Freddy's Surge

Some kind invasionite friend should hand Rear-Corporal Freddy von Kagan an M-14 and ship him out to the Mesopotamian Front, where his youthful zeal and indiscretion might be of use. Keyboardin' like crazy on behalf of the Surge of '07™ does nothing at all towards makin' the world safe for Prëemptive Retaliations. Little Freddy is certainly never gointa change the minds of the liberal fiends at Times Square in Manhattan, and even if he did, he and his family and Kagan Family Surge Values would not thereby be significantly advanced.

Freddy's not an unintelligent lad, so I shan't accuse him of forgettin' exactly who it is that he and his family and their Boy and their Party profess to be at "war" with, only of openin' himself up to intellectual and moral corruption when he carries on like this.

"Beware of AEI! Be thou caveated, Freddie Kagan! AEI corrupts. Look what it has done quite recently to my Col. Spook (your ideobuddy R. M. Gerecht) and my Col. Blimp (your ideobuddy V. D. Hanson), both of them in close connection with the GOP Kiddie Krusade and a' that and a' that. The former started out with a questionable, but intellectually presentable-for-dsiputation, thesis about bringin' democracy to the backward indigs of the Levant. The latter started out with an even more questionable, yet formerly very traditional and still potentially pulse-quickenin' sentimentalism about Ares, the Father of all good things. The original Gerechtianity and the original Hanson product were certainly not the two best systems of thought and feelin' that anybody human ever came up with, even by Wingnut City standards, but nevertheless they had character, they had style, their schemes were to be praised as Goethe praised Bohemia: no Italy, obviously, yet still ein eigenes Land -- how you say in Greater Texan? -- "its own sort of land." Neocomrades Gerecht and Hanson are of "their own sort" no longer, unfortunately. Nowadays they are mostly of an AEI-corrupted sort. Not altogether, to be sure, for they remain far more worth reading than the hordes of mechanical wind-up-toy ideologues who were never at any point independently viable intellectual fetuses outside the para- or quasi- or pseudo-academic womb of tank thinkin'. All the same, most of the former Eigentümlichkeit has departed from both Spook and Blimp. A deplorable amount of their recent writing consists of Boy-'n'-Party agitprop that Dr. Limbaugh could probably have done rather better, things such as -- ahem! -- NewYorkTimes-bashin'.

"Don't ever let it happen to you, young Freddie!"

Misunderstanding the Surge The New York Times wrongly judges the plan and the commanders who are executing it. by Frederick W. Kagan 06/05/2007 12:48:00 AM Yesterday the New York Times published yet another article in an ongoing series that might be called "The Surge Has Failed." This one was titled "Commanders Say Push in Baghdad Is Short of Goal." The article reports on a one-page summary of a document the Times characterized only as an "internal military assessment." According to that document and interviews with some commanders, the paper argues that the Baghdad Security Plan is not meeting its goals in securing the population of Baghdad, largely because of sectarian bias within the Iraqi police. The article contains some important distortions. The authors state, "American commanders have also had to send troops outside the capital, to deal with a sharp rise in violence in Diyala Province and to search for American soldiers kidnapped south of the capital." In fact, Generals Raymond Odierno and David Petraeus decided from the outset to deploy additional U.S. forces to the "belts" around Baghdad, both south and north, in order to interdict the lines of communication used by both Sunni and Shiia terrorists to send weapons and fighters into Baghdad. Violence had been rising in Diyala since mid-2006, and the U.S. command decided to address it early this year because instability there contributes directly to violence in Baghdad. The southern belts house car-bomb factories and terrorist safe-havens, which is why MNF-I decided to clear them before attempting to secure Baghdad. The decisions to flow additional forces into these areas slowed the pace of clear-and-hold operations in Baghdad, but these operations will go a long way toward ensuring that peace established in the capital will be stable and durable. The decision to flow forces into the belts was a sensible adaptation to the reality on the ground at the start of the new plan. The problematic New York Times article elides two very different military plans into one. General George Casey began developing a new plan to stem the rising tide of violence at the end of 2006. Casey's plan was based on the same presuppositions that had guided the U.S. war effort in Iraq since late 2003. President Bush announced a new strategy on January 10, 2007, and he changed the command team in order to implement it. In mid-February General David Petraeus replaced General Casey as the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. Since the change of command, Generals Petraeus and Odierno have made clear that they did not accept the rosy scenarios of security by summer that General Casey had been pushing. General Petraeus and General Casey differed in their assessments of what U.S. forces in Iraq could achieve by summer because they had different ideas about how to accomplish U.S. objectives in the country. Since taking command in mid-2004, Casey had been focused on using Iraqi forces to establish and maintain security throughout Iraq and on "transitioning" responsibility for security to those forces. He remained undaunted by reports that the Iraqi Security Forces were contributing to the violence by participating in sectarian cleansing. By the end of 2006, the National Police were particularly problematic in this regard. Nevertheless, at the turn of the new year General Casey still preferred a plan that would rely on overly-optimistic projections of the capabilities and performance of Iraqi Security Forces, just as the two failed attempts to clear Baghdad in 2006--Operations Together Forward I and II--had done. The Bush administration made a mistake by attempting to cast the new strategy that General Petraeus would ultimately design and execute as a minor modification of Casey's strategy, and by insisting that U.S. units would be partnered with Iraqi Army, National Police, and Iraqi Police units throughout Baghdad. But Generals Petraeus and Odierno learned the lessons of 2006 better than that. American forces in Baghdad are partnered with Iraqi units where possible, but are focused primarily on securing the Iraqi population rather than on pushing the Iraqi Security Forces into the lead, which had been Casey's primary focus. Petraeus and Odierno also knew that securing the population would take most of 2007, which is why they never predicted success by July, as Casey had done. Despite months of clear statements from the senior commanders in Baghdad to this effect, the New York Times has paid no heed, and is now trying to compare the progress of the actual, much more realistic, plan being conducted by American and Iraqi forces to the goals of the unrealistic plans developed by the now-departed commander. The paper's comparison is meaningless. Generals Petraeus and Odierno have made it clear that it is not possible to make even a preliminary assessment of whether their plans are working before September 2007, and they have indicated that operations and U.S. forces will need to be sustained at a high level into 2008. They are right.

Little Freddy Kagan, like almost everybody else, should always be accorded broad and generous leeway to expound her own argument -- or to expound AEI's tank-think argument, for that matter -- however vicious and sophistical the argumentation, without perpetual interruptions from the peanut gallery. I promise not to interrupt again, but kindly allow me to quote the quite short passage from this NYTC story that most struck me: ... The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to “protect the population” and “maintain physical influence over” only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods. In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face “resistance,” ....

Now back to Freddy. Onwards!

The discussion in the New York Times article about the involvement of Iraqi Police in sectarian killings and attacks against U.S. soldiers is portrayed as a major setback in the context of these elided plans. It is not. It is the same situation U.S. forces have been dealing with since early 2006, when sectarian violence began to rise in the first place. This is precisely why Congressional recommendations to accelerate the handover to Iraqi forces are mistaken. The current coalition plan--and the New York Times does not even note that General Petraeus has just completed a thorough review of the situation and developed a new campaign plan to guide coalition efforts henceforth--takes this situation into account much more thoroughly than the discredited and discarded approaches of 2004-2006. The appropriate adjustment of military strategy to reality on the ground has led to a more realistic appraisal of the time required for success, as well as an approach far more likely to lead to success. The details of the sectarian violence described in the Times article are not particularly instructive. The neighborhoods mentioned are among the very worst in Baghdad, and have been for some time. U.S. forces are just getting set in some of them and just beginning major clearing operations in others. As we have noted many times, when coalition forces begin clearing operations in areas the enemy had held for a long time, coalition casualties go up. The enemy fights U.S. forces in order to maintain their ability to pursue their ends. Defeating the enemy is necessary to provide basic security to the population, the essential precondition for any meaningful progress in Iraq. The causes of Iraqi civilian casualties, on the other hand, are the same as they have been for more than a year--al Qaeda attacks and attacks by rogue elements of the Jaysh al Mahdi. But overall sectarian violence remains at about half of the December level--a marked change considering that violence had been rising continuously since early 2006. Even with the increased al Qaeda violence added in, the level of violence remains stable--again, a positive change from a situation in which violence appeared to be rising uncontrollably. And it matters a great deal that the last U.S. units have just begun to arrive. We should note--as General Odierno did in a recent press conference--that it takes time for a unit newly arrived in theater to begin to operate effectively. It must develop an understanding of the neighborhood, an intelligence picture of the enemy, and build relationships with key local figures before it can even begin to start effective clear-and-hold operations. All that takes time--anywhere from 30 to 60 days, depending on the unit and the neighborhood. In the interim, violence increases as sectarian actors try to achieve their goals before the new unit can become effective, and as entrenched enemies make strenuous efforts to keep coalition forces out of areas that they control. After all, there are no coalition casualties in areas where there are no coalition forces--even areas that the enemy holds. Then U.S. forces must clear the enemy from these areas by engaging in major combat operations that often last for several weeks. And holding an area after it has been cleared takes even more time. This New York Times article and many people who favor shutting down the current strategy fail to understand or acknowledge how long large-scale counter-insurgency operations take or what they look like in their decisive stages. They also refuse to recognize that the current strategy is a departure from--and not a continuation of--the approach that had failed to control violence from 2004 to the end of 2006. Some opponents of the plan now propose returning to General Casey's failed strategy by focusing exclusively on the training of Iraqi security forces and using them instead of U.S. forces--the very strategy that had allowed violence to spiral out of control in the first place. There will be many difficult months to come, as our enemies attempt not only to make the strategy fail, but to convince Americans and Iraqis that it will fail. There is no guarantee that any military strategy will succeed, of course, which is why commanders should evaluate the progress of their strategy. But our new military commanders have understood the problems mentioned in the Times article for months, and they are actively working to solve them. The New York Times wrongly judges the current commanders by their predecessors' expectations. And it wrongly presents their efforts to solve legacy problems as evidence that the current effort has failed. It may be emotionally easier for some simply to convince themselves that the U.S. has already failed in Iraq. But success remains possible if we have the will to try to achieve it.

Well, maybe, but meanwhile it's hard for me not to notice that little Freddy Kagan of AEI never does quite come to grips with what would seem the most urgent enemy, "American and Iraqi forces [are] able to protect the population and maintain physical influence over only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods." Freddy doesn't deny the NYTC/DOD numbers, Freddy doesn't confirm the NYTC/DOD numbers, Freddy just ignores 'em. Possibly we lay sheep are to infer that such discouraging numbers are all the fault of former GOP-anointed boobs like Casey and Abizaid, whereas our now GOP neo-anointeds, Petraeus and Odierno, will swiftly -- as swiftly as possible, anyway, though perhaps it may take fifty years, like in South Korea -- set all to right at last. (But little Freddy does not expressly say that.)

Are these bad numbers -- numbers not DOD-denied or AEI-denied or even denied by Freddie Kagan-- only a "legacy problem"? Did Casey and Abizaid suppose that the extremist GOP could somehow attain its Mr. Karl Rove's ever-hotly-panted-after public relations Success and Victory in the former "Iraq" without any population protection or neigborhood "physical influence" provided at New Baghdad? (But little Freddy does not expressly say that either.)

