? The fact is that the Democrats are going to have to spend this week and the next two months explaining to their voters how the "change" campaign became the "business as usual campaign" and why that is better for the country - especially for young people who had armed themselves for a generational takeover. A separate problem remains with Hillary Clinton supporters, who have refused to get over the fact that she didn't win the nomination and wasn't selected to be vice president. These people are feeling vindicated, even though this ticket represents a far better best-of-both-worlds scenario than her presence would have produced.

Christokorean moonbats are only, at best, moonbats of an inferior sort, prone to Superstition and Enthusiasm. It would be unreasonable to raise, at their level, any tricky questions about exactly where J. Sidney McCain stands on the Change-As-Usual issue. But any fool can work out they are not interested in J. Robinette for himself, but chiefly as a Hillary-free zone, and secondarily as a specimen of Altzheimer’s fodder. If Cap’n M’Cain ever reads their editorials, a thing nigh unto incredible, maybe even he will be able to work out that he is now under no pressure to anoint either a female or a juvenile. Not that such an unorthodox anointment was likely in any case -- with the Commanderissimo it has , of course, all along been only a question of which apoplectically middle-aged, brain-dead white male should be greased. [1] We shall see, but I doubt the Atwater Party anointee will be worth commenting on, unless it be Sen. Lieberman, and in that case we shall be descanting about what an exceedin‘ly dumb Mugwump JSM is, mentioning the positivity of Holy Joe scarcely at all.

So, then, the core Christokorean analysis seems to be that Lady Rodham will win this one for the Flyboy Hero, not out of affection or ideological affinity, but because B. Hussein Obáma is in her way as much as in the Atwaterites’ way. The fact that Lady Rodham began her political evolution as a dupe of militant Republican extremism back when the Big Managers were runnin’ a Party of Goldwater rather than of Atwater is no doubt merely coincidental. Probably.

But the moonbat element have already been conferrin’ with the señorito element, it looks like: "[H]is selection reveals Mr. Obama's own insecurity about his own credentials." They drop that sentence into a remarkably long paragraph (long for a wombscholar-oriented fishwrap, that is). They drop it in, but I fail to see that they do anythin’ else with it. The rest of their piffle marches to the tune that BHO and JRB are interchangeable, "[B]oth men have been firmly ensconced on the political left when it comes to" foreign and aggression policy.

Well, perhaps the moonbats figure that the ‘insecure’ Senatorino figures that his credentials can be fixed up in a jiffy by just adding in more of the same, the supposed deficiency being strictly quantitative and not qualitative. A decent political grown-up would assume that running as a Demoncrat automatically assures BHO of whatever benefits there of that nature there may be to scarf up. In short, BHO has just wasted his vice-presidential card in order to obtain what he could scarcely have failed to possess anyway, what only a definite repudiation could have caused him not to possess. [2]

However, the ‘insecurity’ of B. Hussein Obáma is a figment, tripe and baloney concocted at, and by, and for Wingnut City and Christokorea. The Atwaterites know that themselves, since they spend the other half of their time swiftboatin’ Televisionland about BHO’s insufferable arrogance and his pluperfect and arugular élitisme. Presumably they calculate correctly that wombschoolin’ and Niederdümmung have now advanced to the point that the average swing voter is unlikely to be puzzled by a combination of Satanic superbia and a cripplin’ sense of self-unworthiness. Or do they calculate correctly that their ‘populist’ dupes and their ‘no substitute for Victory!’ dupes will never compare notes? (But God knows best what moonbats calculate!)

Here is the Moonbat Times bottom line:

The hope is that Mr. Biden will help Mr. Obama overcome a major political problem: the growing perception that he is unprepared to lead a nation at war.

Certainly no loyal Atwaterite hopes anythin’ of that sort. I presume it must be doves and donkeys of which Christokorea sings. If one may tediously go back to the first hurdle that the fishwrap artists leaped over without fear and without discussion, does the holy Homeland, taken by and large, in fact consider Herself to be "at war" as of 23 Sha‘bán 1429, the former 25 August 2008?

If that were really the case, would not the Big Management Party’s Commanderissimo Presumptive be a shoo-in? Moonbats and señoritos and the rest of their pack as well like to wonder out loud why the Senatorino from Illinois is not twenty or thirty points ahead in the polls if he is really half so wunnerful as his swooning groupies make out, but if we assume that the Long War™ and the Kiddie Krusade™ are truths universally acknowledged, the shoo ought logically to be on the other foot, nicht wahr?

If we drag in the former Real World, it is obvious at once that nobody around these parts is at war and never was for more than a few minutes in her imagination immediately following the Pentagon/WTC attacks of 23.VI.1423. Insurance auditors have long since revised their rates for airliners and skyscrapers, and that was that, in mere Real World terms. What matters for proper evaluation of moonbattery and of the Biden anointment is not whether our holy Homeland is ‘really’ at grips with hate-inspired antagonists in a life-or-death struggle -- of course She ain’t, circumspicete, for Pete’s sake! -- but whether Televisionland and the electorate would like to think so or not. Christokorean kiddie analysis takes for granted that the Dan Quayle couch potatoes are still ‘war’ fans. Postinfantile señoritos can analyze a little better than that, perceivin’ that the Big Party’s ‘war’ has been over for quite a while now. Señoritos regret that it should be so, but by and large they do not let their hormones run away with them the way moonbats do, overrulin’ their brains as to the actual correlation of farces. Señoritos think ‘we’ oughtabe at ‘war’ against the Islamophalangitarian Terror™, but they also manage to notice that ‘we’ actually are not.

The Senatorino from Illinois and the Senator from Delaware and about ninety-eight percent of America’s party do not believe in the AEI-GOP-USIP-EIB ‘war’ either as fact or as value. The other two percent, Sec. Albright and Amb. Holbrooke and Sen. Lieberman et hoc genus omne, remain gung-ho for ‘war’ in the path of Military Humanism™, or in the path of hyperZion, or in both paths simultaneously, but these gentry are sufficiently best and brightest to see that they cannot march towards their radiant destination openly and expect to find the other 98% of us marching behind them. They appear to have figured out that they will have to conduct their ‘war’ on the side and on the sly. The Dan Quayle couch potatoes will put up with quite a lot of bipartisan CFR-Brookings-Hambaker bipartisan model ‘war’ as long as they don’t run into it on TV too often. [3]

By my analysis, then, the moonbats are badly mistaken. (Imagine that!) The Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and Heritage and Hoover is not goin’ta collect many fresh votes with his ‘war’ mongerin’. If he does not monger with a good deal of circumspection, the Party of Atwater will actually lose votes because of their ‘war’. Not a great many votes, probably, and assuredly not enough to cost Atwaterism the election single-handed, but still . . . .

Since BHO does not suffer from the ‘problem’ that America’s Moonpaper professes to have diagnosed, it follows that Sen. Biden cannot be the solution to it. Perhaps there would be more to say for kiddie analysis if they had scribbled about Obamatan unpreparedness simpliciter instead of "unprepared to lead a nation at war." Such analysis would be more suitable to the former Real World, but on the other hand they "are an Empire now" [4] and furthermore J. Sidney is the new Emperor thereof. Simply escapin’ from reality does not eliminate all of the Big Management Party’s problems: to trade in reality-basin’ for Cap’n M’Cain may not prove the best bargain that moonbats and señoritos and right wingnuts generally have ever made. The GOP geniuses have rallied stoutly behind their new Commanderissimo, as necessarily they must, but the Party base and vile are rather notoriously not crazy about the Hero Aviator. When it comes to "preparedness to lead a nation at" anythin’ other than ‘war’ . . . . Well, let us say that lots and lots of good folks at Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City think that the Big Party’s Commanderissimo is headed entirely the wrong way on xenophobia ("immigration reform") and demoplutocracy ("election reform" &c.) and the pretended global warmin’, among other items. If it was not for ‘war’ leadership, I daresay they’d have gladly let J. Sidney McCain go commanderissimate elsewhere and over others. Just like they did in 2000, before anybody dreamed of ‘war’.

This puts the extremist GOP base and vile in a position comparable to their own Boy’s position in the former Iraq: they find themselves somehow saddled with JSM, and apart from ‘war’ this saddlin’ does not make any sense, not even by the dim lights of EIB and Christokorea and Wombschool Normal U. So unless the B&V are to consider themselves demented, -- an unthinkable proposition! -- ‘war’ must be central to the electoral campaign. And then if ‘war’ is centralized in general, naturally individual campaign events such as the anointment of Joseph Robinette Biden must be furnished with an exegesis in terms of ‘war’ also. For instance,

Mr. Biden, since his election the Senate in 1972, has generally voted with the George McGovern/Ted Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party on national security issues, whether the question was defeating communism in Central America, the Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s that helped bring down the Soviet Union or the 1991 Iraq War. That said, Mr. Biden is no knee-jerk leftist, and he has a healthy tendency from time to time to turn his scorn on the political left - as he has done during the past year regarding funds for military operations in Iraq.

Moonbats are too far removed spiritually from the holy Homeland to be expected to gauge JRB’s "healthy tendency" correctly. It was not about ‘war’ as such, it was about the Fedguv Constitution, a domestic matter that can not be expected to be of importance to Christokorean nationals. Though even they ought to be able to work out that B. Hussein Obáma can not have been attempting to annoy the "knee-jerk leftist" when he decided to anoint Mr. Biden. Sheesh!


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[1] Gov. Jindal of Louisiana was briefly ballyhooed back when the Party of Atwater were still a little afraid of BHO, but of course that was an impossible scheme mentioned only in desperation. The Party of Atwater do not install their señorito element in leadership positions until they grow up to be apoplectic and middle-aged to the eye, and most likely brain-dead within.

Gov. Roosevelt of New York in 1900 was perhaps an exception, but one hundred and eight years really IS a long time in politics.



[2] On the ridiculous assumption that thee or I were campaigning for POTUSdom, Mr. Bones, such a repudiation can be imagined: we would climb up on the platform and resoundingly JUST SAY ¡NO! to the whole Albright-Berger-Holbrooke-Indyk-Lieberman-Ross cabal. Plus maybe Pan Brzezinski as well.



[3] The recent "Three Trillion Dollar War" shtyk was wasted ingenuity. The couch potatoes don’t mind what ‘war’ costs, they mind having to see it on the tube all the time even after they have plainly announced that they are bored with it.

Righteous Virtue Meets the Delaware Monster

Primâ facie one expects to be served typical North Danish baloney like

"the addition of Joe Biden to the Obama ticket might aggravate these tendencies, because in the past Biden has been a leading American voice in promoting an interpretation of Iraq as a country of three mutually hostile and internally stable population blocks. His various “plans for Iraq”, while frequently misunderstood, in different ways reinforce the view that the main problem in Iraq has to do with a centralised state structure and coexistence issues. Like many others in American politics, Biden has failed to acknowledge the emerging non-sectarian trends in Iraq, seeking instead to push ideas about “Sunni federalism” during his visit to the Anbar governorate.

But we had better have the Wonderbread in which the baloney is embedded as well, an account of the tendencies that might be aggravated. Dr. Righteous Virtue begins strikingly, disagreeing with about 98.3047% of the known universe:

" ... the real context of the upcoming Democratic convention is that ‘the surge’ in Iraq is not working at all. Despite measurable successes in bringing the levels of violence down, the American-sponsored political system in Iraq is actually more dysfunctional than ever...."

Emphasis added, naturally, and also added in such a way as to run across the break between two of the sophist’s sentences. That seems fair enough to me, though, or anyway no more twistificatory than what Dr. Virtue does to his own foes -- ’no-’count know-nothin’s that they are! Taking the emphasized part in isolation, then, we learn that violence levels in the former Iraq have no connexion with the Ever-Victorious SurGe of ’07™. [1] We also learn that R. Virtue doesn’t mind dictating to AEI-GOP-DoD-USIP-EIB-etc. what they are up to. Possibly they are unaware that the real reason why they surGed was to functionalise the Khalílzád Konstitution, but all the same, that is what happened. North Danish Virtue is militantly objective, much like Rio Limbaugh virtue, though the latter is only your lower-case ethical type. Petrolaeus and Crockerius are doin’ what they are doin’ after all. Everything is what M. Reidar Visser says it is; why should we wish to be deceived?

The psychology of docta amentia is fascinating, but let us discuss that topic some other day. At the moment we need to know exactly what the word ‘dysfunctional’ means in the most recent oracular deliverance:

"... actually more dysfunctional than ever, incapable of delivering the results that both Iraqis and Americans are looking for. Perhaps the best evidence is the fact that it is now Washington’s own darlings in Iraq and their pet projects that stand in the way of progress, as seen in the vice-presidential vetoes this year against the provincial powers law and the provincial elections law. There is in fact a cross-sectarian majority in the Iraqi parliament that wants to have early elections and power-sharing in Kirkuk, but Washington’s allies among the Kurds and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) keep blocking progress towards national reconciliation and a more sustainable political system. The salient cleavages in Iraqi politics are increasingly of a non-sectarian nature – the alliance that challenged the Maliki government through its demand for early elections and power-sharing in Kirkuk had an eminently cross-sectarian composition, and no matter how the media likes to spin it, the recent sacking of the police commander in Diyala did pit some powerful Shiite players against each other – but American policy fails to respond to this reality."

Thus R. Virtue completes setting his miniature replica Stage of Ex-Iraq for the appearance of the (not so very) new character, Bidenius. We have seen before that Dr. Virtue can be in a red-hot rippin’ hurry to shoehorn whatever just happened into accordance with the established platform and by-laws of his own Party of Zero. That seems to have happened here, where he distinctly talks as if he used to be conjoined with militant extremist Republicans in an alliance for "progress." As I recall RV has never touched more pitch and filth than to notice that GOP-AEI-DoD-USIP-EIB-etc. happen to possess the power necessary to stuff the Visserian Peruna down the natives’ throats willy-nilly. R. Virtue never came even close to agreeing with Team Aggression about the recipe for the salvific gunk required.

