An Instinct for the Capillaries

The lesser dovish blogosphere -- Ms. Cobban, Mr. Badger, Dr. Visser -- has been taking a remarkable degree of interest in A conference held in Baghdad on 14 April by members of the Council for the Region of the South (Majlis ’Iqlím al-Janúb), as RV begins his emergency bulletin about this deplorable development. Exactly what one is expected to become alarmed about is not quite as perspicuous as one might wish, however:

The interesting aspect about this story is the identity of the regionalists in question. No names are given in the most recent press report, but an organisation with an identical name was founded in Nasiriyya in May last year - so far without attracting much attention from outsiders. Intriguingly, the leading figures behind that move were from SCIRI, Daawa and various smaller political groups in Nasiriyya. The Sadrists and Fadila were not represented.

The "most recent press report" refers to al-Hayát of 15 April 2007. A partisan organ of the Sunni International that one can not altogether trust on the subject of neo-Iraq cites three quasideputies obviously picked because they disapprove of Decentralization Now assuring us that they do indeed disapprove of it. Here in degenerate Westistan, even Fox News would probably not push its well known fairness and balance quite that far. Why, reporting on the formation of a leadership committee, the Murdochites might even mention the names of the leaders! In the Middle East, however, such far-fetched norms do not apply. The "pan-Arab" hack cannot be bothered to mention who attended, but he finds time to mention that nobody of importance was there, and infer that nothing will come of. A lucky escape that will be for pan-Arabia, no doubt.

Our norms become not just inapplicable, but apparently invisible to ourselves. Dr. Visser doesn't complain that he is reduced to guessing who and what he's going to instruct his disciples about; he doesn't even notice that there might be something to complain of.

Mr. Badger did not notice either, let alone complain, but then he must have been distracted by the opportunity to carry on his War on Juan, a private affair of honour which leads him about as far astray as anybody's instinct for the capillaries ever could. He's quite right about the particular nit picked, the first word in M. Hack's story was indeed "condemned," and perhaps there were no quasideputies present at all when the conspirators assembled the day before, although they may have been there only to be considered ghayr mas’úliyyín by M. Hack. It is a mildly interesting tree or shrub, I suppose, that even Don Juan can nod, but meanwhile how about the forest? How about "news" stories that begin with the word "condemned" and never get around to telling us much more than how damnable whatever-it-was really is? "Having decided, why report?" -- that attitude might be put under the microscope also, perhaps.

Returning to the Visserian guesswork, he does seem to allow for the possibility that this time around it may be somebody else with the same name, "Council for the Region of the South," but there's not much to be made of that. The possibility that the three quasideputies sat down with _al-Hayát_ and made the whole thing up out of whole cloth does not occur to him, and probably that is no great loss, although independent confirmation of the event would be nice, I think, even if we don't want to soil our ears by hearing from anybody who actually favors such wickedness.

But seriously,

There are at least two possible explanations. Firstly, regional sentiment in the far south of Iraq is very pronounced and often overrides the ideology of the central leadership of the national parties. This has been seen in Fadila (which has always been more localist in Basra), Daawa, among the Sadrists of Maysan (who sometimes employ regionalist rhetoric in the context of oil), and even among SCIRI members in Basra (some of whom continued to focus on Basra and the far south even after the central leadership had declared a single Shiite region as their goal.) The Nasiriyya-based Council for the Region of the South could be yet another example of regionalist sentiment cutting across ideological affiliations. Alternatively, this may be another instance of a phenomenon seen elsewhere in the south, where SCIRI have created "copycat" organisations in order to gain a foothold in a region where they traditionally have had problems. In Maysan, for instance, there are two Hizbollahs, one tribal and quite secularist, another pro-SCIRI and more Islamist. SCIRI are clearly trying to capitalise on the ongoing tension in the Sadrist camp in Basra between Fadila and followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, and theoretically this latest move by the Council for the Region of the South could have to do with another attempt at breaking down resistance to SCIRI in the far south, by co-opting and diluting it. The fact that the foundation of Majlis Iqlim al-Janub back in 2006 was widely reported in SCIRI and Badr media might suggest that the latter interpretation is the more plausible one.

As to Option One, notice how "sentiment" is good, and "ideology" bad, even though one would have thought that centralization and decentralization would have to be on a par and differ in effect only by presence or absence the word "not." It would be fun to apply the same rhetorical gimmick to "sectarianism," which is presumably far more respectable when it consists Mr. Hume's Enthusiasm than when his Superstition enters in to corrupt, when one's religionism is a matter of "identity" more than of theology. But I digress.

Unlike Mr. Badger, Dr. Visser knows a jugular when he sees one, sort of, and he lunges for it quickly enough. SCIRI being radix omnium malorum, as everybody knows, who can doubt that Option Two is not only "more plausible" but actually the case? I even like it myself, a little, since it falls in with my theory that the Rev. ‘Abd al-‘Azíz al-Hakím is smarter than any other six neo-Iraqi pols taken together, M. Ahmad Chelabí once excluded.

But as to the ethical merits of the "copycat" ploy, he and I will probably not see eye to eye. Giving the people what they seem to want is, in general, fine with a mere donkey like me, but does Dr. Visser agree? Not likely. Naturally he supposes that the ideological fiends in question intend to deceive his poor sentimental Southerners and swindle them into a nine-state solution sooner or later. Well, we'll see.

Meanwhile it takes a somewhat specialized mentality to attach as much importance to this fuss as our lesser dove bloggers do. Can putting down the Qiyádat al-Muwaqqata li-’Iqlím al-Janúb, which has no serious prospects anyway, really be more important than what Crawford dictates next? Or more important than a native trifle like the resignation of the Sadr Tendency ministers? Apparently if you suffer from a severe enough case of schizophobia, it really seems to be so.

It can happen here too, however, this sort of lack of proportion. There are, or used to be, Americans who seriously believe that our politics revolves around Mr. Ralph Nader. They see what they see very clearly, no doubt, but only at the price of ignoring most of what major bloggers think matters more. Oh, well.

Anna Missed

seems an unlikely name, but what else could it be, even though she (?) posts to Mr. Badger's peanut gallery as "anonymous"? (The Bani Google might consider numbering the anonymice in any one sequence so you know that item eleven indeed came from the same undisclosed location as item three.)

I'm pretty sure theres not a lot of daylight between views here. I only jumped in because the two issues tend to drive me crazy: a) the tendency of the MSM to propagandise prefixed names and or notions, to foreign leaders or events -- that evolve into common assumptions and beliefs that are then exploited to serve U.S. "interests" abroad. It's regularly reported, and largely assumed that it was al-Qaeda in Iraq who bombed the mosque in Samarra, even though I've never seen any evidence reported it was so, Rather like the similar Saddam "kicked the inspectors out" legend these things weasel their way into even critical discourse. So exactly what did Muqtada al-Sadr do to have inspired such demonization? After all he's a nationalist, supports democracy, is a sworn enemy of al-Qaeda, is anti-partition, is less in Iran's pocket than the other Shiite trends, and no doubt to the total chagrin of occupation authorities, can call out up to 1/2 million flag waving Iraqis into the streets in a show of unity and peaceful resistance. You would think he'd be a dream come true for the Bush administration, seeing how he represents all of the above also happen to be in concert with them in what they say they want for Iraq. And in addition, Sadr is also against everything the administration says its against (but, surely is for), like enduring bases, partition, oil resources, etc. -- except for that one thing; that he is also anti-occupation. That he will never serve American interests in Iraq. So, in spite of all that, he's relegated as a "firebrand, radical, thug", and as Time would say "the most dangerous man in Iraq".

Where is "renegade cleric," my own favorite Homeric epithet for the Reverend Señorito al-Sadr? There's also "anti-American cleric," which nicely insinuates that Uncle Sam and GOP invasionism are more or less one and the same. Who knows, if the cowpokers had quit while they were ahead after deposing the Ba‘th, the lad might even rather like the holy Heimatland!