=====

All things considered, Mr. Bones, is it not, on the whole, a great pleasure not be some little para-academic tank-thinker like Rear-Corporal Frederick Kagan of AEI is?

WE are free to know what we want and complain when we don't get it, although perhaps our complaints will be ineffectual. Whereas poor Freddy . . . . What a dreadful lot is Señorito Freddy Kagan's, Mr. Bones! it boggles the mind and troubles the heart even to imagine such a lot as his. All one's valuables, one's individual careerist TankThink valuables and all one's Family Mars-not-Venus valuables and all one's Party or "conservative" "ideology" valuables, absolutely eveythin' one has spread out there on the table at the Casino of Human Events bettin' on Rancho Crawford's Surge of '07™, when one has no better notion than the Crawfordites themselves do exactly what anybody is surgin' for, no control over the Crawfordites, and no Plan B. Should _rouge_ come up rather than _noir_, Freddy is ruined.

And yet ...and yet .... Hath not gamblin' been acclaimed as if it were gallantry?

My dear and only Love, I pray
This noble world of thee
Be governed by no other sway
But purest monarchy;
For if confusion have a part,
Which virtuous souls abhor,
And hold a synod in thy heart,
I'll never love thee more.

Like Alexander I will reign,
And I will reign alone:
My thoughts shall evermore disdain
A rival on my throne.
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That puts it not unto the touch
To win or lose it all.

====

Poor Freddy Kagan has such a mountain of odds stacked up against him (and his Family and his ThinkTank and his Boy and his Party), that his success would be almost as antecedently improbable as Macedon's against Persia, and should, by some fluke, Rancho Crawford's Surge of '07™ actually "succeed,", probably the ensuin' Crawfordocracy would subsequently fall apart at least as quickly as Alexander's racket did.

This is all very well, Mr. Bones, and I agree with it. Nevertheless may I not romantically and, if you really must insist, even "unseriously" celebrate the GOP/AEI's poor corrupted Freddy Kagan the way their own "conservative" Sir Walter once celebrated poor (but not in the end seriously corrupted) Edward Waverley?

Try not to be such a Boston blue-nose, Bones! One can be símpatico with a Wingnut City specimen like this little Freddy Kagan of AEI without assenting in the slightest to any of its cheapjack ideological notions, no matter how relentlesly vociferated.

One Paragraph of 'Honesty' ...

... from Colonel V.D.H. Blimp of AEI and Hoover is about as much as anybody should be compelled to endure early in the morning.

The United States can usually win even postmodern wars abroad if it can play to its strengths — which are marshaling our enormous material, intelligence, and technological advantages to defeat the enemy before he inflicts enough casualties to convince an affluent and comfortable public at home that such losses are simply not worth the envisioned aims.

Not even a proper paragraph, is it? only a paragraph fragment. And yet it gives rise to so many questions that it goes on to beg! Let's turn over a few of the words and look at the scorpions underneath:


"Usually"

Why doesn't Col. Blimp name a few splendid triumphs (maybe Serbia 1998) and not so splendid ones (maybe Lebanon 1983) and merely ridiculous ones (Mexico 1914, Guatemala 1954, Grenada 1983) and then let his readers work out proportions and "usually"? He could even list all pertinent capers, back through Spain 1898 -- the first blooding of Grant's Old Party, and also the first US war that can be called "imperialist" in the current sense, the affairs of dishonour with Canada 1812 and Mexico 1847 having been aimed at grabbing the conquered land itself as well as control thereof.


"Win"

I seem to recall some rightist rhetor or geopol maintaining that, despite certain superficial appearances, the USA in fact won Secretary MacNamara's War. Doubtless the current crop of wombscholars are not led to believe that we failed to win the 1812 affair, despite not gaining a single square centimetre of Upper Canada. This little monosyllable can be pretty flexible, although presumably there are limits somewhere. Blimp probably would not agree with any German who claimed that his fatherland had won in 1945, although the Teutonic sophist could undoubtedly maintain a perfectly straight face while pointing out that almost everybody, Germans included, is better off that we would have been if the Hitlerites had had all the technical military successes. Blimp certainly would not agree that Jefferson Davis et al. were winners in or after 1865; that outcome involved an "existential" -- Blimp's own silly word later in this piece -- failure to win.

Or did it? A lot of the slaveocrats and their dupes survived individually, after all, and by the time McKinley sallied forth to settle the Dons' hash, many ex-Confederates actually did say, more or less, "We won too in 1865. Everybody in America won." So maybe they did win, but of course Blimp has not the slightest intention of settling for that kind of success and victory in advance. Neither did the not-yet-ex-Confederates while their rebellion was in progress. To settle, unilaterally and preëmptively, for a Jefferson Davis kind of "win" as regards the occupation of Peaceful Freedumbia and the GOP Kiddie Krusade in general would invite contradiction from Blimp and swiftboatin' from some of his crew's weaker brethren.

It would also, and more importantly, be in violation of ordinary language the same way ordinary language is violated whenever wicked liberals propose to classify goods like education or health care or racial reconciliation or regulation of OnePercenter capitalism under the rubric of National Defense. If words existed in a vacuum of connotations and sentimentalities, there would be no objection to talking that way, we could even Blimpishly call these goods "existential urgencies of national defense" without defying facts or logic. Nevertheless it is self-defeating to talk that way. Even though there was no intention to deceive, the folks at Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City, who may not see anythin' especially good about such nonmilitary or antientepreneurial goods, will take the line that everybody, including Ms. Liberal, knows very well that schools and hospitals and trade unions are not really part of national defense, and so the lady is a liar. (Blimp, being a specialist in geistige Militärismus, will be more determined than ninenty-nine percent of the neocomrades to reject that particular patter. He is scarcely representative, though, or a suitable native speaker to be used as informant..)

Most importantly of all, to claim that Uncle Sam could "win" in Peaceful Freedumbia by withdrawing from it, or "win" the GOP Kiddie Krusade by relapsing into a wimpy law enforcement paradigm instead of the cowpokers' belovèd "war" paradigm undermines itself. The policy recommended consists in preferring long-term stability and reconciliation to immediate economic and ideological gratifications. The goal might be described as "nobody wins," or "everybody wins," but to market this product with a slogan about Uncle Sam in particular winning is likely to make foreigners worry about being swindled into ending up as losers. Blimp's own parade of supposed Yank supremacies reflects the present correlation of forces: our poor Sam is a sort of (unelected) global wheeler-dealer who wins all the ties, and also gets to define what counts as a tie. If there is anybody in sight who does need more winning than he's got already, it's Sam.



"Postmodern"

Coming from an AEIdeologue and a Hoovervillain, "postmodern" can only be a partisan insult of some sort, but exactly who it is calculated to annoy and why they should be annoyed, I have no clear idea. Probably Blimp counts the Second World War and the Korean "police action" as modern wars par excellance, but how far his "modern" stretches backwards and forwards unprefixed from the period 1941-1953, Blimp really ought to tell us, since there is no way to guess. Perhaps he intends his subsequent formula about "defeat the enemy before he inflicts enough casualties to convince an affluent and comfortable public at home that such losses are simply not worth the envisioned aims" is intended to be the definition of "postmodern warfare"? It wouldn't hurt if he said so. Decent political grown-ups could then wonder exactly what is postmodern -- or modern, or premodern, or calendar-connected at all -- about deciding the game is not worth the stakes. Prudence and rashness were not invented last Thursday afternoon, were they?

If that rigmarole is a definition, then Uncle Sam's wars will have became postmodern as soon as Sam's nephews and nieces became "affluent and comfortable" instead of poor and wretched. But when was that? Compared to most of our contemporaries at any given point in time, we've always been very well off in these parts, thank you very much! George III should have been able to keep us under his thumb if affluence and comfort are automatically conducive to defeat, those Highlanders raised after Culloden and the clearances should have ripped Gen. Washington to shreds single-handed. Trying to take Blimp seriously in this fashion leads straight to absurdity: King Philip's War was our most recent modern conflict, and indeed, our one and only modern conflict of any significance. (The French and Indian War might qualify, had the Indians and the French won it, but unfortunately for theoretical Blimpianity, they did not, comparatively underfinanced and uncosseted though they were.)

We had better stick to the first guess and confine Blimp's historical grotesqueries to the proposition that American affluence and comfort only set in after 1953 at earliest. That's ridiculous, but not so ridiculous as the other. The obvious question is whether the war that Sec. MacNamara and Dr. Kissinger jointly contrived to lose was a postmodern one or not. Probably Blimp thinks so, but it would have been a great kindness had he simply said so. Along those lines the colonel could gratify many kindred Party and factional spirits by discovering that affluence and comfort first got the whip hand of America precisely in February 1968, when, as every present-day wombscholar knows, that futile Tet Offensive of the black pajama guys was put down with ease, and yet for some obscure reason Mr. Johnson of Texas decided not to take the obvious view of what had happened, but its exact opposite.

It goes without saying, if you're an AEIdeologue and a Hoovervillain, that the "Democrat Party" must have presided over the ruinous Triumph of Affluence and Comfort, and LBJ looks to be the most eligible donkey to pin that shameful tail on. The traditional devotion of the militant GOP to poverty and discomfort -- and thus, teaches Blimp, to the warlike spirit -- for most Americans, though perhaps not altogether for themselves, has been maintained unswervingly from U.S. Grant to G.W. Bush. The only possible exception is Mr. Reagan's divagations into "voodoo economics," if harshly assessed. (You'll recall that the Party hero was once a donkey himself, though. Maybe poor Ronnie just couldn't help himself?)

"We hate '68" makes a suitable bumper sticker for the Boy-'n'-Party crowd of 2007, although most of their hatred has little to do with Col. Blimp's special concerns and a lot to do with affirmative action and Equal Rights Amendments and grade inflation and that complete collapse of highbrow culture that The New Criterion will be glad to measure and denounce for you on request. If geistige Militärismus, or the possibility for it, did in fact collapse at the same point as Kultur in general, presumably this was not an accident. Should V. D. H. Blimp ever think these matters through synoptically, perhaps he will find that High Culture is quite as inconsistent with affluence and comfort as his own pet notions are. For that matter, perhaps spiritual militarism is -- was -- itself a component of High Culture? It would be logical enough, in this outsider's opinion, that a nation grown too fat and happy to enjoy Arnold Schönberg's music or the verses of Mr. Eliot of St. Louis any more should have little use for General von Clausewitz either. Or if not exactly logical, at least natural, the sort of thing anybody might expect.

Attempting to invent or expand Blimpianity in advance of Blimp himself is a bit cheeky, I admit, but now that all standards have crumbled -- that being probably the core slur in "postmodern" as the word is customarily deployed by AEIdeologues and Hoovervillains and Weekly Standardizers and suchlike cattle --, what else is to be expected? Surely my insolence fits right in?

Blimping it is kind of fun, too, although perhaps too easy to be genuinely edifyin'. For consider, if all standards have crumbled, then the standard implied in "such losses are simply not worth the envisioned aims" must have crumbled as well. Prudence and rashness were indeed not invented last Thursday. What happened on the day in question is merely that all the yardsticks and balances and spectrometers for measuring prudence and rashness were smashed to smithereens by the affluent and comfortable mob. The Hansons and Kramers and Kimballs and Kristols, the whole host of "conservative" "intellectual" señoritos, often talk as if they had a private horde of measurement devices left over from before the flood of '68 stashed away somewhere, and perhaps they really do, but plainly the time is not yet ripe for these treasures to be made public. Why bring such precious antiques out into the daylight of Neocomrade R. Neuhaus's Naked Public Square™ and give the affluent and comfortable mob a chance to smash what they -- what we -- accidentally overlooked in 1968? Squirrel them away safe somewhere until absolutely sure that all danger has passed!