Should the OBB ticket (improbably) prevail, it will inherit Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower as a matter of course, and then R. Virtue will have to stand in line with the rest of the exotic exile pols of the world -- Saakashvilis, Makiyas, Chalabis, Kys, Thieus, Imperial Pahlavis, Pinochets, Batistae -- who think it would be really neat if Uncle Sam were to install themselves, and their cousins, and their family's traditional clients, and their ideobuddies, and their roommates at Yale in power back home. [2] Power draws Chalabis and Vissers the same way an open jar of honey draws files. "Why should we wish to be deceived?" In particular, why deceive ourselves that the flies care much about the taste of the honey?

The toy theater stage is set. Enter Bidenius from the left:

Remarkably, however, it seems that Biden may have cleaned up his Iraq rhetoric as part of his VP bid. At least, it is quite conspicuous how every trace of his “plan for Iraq” now appears to have been erased from his website at joebiden.com, where he now instead supports Barrack Obama’s more general argument about shifting the focus to Afghanistan. Also, at some point between April 2008 and today, Biden’s website specifically devoted to his soft partition schemes, www.planforiraq.com, was quietly shut down – at this site, Biden’s rhetoric had consistently focused on a tripartite Iraq to the very end. Only on his Senate website traces of his Iraq policy remain, but even there a more toned-down version appears, with the emphasis on a general push for federalisation. This is still in contravention of the Iraqi constitution (which specifically rejects any kind of elite-driven federalisation process) but it could perhaps mean that Biden increasingly realises that his plans were unsustainable and that trends in Iraq militate against them.

So perhaps the poor pol has definitively recovered from his bout of schizomania mutilans? Or perhaps, on the other hand, he has not, since it would be indecorous for an aspiring Second Banana to hawk a foreign and invasion policy different from that of Numero Uno. And on the third tentacle, perhaps R. Visser has already made calculations not unlike our own that tend to demonstrate the advantages of never setting oneself up bumptiously against the wielders of Sole Remainin’ Hyperpower. Even if poor Joe continues to be wrong about nearly everything ex-Iraqi from the Party of Zero standpoint, conciliation might win some concessions eventually, whereas strict principled intransigeance must come off empty-handed. "Softly, softly catchee monkey!"

Directly badmouthing Top Banana donkeys may be inadvisable, yet one can always kick the rank and file around a little:

Democrats appear to be equally ignorant about the survival of Iraqi nationalist sentiment, but they express this in a different policy: acceptance of Iranian influence in Iraq as something natural. This was even written into Obama’s “New Strategy for a New World”, released in mid-July. Commenting on Iraq, Obama writes, “Iraq is not going to be a perfect place…we are not going to … eliminate every trace of Iranian influence”. He seems unaware that this particular statement may be seen as deeply offensive by many Iraqi Shiites who are proud of their Iraqi identity but fearful of Iran and the pro-Iranian elites that have been empowered by the Bush administration. Their fear is that a new Democratic administration will accord Iran exaggerated influence in Iraq as part of a grand, Dayton-style regional settlement designed as an antidote to the Bush administration’s unilateralist policies.

Party-of-Zeroist technique stands out there, does it not? Dr. Righteous Virtue does not speak for North Denmark or for Old Europe or for himself, he speaks for "many Iraqi Shiites." Who can be so low-minded as to doubt that he would show us a valid power of attorney from "many Iraqi Shiites" if we demanded such a thing? Certainly I shall not doubt it, being anyway more interested in the holy Homeland angles.

RV does not seem to understand the Heimatland Gottes very well. Or possibly I don’t. Either way, nobody has been hollering for "a grand, Dayton-style regional settlement" loud enough to capture my ear. In addition to there being no detectable groundswell for such a scheme, the ideology in the Tanks of Thought has not sloshed like that either. Nobody worth mentioning in the holy Homeland wants to accord the evil Qommies "exaggerated influence." North Danish ideas of exaggeration may differ slightly from those of Crawford and Kennebunkport and South Succotash and central Chicagoland, but not enough to salvage that particular exuberance. [3]

Meanwhile, back in Cloudcuckooland,

Democrats cannot simply close their eyes and imagine that the Iraq of 2008 in any way represents a natural state of affairs, and that a quick withdrawal automatically will prompt some kind of Hobbesian reset whereby the country will find back to its true self. Real change in Iraq would mean that Obama realised that for five years straight the United States has promoted and consolidated an artificial sectarian system in the country, and that disengagement from Iraq should also aim at reversing this trend.

Which is to say, Extra Visseritatem nulla salus. Which figures, of course, considering the source of this morning’s baloney sandwich.

It befits the Silly Season well enough to try to fill in that scenario in one’s imagination. The transition back from Corrupt Artificiality to pure and unsullied Nature would be presided over by an integalactic force drawing mainly on North Denmark and West Neptune! If they ever get the public water supply working reliably, Murti-Bing Pills® will put down corruption and artifice and icky sectarianism, imported from darkest Crawfordestán half a decade ago, the same way fluoride conquers tooth decay!! Everybody remotely connected with the Supreeme Hakeemes will be imprisoned for life as a matter of public sanitation!!! [4]

Perhaps I get carried away.

How about a fifty-dinar fine for even thinking the word ‘partition’ in a public place?


___
[1] Sure, R. Virtue mentioned only "violence REDUCTION." But there are limits to even my polemical charity, vast though it be. He will certainly get the whistle called on him if he ever tries in future to object to SurGe and SurGists on grounds of increased violence. He can have his "not working" both ways or neither, but not only one way as between Up and Down, let alone a wobble back-and-forth. So we shall assume SurGin’ is violence-level neutral - period.


[2] R. Virtue and the Party of Zero do not crave power for themselves personally? No doubt, but ‘idealists’ of the Reidarian ilk can be a damnable nuisance under foot all the same. M. Pascal and the Muses and I are not impressed with the notion that disinterestedness is the ace of trumps in ethics and politics. Working that principle backwards, Dr. Virtue’s excessive swooning over the ‘nonsectarianism’ of his own pets amongst the former Iraqis probably arises from Idealismus too. It seems never to have occured to some shallow reflectors that there can be an unjust judge whose injustice takes a form quite different from lining his own pocket with bribes or grabbing the local cathedral for his own religionism all but fifteen minutes weekly, alternate Thursday mornings from 0230 to 0300.


[3] The sophistical exuberance is perhaps too nebulous to merit even ridicule. Would a "regional settlement" necessarily include a solution of the Palestine Puzzle? If so, we can securely count on it never happening. If not, what on Gore’s green earth is Dr. Righteous Virtue going on about when he emits such a phrase?

Regardless of whether it is the Commnaderissimo of GOP and AEI and EIB who wins in November or the feckless OBB twosome, it looks as if Dr. Righteous Virtue will be bringing coals to Newcastle in the form of lobbying Uncle Sam not to be too nice to the sinister Safavids. Oh, well, it is not as if anybody empowered is going to err for purely Visserian reasons!


[4] It is, to be sure, DOCTA amentia that we encounter in Dr. Righteous Virtue. He's a regular whizkiddie on Basra trivia questions, it is only a few minor points about Right v. Wrong and that sort of thing that cast him into a witless kerfuffle.

Cereal Capitulations, A Subsocratic Dialogue

Try this with thee’s raisin bran, Mr. Bones!

MISS LYNX: One reason for the silence [1] is the serial capitulations the US is making. On elections, on time lines, even on their beloved Sons of Iraq program. All of which suggest they have fallen behind the Maliki makeover program into the new Saddam. It's a tough thing to come to terms with, after all the wasted energy over "democracy" and the COIN "enlightenment" path toward it. DR. CARTOONOCLASTES: Or possibly ... that Bush, turning the whole idea of "conditional engagement" on its head, is telling Maliki et al that they should take advantage of their friend Bush's last months in power let him help them secure their grip on power, if they will just please sign something. In other words, that the Americans aren't just capitulating but have actually joined the parade in a proactive way... MISS LYNX: I think thats right, that the US is on board with Maliki's radical new make over. I meant that those doing the capitulating were those democracy and COIN folks towing the line - for what now appears to be at best, token propaganda.

Perhaps the Silly Season has finally infected even me, Mr. Bones, but there seems to be less nongoofiness in about 180 words there than in six months of regular output from the angelic agitprop mills of Lynx, Badger, Cartoonoclastes LLC. There is not any more evidence for today’s baloney than usual -- not any evidence at all, really -- but the huntin’ - shootin’ - conspiratorializin’ gentry have deviated into plausibility for once, if not into Sense pure and simple.

Naturally that means they must have stumbled onto turf previously taken possession of by thee and me, sir. And so they have, for what does this alleged proäctivity amount to but a specific exemplification of our own fundamental Crawfordological speculation that Team Aggression, for a long time now, has been prepared to accept pretty well anythin’ whatever in the former Iraq as long as it can be maketed to Televisionland and the electorate as Success and Victory for Boy and Party and Ideology. The positive character of the bushogenic quagmire, the weal or woe of thirty million spear-won subjects of AEI-GOP-DoD-USIP-EIB -- such exotic details count for nothing or little compared to makin’ sure that the cowpoker vigilantes can holler "Yippee, we finally won!" -- plus naturally add in a less exuberant tone, "Plus please note for future reference that the Demoncrat Party did NOT win."

Oddly enough, we arrived at that Crawfordological guideline of ours by looking towards Crawford. Over at Goofville, they look more towards beautiful downtown Takrít, the Mecca of Sunninterní Antisectarianity. That indirect procedure is as if one were to pursue astronomy by gazing always downwards into a dentist’s mirror. Thee will not be amazed, O Bones, that it might take them rather longer than us to arrive at this little scrap of common ground that I think I have unearthed.

The odds are heavily stacked against sanity persisting at Mu’ámara Junction, alas! The selection of Senator Biden is bound to set Cartoono the Magnificent and his clown troupe off on a bender. Old White Joe is, of course, the very model of a modern schizomaniac, forever chuckling to himself with glee at the prospect of tearing other folks’ former countries to shreds for them, then setting the shreds on fire, then "dance around the funeral pyre, playing a violin, -olin, playing a violin." [2]

The good news is that Barry and Barry’s Joe will lose in November. [3] Once J. Sidney has been safely installed as Commanderissimo of AEI-GOP-DoD-EIB (&c. &c.), the USA neorégime won’t have to truckle to poor M. al-Málikí any longer. His whole Hannibal of Da‘wa shtyk will crumble rapidly, as the irresistable military supremacy [4] of Sunnintern and TwentyPercenters combined makes itself felt. In no time at all, it will be "Helicopters on the roof, aloof." (And about time!)

So everything is still all right, basically, from the Goofville perspective: more annoying delays of the inevitable, but no fate worse than that. Today’s unaccountable deviation sensewards is not so extreme as to involve Cartoono & Company becoming less idealistic and Parmenidean about the strictly military prospects of their pets. When Himself speaks of poor M. al-Málikí and selected I. Z. quislings "securing their grip on power," he means, I take it, their power vis-à-vis the remainder of the Quisling Community. The Mighty Muqáwama is entirely another story.

Perhaps I had better specify the ungoofy part of the MJ new look with more precision. Above all it is the guess that ruling circles of AEI-GOP-DoD-EIB have decided to allow poor M. al-Málikí to borrow their Uncle Sam’s hyperpower and warm bodies and violence pro expertise in order to advance specifically Málikiyyan objectives in the native politics of the International Zone neorégime. After they have assisted the Hannibal of Da‘wa, little Miss Lynx’s "new Saddam," to make himself intramurally supreme, Hannibal will be replete with gratitude and willing to agree to pretty well anythin’ that Cap’n M’Cain may subsequently desire of him.

That is not bad at all, especially if it could be taken with assurance as the effort of a recoverin’ goofball, but it is not perfect. It may well soar over the heads of the GOP geniuses unnoticed that the sort of loyalty that they expect from Hannibal Gloriosus is not common in the evil public sector and will probably not be forthcomin’ in any marked degree. "Austria will astonish the world with her ingratitude."

Regardless of what the cowpokers themselves miss or figure in, Miss Lynx and Dr. Cartoonoclastes have not noticed their own new analysis product’s strongest point, namely that it implies a return of the former Iraq to Greater Levantine normalcy. Hannibal is to become what Gen. Mubárak or Messrs. les altesses royales du Ryad have always been. This mode of being involves some very particular specifications about the loyalty-gratitude nexus: Hannibal must be kept on a short leash, compelled to be loyal and grateful on a day-to-day basis, he must never be allowed not to worry about somebody else supplanting him, whether, improbably, from below by ‘revolution’ and muqáwama or, far more likely, from the side, by some near peer who sneakily persuades Team Aggression that he could be an even better Kirkpatrician "our S.O.B." for them than poor M. al-Málikí. Fifteen or twenty years deeper into the Century of J. Sidney McCain, these unpleasantly paranoid requirements will be less necessary, and Hannibal, or Hannibal’s heir, will at that point no doubt be trustworthy out of sight for short periods of time. But to dispense with the leash at the outset would be madly irresponsible.

I conjecture that Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes do not care to notice this aspect because it seriously interferes with their Pangloss-cum-Pollyanna attitudes about the swiftly approaching triumph of strict nondenominational pro-Sunninternianity. They do not want a short leash to connect Hannibal with George XLIII and John XLIV and Ignoto XLV and .... What they crave is Hannibal left on his own in some shady corner where their factional pals can tear his [exp. del.] guts out with claw and fang and impunity. So to speak.

If goofiness is to be eschewed altogether, Cartoono & Co. will have to learn to keep their hormones in check. To think ‘unthinkable’ thoughts, such as that once in a while the bad guys really do prevail, and that’s that.

Oh, well.

____
[1] Cartoono had scribbled

[R]ecall the Diyala operation of Monday, where the American involvement has been made clear (a "rogue operation" according to the deputy commander of US forces in the region), and this American involvement has elicited no follow-up whatsoever by those who purport to explain "counterinsurgency" to the American people from some kind of a supposedly progressive standpoint. Preferring instead to push ahead with the story about the American forces as a moderating influence.