Frankly, I'm just sick of the hypocrisy and the transparent duplicity of just assuming the negative simply because those in the media say its so, especially when it happens also to be in their self interest to say its so. And while I may be overstating the point, or assuming too much, It just bugs me to see otherwise clear thinking to assume this trash-baggage stereotyping in their analysis, and inadvertently carrying water for the administration. And b), which is the that this entire notion that Iraq is/was to be a template for democratization of the Middle East has in fact been branded as a liberal enterprise. There is, preceding the above pattern of assumptions, the following assumption, that the ME can or should be given or want the gift of democracy as we know it -- imposed upon them. This being, albeit a perfect propaganda/justification tool for internal America, fails massively as a means to inspire interest in the program because of a fundamental cultural disconnect. Which has been generated historically in the west from the enlightenment on, with its emphasis on the individual at the expense of the collective -- seeing that how it is, that historically, the ME is the precise opposite, being essentially collectivist oriented societies -- where the clergy functions as the arbitrators/lawyers of the word and flows outward simultaniously on all cultural levels (politics included). To assume that these peoples would throw off their entire cultural milieu in favor of an occupier's (and a bad one at that) values is the unfortunate product of the present dilemma forged as it were, by liberal enlightenment [having been] rejected. And become a fool's errand. anna missed / 9:09 PM [11 April 2007]

The last paragraph gets a bit metaphysical or hazy, at least for me, but I believe we are meant to understand that "liberal" is a bad thing, as viewed from somewhere out towards the left edge of the world.

Still, AM is right about the basic facts, no matter what superstructure is subsequently erected on them. Sadr III certainly gets demonized a lot in the invasion-language press, and he does hold more or less the political positions attributed to him. The only nit I'd pick is about "anti-partition," which should be qualified a little, perhaps. There can be no question of admitting the legitimacy of any partition imposed by the militant Republicans, but that is a second-order point in the Sadrist system as I understand it, an obvious deduction from the primary premise that nothing whatsoevr done under an alien occupation can ever be more than provisional and temporary. When Iraq becomes a country once again, perhaps even partition may be considered by those who are alone entitled to consider the question, but meanwhile it would be outrageous if the Crawfordites were to make sure that there will be two or three statelets instead of one Iraq. Of course the invders intend nothing of the sort, but since Sadr's position begins by assuming the intolerable illegitimacy of precisely themselves, it seems reasonable enough that they do not applaud his ad hoc schizophobia.

The superstructural part, the explanation of why M. Sadr gets demonized, begins with "the hypocrisy and the transparent duplicity of just assuming the negative simply because those in the media say it is so, especially when it happens also to be in their self-interest to say it is so." This, too, sounds rather far off to starboard to me, but it is not quite as clear as I'd like. What is this self-interest, exactly? Are they afraid the Republican Party extremists will shut them down if they are too kind to the Sadriyya? Or that hooligans from Rio Limbaugh will come smash their windows or boycott their corporations? These dangers seem remote. If we really want to dodge all hypocrisy, shouldn't we state frankly that the "MSM" demonize Muqtadá and his merry men because they expect that is what will please their customers and sell more newspapers and lure more advertisers?

I don't propose to excuse them because they are only trying to please their own market niche. That might do for the journals and broadcasting of the rightist gutter, America's Moonpaper and the like, but I assume we speak of the sort of intellectually respectable "MSM" that professes, on the masthead of the whole armada's flagship, to furnish "all the news that's fit to print." Folks with lofty pretensions like that ought to know better and do better, no doubt about it.

But, although they should, do they in fact know better? AM makes it sound as if they know the real Sadr as well as she does, and then deliberately draw one of Mr. Badger's cartoons about him rather than sharing their own less exciting knowledge with us. I should guess that they do not actually have the knowledge themselves, which implies that they are less corrupt or hypicocritical than she makes them out, but at the same time more incompetent. The level of reporting from neo-Iraq in the Big Three -- the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post -- is abyssmal. Since I do not watch television, I am only speculating to say that they are probably even more so, but I think it's a pretty good bet. The Green Zone hotel-lobby journalists are at the mercy of the Proconsular Palace's civilian Republicans, and Five- O'Clock-Follies uniformed people, and such neo-Iraqi subjects as can address them in English, or maybe French, and are willing to do so. The Sadrists are not willing, so the lounge lizards know about them only by rumor. It is probably not an accident that the one interview by M. Sadr given to a European journalist went to La Repubblica of Rome and not to what we should consider a truly mainstream medium. After four years of lawless occupation, it would not be surprising if merely hearing anybody talk in the aggression-tainted tongue of Blair and Bush dangerously raises a Sadrist's blood pressure.

It is easy to see why the politicians and clergymen of the Sadr tendency disdain to bombard American journalists with their own tendentious accounts of the GOP occupation, as if they were M. Sálih al-Mutlaq or Dr. Ahmad Chelebi. And of course they do not have any powerful foreign friends to do it for them, no equivalent of the massed phalanx of the Sunnintern or all the international fans of "secularism." Even if they were on better terms with Iran than they seem to be, English-language propaganda for their cause emanating from Tehran or Qom would be worse than useless.

Hence the Wongs and Burnses and Taverneses and Rubins never hear the Mahdí Army side of the story even at New Baghdad itself except from sources that are at best neutral and more likely hostile. It might not make a great deal of difference if they did, to be sure, but if the rebuttals were readily available, I daresay that mechanical even-handedness of our MSM would require that a certain amount of it was adjudged fit to print. The customers might not like it much, actually, but I think the aspiration for intellectual respectability would come in at least slightly ahead of crude economic self-interest. As things stand, however, it is the path of least resistance to let M. Sadr and his juvenile delinquents be remembered by customers of the MSM almost exclusively because they formerly had the impudence to shoot at the alien invaders and occupiers of their country.

The (moderately) famous quotation

"If I were a Mexican, I would tell you, 'Have you not room in your own country to bury your dead men? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands, and welcome you to hospitable graves!'"

shows that persuading Yankees to see things from a more or less Sadrist point of view is not absolutely impossible, but it is certainly not easy. I believe Mark Twain was just as fierce against GOP invasionism in the Phillipines, but that is pretty well the whole repertory, as far as I know. Even if the Sadriyya were as helpful as possible and geniuses at propaganda to boot, neither of which even begins to be the case, getting an impartial hearing for their cause would be a hard uphill struggle. For that matter, Mr. Corwin of Ohio was not altogether impartial, for if the "slaveocracy" had not wanted to aggress against Mexico, his sympathy with the victims of invasionism would probably not have been so cordial.

The core of the problem is, unfortunately, us, and not our media. The thought that we are so badly in the wrong that lesser breeds without become justified in resorting to physical violence is so uncongenial as to be almost literally unthinkable. And the proper name of the problem is not "hypocrisy" or "transparent duplicity" or "self-interest," but more like "narcissism" or "self-esteem." If we are to think as well of ourselves and our Uncle Sam as we find comfy, Muqtadá al-Sadr has to be demonized. This necessity has very little to do with who the man is and what he stands for, the tale is really all about us. If he did not start by believing that we are shameless monsters of injustice for a long list of other reasons, he might complain about our bad attitude towards himself. As things are, he has no standing to file such a complaint, and those of us who consider that it is bad policy and bad morality to go about grabbing control of other people's countries would be wiser not to drag him in when we make our case. Invasionism would, after all, still be wrong even if nobody resisted it.


Meanwhile, there is the immediate stimulus that brought forth Anna Missed's remarks, and it goes like this:

Sounds like we could be headed back to a re-run of 2004, when Sistani was in the hospital, the Mahdi Army was in full revolt, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq appeared close to tearing apart. If these rumors are true, anyway. Especially if Sistani makes the big exit, that may be all the cue al-Sadr's crew -- and their Shiite rivals in SCIRI -- need to make a would-be preemptive move to fill the resulting power vacuum. (...) I remarked below that populist thug/cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's "rally in Najaf [today] is a raised middle finger to the Shiite religious hierarchy led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, which has often sought to tamp down Sadr's rising influence." I wonder how the learned and spiritually revered Sistani broke the news to al-Khoei -- the son of Sistani's mentor and predecessor as capo di tutti capi leading Grand Ayatollah -- that he should give up on pursuing his brother's murderers for the sake of family Shiite unity. (...) When Mookie -- or whoever is calling the shots in his name -- was more secure in his control, he was comfortable telling his followers to lie low in the first days of the escalated U.S. profile in Baghdad. A less stable and unified movement may be even more dangerous, as some faction may see a higher level of violence and chaos as their opportunity to take command, just as the Sadrists did in 2004 and again after the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra a year ago. That repeated tactic of leveraging militancy into greater clout has made the Sadr movement the equivalent of an 18-wheeler filled with dynamite barreling down Iraq's political highway. Now, though, the Americans are shooting at the tires, and there's fighting in the front seat over who's in control of the steering wheel. Oh, well, I'm sure there's every reason to think this will turn out okay.

This gentlepundit doesn't seem to like any Twelvers at all, and there is a lot of that going around also. AM might notice how he takes the MSM's word for the proposition that the Sadr Tendency is collapsing. 'Nuff said, except that we are pleased that Mr. Badger has returned to the fray.

"All Very Well, Father Joseph . . ."