Meanwhile the señoritos are in a (suitably?) uncomfortable position. They dare not risk exposin' their pre-1968 instruments to the affluent and comfortable mob of 2007, but at the same time they keep makin' particular measurements down in their secret crypts or root cellars that they think everybody should know about, as notably that Peaceful Freedumbia must be successfully occupied and the GOP Kiddie Krusade pursued through all the windin's of a Long War. The "prudentiometer" that recorded these measurements cannot be risked, yet to present the measurements without presentin' the measurement device does not go over well with the affluent and comfortable mob. There is a certain ipse dixit flavour to that approach, don't you know? For us, that's a bit too like the lady's "Kindly allow me to know best!"

But maybe these "postmodern" trappings are more amusing than essential? It seems quite conceivable to me that Col. Blimp does not possess any prediluvian prudentiometer after all, and that he is in fact doin' business at a familiar old rightist stand. The señoritos of "conservatism" have traditionally been nothing if not elitist, frankly preferrin' their own judgments about prudence and rashness (and a lot else) to the mob's. One might say that the Little Friends of Eddie Burke don't need external prudentiometers, they are prudentiometers. When the gentry say a war is worth fightin' and the mob disagrees, why, so much the worse for the mob! It's as simple as that (?) and to drag in "postmodern" contributes nothing worthy of mention. It's also unimportant what the mob is moved by, maybe it's "affluence and comfort" today, maybe "Church and King" in the 1790's, maybe tomorrow "All power to the Soviets!" or "Islam is the Way!" Who cares? A mob is a mob is a mob. Period.

On the other hand, it was Blimp, not I, who dragged in "postmodern." Evidently he thinks it is important. Still, he might be mistaken in thinkin' so.

==

The scribble is long enough, but I did mean to quarrel with the colonel about "our enormous ... intelligence ... advantages." Who would deny that the noble GOP Godzilla utterly outclasses evil terrorist Bambi in material advantages and technological advantages, the two ellipses in that scrap of quotation? When it comes to intelligence advantages, though, I have my doubts, and that no matter whether Blimp refers to CIA intelligence, as he probably does, or IQ intelligence. Can he seriously consider that M. Bin Ládin of Khurasán is enormously worse equipped to detect (and to analyze) what Mr. Bush of TX is up to than the other way around? The proposition seemed dubious to me primâ facie, and it still looks pretty dubious now that I examine it again. But God knows best.


NB: I took "honesty" from the señoritos of National Review, who called Blimp's piece "Honesty about Iraq: How are we doing?" VDH himself only used the H-word once, at the very end, and when he did so he was not thinkin' of self-criticism at all, although what he says happens to condemn the P. R. behavior of Boy and Party:

So more explanation, less assertion; more debate with, rather than dismissal of, critics. And the final irony? The more brutal honesty, the less euphemism and generalities, the more Americans will accept the challenge.

The affluent and comfortable postmodern mob seems to have evaporated somehow: hey, presto, now Uncle Sam's nephews and nieces are poor and wretched and heroically belligerent again! Or anyway, we could be inspired to become so.

Karl Rove's pro judgment on such a question would be ten times more valuable than Blimp's amateur one. That neocomrade is never goin' to discuss his calculations in public, of course, but in practice it is plain that Rove's employer is not exactly headed towards a revival of Spiritual Militarism through "brutal honesty" at the moment, even though "euphemism and generalities" is not the best way to describe current Party agitprop either.

"What's The Rush, Major Leaker?"

"Haven't you heard that you are now permitted by your Little Brother to surge ever onwards until the year 1480/2057? 'Tis plenty of time that you have, sir."

But seriously, it appears that a certain disgruntlement has set in at the Green Zone Officers Club. Set in again, for the higher-salaried violence pros out in the occupied boondocks of Planet Crawford were leaking to this same tune six or eight months ago. They may have thought for a moment that their concerns were being addressed with the appointment of Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and the portentous unveiling of the Surge of '07™. Had the GZOC examined the panacea in question more closely, they might have expected less and avoided undue disappointment. On the other hand, the rest of the conventional wisdom crowd made essentially the same mistake, regardless of whether they thought Master Freddy's surgin' the greatest thing since sliced bread or only another stumblebumism from the same old Party of stumblebums.

Careful scrutiny would have revealed that none of the GOP geniuses involved in plannin' this ever memorable production ever made clear exactly whom or what they proposed to surge against. Considering their track record, one naturally supposes they had no clear and distinct idea themselves. Yet careless scrutinizers of every persuasion, hawks and doves and dodos and ostriches, have some excuse for assuming that whatever else the Surge of '07™ might do or attempt, it would at least clobber the Rev. Señorito Muqtadá al-Sadr. It's hard to avoid noticing that the lad remains unclobbered. Even at the Green Zone Officers Club, notice has begun to be taken, and therefore disgruntlement seeps in. The brassier violence pros really did want that particular coonskin nailed up on the wall over their fireplace. Like almost everybody else, they'd be much worse off at this point if they had got what they wanted. That point is more or less irrelevant, though, because GZOC cogitation procedes in a near total vacuum of information about native politics. Last fall, and now again, they got as far as bein' mad at poor M. al-Málikí because he doesn't want to give them M. al-Sadr's head, but of how the situation looks from Núrí Kamál Jawád's side, they know little and care less. The Chairman of the Council of Quasiministers can easily be pronounced "corrupt" or "sectarian" and that disposes of that, does it not?

At the level of colonels and generals and Majors Leaker, I think violence professionals ought to know and care about the indigs they conquer and occupy for Boy and Party more than they do, but perhaps that is an arbitrary and unreasonable demand? These folks are, of course, specialists, and the off-beat way I refer to them emphasizes that they are. Were they to take to studyin' their neo-Iraqi subjects' politics, would they not at once be reduced to the level of mere clumsy amateurs?

Probably we should disregard the fact that they have all learned by now to say Party line stuff like "Of course I realize that there can be no exclusively military solution . . . ." That's doubly disregardable: not only is it very doubtful that the GZOC gentry mean it seriously, even if they did, it would not follow that supplyin' the nonmilitary ingredients for GOP Success and Victory is their responsibility. Neocomrade R. Crocker or somebody is supposed to handle that end of occupation policy, no?

But then we come to Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton, who can't be brushed aside so easily, especially not by his subordinates. The plain thrust of his neo-MacNamaran dogmas about counterinsurgency is that it is indeed their duty at the GZOC to worry about indig politics. Such worry is the professional duty of every armed invader and occupier down to 2LT at least, and perhaps of the other ranks as well. In the absence of such worry, conscientiously pursued at a high level of quality, Petraean counterinsurgency would (I presume) be doomed. (The extracts I read even suggested that Dr. P. might not much mind cuttin' the Crockers out of the loop, but he did not actually say that, of course, and perhaps I mistook his drift.)

As things now stand, after fifty months of Party stumblebumism, Petraean counterinsurgency may well be doomed in any case, as far as Peaceful Freedumbia is concerned, but the GZOC colonels and generals and Majors Leaker probably don't think so, and if they did, they'd have no business talkin' about their thoughts out loud. They would certainly have no business deployin' a general strategic pessimism to excuse themselves from the intellectual rigors of Petraean counterinsurgency.

From the outside there is no way to judge how well the Ivy League braniac gets along with rank-and-file colonels and generals, whether or not Dr. P. thinks the GZOC is full of mentally lazy slackers, while the accused think Dr. P. a pretentious and ambitious showboat and nuisance. That might well be the case, but if it is, the New York Times probably won't be reporting about it any time soon. Here is another detail of the Kiddie Krusade that we'll probably be sure about only when more of the perps have published their memoirs. Maybe even then we won't know for sure, because a circular firin'-squad formation of the various memoirists is not unlikely.

One may speak for oneself, though: if I was Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton, this article would not please me. Those subordinates who allowed their identities to be disclosed were circumspect enough, but even they do not sound exactly enthusiastic about Master Freddy Kagan's Surge of '07™, or to claim that Success and Victory are now inevitable, given the bright new Leader as well as the brave new Strategy. (To be fair, perhaps the real Dr. P. called in Odierno and Brooks and ordered them to talk as quoted, the object being to help customers of the New York Times Company appreciate why the Surge of '07™ may require another fifty years or so to achieve all its objectives -- objectives which of course the real violence pros were too professional to expect to achieve instantly. But on the whole I'd guess that is not what happened.)

Major Leaker proper -- "several senior officers" &c. &c. -- is very displeasing indeed, and especially because he handed over a copy of that "one-page assessment" "completed in late May." It is not utterly inconceivable that Boy and Party might think an autoleakage of that sort advantageous, but if so, the event should happen at Crawford rather than New Baghdad, and perhaps the event should star Master Stephen Hadley, as in the case of last fall's "trip report." This morning's sort of thing won't do at all. The present can only be a hostile leak. Fort mauvais!, as Louis XIV used to say.

Being a towerin' neo-MacNamaran intellect, I -- that is to say, my notion of Dr. P. -- naturally regard it as more important to reflect on the sources of Maj. Leaker's bad attitude than to identify him and get rid of him. The latter is of some importance too, though, since it makes whizbang counterinsurgency more difficult than necessary to have to conduct it in a fishbowl. Indeed, if I can't even keep my own secrets safe, how shall I keep the native neosubjects entrusted to my care safe?

Nevertheless, it is a more serious matter that Leaker should think the counterinsurgent task hopeless, and most serious of all that Leaker should encourage the New York Times in its own already existing belief to that effect. Leaker doesn't actually say that he thinks the task hopeless, though. When he handed that damn paper over to the enemy, did he say something like "From these numbers you will see why we must have substantial reinforcements in order to reach our goals," something of that sort that the NYTC peaceniks would be bound to find unfit to print? If so, Leaker was very naïve about the MSM, and in any case he's guilty of a security violation and of forswearing himself, which ill becomes an officer and a gentleperson, yet possibly he's not quite such a completely treacherous ratfink as he looks to be at first.

Meanwhile, how to make lemonade from this regrettable lemon? That's mostly for the chickenhawks down at the ranch to decide, but they might ask my advice about how to handle it. Can I think of something even better than "From these numbers you will see why we must have substantial reinforcements in order to reach our goals"? How about . . . ?

At this point I shall desist, because imagining the attitudes of a Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton is within the scope of my imagination or anybody's, whereas his detailed ingenuities of Mil. Sci. and neo-MacNamaran counterinsurgency obviously are not.