So one must infer that Miss Lynx ponders the ‘silence’ of Juan the Wicked, and Helena the Foreign Policy Foxite, and Maarcvark the Off-On-Vacation-While-Baghdad-Burns. No doubt there exist other fake-progressive nonfollowers-up, but that unholy trinity will do to indicate which hand is getting bitten by Miss Lynx. Himself, being in a temporary snit against Dr. iRack, probably meant that nogoodnik in particular by "who purport[s] to explain ‘counterinsurgency’ to the American people." Anyhow, what the traitor fiends are ‘silent’ about is the story about the extremist Republican forces as a perpetual wellspring of s*ct*r**nism.


[2] T. Lehrer fecit

About a maid I'll sing a song, Sing rickety-tickety-tin, About a maid I'll sing a song, Who didn't have her fam'ly long. Not only did she do them wrong, She did ev'ryone of them in, them in, She did ev'ryone of them in. (...) She set her sister's hair on fire, a-Rickety-tickety-tin, She set her sister's hair on fire, And as the smoke and flame rose high'r, Danced around the funeral pyre, Playin' a violin, -olin, Playin' a violin.

[3] Good news for rabid schizophobes, I mean. Should the MJ gentry actually care about any other branch of progressivity in central North America, they may not be quite so burblin’ly happy on the morning of 5 November 2008. Mais nous verrons.

Maybe ‘Feverish’ After All?

Perhaps one should not make light of the Oracles of Virtue after all, O Bones! No matter how pomposely they set themselves up to be revered and resorted to, there is always at least some possibility that they may guess the future correctly by accident. Or, indeed, "by inspiration, like a bagpipes."

More specifically, McClatchy and McClatchy’s Fadel have gone around the bend and out of sight about the Diyálae Affair, which I shall henceforth punctuate that way so as to remind thee and the Muses of M. Dreyfus. What does one say about a news story that starts off as follows?

Key U.S. Iraq strategy in danger of collapse Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers last updated: August 20, 2008 06:31:07 PM BAGHDAD — A key pillar of the U.S. strategy to pacify Iraq is in danger of collapsing because the Iraqi government is failing to absorb tens of thousands of former Sunni Muslim insurgents who'd joined U.S.-allied militia groups into the country's security forces. American officials have credited the militias, known as the Sons of Iraq or Awakening councils, with undercutting support for the group al Qaida in Iraq and bringing peace to large swaths of the country, . . .

. . . and off she goes!

What does one say? Not a hard question. One says, "Why was that twistification not marked as an editorial?" Only a thoroughly ideologated goofball could seriously suppose that the ‘collapse’ of a whole system of neocolonial occupational therapy should be presented as if it were a new bridge felled by an engineering mistake.

Having got the main point off one’s chest, one may attend to the tale rather than the title, and wonder what the corporate media fiends think they are doing, exactly. What is Diyálae to them, or they to Diyálae? At that point one reads the twistatorial through and discovers that the D-place is not so much as mentioned in it. Curiouser and curioser; not only feverish, but cryptofeverish are the Banát McClatchy! [1]

Perhaps the best clue to this ‘professional’ misbehaviour [2] begins with the seventh microparagraph from the end. Repunctuated for grown-ups, here it comes:

Colin Kahl, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a centrist policy institute in Washington, who recently visited Iraq, said the dispute over the militias could set the stage for a return of widespread bloodshed, particularly because the Maliki government seemed intent on thwarting the plan. He noted that of the militia members slated to join the security forces, only 600 have completed the required training. Of those, most are Shiites. Kahl, who spoke with senior U.S. officials during his visit to Iraq, said that the Iraqi government was providing jobs to the militia members in "humiliating ways." He said former Iraqi army officers were being absorbed as low-level beat cops, and men who saw themselves as the "slayers of al Qaida" were being asked to become plumbers and bricklayers. "The last time we humiliated thousands of these guys is back in 2003, and we got the insurgency," Kahl said.

It can’t do much harm to accuracy if we simply suppose that L. Fádil has been good enough to allow C. Kahl to borrow her corporation’s keyboard -- with or without her own private brain tossed in -- temporarily. The thesis being twistified for by her whole scribble is stated plainly there and expressly attributed to Kahl of CNAS. To state it a bit more ab externo: poor M. al-Málikí is headed straight for the Dustbin of History® if he does not quickly join Prof. Colin Kahl of CNAS, and Dr. Gen. David Petraeus of Princeton and West Point, and Proconsul R. Crockerius of Kennebunkport-Crawford, and Mlle. Sappy Conventionalis (of ubiquitous provenance) aboard the Bribe-a-Tribe™ Express. Should it depart the station without him, Núrí Kamál is doomed indeed!

Considering that every dove and every hawk with even a slight trace of lemming blood in her veins seems to agree with that mistake already, ‘feverish’ probably will not do. Yet Señor Kahlfeidal (so to christen the consensus errantium) does seem to think the Bribe-a-Tribe™ Express situation is somehow more urgent than it was last month or a year ago or back when they originally aggressed.

I guess the fuss and feavers must be mainly about the cowpokers down at the ranch, who have indeed not been particularly eager to kick poor M. al-Málikí in the head so as to insure that he does the right thing. [3] The GOP geniuses are not, to put it mildly, used to bein’ successful in their colonial policies. Now that poor M. al-Málikí has managed to set up as the Hannibal of Da‘wa without instantly getting hooted off the stage, the geniuses are perhaps a bit reluctant to interfere with such scanty helpin’s of Success and Victory as have come Team Aggression’s way merely because NKaM may possibly be succeeding and triumphing off in slightly the wrong direction. What I have insolently referred to as "a kick in the head" may appear to the exponents of Big Management as a comparatively minor in-course flight correction that can be made at any time.

There is no sign (known to me) that the Harvard Victory School MBA classes have reconsidered their underlyin’ strategy for the bushogenic quagmire. They still agree with Miss Sappy that the Arabophone Sunní theocommunity must be specially pandered to, that the spurned and slighted TwentyPercenters must be slathered and inundated with Affirmative Action™. However, now that their poor M. al-Málikí does appear to be making a certain amount of progress on other fronts, they do not see any reason to be in a great hurry to kick his head about Sunní-panderin’. If Charlie McCarthy was to get really annoyed about being pestered about Bribe-a-Tribe™ all the time, he could mess up the AEI-GOP-DoD-USIP act pretty seriously. Remember the SOFA!

Señor Kahlfeidal may or may not realize as much. I. e., McClatchy and the New Securitarians are quite capable of egging on a quarrel between the ventriloquists and their native not-so-dummy in order to make AEI and GOP look bad, maybe so bad that they lose control of both DoD and of colonial policy next November. Whether that is what Señor Kahlfeidal is really doing, I dunno. It is clear, though, that he thoroughly believes in Sunní-pandering. For somebody like me, who have not the honour to agree with the consensus errantium and expect only more trouble from Sunní-pandering in general and from those ever-receding provincial elections more specifically, the question of who is to impose, and afterwards take credit for, a misconceived finagle that is not going to work anyway cannot seem urgently important.

The sewer of error does not encompass absolutely everybody, of course. At Mu’ámara Junction, the goofballs will ferociously reject the idea that the TwentyPercenters require to be pandered to. As thee knows, Mr. Bones, the (saving remnant of the) TwentyPercenters are going to be in complete military control of the whole shebang by the end of next month. There is no reason for those all-but-conquering heroes to make concessions to anybody whatsoever. Once they take over, the innocent will have nothing to fear -- ‘innocence’ meaning, of course, a devout attachment to the dogmas of pro-Sunní watan-nationalistic antisectarianism. (What else could the word ‘innocence’ possibly mean, and especially in Arabic? I ask thee, O Bones!)

"Ding-a-dong, ding-a-dong! / And they all sang a song."

"Freedom means peace."

Best Wishes for a happy and edifyin’ SillySeason to all!

Yours as ever,
McRawk


___
[1] Dr. Virtue will be gratified that the culprits persist in hushing up the name and the very existence of M. Ghánim al-Qurayshí.



[2] As the Bulgarian proverb doesn’t exactly have it, "The chicken is not a bird. Russia is not a foreign country. Journalism is not the name of a profession."


[3] Still, they might at least leave Little Brother alone till after Labour Day. It’s not as if publicists and PowerPointe®s never take vacations! Plus the laddie is no doubt deeply engrossed at the moment in tryin’ to figure out how to save M. Saakashvili from the evil neo-Coms. Also in how to save J. Sidney McCain from the hordes of O’Bama.

Last time George XLIII distinctly attended to the former Iraq, it was lookin’ pretty good, wunnit? (From the AEI-GOP-DoD-USIP perspective, that is, naturally.) How can Mission Rea©©omplished go all to pieces again in ten minutes as soon as he turns his back to sneak a figurative smoke?

Undisguised Fact Watch

[On second thought, Mr. Bones, I believe I shall share the following scribble with but thee and the Muses, and not bring it to the attention of the Baní Abí Muqáwama. Probably those animals have no sense of humour about their feeding either.]

20 August 2008: More on Diyala Today there is an attempt by Iraqi authorities to gloss over the Diyala episode by blaming it on technical misunderstandings between various arms of the Iraqi security apparatus: the local police versus a special force from Baghdad. THIS CANNOT DISGUISE THE FACT that a week ago, and reportedly by consensus, the provincial council which includes 20 members from the Shiite Islamist camp (many of them ISCI) voted to oust the police chief, Ghanim al-Qurayshi, whom Baghdad had earlier appointed probably with the support of Nuri al-Maliki and Jawad al-Bulani. Demonstrations against the dismissal, allegedly to a large degree made up of members of the police loyal to Qurayshi, had met with the disapproval of the governor who has ties to ISCI. There clearly is some kind of intra-Shiite dimension to this affair, but it remains unclear whether it is a case of a local branch of ISCI cooperating with non-Shiites in a bid to oust an outsider appointed by Maliki, or another example of tension between ISCI and forces more loyal to Maliki." [R. Visser dixit.]

Learning how to think in the shape of a pretzel is not easy. Lessons and examples from a master ought always to be welcome. RV's ability to fit assorted flotsam and jetsam into his factional mosaics is perhaps unrivalled; it should not be neglected merely because nobody but himself adheres to his own precise ‘pov’!

So, how does he do it? Well of course a mere amateur can do no more than notice a few of the more striking strokes.

Especially this amateur notices that the final body count never gets mentioned, neither here nor in yesterday’s slightly longer virtual notebook entry. Given one killed Sunni, four wounded Sunnis, and two kidnapped Sunnis, how to derive "some kind of intra-Shiite dimension"? In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister -- the best way to handle that sort of difficulty is -- as I infer from the present specimen of technique and hereby freely recommend to everybody -- not to touch it. Facts not mentioned need not be disguised, and then subsequently where there is no mask, there can be no unmasking. Viewed from the other side of the front, there will be no need for any glossing over such as the intra-Shí‘ís are alleged to have been reduced to.

Examination of the way McClatchy handled the same human event yesterday may show the apprentice what to avoid. I count three paragraphs of eminently disguisable facts, followed by four paragraphs of worrying about possible involvement on the part of the AEI-GOP-DoD Coalition. RV dispenses with the latter as well as the former, though anybody the least bit familiar with his agitprop knows that he cares nothing for preserving the good name of the invasionites.

After that, McClatchy and Visser clash headlong. A Battle of Titans, sort of. In the words of the former:

The arrested men were all Sunni. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni party in the country, condemned the raids as sectarian persecution that was directed at the party.

In the words of R. Visser (Tuesday 19 August):

[T]he corporate media is already feverishly reporting the Diyala developments as a purely sectarian affair, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Sunni Islamist IIP holds only 14 seats out of 41 on the provincial council that voted to oust the Shiite police commander (and whose governor is also a prominent Shiite leader who used to be criticised for ties to Badr).

Students must decide for themselves whether the McClatchy corporatists (or any other) are being especially ‘feverish’ about it. Bear in mind, though, that it can’t do one’s cause any harm to make that sort of soft journalism claim even when you know that it cannot be sustained. You have only to announce "No disputing about tastes, tra-la-la! Sure seemed ‘feverish’ to me!," and you will be perfectly safe. Nobody is going to take you to court about a subjectivity like that, and the case would be thrown out in an instant if, by a very remote and improbable fluke, somebody tried.

That is rather an elementary touch, perhaps, as is shown by the fact that my own dilettantish ‘pretzel’ is exactly on a par with the pro-class ‘fever’. No lawyer is ever going to prove that I secretly consider RV the most straightforward of ax-grinders. Even if I really did, he--the lawyer--couldn’t ever.

Definitely more advanced is the touch that goes "conveniently ignoring the fact." That one is so advanced, in fact, that I am not altogether sure how it works -- or even what effect it was supposed to have on the enemy. Nothing good, of course, but is RV mocking the McClatchy crowd because they -- very probably, but not certainly -- are not even aware of his favourite fact, or is he seriously imputing a cover-up of it to them? ("Ha, ha, ha," she chuckled to her native accomplice, twirling her moustachios with cold and unfeverish fiendishness. "If we simply omit to tell ’em about Ghánim al-Qurayshí, why, they’ll NEVER figure out what really happened!")

But time to stop, before succumbing to the Silly Season Spirit altogether.

Speaking of the SSS, did thee know, Mr. Bones, that the oracles of Dr. Righteous Virtue are now being disseminated in the vernacular ? [1] If that keeps up, perhaps RV will not constitute a Party of Zero forever!

Happy days.



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[1] The Sawt al-‘Iráq is, unsurprisingly, a bit at a loss confronted with the sectarianism of Scandinavia. They are under the impression that RV is a Dane. Tusk, tusk!

Pervezites, Perlezites, Crawfordites

Observe the linguistic and ideological structure of the following specimen, Mr. Bones:

Facing imminent impeachment charges, President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation on Monday, after months of belated recognition by American officials that he had become a waning asset in the campaign against terrorism.