". . . if only fortresses were taken with fingertips!"

Ignoring the warrantable sneers of the violence professionals, let us join M. la Eminence Grise for a little amateur militarism, shall we?

We just now complained that Rear-Colonel Fred Kagan did not offer any specifically military commentary about the Cole Plan or the Simon Plan for creating the happiness of neo-Iraq, so why not see what avowed amateurism can do in that direction? The place to begin is Plan C, clause 1.1:

[The United States should . . . r]etain the forces necessary to secure Baghdad International Airport, the Green Zone, and access routes that connect them.

That's not much to ask, is it? Surely a Sole Remaining Hyperpower ought to be able to manage that?

Mais je ne pas que m'amuse, Father Joseph, that is asking for so very little that one can scarcely make head or tail of it. Dr. Simon writes as if he never even heard of The Surge of '07, which itself isn't exactly looking for a Cannae or a Nagasaki, but still wants rather more than that. Unless I am seriously misinformed, the militant Republicans now propose to put the GZ collaborationist pols in charge of their whole capital city, plus the governate of al-’Anbár thrown in at no aditional charge. For that matter, Dr. Gen. Petrolaeus and the Green Zone Officers Club already show signs of succumbing to so-called "mission creep" and wandering off from their appointed -- or announced, anyway -- Surge tasks to entirely supererogatory places like al-Diwániyya and the al-Diyála governate. They run far more apparent risk of mounting their horse and riding off in all directions than of contracting their perimeter to the functional equivalent of that ever-memorable embassy roof at the former Saigon.

What with one thing and another, Father Joseph, I think Dr. Simon does not understand much more about the violence profession than you and I do. Clause [1.1] may perhaps make sense as a political or diplomatic absolute minimum to be defended, but from the West Point perspective it is ridiculous. That may be all the genteel concocters of Plan C think they owe the GOP's indig neo-régime, but to make sure that that minimum is deliverable a great deal more must come along with it, as notably military supremacy along the Tigris all the way down to the Gulf of Petrolaeum at very least. Keeping an interventionist boot on the ground at New Baghdád with a sort of perpetual Berlin Airlift is so silly a proposal that even an amateur can spot the silliness. Bad guys assailing that sort of a Fortress Crawford really would not need a great deal more than fingertips to capture it.

The problem, or "mission," that confronts us now that we have brought our tin soldiers out, Father Joseph, is to guesstimate what a really viable absolute minimum military perimeter would be, one that would make neo-Iraq really safe and secure for the substantive policy goals of Dr. Simon and the CFR/ISG gentry. Of course the already imposed neo-régime cannot be allowed to collapse altogether, that goes without saying, and of course ensuring its noncollapse requires a good deal more than Dr. Simon mentions. But is that all he wants? Is that all his real requirements in the way of organized violence that he doesn't specifically mention?

Well, let's see. Certain other clauses of Plan C look pertinent:

[1.2] During the disengagement period, stage the drawdown to maintain the forces in Iraq needed to protect or relocate vulnerable minority populations and suppress insurgent activity in the largely Sunni provinces. [2] Shift focus to containment of the conflict and strengthen the U.S. military position elsewhere in the region. (...) [2.3] Reinforce the U.S. military presence elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region, for example, Kuwait; explore options for increasing special operations forces deployed to Jordan; and increase the number of rotational deployments to the region, including joint exercises.

We have already expressed certain reservations about clause [1.2] as worded. Taking Dr. Simon à pied de la lettre, however, it would appear that once a certain "period of disengagement" terminates, "vulnerable minority populations" are to be tossed off the sledge to the wolves, and "insurgent activity in the largely Sunni provinces" is to flourish unsurpressed. Except insofar as the GZ neo-régime can protect and suppress, no doubt, but how far is that, when clause [1.1] leaves the native pols desperately embattled on the embassy roof?

But Dr. Simon clearly can not be aiming to help the indigenous collaborationists protect the innocent and vulnerable and suppress the guilty and insurgent to any large extent, when clauses [2] and [2.3] find him wresting Uncle Sam's protectors and suppressors away from the clueless grip of Crawford and redeploying elsewhere with his fingertips. Exactly what they are supposed to do in "for example, Kuwait" when they get there is rather pointedly not explained. That exemplary fortress and extremely valuable prize is not under seige at the moment, nor, in my view, is it likely to be assailled any time soon, now that we have rather memorably established that it is not the nineteenth governate of the former "Iraq."

What do you think General von Clausewitz would say about Dr. Simon of the CFR, Father Joseph, were he subject to potential or actual redeployment by Dr. Simon's fingertips? Presumably he would loyally do his best Krieg zu führen always in the path of State policy and never, ever regard organized professional violence as a metaphysical philosopher's Ding an sich or a political philosopher's separate Estate of the Realm. 'Tis grand stuff, that of Clausewitz, and I am all for it myself too, Father Joseph, but how would you work it if you had to labour for Dr. Simon and the CFR?

Dr. Gen. Petrolaeus of West Point and Princeton University will forgive me, I trust, if I suspect that he is probably not quite on a par with the late Herr Clausewitz, braniac-wise. But he too can be imagined as under the fingertips of Dr. Simon and the CFR/ISG gentry, and it might even actually happen. What would, or will, he do to try to conduct a decent and respectable Krieg, or at least a plausible anti-insurgency, in the path of the policy announced in Plan C?

At the moment he has things pretty much all his own way, Petrolaeus does. The Crawfordite extremists seem to have plumb run out of fresh dumb ideas for the misconduct of their "war" and left the Dr. Gen. pretty much in charge. The very fate of dogmatic Invasionism and Preëmptive Retaliation now seem to hinge on whether one lone intrepid Petrolaeus can walk the tightrope or not!

Now if I was writing Ms. Clio's script, at this point Dr. Gen. Braniac would think of Clausewitz and say something like "Shucks, folks." In fact he does indeed say "Shucks, folks," but more like he's already started running for President than like he is humbly remembering and revering the recognized luminaries of Mil. Sci.

So then, Father Joseph, after being spoiled like this under Rancho Crawford, permitted to do pretty well anything he likes as long as it "works," could Dr. Gen. Petrolaeus of Princeton and West Point ever become a really reliable employee of Dr. Simon and the CFR/ISG gentry, who after all have a tolerably definite policy of their own in mind, even if it can only be subtly communicated by winks and nods in public?

Nous verrons.

Comparative Planmongering: Obsolete vs. Premature

There are many interesting things to think about in connection with the consequences of the Crawfordite aggression of March 2003, and we are not likely ever to get around to some of them if we turn ourselves into a daily E-Review of Paleface Plannings for Neo-Iraq. Nevertheless Rear-Colonel Kaplan of Slate invites us irresistibly to give the panacea gentry yet another whack.

As our title announces, we propose to distinguish two distinct phases in non-GOP paleface planmongering, a sort of Vetus Testamentum period that is already over, or nearly over, and a Novum Testamentum whose efflorescence is bound to come, but has not quite arrived yet. The resulting intertestamental gap is dominated by the militant Republicans' Surge of '07. Colonel Fred seems to agree with us about the basic division of times, at least:

Two new essays on how to disengage from Iraq [sic] . . . both reject the Bush administration's stay-the-course surge and the congressional Democrats' insistence on a fixed timetable for withdrawal. And they're also both utterly unlikely to receive the slightest attention from President George W. Bush. In short, it seems, we're all stuck in a holding pattern, doomed to mere "muddling through," until somebody else sets up shop in the White House on Jan. 20, 2009—an unbelievable 651 days of mayhem to go.

However it is entirely our own idea, not his, that Plan A (for "Ann Arbour" or "ancient history") is obsolete, whereas Plan C (for "Council on Foreign Relations") is premature. Though too far ahead of its time to have any serious chance of mattering, Plan C is not entirely isolated. There is also what we may very happily call Plan B (for "Brookings Institution"), which Mr. Kaplan does not discuss. We won't either, not just at present, because we expect there will be plenty of opportunities to quarrel with that one later on, both because it is much the heftiest of the three (142 pages to 61 pages in C and perhaps 1.5 pages in A), and because after we get out of the "holding pattern," it seems a more ideologically likely airport for our poor Uncle Sam to land at than the CFR alternative.