Speaking again from the outside, I think he personally is smarter than to share the "Clobber Muqtadá" tomfoolery, although there are also possible counterindications. If he really lived up to the advance billing, though, Dr. P. would not have countenanced the mural madness, knowin' in advance that the vast majority of indigs would think at once of East Palestine rather than of M. Maginot or ancient China or Hadrian or Offa's dike. There was also that nonsense from his Number Two Braniac about the Arabs lacking any word equivalent to "reconciliation," the flub I was happy to see Dr. Cobban pick up on. If that reflects the actual level of appreciation of the native neo-subject viewpoint -- and after fifteen hundred days of Party stumblebumism, too! -- the best thing would be for the GOP geniuses to abandon Peaceful Freedumbia at once and then spend five or ten years gettin' up to speed about the next sovereign state that they propose to invasionize and regimechange -- before they actually march in and take the joint over.

That last brings within sight of Neocomrade B. West's interesting suggestion that Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton will have achieved sufficient Success and Victory if he manages to come up with a wonder drug that is bound to work wonders next time, even though neo-Iraq is too far gone to save. Rear-Col. West seems to have changed his own mind subsequently and decided that the Kaganiyya's Surge of '07™ may pull it off after all, but his older idea is more interesting. One trouble with it, though, is that such Success and Victory as that would be far more satisfactory viewed from West Point than from Rancho Crawford.

The GOP geniuses and Party base and vile seem to have lost sight of the forest for the trees. They are no longer concerned about vindicating the general proposition that lawless unilateral aggressions can work, only about savin' face and coverin' ass as regards the one immediate quagmire. The latest trial balloon about a South Korea Paradigm suggests that some of the perps, at least, have abandoned their minds to legacy-seekin' altogether. If Uncle Sam still has forces and fortresses in Peaceful Freedumbia in the year 1480/2057, why then surely nobody sane can say that the Titan of Crawford TX was ignominiously pushed out of the place!

Bush's War, Pelosi's Purse

Not to wrangle with anybody whose feathers might get ruffled and then the ruffling get blamed on me, I'll pick on Michael Kinsley and the Wall Street Jingos instead:


A confused Wall Street Journal editorial last week seemed to be addressing this question of how an elected representative might legitimately oppose a war in our democracy. It began by accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of cowardice. They "claim to oppose the war and want it to end, yet they refused to use their power of the purse to end it."

How that automatically adds up to "cowardice," I dunno, although of course that's the kind of charge the WSJ crew like to bring. Nothing if not macho are they.

So there is a "power of the purse," you see. Congress can cut off funds for a war that people don't like. In this connection, older readers might recall the Iran-contra affair, in which sources of money were found to keep the contra war going in Nicaragua without Congress's even knowing about it. This met with the enthusiastic approval of the Wall Street Journal, even though funds you do not know about are hard to cut off.

That's a palpable hit, I'd say. By the way, have the Bushies perhaps flirted a little with the idea that they might get money out of Sa‘údiyya and the Gulfie dwarfs easier than out of the Congress of the United States? The Party of Ollie North ought to be willing to look at such a plan, it seems to me. But back to Kinsley:

But what happens if you, as a member of Congress, do attempt to use the power of the purse? Sens. Clinton, Obama and Chris Dodd (also running for president) voted against the final Iraq funding bill because all meaningful deadlines and timetables had been stripped out so that President Bush would sign it. That Wall Street Journal editorial accuses these three Democratic senators of "vot[ing] to undermine U.S. troops in the middle of a difficult mission." If this is true of last week's vote, it will always be true of any attempt to cut off a war by cutting off funds. Unless the Journal is in favor of undermining U.S. troops, this makes the alleged "power of the purse" unusable.

Not quite. It really only means you can't use purse power without annoying the WSJ gentry and positively inviting them to swiftboat you. Our pols are not all paragons of fortitude, but under certain circumstances they might brave that danger, at least. Though if they had to take on Murdoch too . . . .

Advocates of the current war who enjoy the spectacle of war opponents caught in this trap of laws and logic had better hope that every military action a president chooses to engage in from here on out is as wonderful to them as is the war in Iraq. Because there is nothing war-specific about this line of argument. It would work just as well on an invasion of Canada or an aerial bombardment of Portugal. The president can do it if he wants to, and no one can legitimately stop him.

Logic and law are perhaps not quite the essence of the matter from the jingo perspective. They certainly are not going to swiftboat themselves next time some contemptible Democrat wants to muck about in the Balkans or wherever, but they'd rather not.


Of course, the president is elected, and in that sense he is acting as proxy for the citizens when he decides to take our country into a war. Right? Well, not quite. Let's leave aside the voting anomalies of the 2000 election. When this president first ran for national office, he campaigned on a platform of criticizing his predecessor for engaging in military action (in Kosovo and Somalia) without an exit strategy. He mocked the notion of trying to establish democracy in distant lands. He denounced the use of American soldiers for 'nation-building.' In 2000, if you were looking for a way to express your disapproval of the policies and prejudices that later got us into Iraq, your obvious answer would have been to vote for George W. Bush.

Check and mate.

Mr. Kinsley of course wants everybody to carefully remember all about the GOP's Floridagate 2000 before we set it all aside -- which looks a bit like trying to have things both ways.

More seriously, Mr. Kinsley has not really quite altogether checkmated George XLIII with his professional rhetoric and dialectic and logic, plus a bit of amateur lawyering. I'm not even too sure about Mr. Kinsley's facts: I recall the candidate's Philistine sneers at "nation building," but his insistence on exit strategies? (How could anybody criticize Secretary Albright's War about "exit strategies" when the whole Kosova shebang was conducted from 30,000 feet without even any proper entrance strategy?)

But the main reason Kinsley misses his mate is that defendant Dubya never claimed that if only Congressional purse power had been properly deployed, Bill and Madeleine would have been restrained from committing all their exitless abominations. Even Mr. George Walker Bush of Andover and Yale and HBS and TX is not quite that dumb.

That's MY main reason. At Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh they'll have a different main reason why Kinsley is wrong, one in which the blessèd and mysterious expression "9/11" figures prominently. "We live in a whole new world, the world of M. Bin Ládin, a world in which the former Colin Powell wimpisms about exit strategies is obsolete and out of place altogether. What we need now is quagmirization strategies, plans for plunging always deeper and deeper into our own doo-doo. And curst be she that first shall cry, 'Withdraw!'"

(Not altogether a joke, unfortunately.)

The present Crisis -- the crisis that stars Dr. Gen. Petrolaeus of Princeton and the Surge of '07™, not to mention the supportin' cast of tens of thousands of units of IED fodder -- puts the extremism of the extremist GOP to the test. Wall Street Jingoes are, as Mr. Kinsley accurately warns us, prepared to go very, very far indeed, but will the Party base and vile follow such leadership as that reliably? These WSJ editorial folks are, after all, not even the official Boy-'n'-Party leadership. By high-and-dry AEIdeological standards, they perhaps ought to be the "conservative" leadership, for if private sectorianism always beats the Public Trough, WSJ (plus or minus AEI) really ought to trump GOP. However in practice, that's only so much baloney.

Mr. Kinsley fails to see the baloney aspect, I'm afraid. He takes the hyperextreme journalistic jingoes at their own estimation without waiting to learn exactly what Rupert Pressbaron Murdoch thinks such cattle are worth in pounds and shillin's and pence. MK even supposes that these crafty spiders have woven a "trap of laws and logic." Oh, what a silly fly is Mr. Michael Kinsley, to be trapped or trappable as easily as that!

"[T]his question of how an elected representative might legitimately oppose a war in our democracy" must be about the easiest question ever asked. What you should do, as a decent political grown-up, not to mention an elected representative, is say "I'm against this war! It's a dumb idea! Stop it RIGHT NOW!" To suppose that there could be any possible LEGITIMACY problem about that approach in the USA is politically and structurally absurd. Morally, it is worse than absurd, insofar as it reveals one as a dimwit fly very easily to be trapped, or at least intimidated, by crafty right-wing spiders themselves actin' ultra vires.

If that advice does not resolve Mr. Kinsley's perplexities -- although it certainly ought to -- how about "Jesuitism for Dummies," so to call it, featurin' the SJs' renowned and ever formidable Double Effect Principle: "I don't dissupport the GOP's 'war' because I want to hurt our troops, I only dissupport this Party 'war' of theirs because I happen to think it detestably wrong in principle and in practice disastrous."

A really scrupulous adult decency might worry about this approach because "collateral damage" has become such a monopoly of the Boy-'n'-Party crew that even to touch it with an eleven-foot-pole or an SJ-warranted Double Effect Principle infringes and encroaches and touches pitch and gets defiled.

'Tis a matter of conscience at bottom, and if Mr. Kinsley's tender conscience and alert conscientiouness can't put up with "Jesuitism for Dummies" and Double Effectiveness, well, that's that. If I slink away privately thinking Mr. Michael Kinsley a bit too high-minded for THIS world, well, that's my problem, not his.

The Striped Pants Menace

Colonel Spook gives us rather more than usual of the Big Picture. That title that the Weekly Standardizers have picked for the article sounds unpromising, [*] but perhaps it is not mere Boy-'n'-Party agitprop, a genre Spook does not much condescend to work in.

Dangerous Illusions / Peace-processing our way to disaster. by Reuel Marc Gerecht American foreign policy in the Middle East can produce severe cognitive dissonance. Take Palestine and Iran. The White House's evolving policies toward the Palestinians and the clerical regime in Tehran show how easy it is for history to take a back seat to process, for reality to give way to illusions, and for hope in diplomacy to obscure the need to make serious decisions. The difficulties in Iraq can be blamed for much of this: The administration has been reeling since 2005, first crippled by the hapless strategy and tactics of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General John Abizaid, and now plagued by self-doubt about the war itself and the possibility of maintaining political support at home. Former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9/11 Commission, made the case for the Iraq war simply and eloquently in the Wall Street Journal. Yet the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, a member of the Iraq Study Group, increasingly reveals that he cannot argue for wars--the one in Iraq and the broader one against jihadism--that he does not appear to understand or believe in.

Would Col. Spook approve of Sec. Gates more if that neocomrade did run around arguing for the incomprehensible and the incredible? The charge against him is framed along "When did you stop beating your wife lines?" -- the defendant is guilty no matter what. But presumably Spook wil tell us what Gates ought to be understandin' and believin'.

Meanwhile, consider that paragraph again. Did you "take Palestine and Iran" like me and then find yourself at a loss to decide what to do with them? Apparently they both illustrate that Little Brother and his merry men are out of touch with Reality and History. (So what else is new?) Apparently the reason for their out-of-touchness is the state of the neo-Iraqi aggression.

Well, I suppose that last bit is new, but unfortunately it does not seem to make sense. The Palestine Puzzle dates from 1947 at latest, sixty years ago. The evil Qommies have been in business for twenty-eight years, since 1979. How can the Big Management Party's quagmirization policy for "Iraq," a policy that is much younger and pertains to entirely different provinces, be significantly to blame for whatever Spook dislikes in Palestine and Persia? Even further around the bend, how could the Hambakerites have screwed up Palestine and Persia, when the only made suggestions, not policies, and those suggestions were about "Iraq"? If poor Gates could get his head screwed on right and become as gung-ho about the Kiddie Krusade as Sen. Kerrey seems to be, I can understand why Spook would feel gratified, but what does my taking Palestine and Iran have to do with that?