Since it comes from the keyboard of a New York Times Company employee named J. Perlez , we may happily identify two of the parties most visibly present as Parvezites and Parlezites. It is hopefully needless to explain yet again that "American officials" is but a transparent euphemism referring to operatives of the AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP Coalition of the Willful™ -- "Crawfordites" will do for abbreviatory purposes. The Perlezites are only indirectly alluded to, admittedly, yet they are undoubtedly there: they are the ones who consider the Crawfordite recognition "belated" and would, one presumes, have ditched His Excellency long since if they ran the Executive Branch.

Last, and least, and least distinctly noted, comes somebody-or-another who is out to imminently impeach His ex-Excellency. "Pakistanis" is, I believe, the technical name for this small and uninfluential faction. What on Gore’s green earth they make of NYTC corporate coverage of their local and native human events is beyond guesswork, at least not bedore I have had a couple more cups of coffee.

Perhaps mistakenly thinking an op-ed scribble had been solicited, the keyboard of JP of NYTC grinds the Perlezite faction axe relentlessly:

The decision removes from Pakistan’s political stage the leader who for nearly nine years served as one of the United States’ most important — and ULTIMATELY UNRELIABLE — allies. And it now LEAVES [the Crawfordites] TO DEAL with a new, elected coalition that has so far proved itself to be UNWILLING OR UNABLE to confront an expanding Taliban insurgency determined to topple the government ... to add a NEW LAYER OF TURBULENCE to an ALREADY UNSTABLE nuclear-armed nation of 165 million people ... and RELATIONS between the countries are AT THEIR LOWEST POINT since Mr. Musharraf pledged to ally Pakistan with the United States after the 9/11 attacks....

And so forth and so on. The keyboard goes overboard, it seems to me, and I am almost tempted to be sorry for the vigilante cowpokers, who have more reason than elsewhere to object with their traditional Big Management Party mantras "History is bunk!" and "That was then. This is now!" If the keyboard of Jane Perlez, idiot niece to corporate Aunt Nitsy, is so smart, then, what does it propose to do about Bushogenic Quagmire #3 of 11?

Not a hard question, Mr. Bones, if thee do not care much about the quality of the answer:

[T]o fix the attention of the two leaders of the coalition parties, Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, on the raging Taliban insurgency that not only threatens American soldiers in Afghanistan but also threatens to destabilize Pakistan itself

The sixth word from the end there has to be one of the world’s all-time great Alsos: provided the armed operatives of AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP are attended to, which must naturally come first and foremost, the corporate keyboard would not mind if Pakistan should somehow fail to be destabilised. Amongst other idiocies, Mr. Bones, thee may observe how the Perlezite faction turns poor old Carl von Clausewitz topsy-turvy: politics and policy are to be mustered in support of the violence professionals, not vice versa. The Crawfordite aggressors have been accused of somethin’ similar as regards the former Iraq, though I do not think that case can be made out persuasively.

What one might expect, but does not actually find, in the GOP geniuses down at the ranch is thrown in one’s face by the New York Times Company. From Nitsy one had expected at least a solemn pretense that natives and locals matter too; perhaps the old girl’s heart would not really be in the Eleanor Roosevelt verbiage, but I, for one, took for granted that Nitsy still remembers the 1945 verbiage and would reiterate it on such an occasion as this one in 2008. I was wrong, sir. I was undoubtedly wrong.

O tempora, O mores!, Civilisation is swallowed up by Huntin’tonian Clashism™ and mere witless Perlezism!

Speaking of witlessness, the Perlezite factional keyboard emphatically does not regard the natives and locals -- most of ’em -- as very clever:

Washington would like the new government to explain to the public that the effort to quell the Taliban is in Pakistan’s interests as well. So far, the coalition, distracted by internal machinations, has failed to make that case, even as the military has taken on the insurgents with new vigor in the last 10 days.

Thee can not, I trust, miss the military silver lining that Miss Jane sees peeping out from behind the cloud there. Pakkies are not very bright in general, but fortunately Sandhurst and West Point can remedy the deficiency. ’Tis a familiar old song when sung by the barracks-basers themselves, however strange and discordant it sounds when scored for Manhattan Island fishwrap consort. I suppose there was originally something to be said for it from a social-scientizing point of view: under old-fashioned Greater Levantine and Latin American conditions, it will have seemed antecedently believable that the patriot colonels and generals would be more genuinely patriotic than the rest of the oligarquía from which they spring. After fifty or a hundred years of experience, this thesis looks more than a little shopworn and unrealistic. Thee are to consider, however, O Bones, that the chickenhawk OnePercenters cannot be exactly the same in 1429/2008 as they were in 1326/1908. Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis ! [1]

In the wake of His Excellency, neoteric Perlezites are bound to consider an alliance with the palaeo-Crawfordite crew, ‘belatedly’ notwithstandin’. Both old and new factionalists agree that native and local druthers are immaterial compared with the safeguardin’ and advancin’ of Wunnerful US:

“We’ve said for years that Musharraf is our best bet, and my fear is that we are about to discover how true that was,” one senior Bush administration official said, acknowledging that the United States had stuck with Mr. Musharraf for too long and developed few other relationships in Pakistan to fall back on.

Major Leaker must be a Perlezite dressed up in cowboy costume. It would be interesting to know what he and Miss Jane said to one another about other eligible Pakkies with whom they might develop a meanin’ful relationship. The latter goes on to advise her corporation’s customers that "suspicions between the American and Pakistani intelligence agencies and their militaries are deepening," which sounds as if she, any way, is not thinkin’ of simply rescrapin’ the gun barrel that Gen. Musharraf came out of. What, if anythin’, Maj. Leaker himself has in mind to do cannot be determined from available data.

Miss Jane spends the rest of her scribble descantin’ on a variety of things that might go wrong even farther:

(...) Pakistan has been through far more abrupt political transitions than this one [but] this is the first since it amassed a large nuclear arsenal. Another central concern is the war in Afghanistan (...).

=

Now if thee were to squint at Bushogenic Quagmire Number Three (of eleven) just right, Mr. Bones, thee might take up a blithe and heedless local-and-native attitude and rather enjoy theeself. Imagine being a blissfully ignorant Pakkie, sir! Or rather, imagine being a Pakkie who sees clearly enough that what is obviously bad for Crawfordites and for Perlezites and even, to a certain extent, for Pervezites closer to home need not be especially bad for mere Pakistanis.

We just quoted Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes the other day, and here we have a sort of photographic negative thereof: your run-of-the-mill Pakkie native or local seems to be in a position to cause lots and lots of trouble for all the Masters of the Universe, actual and potential and wannabe, without making her own position any worse than it already is. The Latin fortune cookie for that one is Vacuus cantat coram latrone viator.

BGKB. Happy days.


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[1] The chickenhawk poet’s Patron presided over the most satisfactory mutation of all in this department. Perhaps the secret of Octavian’s sucess was that he was never really a violence pro at heart, though naturally he would not have lasted six weeks without simulation of one. Being the Son of his Father, or grandnephew to his granduncle, or whatever, furnished him with hereditary military credentials, as it were, that worked admirably because they were never subjected to close scrutiny except by obviously jealous Republican and Antonian losers.

Gen. Musharraf is not like that.

The Señorito as Amateur Divine

One snickers in advance at the notion of a Kristol Minor explainin’ the Origin and End of Evil. What Evil is good for in practice with him and his Big Management neocomrades could scarcely be plainer, but a theoretical disquistion? No, that exercise can only be asinus ad lyram piled on top of Coals-to-Newcastle. Still, snickering is kinda fun after its fashion, so please go right ahead if thee like, Mr. Bones:

[T]he most revealing moment was the two candidates’ response to a question about evil. Yes, evil — that negation of the good that, Friedrich Nietzsche to the contrary notwithstanding, we seem not to have moved beyond. [An asker] asked whether evil exists and if it does, “do we ignore it? Do we negotiate with it? Do we contain it? Do we defeat it?” (...) Obama said that “we see evil all the time” — in Darfur, on the streets of our cities, in child abusers. Such evils, he continued, need to be “confronted squarely.” And while we can’t “erase evil from the world,” we can be “soldiers” in the task of confronting it when we see it. But, Obama added, “Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility” as we confront evil. Why? Because “a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.” After all, “just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good.” It’s nice to see a liberal aware of the limits of good intentions — indeed, that the road to hell is paved with them. But here as elsewhere, Obama stayed at a high level of abstraction.

The question having been formulated at a high level of abstraction, there can be no adult objection to that. The señorito-level objection one can see comin’ a mile off -- the Rev. B. Hussein was very near to suggesting that Evil might have something to do with Wunnerful US. Thee might even claim plausibly that The One™ actually did so suggest. The suggestion is perfect commonplace in theoretical Christojudaeanity, naturally, but what does a Kristol Minor care about doctrinal C-j? ‘Religion’ is for one’s servants to worry about, when one is -- or rather, when one’s daddy usetabe -- a certified Master of the Universe.

Also visible a mile off is that the wingnut laddie found Cap’n M’Cain’s harp-and-donkey show far more to his own taste. How so? Behold! It goeth like this:

Unlike Obama, [the Flyboy Hero] took the question about evil to be in the first instance about 9/11. McCain asserted that “of course evil must be defeated,” and he put “radical Islamic extremism,” Al Qaeda in particular, at the top of his to-defeat list. In this context, McCain discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and concluded by mentioning “the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform.”

I repeat that the señorito does not indulge in so pedestrian a reflection as that if the Reverend Mister Seeker had wanted to seek out opinions about the Pentagon-WTC attacks, or about the Islamophalangitarian Menace, or anythin’ else specifically in the jihád careerist vein, he was perfectly free to do so. This approach puts us mere critics at an "apples and oranges" disadvantage, in that Kristol Minor obviously preferred the question that his Commanderissimo Presumptive answered, but had not been asked, far better than the previous exchange between the Senatorino and the Rev. Seeker, which more or less managed to stay on the same rails throughout its trajectory.

Thee are not to suppose, Mr. Bones, that it is only a matter of what ‘enemy’ or general type of ‘enemy’ one individual krusadin’ kiddie happens to prefer to be at ‘war’ against. Billy might just as well have mentioned the Caucasian abominations of M. Putin. The Caucasian abominations of Cyrus and Assurbanipal might do almost as well. For that matter, the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, would do, supposing that the Baní Murdoch happen to dislike their pollen enough. Anythin’ at all would do, almost, as long as it is very, very far removed from Wunnerful US.

Master Jackass has a very tin ear indeed for traditional C-j divinity. The notion that Evil and US are not on speakin’ terms is dead wrong semper et ubique et ab omnibus. The error is so far around the bend and out of sight that it is not even a haerêsis. It is only a stultitia.

But mark more closely how tonedeaf Master Jackass twistifies his mythological musicology, please. Regardless of what question was in fact asked, the Kristolian answer runs "So while Obama talked of confronting evil, McCain spoke of defeating it." There are several interesting aspects to that intellectual and ethical disgrace. For one thing, it is a very chickenhawk kind of stultitia to suppose, or even think or wish it to be supposable, that one’s enemies or ‘enemies’ can not possibly win. The Hero Aviator is no General Carl von Clausewitz, obviously, but he is not entirely to be identified with the low views of Corporal Thersites and Rear-Private William Kristol and Mess Sergeant Murdoch either. Saladin and Richard soar far over the head of Cap’n M’Cain, along with an alarming number of other things that a statesperson of highest degree may ideally be expected to be familiar with, yet, on a good day with the wind behind him, J. Sidney recognizes that there is, or ustabe, such a thing as Chivalry in the world. He does not consciously and deliberately prefer to be at ‘war’ with cockroaches in human form rather than with warriors -- or at very least with ‘warriors’. Though he be one dumb Mugwump, J. Sidney is at least no trashy señorito to think it would be nifty if ‘war’ could somehow be made indistinguishable from insect extermination.

To reascend from the earthbound Temple of Bellona to the Valhalla of Christojudaean Superstition and Enthusiasm, little Billy does not seem to understand what the word ‘evil’ means up there, what it has always meant to C-j theorists. It certainly has never meant bein’ a cockroach in human guise. The termites never, ever got a fair shake or a level playin’ field when they went up against this señorito’s present or former neocomrade, T. D. DeLay -- a radical asymmetry which only goes to prove that termites and cockroaches have nothing to do with Evil as the C-js conceive it.

As everybody both sane and interested in so sectarian and divisive a subject as Evil conceives it, for all I know to the contrary. Master Jackass has no notion what he is brayin’ about, unfortunately, when he brays about Evil. I assume that he does not hold that his neocomrade D. Frum actually invented (or discovered) Evil in conjunction with those grave factional studes of poles and axes and the like that one saw reflected in the orations of Little Brother in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. But he might as well think that.

I don’t trust BHO an inch, thee should understand, O Bones! Nevertheless, unlike little Billy K., he did manage to say something both responsive and intellectually presentable. Matthew Arnold’s ever-immortal Bishop Wilson said it unbeatably, but B. Hussein managed well enough. [1]

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[1]

In the essay which follows , the reader will often find Bishop Wilson quoted. To me and to the members of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge his name and writings are still, no doubt, familiar; but the world is fast going away from old-fashioned people of his sort, and I learnt with consternation lately from a brilliant and distinguished votary of the natural sciences, that he had never so much as heard of Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to have invented him. (...) [I]t distresses one to think that the new lights should not only have, in general, a very low opinion of the preachers of the old religion, but that they should have it without knowing the best that these preachers can do. And that they are in this case is owing in part, certainly, to the negligence of the Christian Knowledge Society. In old times they used to print and spread abroad Bishop Wilson’s Maxims of Piety and Christianity; the copy of this work which I use is one of their publications, bearing their imprint, and bound in the well-known brown calf which they made familiar to our childhood; but the date of my copy is 1812. I know of no copy besides, and I believe the work is no longer one of those printed and circulated by the Society. Hence the error, flattering, I own, to me personally, yet in itself to be regretted, of the distinguished physicist already mentioned.