Be that as it may, Mr. Kaplan lumps Ann Arbour and the CFR together instead of splitting them up:

Simon, a Middle East specialist and former National Security Council official, and Cole, professor of Middle East studies at the University of Michigan, have three common premises. First, the surge and the new counterinsurgency strategy almost certainly won't work, in part because the war is not just an insurgency war but also a civil war involving three sects (and divisions within those sects) against one another. Second, the U.S. occupation strengthens the insurgents and broadens their support at least as much as it weakens or isolates them. However, third, they also emphasize that real hell would break out if U.S. forces suddenly or arbitrarily withdrew. Cole, while fiercely critical of Bush's policies on Iraq and much else, has long been adamant on this point—that there are degrees of civil war and Iraq hasn't begun to approach the full boil that an unconditional pullout might ignite.

As you see, Mr. Kaplan does not mention the most basic resemblance of the two, which is simply that neither one was framed with an eye to the special interests of the Big Management Party. Neither Prof. Cole nor Dr. Simon has any use for an "irresponsible" withdrawal of GOP military forces from neo-Iraq, and that is Kaplan's third point, and in both cases notions of "responsibility" are cherished that would pretty well prevent any serious withdrawal in our lifetime, but it is unfair to these planmongers not to notice explicitly that they feel no special responsibility to save the face of the Republican Party. JC would almost certainly prefer to maximize Crawford's embarrassments, except insofar as that would conflict with conducting nonwithdrawal on his own terms, whereas we may as well assume Dr. Simon is genuinely "bipartisan" until there is definite proof to the contrary. Certainly the CFR en masse is bound to take that line when the crisis comes. Our foreign policy gentry may well decide that the interests of the USA, as CFR-conceived, require letting the invasionite stumblebums off very lightly, but we may stipulate in advance that that conclusion will be quite free of all partisan GOP taint. There's slightly more danger of a Democratic Party taint, actually, an obtrusion of "Just look how we competent folks conduct our invasions and occupations, as for instance in Kosova!" Still, at bottom the CFR/ISG gentry are bipartisan/nonpartisan enough to be getting on with, and so too will their schemes for nonwithdrawal be.

As to the substance of Mr. Kaplan's three similarities, I suspect he has lumped together rather more than the two plans he purports to be comparing. The first two come straight out of the Conventional Wisdom Catechism, it seems to me, once the dwindling band of Crawfordites are excluded as unwise. It's such orthodoxy that it bears repeating:

First, the surge and the new counterinsurgency strategy almost certainly won't work, in part because the war is not just an insurgency war but also a civil war involving three sects (and divisions within those sects) against one another. Second, the U.S. occupation strengthens the insurgents and broadens their support at least as much as it weakens or isolates them.

The one or two percent of anti-hawks who actually know a little something about the fomer "Iraq" may have reservations about the first point. Mr. Badger and Dr. Cobban and Dr. Visser are bound to smell some sulphur in the casual assumption that "sectarianism" really exists and really matters. But 98% of us good guys agree collectively to it, even if our individual views were outvoted in the caucus, and as for the second point, it looks like a full 100% consensus to me. The upshot is that any paleface planmongering that does not come from unrepentant aggression fans is likely to agree that The Surge won't work, that there is some sort of civil war going on already in neo-Iraq, and that it only makes bad things worse that the natives see so many inscrutable armed aliens running around the landscape of "their" "country."

Before I start drawing distinctions rather than obscuring them, here are the concrete recommendations with which Plan C concludes, with numbers added for ease of reference:

The United States should: [1] Declare its intention to disengage the majority of U.S. combat forces from Iraq within twelve to eighteen months, to begin once the results of the surge become known. [1.1] Retain the forces necessary to secure Baghdad International Airport, the Green Zone, and access routes that connect them. [1.2] During the disengagement period, stage the drawdown to maintain the forces in Iraq needed to protect or relocate vulnerable minority populations and suppress insurgent activity in the largely Sunni provinces. [2] Shift focus to containment of the conflict and strengthen the U.S. military position elsewhere in the region. [2.1] Plan for humanitarian contingency operations. [2.2] Refocus on containment of the war in Iraq. [2.3] Reinforce the U.S. military presence elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region, for example, Kuwait; explore options for increasing special operations forces deployed to Jordan; and increase the number of rotational deployments to the region, including joint exercises. [3] Engage Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, members of the UN Security Council, and potential donors in a stabilization plan for Iraq. [3.1 Prepare to provide Jordan with help in managing the cross-border refugee flow. [3.2] Work with the UN secretary-general to form an Iraq stabilization group, including Iran and Syria, with an emphasis on control of borders, management 42 of refugees, economic and technical assistance to Iraq, and diplomatic support for political reconciliation [3.3] Work with the UN, NATO, and neighboring states on plans for humanitarian intervention in the event that violence in Iraq becomes genocidal. [3.4] Act decisively elsewhere in the region, particularly on the Palestine-Israel impasse by articulating a vision for final status, and on support for Lebanese sovereignty.

As a mere curiosity, observe that the Hashimite monarchy gets mentioned twice, whereas most comparable documents pay no attention to it worth mentioning, presumably in accordance with the maxim de minimis non curat lex. On the other hand, Jordan is not required to do anything except be where it is.

The great primâ facie difference between this agenda and that Rube Goldberg contraption out of Ann Arbour that has been discussed already is that everything in is to be done by only one agent, Uncle Sam. This alone makes it vastly more sensible and potentially workable, although to be sure Mr. Kaplan is right to warn us that the Crawfordite extremists are not going to touch most of it unless somehow compelled to. After unity of action, the second big difference from Plan A is that there is no mention of native politics at all. In his analysis, I presume Dr. Simon suggests various things that the Green Zone collaborationist politicians might be well advised to do, but he does not attach sufficient importance to such points to admit them to his executive summary. (For once, by the way, we really have an executive summary, a list of things to be done, even if it is not called that and comes at the end.)

As you recall, Prof. Cole's central gimmick was entirely about native politics. Mr. Kaplan notices that it is there, but he does not sound especially interested in it:

The impending departure of U.S. troops may impel mainstream Sunni insurgents to turn against the jihadists. It may also compel the Sunni Arabs to take part in the negotiations on some national accord, knowing that American troops will not be there to protect them against Shiite or Kurdish reprisals. Cole further recommends holding new provincial elections so that the elected Sunni Arab representatives could stand in for guerrilla groups in the national talks, as Sinn Fein did in Northern Ireland.

The unemphasized part of that paragraph again seems to come rather from Mr. Kaplan's idea of the anti-hawk general consensus than from the two plans specifically compared. Rather puzzlingly, he himself began by distinguishing the position of "congressional Democrats" from the proposals of his planmongers, and the former would seem to me the most suitable pigeon hole in which to file the notion of a salutary shock administered to frivolous indig pols. In any case, Mr. Kaplan is not himself specially interested in the neo-régime, as indeed, why should be be, when he calls his column "war stories"? Still, in that light one is a bit disappointed that he offers no significant military analysis of Dr. Simon and Prof. Cole either. One might even complain that he only brings these characters on stage to lead up to the dismal announcement that there are 651 bombing days left before anything serious can be done about the bushogenic fiasco. Very likely that will prove to be the case, but pointing it out to us resembles a US politics story more than a proper war story. Certainly the planmongers themselves do not make that particular point, or show any sign of not wanting all their suggestions implemented at once.

This brings me to the distinction abbreviated in the title, that Colean planmongering is obsolete, and the Simonian type premature. Pari passu one could, however, say that they have in common that their preferred notions are certainly not going to be realized at the moment. Something like Dr. Simon's may be realized eventually. The Ann Arbour sort of contraption, though, could only have got off the runway if it had been launched very early in the course of the quagmire. If even then. So much is dictated to non-American actors who have no very obvious motives to speak the exact lines that Prof. Cole has written for them that the whole production he envisions would have been possible only with both an "international community" and a local Levantine cast much more willing to do things Uncle Sam's way than at present. It is (barely) conceivable that Plan A might have done the trick if it had been part of a package deal in the fall or winter of 2002-03 specifying that those arrangements were to be imposed on a post-Ba‘th Iraq after the Crawfordites invade and conquer it with explicit authorization from the Security Council behind them. Instead we have watched nearly four years of the Lone Ranger and Tonto before the "problems of success" mounted up to a point where the gruesome twosome had to take serious notice of anybody's ideas but their own.

Starting from where we find ourselves, or rather will find ourselves after The Surge of '07 peters out indecisively, Dr. Simon's Plan C makes such lemonade as it can out of the militant GOP's Lone Rangerism lemon. We can ask other international agents to accommodate themselves to American schemes of glory, but we definitely do have to ask, and we may even be reduced to bargaining and making certain concessions to the lesser breeds without that we should ideally prefer not to have to grant. The CFR/ISG gentry profess to be all in favor of such a basis for foreign and invasion policy. We may get to see the objective sincerity of those professions put to the test: do they really want to be multilateral forever and on principle, or are they only trying to get back to a normalcy where Uncle Sam more or less can write everybody else's lines for her? I expect it will be an interesting show, not only internationally but at Beltway City also, where the CFR/ISG gentry will have to revise Sen. Reid's and Speaker Pelosi's lines as well to obtain their desired nonwithdrawal, and may even collide with recalcitrance on the part of Televisionland and the electorate.