The administration is tired. Arguments for the war on terror and Iraq that once came easily (if seldom eloquently) are rarely heard now. So we are left to parse the administration's actions for thematic content. It's not a happy task. We'll take the depressing first, leaving Iran, which is with the possible exception of Sunni jihadism the greatest menace confronting the United States, for last. The West Bank and Gaza are increasingly convulsed by civil strife--in Iraq such violence is sometimes called "civil war"--yet many people, in government and out, think that an Israeli-Palestinian deal is still possible, provided Washington has the will to force Jerusalem to make concessions. Yet the Islamic fundamentalist movement Hamas has grown powerful electorally and militarily by advancing an uncompromising hostility to the existence of Israel. Fatah, the backbone of the now-defunct Palestine Liberation Organization and the political base on which the Bush administration and the Europeans want to build a Palestinian state living in peace with its Jewish neighbor, has grown noticeably more anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. Competition with Hamas, more popular and more religious, now defines Fatah's themes. Not just on the West Bank and in Gaza, but throughout the Sunni Muslim world, fundamentalism has eclipsed virtually every other rallying cry. Born in anger at the unstoppable bulldozer of the West's seductive and deracinating modernity, Islamic fundamentalism shows no signs of receding in Sunni lands, let alone in Palestine, where the faithful live right next to rich, technically accomplished, and militarily powerful Westerners.

I believe these facts are well known. Have the natives of East Palestine taken to militant neo-Islam, then, because Mr. Robert Gates is a bit wobbly (maybe) as regards Responsible Nonwithdrawal from "Iraq"?

More important, the good colonel seems to be dodging his own spookiness just a bit. I recall that he advised us that the indigs should be allowed to have their "political Islam" even though things might be a bit messy for a while and the process might not lead them straight to Republican Party values. Is Spook now gettin' tired of that line?

Peace-processing has become an institution in Washington. Among many Democrats and Republicans, it's a reflex. Normally historically sensitive people will quickly affirm the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio to the spread of religious radicalism in the Islamic world and its now nervous offshoot, Europe. Yet the dynamic unfolding in Palestine--Islamic fundamentalism gobbling up the decaying corpse of secular dictatorship--is what we've seen almost everywhere in the Arab world. In Algeria, Syria, and Iraq, the process has been even more violent than in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is basically irrelevant to this ongoing collision of modernity and Islam. Still, it is entirely likely that a majority of Palestinians, perhaps a decisive majority, do not want to live peacefully next to a "Western, Jewish-colonial settler state." There is a reason Fatah has moved closer to Hamas ideologically. Religious Muslims, let alone fundamentalists, loathe the idea of a Western, Jewish state in what they see as the Muslim Middle East. As fundamentalism has gained strength in the region, the U.S.-backed dictators and their clientele--the Middle East's peace-processing establishment--have become an ever smaller minority among a more politically faithful majority who are deeply offended by the idea of Israel. What the Bush administration is now halfheartedly and wearily trying to do is restore the ancien régime after 1789.

Again, the facts are familiar, and the interpretations are not outrageously tendentious in the AEIdeological direction. Perhaps there is a faint glimmer of what Spook is really up to. Though he repeats proposition P the same as always -- "Israel is basically irrelevant" -- he seems to be comin' arount to not-P all the same. That is to say, the Spook Doctrine, as originally proclaimed, is now to be reworked so as to take more account of Jewish Statism. To capitalize on this faint hink unilaterally and preëmptively, let us leap to the conclusion that Spook Doctrine II, when beta-testing is over and the product is released, will contain a restrictive clause about exactly what neo-Islamic political messinesses can be tolerated. In particular, faith-crazed native pols are not ever to mess about with interests really vital to the Tel Aviv statelet.

Spook knows enough about the Middle East that he really ought to have thought of it on the first pass. I recall, however, a vague impression from the AEI leaflet in which Spook Doctrine I was revealed to the world that the colonel had Algeria in the 1990's on his mind. Those provinces are far enough removed from Palestine to make it likely that if the faith-crazies ever actually took over, their anti-Zionism would be all bark and no bite. (Unless, to be sure, they were to as much interests in obtaining nukes as the evil Qommies do.)

Fortunately, with the Palestinians, the administration's search for a new policy can't be too detrimental to the United States. The Palestinians have enthusiastically rejoined the mad rush of modern Islamic history. They are no longer a separate, special people. The Palestinians are in the early stages of their "civil war," and it's impossible to know where it will finish--though one could make a decent guess that in these early rounds, Hamas will win and the illusion of a Palestinian partner for peace will end, even for the most committed Americans and Europeans. What America can actually do in the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio is now irrelevant. What is sad, however, and worrisome, is the extent to which the administration's actions reveal its philosophical crack-up. Where once the administration tried to understand the spread of Islamic radicalism (the president's vivid allusions to American support of autocracy in the Middle East were path-breaking), the administration is now defaulting to language and priorities typical of the decades that the president once criticized. The State Department, a profoundly conservative and cautious institution that, like all foreign ministries, exists to fortify government-to-government relations, has always been waiting to bring back the familiar, comparatively manageable world of Israeli-Fatah negotiations.

Gloatin' "Aha! Now they are going to kill one another off, so we won't have to" is not very becoming. AEI corrupts, no doubt about it. Still, even a tarnished Spook remains interesting (though scarcely important). From what point of view is, or was, it a grave threat that East or Gentile Palestinians should be accounted "a special, separate people"? The answer seems plain, but the analysis Spook implies is not very persuasive. Is Jewish Statism really better off to be opposed by "only" all of political Islam, and not those special, separate West Bank pests?

This product definitely needs further beta-testing. Factoring in Zionism and Hyperzionism and Counterzionism is a sensible idea, but the geopoliticsitarian chef has not worked out exactly how much of that ingredient will work best. He's just, so to speak, tossed three tablespoons of salt-of-the-earth into his new pottage when something like half a teaspoon of it would be much tastier.

The White House, under fewer illusions, may simply want to maintain the appearance of peace-processing for the benefit of transatlantic ties. There is an argument for this, given the essential European role in imposing serious sanctions against an Iran that is pursuing nuclear weaponry. Just a little sop to keep the Palestinian-focused BBC and Bundestag happy. And the Europeans don't require much since the undeniable popular power of Hamas, its hard-to-conceal ugly ethics, and its blatant revulsion for Israel have severely tarnished the once romantic Palestinian cause. But no more than a sop is justified. The sooner Washington gets beyond the peace process, the sooner both Democrats and Republicans can think more seriously about how to deal with rising Islamic radicalism in the Middle East and the threat it poses to the West. Returning to the pre-9/11 preference for stable Muslim autocracies and the peace process is a dangerous cul-de-sac.

Spook has no better credentials to practice Crawfordology than anybody else. Like thee and me, he's obviously only guessin' what his Little Brother might do next and what the rationale for it will be. Reading the first paragraph backhandedly, though, we perceive that Spook is really, really worried about the evil Qommies.

The second paragraph is more interesting. The corruption of AEI extends to Spook's not wantin' to make any serious concessions to the Old Euros. The corruption may even include thinkin' those folks rather less intelligent than they actually are, as well as, obviously, thinkin' them less significant. Lone Rangerism lives! Only now Lone Rangerism, rather oddly, has started poundin' the table about "the threat ... to the West." We've already had the Tel Aviv statelet presented as "Western" par excellance, which is paradoxical in itself, but it is difficult to imagine that Spook has been corrupted to the point where Charlemagne country is to be excommunicated from Westistan altogether. That sort of ideoproduct is readily available elsewhere, but I had thought Col. Spook a couple of links higher up the great chain of wingnuttery than to deal in such trashy wares.

In any case, here is a fine example of why I react to "the West" from the likes of Spook much as Prince Bismarck did to an earlier and similar buzzword: "I always find the word 'Europe' in the mouthes of statesman who are afraid to ask for what they want in their own name." (Quoted from memory) A Lone Rangerism that dare not speak its name?

Then there is final sentence, which is of course a covert advertisement for the Spook Doctrine. Whether additionally restricted in the interests of Jewish Statism or not, the product remains, according to its manufacturer, clearly better than all the competition, and far, far better than "preference for stable Muslim autocracies ." On Pass One, I don't think Spook would have dragged in "the peace process" as an inferior alternative to his own stuff. More likely he'd simply have ignored it. He really ought to think things out a little and write them down for us to pick holes in. Does Spook now suppose that "the peace process" has always been -- or at one point was, or conceivably might be -- a behavior directed at ensuring the survival of the cardboard kingdoms and the barracks-based republics? If so, I'd venture to say that he is mistaken, that he should take a WYSIWYG or Aristotelian view of it and regard the peace process as having been aimed at obtaining peace by solving the Palestine Puzzle. That may be very boring and conventional, but Lady Veritas never promised us that she would never get a bit tiresome and eye-glazing at times.

The mess in Iraq has also allowed the idea of possibly productive negotiations with Iran's mullahs to take hold in Washington. However, only staunch doves and "realists" who are blind to the reality of power politics in the region can look optimistically upon the negotiations between the United States and Iran. We have a clerical regime that has aided and abetted virulently anti-American, radical Iraqi groups, exported to Iraq sophisticated automatic explosive devices designed to kill American and British soldiers, pushed forward defiantly its construction of uranium-enriching centrifuges, and kidnapped at least five American citizens in Iran, four of them Iranian-American dual-nationals. Utterly bogus espionage charges have been hurled at three, including Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center in Washington. Like her boss, former congressman Lee Hamilton, a chairman of the Iraq Study Group, Ms. Esfandiari has been an advocate of reconciliation between the United States and her homeland. Note: The espionage charges were thrown at these Americans, who had absolutely nothing to do with U.S. intelligence and would have recoiled from any advocacy of "regime change," a day after the May 28 meeting between the Americans and Iranians in Baghdad. This isn't rocket science. We have a meeting, and the regime in Tehran wants to make crystal clear its contempt for any suggestion that the mullahs might want to build a bridge or two. The clerical regime hasn't been killing American and British soldiers in Iraq because they think it's counterproductive. They haven't been aiding radical Shiite groups because it's counterproductive. It looks increasingly likely that Iran has also aided Sunni insurgents--which the mullahs apparently don't think is counterproductive. The truth about Iran's revolutionary elite is that they have little regard for the Iraqi Shia, whom they blame for failing to rise against Saddam Hussein during the 1980-'88 Iran-Iraq war. Compromising the Iraqi Shia for the greater goal of hurting the United States and radicalizing the Iraqi Shiite community is undoubtedly seen in Tehran as a price worth paying.

Ah, here's the red meat at last! Spook should have written his anti-Qommie tirade separately so as to have more room to arrange his ideas in. Notice how in the first couple of sentences he makes plain, but without ever actually sayin' so explicitly, that he thinks Little Brother and the rest of the Party cowpokers are doin' everythin' about as wrong as wrong can be. AEI corrupts: the neocomrade has been reduced to this tactic before, and no doubt will be again. Considering that Spook is much more intelligent and far less ignorant than your average GOP genius, let alone the Party base and vile, I once again find myself wondering if the geniuses realize that the scribbler they are reading does not at all support what Big Management has been doin'. The camouflage gets pretty thin, I should think, when Spook is reduced to stickin' pins in a wax image of the SECDEF.