Silly Season Stuff

"Goofs, all alike, no season know, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time" . . . . That sounds a little like poetry, Mr.Bones, so therefore it must be factually inaccurate. I trust thee managed to stay awake during the class where Mr. Mencken proved that theorem on the blackboard?

Yesterday Juan the Wicked deviated into seasonal goofery thusly:

AFP also reports that in Baghdad's Jadid district, Iraqi forces arrested the head of an Awakening Council for involvement in terrorism and conducted a raid on guerrillas so that 250 displaced persons could return to the neighborhood. My guess is that this translates that at least some members of the Sunni Awakening Council had earlier been involved in ethnically cleansing Shiites, and that the al-Maliki government is now cracking down on it so that some Shiite families can safely return. The US views the Awakening Councils as valuable anti-al-Qaeda paramilitaries willing to take American money to fight the QUTBIST VIGILANTES.

Every schoolboy and his sister-in-law understands who it is that the Bribe-a-Tribe™ artists bribe tribes to oppose; if JC had written "runcible thugs," there would have been no actual loss of information. The objection, however, is that so exceedingly fancy and tertiary-educationalist-sounding a monnicker ought positively to add value to the analysis, which "Qutbist vigilantes" does not do. It is insufficient to defend such a phrase on pure stylistic grounds as the "elegant variation" of the Fowler brothers, as though QV were only a glorified pronoun. Thee and I, sir, might have said "faith-crazies" or "neo-Muslims." We’ve said both of those a lot, and hope to survive a while to repeat them ever more abundantly. But they are not comparable, because the words "faith" and "Muslim," so deployed, are not the moral equivalent of an examination question, they are genuinely quasipronominal in that everybody pertinent does in fact know what one is pointing at with them. "Qutbist" sounds like a puzzle because it is a puzzle. It would be mildly objectionable even if the answer to the puzzle were obvious. Since it is not obvious at all, one is tempted to object less mildly.

Walter Mitty, I suppose, would not object at all, he would only figure that it his own fault. He "must have" missed some learnèd Ann-Arboreal account of who and what is to be accounted Qutbist in the former Iraq that the invasionites have made. Plus WHY, naturally. Self-effacement is always charming, perhaps mostly because it is met with so infrequently. Nevertheless, truth matters a little bit also: there has been no learnèd Ann-Arboreal account, and now that JC knows that his maneuvre was noticed, thee can pretty well count on there not ever being one. We either make up one for ourselves or we go to bed hungry.

Nothing occurs to me off-hand that is worth thee staying awake for, Mr. Bones. The specific kind of neo-Muslim religionation associated with M. Sayyid al-Qutb has very little obvious connection with the AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP mess in Mesopotamia. Thee will recall that Mr. Eponym was terribly, terribly SHOCKED to learn what our own holy Homeland is really like when he visited it long ago, back in Good King Ike’s golden days, I believe it was. No doubt the holy Homeland has grown even shockinger still to a Qutbist sensibility over the subsequent half century: two more degenerations of unmitigated Change and Decay and extremist GOP! ’Tis ever an edifying theme, Mr. Bones, that one! I could bore thee about it till the cows come home to roost. Unfortunately if that be what thee understands by le qotbisme, there can scarcely be any of it worth mentioning in the former Iraq. Juan the Wicked may have grown bored with the obvious and decided to milk the bull for a change, but unsurprisingly there ain’t any milk. ‘We’ are unpopular in those parts not because of Change and Decay and rampant Goldwateranity, but only because the Coalition of the Willful decided to aggress their way to Baghdád.

‘Our’ victims are not , I fear, all that interested in the pathology and epidemiology of US. They are almost as narrowly narcissistic as extremist Republicans would be if somebody hyperpowerful from Mars were suddenly to invasionize them and start inflicting a mandatory course of Petraeo-McNamaran Occupational Therapy. No doubt a few peripheral wingnuts would scribble in the vein of Neorabbi B. Lewis -- and indeed, in the vein of Neomufti S. Qutb -- enrichin’ themselves by explainin’ What Went Wrong? with Martian Civilisation to allow such deplorable interplanetary misbehaviour to happen. Nevertheless, these parlour games of educationalizers and publicists would be peripheral in the extreme. Ordinary sane patients would -- obviously -- concentrate on trying to regain control of the asylum and expel the alien intruders.

So then: ¡Muqáwama, sí; cotbismo, no!

"Vigilante" is even worse than "Qutbist," being the exact technical term for the misbehaviour of the Martians of Kennebunkport-Crawford. To transfer it to the other column risks grave confusion. A very strict legal pettifogger indeed might maintain that the Muqáwama are on a par with the Martians, legitimacywise: that is, neither party possesses a shred of it. More informal inquirers -- including thee and me, Mr. Bones -- are bound to notice who started the bushogenic quagmire and cut their enemies some slack on that account. And merely as everyday Chicagoland English, sir, does not the word ‘vigilante’ have a decidedly proäctive ring to it? Does not ‘vigilantes’ apply much better to the perpetrators of Preëmptive Retaliation™ than to those retaliated upon in advance?

It would be going far overboard to claim that the Muqáwama "are simply defending themselves" from the Martians. Plainly things in the former Iraq are not that simple: if nothing else, the enemies of AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP are also squabbling for Power like mad amongst themselves. Yet not even Juan the Wicked would pretend that ‘vigilante’ means "she who squabbles intramurally to get herself into power." At least, one hopes he wouldn’t.

So much for my own displeasure with "Qutbist vigilantes." As thee might easily have anticipated, O Bones!, the displeaure of Cartoono the Magnificent is far more entertaining:

We've all heard of the standard "AlQaeda in Iraq" brand, and of course the crossover "Sunni Arab guerrillas" label, which so memorably fused the badness of AQ with the broad sweep of the "Sunni-Arab" resistance. But times and fashions change, and now there's this new thing Juan calls "Qutbist vigilantes". What is it? The truth is no one really knows. All we know for sure is that it was time for a change and a new look.

Thee will observe that I have titled this performance with my own evaluation of exactly what o’clock it is in the former Iraq: poor Don Juan has but succumbed to the Dog Days and the Silly Season, as almost anybody human might. Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes are exceptional in this respect, for, being goofballs all year ’round, they cannot engage in the same intellectual aestivation that the rest of us enjoy, even at Ann Arbour. Goofs who are on duty 24/7 cannot ever goof off, I fear. "Life is unfair."

Rhetorically, the zany threesome are ahead of the calendar: they feign themselves in Paris in October, shopping for a winter wardrobe. That trope is their own latest offerring, which is not one of their stronger efforts, as it seems to this keyboard. Cartoono’s crew strikingly fail to indicate WHY Juan the Wicked should suddenly require to dress up his nakedness with a new set of invisible threads. I am so unsympathetic to the whole cartoonoclastic shtik that perhaps I often miss the points they intend to illuminate. Nevertheless, is not one of the great beauties and pleasures of goofy conspiratorializing the assignment of motives? And is not "it was time for a change and a new look" about as close to assigning no motive at all as one can sail? Not up to the usual mark are they!

Of course there was a little more yimmer-yammer than that:

"Al-Qaeda" was obviously getting to have a shopworn feel to it. And as for "Sunni Arab guerrillas", something interesting happened. Many of them became "Awakenings", thus changing from bad to good. Which is important because that makes Maliki's refusal to hire them a bad thing. Not only a bad thing, but his signature bad thing, and the feature that could well be the hook for a new "Maliki-bad, we can't withdraw the troops just yet" theme. So the broad bad sweep of the "Sunni Arab guerrillas" label became a problem. If you don't want to get stuck in yesterday, you can't harp on "AlQaeda", and you can't harp on "Sunni Arab guerrillas" either--you need a fresh look.

When Cartoono says ‘you,’ he does not, of course, refer in a pedestrian fashion to thee and me, Mr. Bones. He must mean Juan the Wicked and all his vile co-conspirators. I have doubted my own ability to appreciate a cause I find ridiculous. Dr. Cartoonoclastes has the same problem, it looks like: he attempts to think like a Martian invasionist rather than a rigorously nondenominational pro-Sunní patroniser of the blessèd and mysterious Muqáwama, but he just cannot do that particular trick well. The idea of Juan R. I. Cole advising Richard Bruce Cheney "We do not want to get stuck in yesterday, sir, so we can’t harp on Al Kayduh or go on about Sunni Arab guerrillas any more. What we need is a fresh look!" . . . !

"If you believe that, sir, you would believe anything." [1]

To be sure, being a goofball does pretty well mean believing anything one likes, does it not? The puzzle is usually why they like their own latest goofinesses, and usually it is a much easier puzzle than this one. In any case, note that Dr. Cartoonoclastes has no constructive theory of "Qutbist vigilantes." Freshness is not construction.

At that point, the Mu’ámara Junction gentry suddenly jump their tracks and take to ranting about a freshness unconnected with Juan the Wicked and/or M. Sayyid al-Qutb:

We've all heard of "government,""opposition", and "resistance". So what's with the new PTA/PTB label that's all the rage? Same thing--it's the fresh look that's important for the new age. In the old days there were groups that resisted the American military occupation, and on the other side, there were the collaborators. But not any more, say the stylists. Nowadays all anybody wants is a slice of the cake, it's human nature. Of course it's paradoxical, but now that the whole country opposes the American occupation, with Maliki in the lead, they're all resistance and none of them is--so there's no more "resistance versus collaboration". It's all PTA versus PTB.

"Same thing"?! Thee must be cautious hereabouts, Mr. Bones, and take care to attribute no more sense and rationality to the goofballs than they actually earn. As ever, our default assumption must be that they mean what they say and say what they mean, however bizarre they wind up looking to outsiders. In particular, there are no grounds for attributing to Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes the faintest inkling that maybe the good TwentyPercenter folks they rejoice so righteously and so disinterestedly to patronise are losing the struggle -- or even simply "have lost" it already. It may seem incredible to thee and me that so elementary a thought never occurs to them, but our difficulties of imagination have no evidential bearing on their behaviour. I therefore take Cartoono the Magnificent to really and truly believe that his own factionette’s glass is half full rather than 98% empty when he declaims "now that the whole country opposes the American occupation...."

For a rational creature, though, his dottiness makes a very pretty bookend to match and balance the one commemoratin’ V-IQ Day, 1 May 2003: "Misson accomplished! We are ALL watan-nationalists of the former Iraq nowadays. Why, even poor M. al-Málikí has become a watan-nationalist! Who’d ever ’a thunk THAT? O frabjous day! Callooh!! Callay!!! Mission accomplished!!!!"


What’s that, sir? . . . Well, OK, maybe I am spoofing the clown element just a little.

Dr. Cartoonoclastes is aware enough that AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP have not actually gone away yet, and there are, I think, slight traces of his thinking of the Hannibal of Da‘wa in the poet’s immortal and ornithological terms :

"Of W. W. (Americanus)" [By Not John Donne] The clear cool note of the cuckoo which has ousted the legitimate nest-holder, The whistle of the railway guard despatching the train to the inevitable collision, The maiden's monosyllabic reply to a polysyllabic proposal, The fundamental note of the last trump, which is presumably D natural; All of these are sounds to rejoice in, yea to let your very ribs re-echo with: But better than all of them is the absolutely last chord of the apparently inexhaustible pianoforte player.

Happy days.



___
[1] Duke of Wellington anecdote VIIIb.

"a large historical and even philosophical matter at stake here"

I leave aside the matter of McCain and Obama, since I think the war in Georgia is primarily about the war in Georgia and not another excuse to chatter about the presidential campaign.

That sounds promising, but alas! -- the distinguished Jewish Statist and peretz-barrel sage cannot live up to his own insight. It turns out very quickly that the war in Georgia is really about ... well, I will let M. Léon von Wieseltier explain it to thee, Mr. Bones, since it is his moonbattery:

And then there is the use of that word "simply." As in: "For McCain, it's simply a product of Vladimir Putin's evil intentions." That little word does a lot of business. Coming from an intellectual, it is one of the cruelest insults. (...) Liberals ... have sagely grasped the limits of American force and the blandishments of soft power and the danger of flying too close to the sun--they pride themselves upon their complexity. They are not simply anything. There is a large historical and even philosophical matter at stake here. It has to do with the analysis of the motives of America's rivals and enemies.

M. Léon von Wieseltier

could be selectively quoted to make him out simply (ahem!) your average Joe, an honourary member of the Plain People of Ireland™ who can never remember exactly why the Divine Trinity is simpler than Divine Unity would have been. No way. We have already detected that M. von Wieseltier can not possibly be a Joe, since he aggressively fails to believe that the war in Georgia is about the war in Georgia. Naturally the war in Georgia is about "a large historical and even philosophical matter." (What else would it be about, Mr. Bones? I ask you!)

Setting aside the word "America’s" (for narrow Zionological as well as broad philosophical reasons), we find M. von Wieseltier analysing the motives of rivals and enemies:

Briefly, I see no reason almost ever to reduce their actions to [one’s own] actions. Yes, history is a bramble of causes and effects, direct and indirect, and our policies have consequences; but still our rivals and our enemies are autonomous historical agents. They have beliefs and interests and desires and fears that we did not give them, or provide the occasion for them to get. Is there anything at all that we know about Vladimir Putin, about his background or his worldview or his career or his way with power, that makes his invasion of Georgia surprising? Putin champions a particular vision of Russia and a particular vision of Russia in the world. That vision is indigenous to himself [1] and to the political culture over which he presides. It is a primary fact of the contemporary world. Not even the presidency of Barack Obama will rid him of it. You see, he does not wish to be rid of it.

(A sudden twinge in the Joe gland must have struck M. von Wieseltier at the end there, for he might just as well have keyboarded "Putin simply does not wish to be rid of it." [2] But onwards! M. von Wieseltier was about to explain the Peculiarity of the Putinian Vision:)

So Judis's comment strikes me as a robotic reiteration of the old left-wing view of the Cold War, here applied to post-Soviet Russia. It is just a matter of hours before Richard Falk writes the same thing. (It turns out that those who remember history are also condemned to repeat it. Bummer.) But I will grant Judis his question. Is this a new Cold War? Truly I hope it is not. But whether or not it is a new Cold War, in Gori--and tomorrow maybe in Tbilisi--it is a hot war. Whether or not it is a new Cold War, it is an old war of authoritarianism against democracy. So what exactly are we supposed to tell our friends, the besieged Georgians? That we are tired? That they should have provoked Putin before 2003, or before 2001? That we have re-read Niebuhr?