Success is avoiding "irresponsibility" is not guaranteed to Dr. Simon's approach, but with Prof. Cole's approach practical success is unimaginable. Even if we elected Don Juan himself President of the United States, and fortified him with all the powers that the incumbent endeavors to usurp, Uncle Sam would still wind up either garrisoning neo-Iraq forever, or getting out of it indecorously, for all that Plan A does not embrace either horn of the dilemma.

Plan C requires some interior redecoration to make it a marketable product, but the CFR folks still have 651 days to work on it, unless the Crawford cowpokers collapse unexpectedly, and the decorators may pull it off. Doubtless my public relations advice is not worth having, but if asked, I'd advise them to avoid the word "withdraw" and emphasize instead that they propose to "end the occupation" of neo-Iraq, which is close enough to the truth for political purposes. Garrison neo-Iraq forever, but don't get lured into trying to "occupy" it ever again! Clause [1.2] should accordingly be revised so that there is no suggestion of a "disengagement period" that will come to an end. "Disengagement" by itself, however, seems an admirable weasel word for the judicious and responsible combination of nonwithdrawal and nonoccupation, privately conceived of by the foreign policy gentry as a permanent state of affairs although better not publicly paraded as such.

'Tis so judicious and responsible that one wonders why the Crawfordites never thought of it for themselves. The stumblebums never seriously wanted to administer their conquered provinces, after all. If we are seeking individual scapegoats, perhaps it was Sultan Jerry and Khalílzád Pasha who are most to blame for getting the militant GOP tied up, or tied down, in the occupation business. But probably the chief fault should be found elsewhere, in the psychology of the Showboat-in-Chief, so to dub him, or in the political sociology of the Big Management Party. They could never do anything quietly, never restrain themselves from hogging all the limelight available. That self-indulgence would have been injudicious even supposing that pretty well everything they trumpeted in advance had not turned out to be a blunder. Presumably the CFR/ISG gentry will learn from this deplorable example what to avoid when it comes to the marketing and implementation of Plan C or something like it.

"Softly, softly, catchee monkey!"

What Scenario?

In general, it is not a good sign for our higher gurus when they find themselves having to write "just to clarify" and "I was simply saying." In particular,

Just to clarify in light of . . . comments, I was not proposing an optimistic scenario, or, indeed, any scenario at all. I was simply saying that Saudi Arabia and Iran do not have to have a proxy war in Iraq if they don't want to have one, and that it is possible for them to take the prudent steps that would forestall it. Many commentators present the prospect of such a war as inevitable or as preventable only by a continued US military presence. The US presence, however, has made things worse every single one of the past three years, because it unwittingly removes the incentives to compromise from local Iraqi forces and helps to paralyze the neighbors from playing a prominent role. Remove the US military from the equation, I am arguing, and it is far more likely that all parties concerned will begin behaving more responsibly. I cannot guarantee that outcome. I can say that the past 3 years do not make me sanguine that things will get better with a continued US dominance.

Perhaps it might have been better to come back with the famous one-liner "Doctor Hawkswoop refuses to understand me" than to expostulate like that. "Never apologize, never explain" might do also.

Our sympathy should be extended to poor Hawkswoop, Mr. Bones, especially considering that we too failed to notice what JC claims to have been simply saying. If in fact he had said "Saudi Arabia and Iran do not have to have a proxy war in Iraq if they don't want to have one, " we should undoubtedly have noticed it. Nevertheless, our rule is not to impugn anybody's subjective sincerity except at gunpoint, so let us stipulate that he really thinks he simply said it. In any case, it has now been clearly said, and it does to some extent clarify the latest Colean scenario. Of course he then takes back more than he bestowed by rarning that he does not condescend to deal in scenarios, a remark that seems clear and simple enough, but leaves one wondering what word they use in Michigan to describe that cast-of-thousands screenplay published by The Nation. Does "scenario" mean what he expects to happen, as opposed to what he daydreams of making happen? If so, would he complete the reversal of our own usage and call the latest Cole Plan a "forecast"? Yet it is also possible that Don Juan says "scenario" where we should say "situation report," and is reminding Dr. Hawkswoop, correctly, that he plunged straight into prescribing for his patients without setting forth his diagnosis of their ailments as a preliminary step. For all I know, at Ann Arbor everybody is worried about a proxy war between Riyadh and Qom when she speaks of the neo-Iraqi troubles and there is no need to spell it out. In broader circles, however, there are still a few folks like Hawkswoop and us who don't immediately think of the invasionites' many and various problems of success in exactly that light.

It would be interesting to know exactly what was objected to the latest Cole Plan by these objectors I personify as "Dr. Hawkswoop." It seems plain they are even less eager to rush irresponsibly out of the GOP's neo-Iraq than even Prof. Cole. In the abstract, I they might have objected that they are not optimistic that the scheme proposed will allow them to prolong the occupation adequately, but that is an unlikely reading. If Hawkswoop had simply said that, we should almost certainly have had some protestations that an eventual withdrawal was not meant to be precluded altogether. Perhaps it was Dr. H. who brought the proxy war script into the light of day and maintained that that is what the latest Cole Plan would likely lead to? That analysis would be rather unfair to the proud author, who certainly did not write any lines of that sort for the statesmen of Sa‘údiyya and Iran to utter on his stage. However almost any student of the Cole Plan is likely to worry that it contains so many moving parts whose motions must be precisely produced and directed that the whole thing could quite conceivably go haywire. That was one of our own reservations about it, and "avid student" in the Ann Arbour peanut gallery has come to the same conclusion independently. Dr. H. may been troubled that if the central problem is this hypothetical proxy war, the most strikingly new ingredient in the potion prescribed seems a bit off the mark. First we have local elections and then a responsible and respectable and moderate and representative Arab Sunni political class suddenly emerges out of nowhere. That seems to be the chief gimmick, and who would object if it -- very improbably -- happened? But if we suppose that it does, would that suffice to insure that there shall be no such proxy war? Prof. Cole may perhaps be simply not-saying that in that event, M. Bin Sa‘úd could stay home in his palace and have no need to hasten to assist his oppressed connational coreligionists against Safavids at home and in the East. Except that that cannot be right, since the latest Cole Plan specifically includes lines for M. Bin Sa‘úd to utter that will keep poor M. al-Málikí and the U.I.A. gang from overreaching. To quote the pertinent passage again,

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has credibility with Iraq's Sunnis, especially now that he has denounced the US occupation as illegitimate. They could trust his representations . . . .

That makes no sense at all if we imagine M. Bin Sa‘úd refraining from all meddling in the native politics of neo-Iraq. However, once we imagine him meddling, it is difficult not to imagine countermeddling from the direction of Tehran. Perhaps Prof. Cole's imagination works differently than our own, however.

He's written a few lines for his stage Persians to speak as well:

The Shiites will have to demobilize the Mahdi Army and Badr Organization as well, and Iran will have to commit to working with the Maliki government to make that happen.

Whatever the merits of the proposal, it positively demands that there be meddling. So then, the latest Cole Plan has both M. Bin Sa‘úd and the Rev. Khamene’í up to their necks in the domestic affairs of New Baghdad. If Dr. Hawkswoop is alarmed that this arrangement might provoke rather than avoid a proxy war, perhaps he has a certain amount of reason to think so.

Turning to the scriptwriter's rebuttal, he seems to think that his "Taif II" would work better if pretty well everybody is allowed to dabble in neo-Iraqi politics except the US Republicans. On the other hand, they cannot just go away and leave the rest to go to it. The Colean imagination seems to picture the militant invasionites as suddenly converted into something like Bismarck's "honest broker" from the Congress of Berlin. That is very imaginative indeed, at least in the sense of being remote from reality as it appears to most people primâ facie. Are we seriously to expect a strict impartiality from Crawford as regards the meddlings and countermeddlings of Iran and Sa‘údiyya? If JC has given up on influencing the Bushies altogether, are we to expect such impartiality from some Democratic President beginning in January 2009? For that matter, does he seriously believe in it himself? And even if he does, may he not be in some danger of confusing the Form of impartiality (letting all the dabblers dabble equally) with the Matter of impartiality (making sure each dabbler gets only what she deserves)? Prince Bismarck was clear-headed about the distinction -- "Austria had as much right to resist our demands as we had to make them" -- and so his sort of honest broker might do the trick. The Ann Arbour sort, I am not so confident about, let alone the Rancho Crawford sort.