The main thing is that Little Brother and Associates are now supposed to perceive how the evil Qommies toy with them. Obviously Spook is perfectly sure that they have yet to perceive it. Since the camouflage is so thin, perhaps the allusion to rocket science might have been dispensed with: that sounds dangerously like lesé majesté. Dale Carnegie or somebody might advise him that it does not often help to make the sale to begin by calling the customer a blind moron. On the other hand, the chances that the Crawfordites were goin'ta buy anythin' from Spook were negligible to begin with, so there is no practical effect. (In that case, though, what would he have to lose by sayin' in so many words that he thinks their latest aggression and occupation policies are mistaken and dangerous? Not only does AEI corrupt, AEI corrupts pointlessly!)

Spook would probably claim a special expertise in Qommie Studies, but is he in fact any better at that parlor game than at Crawfordology? There is no way to judge from a popular and polemical scribble like this one, where he, quite reasonably, does not explain how he knows interesting things like "Iran's revolutionary elite ... have little regard for the Iraqi Shia, whom they blame for failing to rise against Saddam Hussein during the 1980-'88 Iran-Iraq war. Compromising the Iraqi Shia for the greater goal of hurting the United States and radicalizing the Iraqi Shiite community is undoubtedly seen in Tehran as a price worth paying."

"Compromising" the Iraqi Shia pretty clearly means (allegedly) furnishing arms to non-Twelvers as well as Twelvers, but I could do with more evidence to decide exactly what Spook means when he talks about "radicalizing" them. Does that only mean encouraging them to rid "Iraq" of extremist GOP palefaces, or is there some broader and more durable radicalization to be feared? Probably the latter, since Spook exhorts to the Kiddie Krusade, against "rising Islamic radicalism in the Middle East and the threat it poses to the West" &c. &c. Unfortunately he has not allowed himself sufficient space to explain these things adequately.

As to mind-readin' the mullahs, Spook seems to think, but does not plainly say, that they regard chaos in the former Iraq as a good in itself. There is no way to argue with him about it, though, since there is no clue what his guesswork is based on. The idea is antecedently imporobable, however, and would therefore require quite a lot of evidence to support it. The only evidence Spook sticks in is about the arrested Americans, which has no discernible bearing on evil Qommie schemes to compromise and radicalize the Shia of "Iraq."

An assumption of the Iraq Study Group was that the clerical regime wants stability next door in Iraq. Hence it might be willing to work with Americans. Yet Iran has benefited enormously from Iraqi instability. Traditional, moderate clerics like Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who have been willing to work with Americans, have been battered and bruised by the violence. The radical Moktada al-Sadr, a little-known and little-admired scion of a famous clerical family, skyrocketed to prominence because of the strife and thanks to critical Iranian aid to him. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its more radical military wing, the Badr Organization, has also benefited enormously from the violence. SCIRI is a key Iraqi player that has received substantial assistance from Tehran. What is particularly regrettable about SCIRI is that the bloodletting has made life more difficult for moderates within the organization. And the violence has made it harder for SCIRI to pull away from Iranian patronage.

Applying my Leo Strauss Brand™ Secret Decoder Ring to that bit of evidence-unbuttressed guesswork, I gather that Spook thinks the evil Qommies want to destabilize and compromise and radicalize the former "Iraq" so as to discredit Cardinal al-Sístání and the Najaf Hawza and the so-called "quietist" strain of the ’Ímámiyya. The Hambakers were blind morons not to appreciate so perspicuous and luminous a truth of Area Studies! (I fear I may be a blind moron too.) Be that as it may, one does still wonder exactly what the evil Qommies can see in that program for themselves. If one were told that they want to put SCIRI in power, or something of that sort, that would be different, but the Spook theory of them seems to be that of certain Saturday-morning cartoon "mad scientists determined to destroy the Universe for ends of their own."

Does Iran want to stop this process? Iraq's Arab Sunni community--detested by the Iranians--has been routed from much of Baghdad, badly bloodied, and put to flight by the hundreds of thousands. This is a bad thing in the eyes of Tehran? Where does Iran have the most influence in Iraq? In Basra, where Shiite-versus-Shiite violence is at its worst. This is not a coincidence. Tehran has benefited massively from Iraqi Shiite division and internecine strife. What the United States should expect from Iran is that it will continue to ship its deadly explosives to Iraq and, through violence, feed the radicalization of the Shiite community. Success through Hezbollah in civil-war-torn Lebanon is the model to remember. Until now, it's been Iran's only successful foray abroad. "Stability" in Iraq means only one thing to Tehran: an American success.

The AEIdeologue says " Tehran has benefited massively," but apart from suggesting that dead Sunnis are an obvious good thing, no questions asked, what this massive benefit consists in, who can guess? The success of Lebanon's God Party, such as it was, was attained chiefly at the expense of Jewish Statism and other factions inside the Beirut statelet, and how it parallels developments in "Iraq" I cannot begin to make out. Maybe if we turn the final fortune cookie inside out, however, we catch a glimpse of what Spook's glands teach him: any American, or militant GOP, success anywhere is eo ipso a grave setback for the evil Qommies. That would be AEI corruption run berserk, however, that Col. Spook has now been reduced to the level of a typical Boy-'n'-Party gland-baser. "Say it ain't so, Reuel!"

It should be clear that the clerical regime now believes it can move rapidly forward with its nuclear program without much fear of American preventive military strikes. The once palpable fear of George W. Bush seems to have dissipated as America has floundered in Mesopotamia. Everyone can see that Washington, not Tehran, was more desirous of the recent meeting (NSC spokesmen clearly signaled that we wanted this meeting because U.S. troops were dying in Iraq). Even the most inept power politician in Tehran saw that America was weak and on the run. What once provoked anxiety (American troops in Iraq) now whets the appetite. The failure of the United States to respond more forcefully to Iranian arms shipments to Iraq has reinforced the message. Ditto the low-volume response to the kidnapping of American citizens in Iran. The only good news here is that it will be difficult for the clerical regime to continue talks with the United States even though doing so is manifestly in its interest. When Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently said, "Those who imagine that the Islamic Republic of Iran will change its established, logical and defendable policy of forswearing negotiations and relations with the United States are seriously in error," he was being understated. It wouldn't be the first time that clerical Iran had refrained from doing what was in its best interests. But it probably wouldn't take much to tie America up in negotiations--or the hope of negotiations--with Iran over Iraq. And the more America is wedded to talks, the smaller the possibility that it will effectively counter Iran's nuclear-weapons program--the ultimate objective guiding the mullahs' foreign policy. What Tehran would surely like to do is convert its discussions with the European Union over its nuclear program from negotiations about stopping the enrichment of uranium to negotiations about managing an actual nuclear-weapons capacity. Iranians know the North Korean model well. It's a good one. Keep America talking on Iraq, and press ahead for the nuclear prize. Does President Bush understand all this? Probably. Does his administration? The wish to disbelieve the obvious remains great, particularly as Iraq becomes more violent, which will happen this summer even if the surge is working. And although some might still want to put faith in the CIA's estimate that Iran will make a nuclear bomb in 10 years, it's a better bet that Iranians are significantly increasing centrifuge production because they have figured out how to make it work. Most likely, the time for diplomacy and sanctions is shrinking fast. Since the alternatives aren't easy--blockading Iranian oil exports through the Gulf or preventive military strikes--the Bush administration will be tempted to believe in the illusion of negotiations. We can raise the white flag, and call it victory.

Should anybody care to take the RMG camouflage shtik seriously, she would learn that Little Brother has now lost control of his own Administration -- which is not a very nice or loyal thing to say about His Nibs, surely, although perhaps not quite as bad as "blind moron" would be.

Then there is the "wish to disbelieve the obvious" shtik, which needs some work before it is ready for rhetorical prime time. The way it is deployed here it amounts to certain blind morons wishin' to disbelieve what is obvious to Col. Spook, perhaps to Col. Spook alone, rather than obvious to themselves. That's not really much of a club to hit one's Party enemies over the head with. It is unlikely that poor Neocomrade R. Gates will delegate some underlin' the task of respondin' to Spook, but if he did, the obvious line of attack would be to maintain that the honourable and gallant is in most cases seein' only mirages and turnip ghosts, then dismiss him more in sorrow than in anger.

It's doubtful that the vigilante cowpokers have any clear and distinct ideas behind their current aggression and occupation policies, so it would be wiser not to try to tackle Spook's unclarities and indistinctions and mind-readin's head-on. They might, though, point out Spook's irresponsibility. THEY have to worry about payin' for their Party's aggressions and occupations, and findin' enough warm uniformed bodies for them, and persuadin' Televisionland and the electorate to put up with them, even ideally to "support" these capers. Col. Spook is not required to worry about such matters, and he does not worry about them. To point this fact out would not really address any of Spook's concerns, but it would tend to discredit him before an audience of GOP geniuses all the same. As I said, though, Spook is probably not important enough to need to be discredited, and even if he was, his own camoflage shtik would allow them to pretend not to have noticed his assaults.

As regards the biggest turnip ghost of all, perhaps the perps down at the ranch might mercifully inform Neocomrade R. M. Gerecht of AEI, in strictest secrecy, that they have no more intention of seriously negotiatin' with the evil Qommies than he attributes to the evil Qommies of negotiating with the GOP. That way Spook can stop chewin' his nails about Dubya gettin' duped and move on to, hopefully, some more profitable hobbyhorse.

_____

[*] The Weekly Standard señoritos did indeed mistitle the scribble. It is not "the peace process," but rather his private mirage of George XLIII duped by the mullahs, that the writer expects "disaster" to come from. Perhaps that discrepancy means that Kristol Minor's crew are more fixated on Jewish Statism than even the Mark II Spook Doctrine. Or perhaps it means nothing at all.

Memorial Day at Rio Limbaugh

Americans may differ on how best to honor those who have given their lives in this war [about the GOP's Peaceful Freedumbia now happily created in neo-Iraq]. Should the fight be redoubled as a tribute to the fallen? Or does our obligation to the dead mean ending the war that took their lives as soon as possible? After the Civil War, Major General John Logan proclaimed the first Memorial Day for the dead on both sides: "We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders." That's the reason we have a Memorial Day: to honor those who died in uniform in an appropriate way, not with hasty escalations or withdrawals but in simple gratitude for their sacrifice.

As often, the problem is not what some trashy partisan rhetor includes so much as what she omits. Are we not to memorialize those who have died in the path of our Uncle Sam indecorously and out of uniform, then, from Nathan Hale down to those four Boy-'n'-Party-hired mercs at al-Fallúja whose sad ending was not sad for themselves alone by any means? Are we now to have a "Memorial Day" that dispenses with all accurate rememberings, then?

The Big Management Party's "Major General John Logan" is only a name to me, and my ignorance may be my misfortune, but if he really supposed, after the 1861-1865 fuss, that vandalism of graves was a real and present danger, he must have been proleptically in touch with that peculiar neo-sort of perennial GOP Genius that time and chance have subsequently unveiled to America under names like "Dubya" and "Cheney" and "Feith" and "Wolfowitz" and perhaps most pertinently "Lee Atwater." JoeMcCarthyficating very ridiculously about some preposterous desecration-of-graves menace in 1865 was maybe even better that swiftboatin' Senator Kerry in 2004, and why not, begorrah? Politics in America was not invented yesterday, after all.

These are the Past Masters of organized selfishness and omphalosocopy and ruthless practical OnePercenterdom that we contend with, O America! Never, ever forget or underestimate, not for half an instant! Not even when they try to softsoap us about Memorial Day.