Wrong again! Unless we rather gratuitously suppose John Judis to figure apocalyptically or allegorically in the Putinian Vision, it cannot have been the P. V. that M. von Wieseltier was hastening to expound. As far as I can see -- and seeing usually comes in handy with visions -- the P. V. never gets properly expounded at all. It does, however, get labeled or classified. M. von Wieseltier is kind enough to call the Vision of Putin ‘authoritarianism’. That is undoubtedly a step in the direction of intelligibility, so let us not be ungrateful, Mr. Bones! On the other hand, let us not kid ourselves that we know for sure what a M. von Wieseltier means when he says ‘authoritarian’. Thee will recall that this was a terminus technicus in the political theology of Neocomrade Ambassador Dr. J. Kirkpatrick. At the other extreme from the Kirkpatrician seminar-room narrowness, a user could use -- many users actually do -- the word ‘authoritarianism’ to signify no more clearly distinguished a Vision than "not democracy." That, it seems to me, is all that one knows for sure that M. von Wieseltier means by it. Probably the sage means quite a bit more, but there is no way of telling what the other bits are like from the immediately available evidence. (Or from my rather hazy recollections of previous intellectual encounters with M. Léon von Wieseltier.)

The Statist himself seems to be preoccupied with a personal problem: what is he to tell his "friends, the besieged Georgians? That [I am] tired? That they should have provoked Putin before 2003, or before 2001? That [I] have re-read Niebuhr?"

Well, M. von Wieseltier certainly should not tell anybody that he has reread Niebuhr unless he really did so. That much is plain. Plain and simple, even. "Honesty is the best policy," don’t thee know, Mr. Bones? (Despite the lack of tones of voice and gesticulations, I get the distinct impression that M. van Wieselthier has not in fact reread his Niebuhr and has not the faintest intention of doing so any decade soon. Evidently Niebuhr is the sort of author that would appeal to Mr. Judis.)

After his phoney-baloney simplisme about a war is a war is a war, even in Georgia, I am surprised that M. Léon von Wieseltier does not just go simplistic and tell his friends at Tiflis what he really thinks, presumably that if it were up to him and to other celebrated Jewish Statists and cracker-barrel sages, Georgians would find Uncle Sam’s cavalry rushin’ to bail them out even as we keyboard, but that in fact other persons with diferent views presently control the foreign and invasion policy of the United States, and so they and their M. de Saakashvili are more or less on their own, most likely.

Showing up personally with a Kalashnikov or two would be an excellent idea, it seems to me, but only if M. Léon von Wieseltier were the very first (renowned) Friend of Georgia to rally to her. A multiplicity of Lords Byron would reduce all of them to the level of commoners in no time. In light of that stringent condition of priority, naturally he owes his ideobuddies of the Rosy Revolution no apology should he decide not to come at all. There is no way for him to be certain in advance that he would be first celebrity to rally, whereas he can be quite sure that if he arrives second, or thirteenth, or 146th, his shtik will be worth little to those intended to get the benefit of it. Despite that misfire, such a shtik would of course be equally expensive and inconvenient for the hero personally, no matter when it happens.

Though I keyboard merrily, Mr. Bones, as befits a Silly Season topic like M. Léon von Wieseltier, thee may mark that Rancho Crawford is indeed in rather a wieseltierisch kind of jam over Georgia. With Team Aggression, however, there is no back-up, nobody in sight as an alternative, or even a supererogatory, second or thirteenth or hundred-forty-sixth comer. If AEI and GOP and DOD and USIP and all the vast Coalition of the Willful® do not take action, action will not be taken. [3]

"Action will SIMPLY not be taken," one might even venture to say . . . .


___
[1] Huh?


[2] How comes a M. von Wieseltier at TNR to be privy to Mr. Putin’s innermost wishes at Moscow Centre?

An excellent question, Mr. Bones. I have not the faintest notion how stage performers do their telepathy tricks. Can a celebrated sage and Statist really do more than thee and I can, which is but to infer from the fact that Mr. Putin actually did so-and-so, that probably Mr. Putin wanted to do it?

Stilll, thee must admit it would be a little fantastic to suppose that Mr. Putin truly aspires to be more like Prof. Dr. Albert Schweitzer or Mohandas K. Gandhi, but continually finds that the wicked world prevents him from advancing in the preferred direction. Thee would be feigning entites praeter necessitatem to believe something like that, Mr. Bones.



[3] The grand and glorious CoW

has been slightly depleted as regards its original intent by these untoward human events in the Caucasus:

Administration officials said military options were almost certainly off the table, but the United States did airlift Georgian troops stationed in Iraq back home , answering a plea from the Georgian government and prompting a sharp response from Russia.

(Why should the Muscovites offer any ‘response’? Was there a stimulus?)

Still, the CoW does not live by its original willfulness alone. Team Aggression fans are bound to consider that their Rosy Rev ideobuddies will still be fightin’ for the same good cause at home as in the former Iraq. As M. Litvinov formerly remarked, "Peace is indivisible." Until the whole world has been certified 105% safe for AEI-GOP-DOD-USIPism, why, obviously the struggle must continue!

It’s really as simple as that, Joe. (Isn’t it?)

Weakly Standardisin’

Thee must allow, Mr. Bones, that the señorito element at Wingnut City was as surprised as anybody else that M. Putin has suddenly taken to bushifying his path through the world. Naturally it makes them squirm even more that M. Putin has attained a tactical surprise that was out of the question for Rancho Crawford in Afghanistan or the former Iraq. A spokesman for the militant extremist GOP has spoken as follows:

“It doesn’t look like this was premeditated, with a massive staging of equipment,” one senior American official said. “Until the night before the fighting, Russia seemed to be playing a constructive role.”

Whereas when Major Leaker’s own crew decided to aggress into Mesopotamia, one would have needed to be blind and deaf not to notice ’em comin’ months in advance! I suppose a dubyapologist who takes an interest in the technical details of organised violence, as Big Party Neocomrade W. Kristol emphatically does not, would attempt to standardize that aspect of these parallel human events by pointing out that it did not do the Ba‘thís any discernable good to know long in advance that the vigilante cowpokers were on the warpath and headed towards Baghdád. Juggernaut does not require to take her victims by surprise. [1]

When it comes to analysin’ a way out of his unexpected embarrassment, the Murdoch-baser becomes very juggical indeed. Little Billy K. starts sneakin’ up on M. Putin and M. Saakashvili almost eighty-five years in advance:

In August 1924, the small nation of Georgia, occupied by Soviet Russia since 1921, rose up against Soviet rule. On Sept. 16, 1924, [t]he Times of London reported on an appeal by the president of the Georgian Republic to the League of Nations. While “sympathetic reference to his country’s efforts was made” in the Assembly, the Times said, “it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civili[s]ed countries is unlikely to make any impression upon Soviet Russia.”

Little Billy may not consider his own sort of thing to be sneakin’, however, because what he mostly wants to do is howl that Russia remains as uncivili[s]ed as ever, plus probably that St. Woodrow’s silly notions about nation leagues and security collectives have not improved with the mere lapse of years. In his Murdoch-based boilerplate,

Dictators aren’t moved by the claims of justice unarmed; aggressors aren’t intimidated by diplomacy absent the credible threat of force; fanatics aren’t deterred by the disapproval of men of moderation or refinement.

Presumably that verbal neo-gunk should put the (moderate and refined) Senatorino from Illinois in his place unilaterally and preëmptively.

Little Billy has only the usual 750 words, Mr. Bones, bear that in mind, please! Thee cannot infer with absolute certainty that our Big Management Party señorito is incapable of presentin’ the claims of justice unarmed and the charms of epithets postponed. Maybe Billy K. can do those parlour tricks with half his brain tied behind his back, only not inside the op-ed straightjacket. Not when he must rush headlong towards his factional BottomLine®:

When the “civilized world” expostulated with Russia about Georgia in 1924, the Soviet regime was still weak. In Germany, Hitler was in jail. Only 16 years later, Britain stood virtually alone against a Nazi-Soviet axis. Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and ’30s, that delay and irresolution on the part of the democracies simply invite future threats and graver dangers?

He is in such a hurry that we are never distinctly told exactly what measures are being delayed and irresolved upon, though it is not hard to guess them with a Murdoch-baser. If M. Putin "gets away" with this sincere flattery of the Crawfordites, he may well start thinking that he is Juggernaut after all. To avoid anythin’ so shockin’ly awful as that, let Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology see to it that M. Putin does not get away with Abkhazia and South Ossetia: ¡caveant consules ne quid detrimenti res publica capiat!

With little Billy K., one should probably punctuate "Respublica" and take it to refer to the militant extremist GOP pretty exclusively. At widest, to the whole Coalition of the Willful, AEI and GOP and DOD and USIP along with a few other neocomradely packs and covens and whatnot. Though not formally a BottomLine®, the most interesting thing in the scribble is the following:

But Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.

"For that reason alone" the neocomrades and señoritos owe ...! Kristol Minor has selected a very strikin’ tail to swing his elephant with. One has to be pretty well totally abandomed to willful coalitionism to want to holler "The cause of makin’ the extremist GOP look good in Iraq is the cause of us all!" M. Saakashvili does not inspire much sympathy chez moi, generally speaking, but presented by Narcissus Dexter with that slice of tripe and baloney, who can fail to feel at least a little sorry for the exotic hack pol? [2]

For that reason alone the neocomrades and señoritos owe ...?

Well, their obligations are up to them, Mr. Bones, and it would not do for grown-ups to impertinently interfere. And since it is only little Billy Kristol mouthin’ off here, we need not get worked up about the fact that the señorito element have no intention of meetin’ their obligations with their own private-sectorian resources when they think they can pick Uncle Sam’s pocket instead. On top of havin’ approximately zero interest in Mil. Sci., the Weekly Standard laddie has never concerned himself with gatherin’ political support for his faction’s capers overseas. The Murdoch-basers may, though it seems unlikely to me off-hand, actually manage to get poor Sam to bail out their ol’ pal Mike [Saakashvili]. If they do, that will be rather a fact about US than about whether señoritos and neocomrades have covered themselves with glory in the former Iraq. To suppose it would be a fact about Caucasian Georgia -- or about die Weltordnung überhaupt! -- would be downright dotty.

But God knows best. I wish thee Happy Days, sir.

__
[1] The señorito element may find it encouragin’ to reflect that M. Putin cannot be Juggernaut, since he has to sneak up on his patients before pouncing. But most likely they will only bitch and moan that M. Putin should be able to pounce at all. Kristol Minor says nothin’ at all about the sudden shock of this awful development -- unless thee rather fantastically suppose it to be lurking in the words "at times we seem oddly timid and uncertain."


[2] Narky D. is so busy emotin’ about himself that he does not, perhaps, notice how ... how strange it makes his Uncle Sam look to have Caucasian Georgia as his number two international ideobuddy and second and bottle-washer, immediately after the forty-pound poodle of Airstrip One. Of course the Lone Ranger does not care to be overshadowed by Tonto, that is only to be expected, but this is ridiculous.

De Pepone Magno

Whenever I see references to the possibility of a cross-sectarian "nationalist resistance" in this blog, for some reason I'm reminded of Linus talking about the Great Pumpkin. Except that Linus didn't affect such a haughty tone in talking about his fantasies.

Goofballs have their funny side, Mr. Bones. That is most of why one calls them ‘goofballs,’ although there is also a minor element of presumed ineffectuality, an expectation that the former Real World would probably win, should they ever have occasion to interact with it. Yet to complain first and foremost that Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and the Herr Professor Doktor von Schachtelbrecher [1] "affect a haughty tone" is the act of a critic with whom I have a few non disputandum nits to pick.

But let Cartoono have the first shot at his own cultivated despiser:

As for [our cultivated despiser], don't mind him. He has been ridiculing Iraqi nationalism for quite some time now. It is one of his hobbies.

And the second shot also:

The thing is [that, as] we've seen right in this here thread, the whole idea of a national focus, of the kind that Sadr, Dhari and others talk about, is not only completely shut out of the corporate media and the thinktank bloviation world, but also seems to be something of a redline to some, to be ridiculed whenever it is brought up. So whatever you may think about the political implications of the military campaign against the Sadr trend and the Sadr trend's response, you have to be careful not to swallow the entire "Iraq is entirely sectarian"/"nationalism is all rhetoric" koolaid.

Can thee call what Cartoono there affects ‘haughtiness’ with a straight face, Mr. Bones? I cannot. Our favorite Parmenidean conspiratorializer seems rather to be posing for a Pietà. The audience is solicited to feel sorry for him, one lone David -- lone, nay, "completely shut out," apart from his peanut gallery! -- going up against Massa Goliath’s "corporate media and the thinktank bloviation world." Plus always there is Juan the Wicked for David Jr. to go up against, whom he does not even mention.

Mr. Spurgeon anticipated [2] the general flavour of that performance admirably, though naturally he was talking about Somebody Else altogether:

Behold and see, was there ever sorrow like unto his sorrow that is done unto him? All ye that pass by draw near and look upon this spectacle of grief, unique, unparalleled, a wonder to men and angels, a prodigy unmatched. Behold the Emperor of Woe who had no equal or rival in his agonies! Gaze upon him, ye mourners, for if there be not consolation in [him] there is no joy in earth or heaven.

If blasphemy were still in the Code, a prosecutor might have recourse to that charge against young David von Schachtelbrecher with some show of plausibility. ‘Haughty’ is far off the mark. Mr. Despiser may have been misled by the defendant’s aggressive assurance that the side he has chosen to side with cannot possibly fail to be triumphant. Cartoono would indeed be "the Haughty" as well as "the Magnificent" if he supposed that the inevitable radiant dawn for rigorously nonsectarian Sunni-lovers will be due to his own personal efforts. But he does not.