On a narrower front,

I also wrote to an email discussion group: With regard to the fate of the Iraqi Kurds if the US withdraws: I don't believe that the US troops are doing the Kurds of Iraq any good. There are very few US troops in the north. Are there any at all in the KRG? There are some near Kirkuk. Some 3000 GIs were recently withdrawn from Mosul and sent to Baghdad as part of the current security plan. The Kurdistan Regional Government is stable and relatively secure because over 60,000 well-armed and well-trained Peshmerga provide security. The Peshmerga are recognized by the Iraqi constitution as the legitimate security forces of Kurdistan, so there is no reason that the US cannot go on supplying and training them. I don't believe there is any evidence that they need US ground troops in order to survive. The Peshmerga are the best and most committed indigenous military force in Iraq and virtually the only part of the Iraqi army (where they have been detailed to it) that have consistently stood their ground in firefights. The Kurds needed protection when Saddam was in power and had 4,000 remaining tanks with which to menace them. That situation has changed. As for the politics of the situation, the same thing applies here as elswhere. The Kurdish political leadership under Massoud Barzani has been remarkably inflexible with regard to key demands of the Sunni Arabs, and I believe that this inflexibility derives in some large part from a conviction that US troops will protect the Kurds and so they need not negotiate with the Sunni Arabs as equals. Remove the US from the equation, and I expect everyone will be more flexible.

That is a good deal less imaginative and more reality-based. Unfortunately it is rather beside the point, since Free Kurdistan is not occupied in the first place, and for that matter, it is only nominally part of "Iraq" at all.

So much from our own point of view. As regards the "Taif II" script and its science-fictional Lebanonisation of the former "Iraq," it would seem to be an objection that the Free Kurds would have nobody external to dabble for them, but Turkey and Iran and perhaps even Syria to dabble against them. In the worst case, one might even have a contest between the local clients of M. Bin Sa‘úd and those of the Rev. Khamene’í to decide which party shall snatch Kirkuk and the oil away from them. To revert to Aristotle, Prof. Cole considers materialiter that the Free Kurds should not have Kirkuk, but formaliter he does not give them an altogether level playing field when it comes to trying to grab it. Or so it appears to me. He may consider his hypothetical brokerage honest enough either way, as far as I am concerned, but nevertheless they are not the same way. (If I was a Free Kurd myself, I should not trust Juan Cole an inch, though., and it is almost the same when I imagine myself a Twelver under the Crawford occupation.) A really dedicated Lebanonizer might reply with some cogency that the Druze don't have anybody external to dabble for them and yet seem to be doing no worse than the rest. But then, there is nothing as valuable as Kirkuk for the Beirut pols and their patrons abroad to squabble over.

What the presence or absence of Republican Party military forces in the remainder of "Iraq" has to do with the Free Kurds is not very obvious, as indeed Prof. Cole says. The status quo ought to suit him well enough. Nowadays the defensive is so much more effective militarily than the aggressive that the peshmerga ought to suffice to let them keep what they have, and if they can't annex more, well, what foreign hearts would that break? If Dr. Hawkswoop maintains that the Occupying Power can't possibly go away because of Kurdistan, he must be feeling rather unaccountably desperate. There are lots of arguments for the irresponsibility of any serious withdrawal of forces available without the occupation fan being reduced to that. "Proxy war" is not a very good one, me judice, but it is much more plausible than anything to do with the Free Kurds.

The GOP extremists could even withdraw their forces to Free Kurdistan, although their military hired hands do not much like the idea for logistical reasons, finding Kuwait, with its port facilities, much more suitable for their purposes. However, if they can be persuaded to adopt the latest Ann Arbour script -- which they cannot, but let's fantasize! -- a small garrison might be maintained there more for reasons of diplomacy than of strategy. Kurdistan as a Crawford Party protectorate would in many ways be an admirable model, except that unfortunately it could not be imitated colony-wide. The Iranians could do much the same for neo-Iraqi Twelvers, but they would probably be lured into overstepping the bounds of moderation. What wrecks this agreeable daydream is that there is nobody available to do anything of the sort for the Arab Sunnis. A five-way Turkey-Syria-Jordan-Sa‘udiyya-Kuwait condominium would be ridiculous. Any subset of it would be not much better, and supersets of it on behalf of the Sunni International as a whole are even sillier. If such a chimaera could actually exist, it would of course overreach quite as badly on behalf of its neo-Iraqi clients as the "Safavids" would on behalf of theirs. Only the Republicans would reliably make sure that their clients behaved themselves, and that only for the rather dubious reason that they don't actually give a hoot about the Free Kurds.

Oh, well . . . .

But let us not be lured into scenariomongering ourselves, Mr. Bones. At least not at any lofty Colean "What I'd do if I was Weltherrscher" level. We humble may decently go as far as deciding who we'd vote for, had we the misfortune to be neo-Iraqi subjects, for after all, it would not be impossible for us to emigrate to neo-Iraq if we suddenly went bonkers. Beyond that, we had better stick to guessing what is going on now and what might happen tomorrow, and perhaps on occasion trying to play some of the real statespersons' cards for them as a diversion for ourselves rather than anything that we expect them to take notice of.

The Tom, Dick and Harriet Plan for Nonwithdrawal

The old and grumpy paleface planmongers have not been impressive. What do the young whippersnappers advise?

Resolving the chaos in Iraq: Some students have their say By Youssef Benali, Caroline Fawzy and Austin Richardson [Youssef Benali is a graduate student in international studies and diplomacy at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. Caroline Fawzy is a mass communications student at the American University in Cairo. Austin Richardson is a student at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. They co-wrote this article as part of the Soliya Arab-Western intercultural dialogue program. The Daily Star publishes this commentary in collaboration with Search for Common Ground.] The United States-led invasion of Iraq has had devastating consequences for both countries. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the war may now have cost over 600,000 Iraqis their lives. Nearly 3,000 American troops have died and the US continues to spend massive sums on the war. The need for new approaches in Iraq has become more urgent than ever. Changes are needed within the country itself and abroad, and Iraq needs the help of the international community more than ever. We three students - one Moroccan, one Egyptian and one American - present our "common sense" proposal for the future of Iraq. The major problems facing Iraq today are as much economic as they are military. The power and sewage systems in Baghdad have been an embarrassment for years - after all, they worked under Saddam Hussein, but crumbled in American hands, largely due to a ferocious insurgency the US was not prepared for. Newsweek magazine's "conservative" estimate of unemployment in Iraq is 30-40 percent. In parts of the unstable Sunni triangle, that figure may be as high as 70 percent. What Iraq needs is a stable economy and many thousands of new jobs. Security is a prerequisite for economic growth. American troops can suppress violence in the areas where they are present, but as soon as they move on, violence spikes anew. Iraq is fiercely divided among ethnic and religious groups, and those who support a continued American presence argue that ethnic cleansing and even greater violence are real risks. We agree that a total withdrawal of American troops is not an option today; the security of Iraq would be compromised and the country's internal strife would devolve into chaos.

TD&H seem to have fallen for that sinister brainwashing about innate "sectarianism" amongst Uncle Sam's neo-Iraqi subjects. Don't they understand that "fiercely divided among ethnic and religious groups" is only a superficial appearance, grossly exaggerated by the mainstream media, whether from interested motives or out of sheer irresponsibility and fickleness?

They seem a little embarrassed about frankly saying they want the militant GOP to remain, hence that fake distinction between "those who support" a continuation of the occupation, and themselves who only "agree" with the supporters proper. On the other hand, they do manage to more or less get it said.

The obvious difference from the senescent planmongers' stuff is that they propose to put economics first. That emphasis could mean Dr. Marx, or it could mean AEIdeology, we'll have to see how they explain it. In any case, it is bound to mean that politics does not come first, and therefore to be, in our view, spinach as a basis for policymaking, although it might lead to some interesting observations on the state of the quagmire.

Iraq's internal political problems must be solved by Iraqis and by their elected leadership. However, one of the greatest mistakes the US has made in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime was to shift an excessive amount of responsibility onto the weak Iraqi political structure, and too quickly. American and British forces are currently the only guarantors of stability in Iraq. US forces, in all truth, will probably need to stay in Iraq for many years to come, as an insurance policy, as they did in Japan, Germany and South Korea. Of course, the responsibility of keeping the streets safe must, at a certain point, shift onto the shoulders of Iraqis, whose security forces must be ramped up.