The Eloquence of the Wingnut Clown

You are not to deny, Mr. Bones, that there is a certain eloquence here. But of course if you was to point out that Richard Bruce Cheney did not create his own eloquence, but only bought it, that would be perfectly OK by me as well.

In the group that graduates today, and among the cadets watching from the stands, we have dozens of future officers that are already combat veterans. You've been to Iraq and Afghanistan. You've seen the enemy and his tactics. You've been part of an Army that has faced unprecedented challenges; an Army at war that is, without question, the finest ever fielded by the United States of America.

Thus speaks the reality-oblivious chickenhawk GOP self-esteemism of 2007 about Gen. Washington's army and Gen. Jackson's army and even the army of Grant's Old Party's very namesake himself! O nos nobiles, why there has never been anybody quite as wunnerful as Wunnerful US, at least not unless dead people count too!

We're fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first, and hit us hard. Scarcely 50 miles from this place, we saw thousands of our fellow citizens murdered, and 16 acres of a great city turned to ashes. Others were killed within view of the White House, at the headquarters of our military at the Pentagon. Many heroes emerged that day, both on board an aircraft over Pennsylvania and among the rescue teams, and they, too, died in the hundreds. These are events we can never forget. And they are scenes the enemy would like to see played out in this country over and over again, on a larger and larger scale. Al Qaeda's leadership has said they have the right to "kill four million Americans, two million of them children, and to exile twice as many and to wound and cripple thousands." We know they are looking for ways of doing just that — by plotting in secret, by slipping into the country, and exploiting any vulnerability they can find. We know, also, that they're working feverishly to obtain ever more destructive weapons, and using every form of technology they can get their hands on. And this makes the business of fighting this war as urgent and time-sensitive as any task this nation has ever taken on. As the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell, said recently, "The time needed to develop a terrorist plot, communicate it around the globe, and put it into motion has been drastically reduced. The time line is no longer a calendar, it is a watch." For nearly six years now, the United States has been able to defeat their attempts to attack us here at home. Nobody can guarantee that we won't be hit again. But we've been safe [only] because a lot of very dedicated professionals have been working relentlessly to protect the homeland. Our government has used every legitimate tool [not even to mention Militant GOP extremism's other tools, begorrah!] to counter the activities of an enemy that likely has cells inside our own country. We've improved our security arrangements, reorganized intelligence capabilities, surveilled and interrogated the enemy, and worked closely with friends and allies to track terrorist movements. All of these steps have been necessary to harden the target and to protect the American people. But we've also understood, from the early hours of September 11th, that we cannot wage this fight strictly on the defensive. We have to go after the terrorists, shut down their training camps, take down their networks, deny them sanctuary, and bring them to justice. In that effort, some of the most difficult and dangerous work has been carried out by the U.S. Army. America is the kind of country that stands up to brutality, terror, and injustice. And you are the kind of people we depend on to get the job done.

This hire-purchase Boy-'n'-Party Eloquence condescends, probably rather injudiciously, to mere Pentagon or violence-professional jargon. Does it make you feel much safer to learn that we've vice-officially become a "hardened target" now, Mr. Bones?

Me neither.

Perhaps we may leave it at that, although speculation about what Neocomrade RBC's captive audience made of such mercenary windbaggery rather tempts one to continue.

But God knows best. Happy days!

Selective Amazement

(I add some apparatus for reference, even if it obstructs the flow of the rhetor a little. )

US Public Skeptical of "Surge," 72% Disapprove of Bush's Handling of Iraq [A1] It isn't amazing that 61% of Americans think the US should never have invaded Iraq. [A2] What is amazing is that 35% still think it was a good idea. [B1] It isn't amazing that 76% (including 51% of Republicans) of Americans say that the increased US troop levels in Iraq have had no impact or are making things worse. [B2] What is amazing is that 20% think that things have gotten significantly better. [C1] It isn't amazing that 63% of Americans support a timetable for US withdrawal ending in 2008. [C2] What is amazing is that so many do not. [D1] It isn't amazing that 13% want to cut off money for the Iraq War immediately, or [D2] that 69% want further funding to be tied to the meeting of specific benchmarks. [D3] What is amazing is that 15% want the war funded with no conditions at all. [D1a] (By the way, that only 13% want to cut off all funding immediately goes a long way toward explaining the vote on the supplemental in Congress). [E1] It isn't amazing that 72 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq. [E2] What is amazing is that 23 percent approve. (Are these the horror movie fans in the Republican base?) [F1] It isn't amazing that 65 percent disapprove of Bush's management of foreign policy. [F2] What is amazing is that 25 percent approves. (They should be asked specifically of what they approve. The rest of us want to know.) I won't say anything mean about the fall to [G1] a 38% favorability rating for the Republican Party. If I were a Republican, I'd want to impeach Cheney before it goes on down to zero. Given that a third of evangelicals voted Democrat[ic] in the last election, it is not impossible that the GOP will end up a minority taste for years to come. posted by Juan @ 5/26/2007 06:23:00 AM

The first point to bear in mind is that Don Juan specializes in Area L, not Area A. His commentary on things so near at hand as these is mere mortal commentary, it is not Credentialled Expertise™. Indeed, the things are so near at hand that not only MIGHT one ask that guy over there on the street corner opposite for his opinion ,as if it might be on a par with opinions inside the erudite fastnesses of the Ann Arbour Faculty Club or the strong-gated pleasure domes of the Kennebunkbort-Crawford Rodeo and Regatta Society, somebody in the applied Soc. Sci. line actually DID ask Joe Corner (or his scientistical equivalent). One does not get a break from Credentialled Expertise™ altogether on such an occasion, but at least the CE™ of a pollster's apprentice is quite different from that of a Levantine area studies guru.

When Prof. Cole errs about the Middle East, or even when he guesses right, he dispenses with sentimental flim-flam like being amazed, he says X unadornedly, then Y happens, and that's more or less that. I daresay the pollsters and their apprentices are equally unflappable and "professional" in the cheapjack sense: nothing any patient says, even nothing that she could possibly say, would ever amaze a wannabe Gallup or Zogby. This particular cheapjackery is so extremely cheap that I'll bet nine apprentices in ten have it down pat before the first coffee break on their very first day at the phone banks: "You think illegal immigration causes lung cancer, ma'am? That's interesting, but all we really need is 'approve' or 'disapprove.' I'll put you down as a 'disapprove,' ... if that's OK with you, ma'am? . . . Now ma'am, would you say that you STRONGLY disapprove of illegal immigration?"

Of course some Soc. Sci. grouch filters out fun stuff like that before the bland corporate product gets anywhere near the columns of The New York Times. Thrill seekers and amazement junkies only get to see good gray actuarial averages the same as everybody else. They must find the picking pretty slim a lot of the time, although no doubt the more imagination they put in from their side, the more amazement they can extract from the pasteurized and homogenized corporate product. Prof. Cole to some extent approaches opinion polls in that collaborative spirit, as was specially in evidence this morning when he wrote "They should be asked specifically of what they approve. The rest of us want to know" (at F2). He might have been a bit more specific, though, because it is really only the two percent of patients that like the Boy-'n'-Party foreign policy in general but do not endorse the invasion and occupation policy for neo-Iraq (see E2) that seem properly amazing. What can they be thinking of? What else has Little Brother been up to overseas that counterbalances and outweighs the manifest quagmire? The twenty-three percent of quagmire fans, however, are about as amazing as the sun when it rises in the east. Probably they can no more think of any other specific mischievment of the Crawfordites than decent political grown-ups can, but there is no reason they can't approve of whatever else the stumblebums may be up to without knowing exactly what it is. They support what their infallible Church supports, and for that purpose knowing the details is supererogatory.

It does, however, seem pretty clear that few, if any, of the GOP base and vile spontaneously think of immigration as being an issue of foreign policy. If they did, the discrepancy between E2 and F2 would have run the other way, with more of them approving of Peaceful Freedumbia in particular than of Little Brother's overall performance vis-à-vis foreigners.

Social scientizing may have inadvertently placed its thumb on the scale here, however, with the pollsters and their apprentices having decided in advance that immigration does not belong in this questionnaire. Few lay sheep of any political persuasion are likely to question the questionmongers along "professional" and methodological lines, even though one need not be a Rio Limbaugh xenophobe to consider that foreigners do not automatically stop being foreign by virtue of being found here in the holy Heimatland. The particular instance may be innocent enough, in the sense of involving no deliberate bias or Murdochlike manipulation. If the learnèd clerks had made plain that immigration IS a foreign policy issue before asking about [E], perhaps the Boy-'n'-Party crew would have come off looking a bit worse still. Yet beyond a certain point, why pile on? Balátar az seyáh rangí níst, as the evil Qommies proverbially say, "There is no colour beyond black."

Nevertheless, it seems clear enough that "technicalities" of that general type could give rise to substantive political distortion. In fact there exists a specialized subclass of "conservative" "intellectuals" who work through MSM polls like this one with a red pencil in order to demonstrate that the poor sweet puppies of the Right have -- once again, now as ever! -- not been given a fair shake. Judging by previous performances, I'd guess that these señoritos will zero in on [E1], "72 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq," and solemnly advise everybody that many or most of these patients, who amount to nearly three quarters of the whole clinic, hold that Little Brother has been insufficiently unilateral and preëmptive and aggressive and invasive for their taste. If only Dubya would be Dubya once again, and unleash some of that really amazin' Shock-'n'-Awe stuff like he used to know how to do!

That seems to me sheer ideological self-delusion, and I observe that with no more than a single follow-up question the pollsters and their apprentices could have revealed it as such. Not being a rightist or neorightist to wallow in self-pity about such perceived affronts, however, or try to prove that everybody is always picking on liberals and donkeys with systematized unfairness and imbalance, I am content merely to observe the phenomenon. I have no desire to go on and whine a little bit about it too, or accuse the social scientizers of either "professional" or political misconduct for not asking my additional clarificatory question. There's more than enough of that sort of behaviour going the rounds already without any additional Americans joining in the Carnival of Self-Pity. Rather an indecorous show, that one.

It does not qualify as "amazing" that such a question was not asked, but then if it had been, that would not be particularly amazing either. It's no big deal either way. I should have enjoyed watching the señoritos of Wingnut City work their way around an obstacle like "4% of those who disapproved of Bush's handling of Iraq thought that the handling should have been more vigorous and proäctive, 83% disagreed, and 13% expressed no clear opinion or declined to answer." Naturally the señoritos would have had no significant difficulty in doing the trick required of them, because in the last ditch -- which is close to where they find themselves at the moment as regards their Peaceful Freedumbia -- they simply don't care whether Americans at large agree with Boy-'n'-Party invasion and occupation policies or not. They can always relapse into Profiles in Courage mode and start quotin' us "Who knows not that to save the people, one must often oppose them?" "President Sorensen" has done a good deal of mischief with that book that he really ought to be called to account for, as it seems to me, although in fairness one should allow that Grant's Old Party would have had strong ancestral tendencies to despise the witless and reckless mob even if that particular book had never been written at all.