Let us not get carried away, Mr. Bones, when some minor league goofball gets irritating. Dr. Cartoonoclastes makes no claims for himself, not even "I report, you decide" -- that one is so obviously a steal that it is not a steal at all. Thee would not, surely, say that the slaves of Murdoch are ‘haughty’? They believe in their own peculiar tripe and baloney eleven hundred percent, just as Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes do, but what has doctrinal bigotry to do with haughtiness? [3]

Perhaps we had better examine what set Mr. Despiser off, the exact shape of "references to the possibility of a cross-sectarian ‘nationalist resistance’ in this blog":

THEY say that this government has retreated from its sectarianism, namely by striking the Sadrist trend, to provide a "balance" between striking the Sadrist trend on the one hand, and striking Sunnis in various areas on the other. WE say: They are throwing sand in our eyes. This is still a government of sectarian allocations. They struck the Sadr trend because the Sadr trend had come to represent pressure on it, and had become a strong competitor in the coming elections--and because foreign interests from here and there wanted to clip the claws of this movement, because in this movement there are nationalists who do not want the partitioning of Iraq; who oppose the occupation and all that goes with it. And that is the reason they struck the Sadr trend, despite what had been done by some of the trend's renegades, some of the sellouts, some of the ignorant, did to their brothers in an earlier period.

None too clear who THEY may be, but WE is undoubtedly the Very Reverend Hárith al-Dárí and nobody else. Mr. Despiser seems to have lost his patience with biased nondenominational goofballism at a moment when Cartoono was, for a change, really and truly murdochising. Or almost so -- admittedly, he very much reveres the Very Reverend and patently wants his customers to do so as well. Still, all Dr. Cartoonoclastes actually says for himself about the possibility of a cross-sectarian "nationalist resistance" is (1) that he has translated wataniyyún as ‘nationalists’ and (2) that the Rev. al-Dárí "dwells on the word in his delivery." The translation is unobjectionable, though of course we all understand exactly what it takes to be accounted echt wataní with that gentleman and his factious reverers. Mr. Despiser is quite right to despise, though he picks an odd occasion to bear his witness.

Even odder to drag in the Great Pumpkin. [4] Not just odd in itself, but odd specifically in conjunction with that ‘haughty’ charge. Perhaps Mr. Despiser was thinking exclusively of the detail that the G. P. does not actually exist? Literaliter, that there is in fact no cross-sectarian nationalist resistance in the former Iraq -- or, anyway, very little of it? Though true, that was scarcely the main point of Mr. Schultz’s memorable shtik. Superstition and Enthusiasm in general cannot be entirely relegated to some disputation-free aesthetic Cloudcuckooland, Mr. Bones, and Great Pumpkinianity in particular is not altogether and automatically "just a joke" merely because it was introduced to the world in one of those icky cartoon thingees that no conspiratorialiser with a decent lack of humour can take seriously.

Mr. Despiser may have been reading his newspaper in a mirror the morning that Pepo Magnus first showed up. Linus is not ‘haughty’ about the G. P. at all. Au contraire, in his (supposed) ‘fantasy,’ it is rather the G.P. that is haughty. Linus is humble, he fully grants the adorable wonderfulness of Pepo Magnus. Though it would sound a little peuliar, one would not be in detectable error to say that Linus attributes to the G. P. has a right to be haughty.

Now all of this would be excellent ammunition for mocking the Mu’ámara Junction gentry, could Mr. Despiser manage to deploy it correctly. The proper disposition is not far to seek. Set forth in SAT format, it looks like this:

LINUS : GREAT PUMPKIN :: CARTOONOCLASTES : HÁRITH Al-DÁRÍ or impersonally, LINUS : GREAT PUMPKIN :: GOOFBALLS : CROSS-SECTARIAN NAT. RES.

Naturally a fuller prose explanation ought to be appended, in which it would be explained that the hinge of the analogy is not the nonexistence of Pepo Magnus, but the worshipfulness of the conspiratorialisers. Like Linus, they are perfectly disinterested in their fake-impartial raptures. It would not be defamation to accuse them of taking kick-backs from the Sunni International or from the TwentyPercenters of the former Iraq. That would not be libel or slander, it would only be utterly unbelievable nonsense.

I am aware, Mr. Bones, that under the label of ‘idealism’ this product finds a market and always has. Presumably it always will. If we word ourselves carefully, sir, we may even say that the product deserves to find its market. Anybody who does not at all wish that it were the case that "The People, united, can never be defeated" must be anima naturaliter Republicana et saeva, a congenital Cheneyite or Wolfowitzist.

But idealism turns to goofballism the instant they shut their eyes to the actual state of popular unity and the exact distance that separates us the populists from ignominious defeat. Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes would be far more credible if they could bring themselves to recognise when things are not going well for the good guys. I presume it would be expecting too much of human nature to want them to disclose fully their private-sectarian conception of a genuine good guy.

Is it also too much to expect them to be accurate about the general correlation of farces between "good guys" less narrowly conceived and the obvious bad guys, the Grand Coalition of AEI and GOP and DOD and USIP? Probably, though I assume this objective to be significantly less ambitious than the other. [5]


___
[1] I trust nobody can wax much haughtier on the path of Cartoono than der hochwohlgeborene Freiherr von und zu Schachtelbrecher, but it is probably a philological banana peel that I stand upon. Not, perhaps, inappropriately. A Schachtel seems to be rather a Durch or English ‘carton’ (as for bird’s milk or orange juice) rather than

an Italian cartone (as for Leonardo and Raffaele).



[2] On Ev. Joh. XIX:5.



[3] Further to liken great things to small, Mr. Bones, thee will have noticed that Baron Rupert’s Weekly Standardisers and Foxnewsies are often to be sighted in public feelin’ sorry for themselves. On such occasions it is difficult to distinguish their garb and paraphernalia from those borne mournfully in procession by Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes and Associates. O God, O Montreal! Neither ‘conservatism’ nor scrupulously disinterested partiality for the Sunni International can ever get a fair shake from the fiends of the MainStreamMedia.

’Twould take a heart of stone not to laugh at them both, sir.



[4] Is nothing sacred any more?



[5] On their "posing for a Pietà" side I find Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes LLC a bit puzzling. They can wallow in a grief worthy of the Baní Murdoch at the way the MSM misrepresent what is ‘really’ going on in the former Iraq, but the idea of lamentation because their pets are really and truly losing ground evidently does not cross their minds. Or perhaps that heretical idea does occur to them, but rather elementary notions about the need for sustaining the troops’ morale cause them to censor it at once? I dunno.

For what it may be worth, the Weekly Standardisers and Foxnewsies behaved the same way back before the Ever-Victorious SurGe of ’07™ finally made them ever-victorious.

I suspect thee and I should not make too much of such resemblances, Mr. Bones, even though it is fun to imagine how much they would annoy the goofballs. Rupert Baron Murdoch and Dr. Cartoonoclastes of Mu’ámara Junction are a long, long way from being a par congressus. But God knows best.

Iraqiness Go Bragh!

Rear-Colonel Nirish: "I do not agree that Kirkuk is an 'Arab' city, but I agree whole heartedly that its 'Iraqiness' must be preserved." Field Marshal Rejab: "A distinction that once again, for various reasons, will be lost on a lot of people. Already this morning we have Juan proclaiming: "Arab tribes threaten violence!" -- conveniently leaving out the part about not wanting violence and preserving its Iraqi character....

Not much point in erewhonating Juan the Wicked into "Don Naúch" or the like, is there, Mr. Bones? But let's see, what the usual suspect actually scribbled was

Parliament Adjourns with No Provincial Election Law; Arab Tribes Threaten Violence The Iraqi parliament proved unable to pass a provincial elections law on Wednesday despite a marathon 4-hour extraordinary session. They adjourned for the rest of the month. The sticking point was finding an acceptable formula for holding the elections in the mixed province of Kirkuk, which is being fought over by Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs. The failure to pass the law makes it virtually impossible to hold provincial elections in 2008. (...) Al-Hayat says that the Arab tribal leaders of Kirkuk Province have threatened violence to "defend the Arab character of the city," [*] which the Kurdistan Regional Government wants to annex. Shaykh Husayn Ali al-Juburi, the head of the governing council in Hawija District and leader of the United Arab Bloc, told the paper, "Arabs have limited patience," adding, "the Arab tribes in Kirkuk are prepared, and have the ability, and the reach, in all Iraqi cities." (He means "to commit violence.")

[*] That is an odd way to leave something out, and not a notably convenient one.

Well, we only reports, ’tis thee what decides, O Bones! Cartoono’s own summatorial admittedly does not have his infinitely noble and oppressed TwentyPercenters announcing "We hereby threaten you that . . . ." But it might as well have, me judice.

The goofball contingent are not at their most formidable intellectually in this particular fuss, it seems to me, although they do have the significant advantage of having picked which team to yell for long since. At Ann Arbour, Juan the Wicked can still enjoy the luxury of pretending that he will condemn whoever throws the first stone. The rigorously antisectarian pro-Sunnis at Mu’ámara Junction are going to have to defend their own pets even if the latter do look a bit like vigilantes or Busheviki. To watch Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes kid themselves that their alone cause at Kirkúk -- as ubique et semper -- will be a defense of the iraquitas of the former Iraq ought to be a fun show.

Mlle. Shirin up in the MJ peanut gallery needs some mild counseling from the Thought Police, though. Let us have her symptoms again please, Sam! And in full:

I have felt from the beginning that the most dangerous and difficult-to-resolve conflict for Iraq would be around Kirkuk. One of the ironies is that whereas it seems the battle is over the "Arabness" versus the "Kurdness" of Kirkuk, it was, before it was "Kurdish" or "Arab", more a Turkmen city, and yet the Turkmens seem to be left out of this altogether now. I do not agree that Kirkuk is an "Arab" city, but I agree whole heartedly that its "Iraqiness" must be preserved.

That is worthy of the Wolkenkuckuckheim Beobachter, is it not, Mr. Bones? To prevent either saintly Saracens or Free Kurds from monopolising iraquitas, let everybody simply pretend that the whole joint is basically Túránian in character, and has been ever since the wandering Sumerians first wandered in. That’s far niftier than anything the learnèd Cartoonoclastes has ever come up with, nicht wahr? Notice especially how well it accomodates itself to an Anti-Safavid Pact of Steel. Írán and Túrán are still going at one another hammer and tongs, just like chez Ferdowsí. Golly! Don’t thee wish thee had thought of that, Mr. Bones? Not as a thing to believe, of course, but simply as a conceptual object of wonder and delight.

Unfortunately Mlle. Shirin is not broadcasting quite on the Lynx-Badger-Cartoonoclastes wavelength. The inner circle of goofballs are sworn never to admit what they are really up to, but naturally they are not supposed to succumb to their own agitprop and forget what they are really up to either. If the TwentyPercenters could somehow be made out significantly less non-Ural-Altaic than the Free Kurds are, perhaps it would be useful as well as nifty, but alas! For real world purposes, the lady might as well propose that everybody at Kirkúk convert to United-Church-of-Christism before the end of next month. That plan, too, could produce an iraquitas undefiled by "Arabness" or "Kurdness" or the last thousand years of human events. That plan, too, would be quite absurd.

Cartoono the Magnificent at least aims at a possible outcome, though perhaps not a very probable one. Kirkúk must, obviously, appertain to the TwentyPercenters. That is axiomatic. But who is to guarantee that they get it and keep it? Ideally the answer would be Themselves Alone, but the present state of the former Iraq is far from ideal. The sectarian scumbags down at New Baghdád may not want Kirkúk for themselves, but most of them seem willing enough to abandon it to Free Kurd carpetbaggers and scalawags. The greater powers of the Sunni International are located in the wrong places, geographically. Turkey looks good on the map -- and is even impeccably Túránian! -- but she is also an ally of AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP-NATO, which makes the situation not so promising. Doubtless the Turks would much rather that the Free Kurds do not get their hillbilly paws on Kirkúk, but how are they to invasionize to prevent that disaster before the last wave of alien invasionites go away?

Which brings us to Little Brother and the Big Management Party, the same old gutter that we usually wind up in. Who do the cowpoker vigilantes think ought to get this prize?

I cannot imagine that they much care who gets the town, Mr. Bones, so long as Exxon-Mobil et hoc genus eventually get the black gunk and AEI-GOP-DOD immediately get whatever credit may be goin’. Should Mlle. Shirin's "most dangerous and difficult-to-resolve conflict" actually break out, the cause of invasionism, and presumably the Party of Grant, will have suffered a serious reverse. So, to the extent that the stuff between their ears is not sawdust, the Big Management bozos should be tryin’ to make sure that nothin’ of significance does break out. If they are reduced to pickin’ sides after the troubles get started, they will be in deep doo-doo: no choice would be satisfactory, neither in the sense of leadin’ to a quick restoration of Greater Levantine normalcy, nor of sheddin’ additional colonial lustre upon the heirs of Th. Roosevelt and L. Atwater.

Cartoono and the MJ goofballs would also be in grave straits, it seems to me, unless their clients come equipped with a good deal more Naturherrschaft than I have yet managed to detect in them. On the other hand, their TwentyPercenter pets would presumably be enduring the siege of Kirkúk rather than laying it, and nowadays any team that is really and truly and strictly on the defensive has a great deal going for it. Think of the Lebanese God Party resisting the armed might of Telavivistán, for instance, sir.

Nous verrons. God knows best.


___
[1] Team Aggression would be extremely displeased if Kirkúk were somehow to accrue to the evil Qommies, but it is so difficult to make up a half-plausible scenario to that tune that one can probably forget about it altogether. Dr. Cartoonoclastes is far better than thee and me at conspiratorialising, Mr. Bones, and he has much stronger motives than we are to concoct such a fantasy scenario. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, he manages to fadge up.

Unless some very big link has gone missin’, though, Cartoono possesses no means to communicate his brainstorms to Rancho Crawford apart from his usual blogghiatura performances, which one cannot imagine the cowpokers payin’ any attention to, not even as a source of innocent merriment.