Rather an extreme set of nonwithdrawers! If their argument is really based on the analogies suggested, they seem badly informed about modern history. If the Crawfordites' troopers are to hang around even after the natives can ensure basic law and order, what conjectured misfortune is it that they are to be "insurance" against, exactly, that would correspond to North Korea or the Soviet Union? If they mean the Safavids, they should say so. And similarly if they mean "global terrorism" or Islamophalangitarianism or whatever the bogey may be. It would be interesting if they thought the paleface invaders will have to stay in order to prop up the local economy, in line with how they started, but no doubt that is my idea rather than theirs.

Partitioning Iraq will never be a solution - as in Bosnia, ethnic and religious groups are still relatively mixed, and partition would involve the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands. But Iraq has a much better chance of surviving as a united country if other nations invest in its success. The United States should go to Iraq's neighbors in the region and secure pledges for military or economic assistance. At the very least, they must promise not to work against the process of rebuilding Iraq into a stable, unified country. A few years ago, of course, the US disregarded the United Nations and unilaterally waged war on the Iraqi regime, implying that it didn't really need the rest of the world to approve or disapprove of its actions. But it has become clear that an international role in Iraq is necessary. US President George W. Bush may be able to convince the UN to play a much larger role in Iraq. The UN's position as a neutral player in conflict zones and history of successful peacekeeping operations could temper the insurgency, and provide an international military presence that would not be seen as an enemy occupier. The UN also has expertise in humanitarian relief and post-conflict reconstruction which would be useful in Iraq.

Nobody respectable is for partition, of course, to favour it would be like entertaining dounts about Absolute Free Trade or Darwinism, a position that excludes one from all decent company. They may be young, but they are not shamelesss profligates.

With the United Nations, we finally get the sort of thing traditionally expected from juveniles, naïve "idealism" and so on. TD&H start from the particular puzzle that they happen to want to solve and conclude that China and Peru "must" do so-and-so in order to help them reach their proposed destination. Unfortunately at Beijing and Lima that is not where the statespersons in power start at all. Peccatum originale is still with us, and so they still begin with "What is in it for us?," to speak crudely. TD&H don't even hint at why pacifying neo-Iraq along their lines would be good for everybody international. Maybe they are realists rather than idealists, maybe we all need to buy some "insurance" against whatever-it-is, but until they fill in that blank, there is nothing to be said one way or the other.

After they have mentally replaced the GOP troopers in neo-Iraq with UN peacekeepers, it sounds as if the latter are still doing exactly the same sort of occupational therapy, but somehow the neo-subjects will not mind it as much. It is difficult to imagine any way that expectation could be other than naïve. Furthermore, their schemes are likely to offend the small handful of people who really care about the United Nations. At present the organization has done no worse than license the extremist Republican aggression retrospectively; TD&H propose that they take it over altogether.

Also, convincing Arab states to send troops to help maintain security in Iraq, and to contribute financial aid to the government there, may be much easier if troops were sent in under a UN umbrella instead of as part of a US coalition. The whole world, after all, should be invested in Iraq's future given its oil reserves and strategic importance in the region. The UN might even consider governing the country itself as an informal protectorate, as it has done (more or less) in Kosovo and Bosnia, learning from the varying levels of its success in these countries.

If anybody is seriously persuaded by that appeal, I daresay she could be talked into agreeing that the UN ought to govern everywhere "as an informal protectorate." A World Government that actually governs the world is a very familiar form of naïve idealism. Perhaps one need say no more than that.

However, filling neo-Iraq with troops from the Arab states could easily be a cynical power play on behalf of the Sunni International and nothing to do with idealism. TD&H have indicated clearly enough that they do not much care for poor M. al-Málikí's neo-régime and consider that the natives have been handed too much democracy too soon. Well, OK, I don't mind, a policy may warrant support even if it is based in cynicism and communitarian selfishness rather than Cloudcuckooland liberality. Maybe it really would be best to hand "Iraq" back to its natural masters, judiciously ignoring all mere numbers and percentages. To do so under cover of the United Nations, though? Surely that is a ludicrous idea, not only because the UN should not connive in such a plan, but because it could not pull it off if it tried. I'm not sure anybody could, but if that is what TD&H really want, they should have enough sense to petition Crawford to do the job for them and not waste time at Turtle Bay. They might also address themselves to M. ‘Abdulláh Bin Sa‘úd, who could perhaps finance their project privately and require not much more from the militant Republicans, who are having certain difficulties with Congress and the electorate at the moment, than a green light. For Pete's sake, haven't they ever heard of the proverb "Too many cooks spoil the broth"?

The next step for Iraq would be economic development, and again, the UN's experience in these areas is vital. Only after Iraq's economy is well on its way to recovery should the question of Iraq's government be considered, because the government rushed into place in Iraq is unstable and is not addressing the concerns of all parties in Iraq, particularly its Sunni and Kurdish minorities. Reconsidering the Constitution and form of government is sorely needed. Stability first, infrastructural development second, and an Iraqi government last. Unless the world gives the Iraqi people something solid to stand upon, their future will be a nightmare. If everyone offers a hand, Iraq could be pulled from the jaws of catastrophe.

"Reconsidering" Khalílzád Pasha's "constitution" as TD&H envision the process can only mean tossing it in the waste basket, for, oddly enough, there is not a single word in it about neo-Iraq being a UN protectorate. Even the loosest construction could scarcely read that unexpected implication between the lines somewhere.

Either TD&H simply don't care about law and legitimacy, or they believe that the United Nations ex officio can never behave in violation of them, and that explains why they would like to drag it in to their plan. The point is arguable academically, I suppose, although I'd be found arguing against their position myself. Perhaps communis error fecit ius applies, and once "we all" agree to be international vigilantes, international vigilantism is perfectly acceptable. Whatever the situation de jure, there is not going to be any such agreement de facto, and especially not after the Security Council has proceeded for years on the theory that neo-Iraq is to be "sovereign" and "independent" and "democratic" and "constitutional." These are, to be sure, only the Four Pillars of Pretending, but all the same a great deal of political and diplomatic capital has been invested in them, and the notion that they must be written off in toto and then we, the international community, shall start over from scratch and occupy neo-Iraq really right is pure moonshine.

Considered as specification of a goal rather than a plan for the journey, the "vision" of TD&H is perhaps not unattainable. Make a coup, trash the GOP-imposed framework, install a Sunni Strongman who adores economic development and detests disobedience, postpone democracy a generation or three -- it all sounds plausible enough and it fits admirably into the really existing Levant. Unfortunately, it also sounds a bit unedifying when one spells it out unmistakably. The desire to find some figleaf to wrap around such a product's nakedness is natural, but surely TD&H can find a better quality figleaf than the positively grotesque one they have chosen?

How to Get Out of Iraq by Juan Cole

We can not rudely ignore a whole new Panacea of the Month revealed from Ann Arbour, Mr. Bones, but it is not worth copying out the whole screed. In any case, the first half is devoted to listing the blunders of the Crawfordites, which is all very well in its way, but has not the slightest tendency to help get the extremist GOP out of "Iraq." The second half is scarcely a plan or a policy either, it is only a scattershot wish list.

The only demands made on the actual perps is that they must (1) vaguely announce an eventual withdrawal, and (2) comply with the CFR/ISG gentry's wish to negotiate directly with Syria and the mad mullahs. After that, all sorts of amazing things are required to happen before it would be safe to have the paleface invasionites actually go away, but none of these things are to be done by, or in the name of, Uncle Sam. Prof. Cole has in mind to dictate to, let's see, the United Nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, "Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait." Plus needless to say, he dictates to our hapless neo-Iraqi subjects most of all. There is quite an elaborate series of hoops for them to jump through. The theory of the pudding is apparently that everybody is so eager to see the backs of the militant GOP that they'll do everything Juan Cole tells them to. He thinks he has a reasonable supply of carrots to distribute amongst the trained animals so that the performance he envisions can come off without any resort to sticks. Nothing less likely. Since Prof. Cole wields no sticks of his own, we need not go into that side of the matter, except to remark that if he wants President Bush to do the necessary poking and prodding for him, he should say so expressly. If he spelled that point out, however, he might see how unlikely the whole scenario is.