Opinion polling, and social scientism more generally, cannot get all the way to the bottom of what is really going on here. It is a bit of a mystery why this should be the case. Soc. Sci. should have worked out better, as far as I can see, but it is plain as day that it has not. I presume the SS practitioners must have gone about their enterprise the wrong way, somehow, but as to exactly what went wrong with their chosen way, I am pretty well clueless. The fancy ab externo explanations of so little success ever securely attained in the course of so originally promising an Enlightenment project that I happen to know of -- say especially the explanations of Prof. Dr. G. Vico and of the late Prof. I. Berlin and of "postmodernism" generically -- fail to elucidate the failure secondarily almost as badly as the primary failure failed itself. Mere commonsensical stuff along the lines of "People are not planets, people have Free Will, in case nobody ever taught you right, Mister, and that is why you'll never get a Science of People comparable to your brain surgery and your rocket science" is no better than the higher-falutin' stuff. Unfortunately it is also not discernibly any worse either.

These things being so, one could do worse than take Prof. Whitehead's advice and have recourse to Plato, whose Gorgias can scarcely be said to explain the failure of Soc. Sci. by calling it a mere "knack" comparable to what the executive chefs and executive perfumists of old Athens used to do, but does at least manage to describe vividly and memorably. This author took to social-scientizing himself later on in his very distinguished career, of course, but that development, though regrettable, yet remains instructive as well. So too is the forgery of whoever forged Epistle VII for Citizen Plato, wherein philosophy itself is effectively reduced to a knack, although the reverent and august verbal circumambience is such as to make it very difficult to perceive that this reduction is what is happening, and the knack in question ends up sounding rather suspiciously like some mediaeval Beatific Vision. Epistle VII was very carefully crafted for marketing to amazement junkies, and there is much to be learned from it, even though what Citizen Plato really thought happens not to be.

Closer to home, it looks as if George XLIII Bush has about come to the end of his knack. Hardly anybody wants more Lone Rangerism from The Boy, and his Harvard Victory School MBA's, and his Big Management Party. A detectable majority of Uncle Sam's nieces and nephews, though perhaps not really a majority of seventy-two percent over twenty-eight percent, (2.57 to 1, that comes to -- golly!) now crave a sort of slow movement in the Political Sonata, some quieter interval in which maybe even Tonto might possibly get a note or two in edgewise on occasion. A true Master of Knackery would accommodate us, even if she privately thought our wishes foolish and maybe even risky, but George XLIII Bush is not quite exactly a Master of Knackery. The Boy still thinks Father Zeus and Mr. Micawber will show up for himself, and his Party, and his Victory School, at the last moment and then it will be all drums and trumpets and Te Deums ever after, with no need whatsoever for any borin' slow movement or any silly nonsense about Tonto. Televisionland and the electorate will snap out of their present MSM-induced funk and sing hearty hosannahs to Petrolaeus and Crocker, but above all to The Boss of all the Petrolaei and of all the Crockeres, down at Rancho Crawford, or up at Kennebukport as the case may be! Everything shall yet be made well again, all things shall soon be restored to "normal" most excellently well, the whole world not turned upside down after all . . . .


Oh, well, that's definitely one possible point of view, no doubt about it. ’Astaghfiru lláh! strikes me as the best and briefest criticism thereof.

(Kindly allow me to wish everybody happy days, even despite ....)

Congratulations on the Promotion, Moody!

SENIOR Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman confirmed that U.S. pressure was mounting, especially on the oil bill, which was endorsed by the Iraqi Cabinet three months ago but has yet to come to the floor of parliament. "The Americans are pressuring us to accept the oil law. Their pressure is very strong. They want to show Congress that they have done something so they want the law to be adopted this month. This interference is negative and will have consequences," Othman told AP. Kurdish legislators oppose the formula for distributing oil revenues among the Iraqi communities, arguing for a greater say in how the money is disbursed.

How about that for "a marshall's baton in every private's knapsack," Mr. Bones?

Unfortunately M. Mahmúd Osmán's individual path of glory is not open to all comers. Before your daughter can hope to become a senior lawmaker for somebody else's country, Bones, she would no doubt have to be a junior lawmaker for somebody else's country, and such slots are not numerous. The necessary arrangements may even be exclusively peculiar to the colonies of Rancho Crawford.

Unless I misremember, though, a certain M. Czeslaw Milosz, in a prose tract called Zniewolony Umysl, mentioned a acquaintance who had the honour to vote in 1940 for the henosis of Lithuania with the Soviet Union without being a subject or citizen of either. An objector might object that this unnamed gentleman, who will have sprung, of course, from the Polish gentry, was scarcely engaged in "lawmaking" on that occasion. But what else is it to be called? More pertinently one might point out the difficulty of fashioning a whole career after that pattern. Still, perhaps M. Quelquechose -- Pan Kelkeszowski? -- managed to hang around Wilno /Vilnius / Vilna as a Bolshevik dietine, so to speak, until the Hitlerites chased him and his political friends out. Who knows, this tertius quis may even have come back in 1944-45 and legislated for the (provincial rather than national) happiness of Lithuania ever after, although in that case his papers must have regularized at some point.

M. Osman would not care for this slightly fanciful analogy, should he hear of its being proposed, and in some respects he would be warranted. To begin with, nobody at Moscow in 1940 was afraid of Lithuanians at all, let alone terrorized of them as Free Kurds are terrorized of all Baghdad régimes, past, present or yet unborn. Then, too, M. Kelkeszewski dabbled in the affairs of the Lithuanians in order to annex them to a larger entity, where as M. Osman dabbles in the affairs of the neo-Iraqis mainly in order to make thoroughly sure that they never, ever get a chance to re-annex Free Kurdistan. In common with every other statesperson nowadays, from M. Bethmann-Hollweg of Imperial Germany down through M. Bin Ládin of Khurasán and M. Olmert of Telavivistan, the Senior Lawmaker will solemnly profess to be overstepping the ordinarily received bounds of measure and decency only out of desperate necessity -- Not kennt kein Gebot! -- and even then purely in self-defense -- "But Mommy, she hit me first!.

Compared to our own Republican Party extremists in particular, M. Osman has quite a presentable case along these lines. There is no doubt at all that the Ba‘thís wronged Kurdistan, whereas it remains mysterious to this day exactly what they did to Mr. Bush and M. Wolfowitz and M. Feith and Mr. Blair (&c. &c.) that finally brought down the roof on them.

Graded on the curve, then, M. Osman is not all that reprehensible. And insofar as we evaluate him individually and personally, grading on the curve seems appropriate, harmless enough and charitable too. However one is not to extend this courtesy to the general principle that allows such a career as the Senior Lawmaker's present career to exist in the first place. The abstract proposition of Political Sciece™ or political philosophy that it can ever be OK for alien statespersons to become even the lowliest of lawmakers inside somebody else's country must be evaluated on a pass/fail basis, and then pitilessly flunked. If it were possible to tar and feather an idea, that is how this one ought to be dealt with. Anathema sit!

Should M. Osman wish to defend his careerism as a matter of "principle," or should somebody at Wingnut City or AEI or Hoover or The Weekly Standard volunteer to do that job for him, I presume the argument from necessity would be advanced rather than the argument from self-defense, insofar as that gruesome twosome can be disentangled. "It simply happens to be the case," I fancy the sophist warning us, "That Free Kurdistan can never be properly safe and secure unless it permanently controls twenty percent of the quasilegislature at New Baghdad -- and simultaneously tolerates not the most pianissimo peep out of the other eighty percent of quasideputies as to how Free Kurdistan shall conduct its own affairs. Perhaps this arrangement does not look altogether fair and balanced. Perhaps it really is a bit unfair and imbalanced. Nevertheless, the practical consequences of any other arrangement would be disastrous because _________" [Dear Ms. Reader: please fill in the blank quant. suff.with bloodshed, genocide, instability, high gasoline prices, perils to Jewish Statism, annoyance at Ankara, cowardly appeasement of the Qommies, international loss of faith in the absolute reliability of alliances with Greater Texas, or whatever other relevant political product(s) you happen to prefer . I can't guess what appeals to you most, but it seems reasonable to assume that Dr. Sophist can. Nobody wants to take unfair advantage, after all! -- that's exactly the topic we are discussing.]

To rebut Dr. Sophist after leaning over backwards to let him frame his argument as indefinitely as that may not be possible, but let us see what we can muster up, Mr. Bones. The best place to start, I think, is over chez Clio: this peculiar Osmaniac or Mahmoodian arrangement has never been found necessary before. If Saxons and Normans and Plantagenets and Yorkists and Lancastrians and Tudors and Stuarts and Hanoverians, along with their equivalents nearer to New Baghdad and Free Kurdistan, managed to scrape along without it, well, possibly so can we. The GOP geniuses keep tellin' us, or anyway they used to for a while, that 11 September 2001 marked the inauguration of a Whole New World, an epoch so posthistoric as to be positively neo-Fukuyaman. We need not here dispute that claim in general, I don't think, when it is so difficult to see what good it would do Dr. Sophist's case to stipulate it. The Senior Lawgiver's new career, his ever vigilant Watch on the Tigris, might very well work successfully, in the sense of guaranteeing 100.0% that none of the Arabophone flatlanders left in the former Iraq ever impertinently mucks about with Free Kurdistan, but what would that success have to do with "9/11"? It did not count as "global terrorism" when the late M. Saddám al-Husayn mucked about there. As far as the Boy-'n'-Party crew were concerned, Saddám's mucking about in Kurdistan wasn't any sort of terrorism at all when it was actually going on. (Militant GOP attempts to reclassify it as such retrospectively have been so transparently self-servicing that in kindness to intellectual kiddies, let's not go on about that, please!)

After arguing that what was never found necessary at all before last Thursday afternoon is probably not absolutely necessary now either, we may go on to doubt that Osmaniac "extramural representation," so to christen the scheme in question, might not even work. Despite the best efforts of Khalílzád Pasha and Prof. Dr. Noah Feldman and their distinguished colleagues, both paleface and collaborationist, what passes for a "constitution" in neo-Iraq does not quite altogether guarantee that eighty percent of the quasideputies can never muck about with Free Kurdistan. Plus, rather obviously, there can be no ironclad guarantee that the neoliberateds will pay much attention to their "constitution" in any case. They have not exhibited much reverence for it so far, not to speak of compliance with it.

(I believe that is putting the point rather mildly. Yet bear in mind how unreasonable it would be to expect spear-won subjects of Crawford to feel about farfetched exotic Khalílzáds and Feldmans at New Baghdad as Americans feel about Mr. Madison and his friends at Philadelphia. If being constitutional at Boston this morning meant insisting on a document written a few months back in consultation with, or even under pressure from, Louis XVI and M. de Vergennes --military allies in a good cause, perhaps, yet also foreign gentlemen who might be said to entertain some rather un-American presuppositions about proper governance -- , . . . ! Well, I daresay you can see where that sentence was headed. Allowances are undoubtedly to be made.)

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So much for M. Mahmoud Osman's lawmaking, even though perhaps this off-hand two-point rebuttal does not settle Dr. Sophist's hash altogether as regards the theory of extramural representation.

The pol's "seniority" as lawmaker for another people's country can be dealt with briefly. It consists mostly in the fact that M. Osman can speak the language of invasion fluently and is ready and willing to seek out Green Zone hotel-lobby journalists to practise his Texan on. Such behaviour is neither illegal nor immoral nor even fattening, but it can be a bit misleading to the extent that it may tend to throw the views of less polyglot collaborationist statespersons into the shade. Caveat lector.