Joe Loves Mookie (!?)

Did you know that the former Iraq has become positively a bowl of cherries?

Iraqi politics is developing in a healthy way. There was considerable anxiety that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as the leader of the Shiite-dominated Islamic Dawa Party has also proven to be more than a sectarian politician and no Iranian pawn. Instead, he has turned out to be a muscular Iraqi nationalist, a stance that enjoys far greater popular support than many Western "experts" on Iraq believed possible. (Remember Senator Joe Biden and others who advised only last year that Iraq had to be divided into three parts?) It's thus no surprise that the more Mr. Sadr aligned himself with Tehran, the faster his popularity declined, which is all the more reason to see our involvement in Iraq through to an irreversible victory.

I quote from the editorial board of the Wall Street Jingo, so there can be no questioning the accuracy of the assessment. Mammon and Murdoch forbid that anybody should question!

The corporate choice of items to assess is perhaps discussable without actual blasphemy. Mention of the Rev. Señorito al-Sadr is no surprise, but were you aware that the RFC, "renegade firebrand cleric," is, or used to be, in league with Senator Biden of Delaware to create the unhappiness of the Mesopotamian provinces? The odd coupling of Joe and Mookie seems a bit provincial and parochial to me. As far as I know, poor Mr. Biden has been unable to DO anything about the way that Boy and Party and Ideology have seen fit to govern or misgovern their spear-won neosubjects.

Biden has, though, been strikingly passive and fatalistic about the Hyperpowerful Executive, presumably on constitutional grounds. Either we hit the greedy pigs over the snout by cutting off their Congressional funding, or we let them invasionize and guantánamicate and waterboard pretty much as they please. No intermediate position seems tenable to the Senator.

There is much more to be said for his position than your average Obamaninny will care to listen to. Should the Senatorino from Cook County actually make it to the White House, Joseph Biden will still be a pest, I anticipate, because the Fedguv constitution will not have changed one iota, technically speaking, merely because of a Second Coming. Every time Barák XLIV itches to do some fun thing abroad that Mr. Madison and the Gang of ’87 might not have approved of altogether, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will attempt to bore his Commander-in-Chief to death by explaining this or that obsolete rigmarole that POTUS ought voluntarily to permit to tie his hands -- scads and scads of tedium to endure from a guy who admits in advance that he cannot make any of it stick!

It is impossible for a serious moraliser not to approve of Senator Joseph Biden. That constitutional Kismet of his means that the distinction of Macht and Recht can never be lost sight of: "It is the right thing to do, Mr. President, even if nobody can MAKE us do it." George XLIII does not understand such a distinction at all, and Sidney LXLIV, the dumb Mugwump, cannot tell the difference between righteousness and JohnMcCainishness with any reliability. B. Hussein Obáma understands it thoroughly, but BHO is a spiritual Harvard: Joe will always be able to tell him, but . . . .

It is a pleasure to speak well of Sen. Biden, but you may have noticed that I do not speak of the former Iraq at the same time. What is there to say of both together? A tiny and dotty school of amateur analysis has attempted to make him out a monster bent on ripping the former Iraq to shreds that shall never be patched together, but that is merely silly: he has had scarcely more influence on the colonial and imperial policies of AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP than the anti-Bidenite crew have had themselves.

It is also a pleasure to hear the Wall Street jingos badmouthin’ the man, although the conjunction with Sadr Tertius is so unexpected that one naturally wants to look into it a little. Up to what are Murdoch and Mammon? There are lots of other doves and donkeys to pick from, why do they single out Joe? Because he "advised only last year that Iraq had to be divided into three parts"?

I suppose that must be it, but if so, the Murdochites and Mammonolaters cannot be seriously interested in Senator Biden, he is just a sort of convenient pillar to lean on while they pat themselves on the back. Have they at last discovered why they aggressed their way into the former Iraq in March 2003, that they have been aimin’ to preserve the territorial integrity thereof all along? It looks as if.

There are a couple of large -- elephant-sized -- and extremely well-kept secrets here: (1) Who but the Jingos perceived five years ago that Ba‘thí Iraq was on the point of dissolution? (2) Who has detected any particular effort by the Jingos and their Boy and their Party to keep the former Iraq in one piece since?

One is not to fall off one’s horse into schizophobic dottiness on the other side, though, and accuse AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP of wicked "divide and conquer" schemes every time one discusses their occupational therapy program. In fact, the good folks of Team Aggression were, and are, not much interested in colonial theology; whether they imperialise over a Three or over a One matters very little to them. A Forty-Six would be fine with them, as long as it makes ’em look good.

At the moment what makes the Jingos look good, at least to themselves, is the way poor M. al-Málikí has set himself up as the Hannibal of Da‘wa, "turned out to be a muscular Iraqi nationalist." Any student of Mammonism and Murdochery in general will suspect at once that muscularity makes a far greater appeal to that weird mindset than nationalism does. One common nonjocular name for the Jingos’ demoplutocratic ideology is "globalism," which on its face means that nationalism can go fly a kite for all they care.

Our GOP geniuses are not the brightest bulbs that ever burned. Very likely they misunderstand the messages that their own hormones are sendin’ ’em. It would be odd if they did not enthuse about the Brave New Núrí, but not at all surprising if they sincerely think they admire their great right hope for his ‘nationalism’ rather than for his Hannibal imitation. They may be sincerely and semiconsciously confused about it at the doctrinal level. Take a typical Harvard Victory School MBA, a credentialled practitioner of Big Management: is her primary loyalty to Big Management as such, or to whatever particular business corporation she is permitted to play with the assets of at the moment?

If the latter, she would be the private-sectarian equivalent of a political nationalist. But is she at all likely to be such a creature? She must, of course, be able to say with a perfectly straight face that Coca-Cola is almost infinitely superior to Pepsi-Cola, but does she really believe it? If Pepsi-Cola offered to make her Vice President for High Fructose Corn Syrup at three times her present remuneration and with five times as large a bigmanagerial sphere, would she spurn the vile temptation with language worthy of Nathan Hale? Might not "an irreversible victory" for Pepsi do the trick as well?

--

Exactly which paleface planmongers are supposed to be mortified when the triumphalist Jingos sneer at "experts" is unclear. Senator Biden is not to be classified that way, is he?

--

As has happened at earlier points in the course of the aggression, pretty well everybody and his sister-in-law thinks his own team is winning in the former Iraq at the moment. Now appears to be the first moment, however, when all the self-announced winners are bound and determined to wrap themselves vicariously in the flag of "Iraqi" "nationalism." Those who took to that particular shtik long ago will probably take a dim view of the Johnnies-come-lately.

Meanwhile, there must be at least a couple of surly critters who decided to sit out this Caucus Race altogether. Where are you now, Peter Galbraith?

But God knows best. Happy days.

End-Of-The-World News For 31 July 2008

Black Friday it is, begorrah, and yet nothin’ at all to do with Islamophalangitarianism and the jihád fiends!

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart. In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized. According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise. The actions by Wal-Mart -- the nation's largest private employer -- reflect a growing concern among big business that a reinvigorated labor movement could reverse years of declining union membership.

What is losin’ an occasional skyscraper or two compared to that menace, Mr. Bones? I ask thee! Should Samuel Gompers and Walter Reuther rise from the dead and walk among us, sir, how shall militant conservative ideologues and card-carryin’ GOP extremists ever feel safe again?

Black Friday is not entirely unconnected with the Senatorino from Illinois: [1]

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states. The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

OF COURSE they were tellin’ Mizz Dumdumb how to vote! What has her lack of I.Q. points to do with it one way or another?

Well, perhaps that is not entirely a rhetorical question. Neocomradess Dumdumb speaks as if she completely failed to notice that her commissars were tellin’ her more than simply how to vote herself. Even makin’ the most liberal (pardon my French) allowances for which corporate employees are to count as petty managers or paramanagerial or quasimanagers, Big Management is outnumbered as hopelessly as ever if only people get to vote and not dollars too. That side of the correlation of farces has scarcely changed in a hundred and fifty years or more. Neocomradess Dumdumb was bein’ solicited to try to get everybody she has the whip hand over to help J. Sidney McCain out at the polls on Tuesday, 2 Dhú l-Qa‘da 1429. [2] Or help him in, rather. Look at the commissarial agitprop, Mr. Bones: "Employees would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation" can not have directed at Mlle. Dumdumb herself, it is plainly what she is supposed to get everybody underneath her to believe, and repeat, and e-mail Congresscritters and fishwrap editors about. [3]


The Jingo reports this story with a refreshing frankness, no doubt on the assumption that it will not be widely read outside OnePercenter circles:

The United Food and Commercial Workers was successful in organizing only one group of Wal-Mart workers -- a small number of butchers in East Texas in early 2000. Several weeks later, the company phased out butchers in all of its stores and began stocking prepackaged meat. When a store in Canada voted to unionize several years ago, the company closed the store, saying it had been unprofitable for years. Labor has fought back with a campaign to portray Wal-Mart as treating its workers poorly. The UFCW helped employees file a series of complaints about the company's overtime, health-care and other policies with the National Labor Relations Board. Dozens of class-action lawsuits were filed on behalf of workers, many of which are still winding their way through the courts. Wal-Mart has been trying to burnish its reputation by improving its worker benefits and touting its commitment to the environment.

Ah, the environment! Divide-and-conquer strategy can never come amiss for the core Party of Grant and Hoover. Indeed, Mr. Bones, that is why "The Union makes us strong." Settin’ green minds against blue collars and Hillarious feminists against Obamaniac civilrightists and so forth and so on is probably the first thing that occurs to the mind of the Harvard Victory School MBA when she encounters turbulence.

Fifteen decades of that finagle have still not made the world perfectly safe for Taylorism, however, so we good guys are not going to go extinct next week either. Or next year. Not even if the Commanderissimo Presumptive

be actually installed and coronated.

Concerning J. Sidney, the Jingo says very little:

Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, opposes the Employee Free Choice Act and voted against it last year.

If I was an anti-labor jingo, though, I should worry a little bit about my starboard flank. JSM was not brought up to be a Taylorite. True, all PowerPointe®s to some extent think alike, but some is not all. The violence profession’s characteristic notions of Big Management are not identical with those of either the corporate boardroom or the graduate-school seminar room. Dr. Ike’s MIAC diagnosis, the discovery of a "military-industrial-academic complex," was a valuable contribution, no doubt about it, but all the same, anti-unionism makes a great deal more sense in the "industrial" pigeon-hole than in the other two. The cause of Wal-Mart is not -- not instantly or automatically or necessarily, anyway -- the cause of them all. And then thee are to consider further, Mr. Bones, that J. Sidney McCain was not even a mainstream violence pro, he was no better than a flyboy. No different than a flyboy, actually. Even if the holy Homeland’s authentic Jominis and von Clausewitzen see eye-to-eye with Freddy Taylor and the Harvard Victory School when it comes to Organised Labour,[4] that establishes nothing about J. Sidney worth mentioning. Bein’ a dumb Mugwump, JSM might very well betray his nominal neocomrades, for about the thousand and eleventh time!, on an issue like this one. Some of the previous JSM betrayals were, as I recall, along the general line of thinkin’ that Daddy Warbucks Industries LLC was makin’ a hog of itself rather too blatantly.

___
[1] Wherefore we mun singen, Deo gratias!


[2] The former 4 November 2008.


[3] Though the Five of Nine are workin’ on it, they have not yet wound the clock back to when employees can be dismissed for not votin’ right in a legal election, whether an election for POTUS or only for shop stewardess. There is a wink-wink-nod-nod element present here in patches like

"We feel it's important that our employee partners fully understand the implications that the Employee Free Choice Act could have on their work environment and benefits," said Heather Trainer, a Cintas spokeswoman.

-- but not to the point of makin’ sure that misvoters do not HAVE any work environment.

"Our employee partners" is excellent. That little lady’s heather must be admirably well trained!

Furthemore, " Cintas designs, manufactures and implements corporate identity uniform programs and provides entrance mats, restroom cleaning and supplies, promotional products, first aid and safety products, fire protection services and document management services for approximately 800,000 businesses. Presumably Neocomradess H. Trainer is a practitioner of advanced or peripheral DMS, "document management services." Ballots are after all documents, night wahr? But God knows best.

Meanwhile, Neocomradess Dumdumb might be twice as bright as she is and still be perplexed exactly how to go about doin’ as she was told. Yet naturally the Wall Street Jingo would not bore its valued customers by printin’ a commissarial pep-talk template in full, even if we gratuitously suppose that it possesses such a document to print.

We can only hope, Mr. Bones, that Neocomradess Dumdumb did not take the risk of allowin’ a Jingo journalist to learn her actual identity. She probably needs her job, and would not care to make it an instrument of social experimentation. One cannot even be certain that the slaves of Murdoch would really drop a dime on her, but one can certainly not be sure they would not. If they do turn her in, though, perhaps some colleague of Neocomradess H. Trainer will intervene to advise Wal-Mart not to fire the disloyal ratfink until after the election. Preferably well after it. Ideally, so well after it that the ratfink herself does not make the connection between cause and effect and then rush out lookin’ for more journalists -- or even lawyers, Father Zeus forbid! -- to talk to.

That plan need not entail an impossibly long delay, in light of the shortage of I. Q. points already noted. BGKB.


[4] The Jingo crew and their neocomrades might make a point of always spellin’ "organized labor" like that, so as to insinuate that that whole icky ‘union’ business is alien and effete and worthy of Airstrip One. Or maybe even of Canada! Yet effeteness is not, perhaps, the Big Management Party’s commissars’ agitprop of preference:

The business-backed lobbying groups are running ads in states where a win by a Democratic Senate candidate would boost support for the legislation in the Senate, saying the loss of secret ballots exposes workers to bullying labor bosses. In one, they use an actor from the "Sopranos" TV series about mob life to hammer home their point.

(Oh, well, they will definitely not be askin’ this keyboard for advice in any case!)