The Panacea itself, the gimmick du jour, is a two step process: (1) "The first step in Iraq must therefore be holding provincial elections," and then, hey, presto! (2) "A newly elected provincial Sunni Arab political class could stand in for the guerrilla groups in talks." The possibility that (2) might perhaps not result from (1) is not considered at all. If it had been, our Rube Goldberg might have gone back to his drawing board before offering his latest gizmo to the world at large. I can't see myself how anybody's sticks or carrots could make (2) happen, so presumably it is to be accomplished by sorcery or divine intervention. That is, I cannot imagine (2) really happening, the sudden production of an authentic and effective (and of course "moderate") leadership for the Arab Sunni theocommunity out of the present total disarray. That's a bit too much like Mr. Hoyle's 747 produced by a tornado passing through a junk yard for my taste. Evidently Prof. Cole is not impressed with the quality of the existing Sunni collaborationist politicians. That is reasonable enough, if we grade them absolutely, but if we grade on a curve taking account of their Free Kurd and Twelver counterparts, they are no worse than anybody else. Political talent is thin on the ground in neo-Iraq, for fairly obvious historical reasons.

Local elections in the governates are not a bad idea, and indeed, I believe Khalílzád Pasha's "constitution" calls for them, should anybody suppose that sort of thing to matter. Nevertheless, the chances that local elections would suddenly undo the disintegration of the former Sunni Ascendancy are nil A slight reduction in paranoia about the "Safavids" at New Baghdad might reasonably be hoped for, but perhaps even that would not happen, because the GZ police and secret police and army, as well as the Republican Party invaders, would still be able to run around anywhere they like, unchecked by local authority. The Arab Sunnis are in a curious ideological position here, because nobody wants centralization and loathes any hint of cantonization or so-called "federalism" than they do. The existing "national" police and secret police and army are just what they ought to be, except that unfortunately they happen to be in the wrong hands.

I digress, for Dr. Cole does not propose to dictate that local authorities should have additional powers, only that elections for them must produce a responsible Sunni Arab political class ex nihilo. He does not quite put all his eggs in that one basket, however: "Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has credibility with Iraq's Sunnis, especially now that he has denounced the US occupation as illegitimate. They could trust his representations . . . ." Well I daresay they could, but would they? Those who consider the Islamic Emirate or the Ba‘th as the legitimate rulers of "Iraq" are not likely to take that view, and probably not all the GZ collaborationists or neuters are particularly fond of Sa‘údiyya either. And in any case, are His Petrolæus Majesty's representations to direct the government of "Iraq"? How will that arrangement work, exactly?

Don Juan has an answer prepared for that question, however: "The Saudi government should then be invited to reprise the role it played in brokering an end to the Lebanese civil war at Taif in 1989, at which communal leaders hammered out a new national compact, which involved political power-sharing and demobilization of most militias." The analogy is at least a little less dotty and irrelevant than dragging in Northern Ireland, but if Taif is the Colean idea of political success, perhaps failure is to be preferred. Had the militant GOP been occupying Lebanon in 1989 on the understanding that as soon as the Taif schemes were completely implemented, they would condescend to go away, they'd be there still.

One is tempted to guess that Prof. Cole understands as much and is cynically in favor of the GOP hanging around neo-Iraq indefinitely. Perhaps in the spring of 2009 "President Clinton" can send him out as proconsul to attempt to make sure that his whole laundry list of requirements is met and a physical withdrawal of forces becomes possible without gross irresponsibility?

The suspicion is unjust, and violates our own principle of taking everybody's sincerity and good faith in politics at face value unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Doubtless Don Juan would like to see "Iraq" a nation once again, but he'd like to see all sorts of other things about what sort of a nation it is to be as well. Bundling his whole wish list in one package leaves him in a position that is hard to distinguish from the Crawfordites' own, although doubtless he does not make his demands impossible deliberately in order to avoid any withdrawal worth mentioning. For that matter, though, some of the Crawfordites would really like to withdraw completely, and they, too, do not disingenuously frame their demands so as to make quite sure they can never be met.

JC is dimly aware that outsiders might see a certain convergence between his views and those of the present Administration, but he thinks it sufficient differentiation from the GOP extremists that he really would like a withdrawal, whereas they would not. That is only partially correct as a matter of Crawfordology. At the moment, it is very difficult for a hard-core aggression fan to frankly state her own position and argue, in the face of the opinion polls, that neo-Iraq must be garrisoned forever. At the moment, she has the Surge of '07 to fall back on, which she believes in and Prof. Cole does not. No convergence there. But that show will not last forever. It won't even last through November 2008, and that means that even a "successful" Surge will turn to crunch before the next general election. For the moment, Colean planmongering has simply nothing to do with Realpolitik, none of the people with real sticks and carrots in hand give a hoot what Ann Arbour recommends. When the crunch comes, however, perhaps in ten or twelve months, the aggression faction may take over his method and say "Of course we are for a responsible withdrawal, and by 'responsible' we mean that conditions X and Y and Z must obtain."

Militant Republicans are not likely to care for Prof. Cole's exact X and Y and Z, which are outrageously multilateral from their point of view. The idea that some sort of standing international conference or committee, "Taif II," is to achieve what the Big Management Party has signally failed to achieve by itself is bound to be intolerable to their amour-propre. But they can come up with their own unattainable preconditions for a "responsible" withdrawal easily enough. Thay can appeal to considerations not available to Prof. Cole, perhaps especially those associated with the Party's "global war on terror," but also including decently veiled allusions to the really central American concerns in the Middle East, which center around the Gulf of Petroleum and the Tel Aviv statelet. Probably we shall be warned that a complete military withdrawal from neo-Iraq would be irresponsible as long as we are not absolutely certain that the supply of fossil fuels and the security of Israel -- a very flexible concept -- will not thereby be imperiled. Better safe than sorry, don't you know? Plus they will have some sort of Iran card to play as well, even if it comes to no more than suddenly discovering that they have been at "war" with the Islamic Republic ever since 1979 without noticing it. There will be plenty of material to frame impossible conditions from without bringing in either regional diplomacy or the domestic arrangements inside "Iraq," neither of which topics much interests Televisionland and the electorate. None of this guarantees that the aggression faction will make it safely through the presidential campaign and obtain another four years to muck about freely in Mesopotamia under "President McCain" or the like, but their plight is far from desperate, and they can scarcely fail to get some mileage out of the Colean, or "impossible preconditions," metaplan.

The narrow gimmick about local elections magically creating a responsible and respectable Sunni Arab leadership is of little use to militant Republicans as it stands, but some of their cleverer tank-thinkers may avail themselves of the general idea, pointing out that the broken crockery will not really be fixed until such a leadership emerges somehow, which happy event will of course require a continued Republican Party presence in neo-Iraq. As to actually making the happy event happen, they are nearly as impotent as Ann Arbour and you and I. GOP geniuses can consider the possibilities of a coup d'état, however, as presumably Prof. Cole does not allow himself to do. That would mean throwing down their own political house of cards, to be sure, Khalílzád Konstitution and "democracy" and all, but if that were the only alternative to being ignominiously pushed out of their own neocolony, they would no doubt consider it. No suitable Arab Sunni candidate for the next George Washington of Iraq immediately comes to mind. Dr. ‘Alláwí, whose name always occurs in such speculations, would not do at all, being neither a general nor a Sunnite. Nor, for that matter, politically competent. Still, "Saddam II" might conceivably work, if the right neo-Washington could be found or fabricated, whereas "Taif II" is only moonshine. Rather agreeable moonshine, admittedly, for it would be nice if the world worked more like that than it does, but . . . .

Putting Humpty-Dumpty Together Again

Wow, look at this, Mr. Bones! Did anybody ever tell you that al-Jazeera is only a front for the Tel Aviv statelet's Mossad? Golly!

Yesterday I noted that the 1920 Revolution Brigades had changes its name to HAMAS-Iraq in what seemed to be a bid to unite the Iraqi mujahideen outside of the Iraqi Islamic State (al-Qaeda). Today, the Islamic Army in Iraq (Jaysh al-Islami) has released a very long, very angry denunciation of the Iraqi Islamic State and al-Qaeda in Iraq (available at the IAI site and on many forums). Jaysh al-Islami is one of the largest and most important of the Sunni insurgency groups, and has been repeatedly mentioned as one engaged in talks with the Iraqi government and with the United States. This statement marks one of the most direct and open confrontations with AQI and the IIS that has yet appeared - far more direct and clear than the HAMAS statement which we debated yesterday. The IAI statement comes in response to a speech by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi which had demanded that all jihadist factions come under the banner of the Iraqi Islamic State. The IAI begins by laying down its principles and its history, comparing its four years of armed resistance to the occupation favorably to what al-Qaeda had managed. It blasts Abu Omar for dividing Muslims and the jihad, spreading internal conflict instead of unifying their efforts: the mujahideen should be responding to the aggression of the Americans and Iranians and Sufis, not fighting against each other. The IAI complains about al-Qaeda's practice of declaring takfír on all those who disagree with it, and of killing people it declares káfir who are perfectly good Muslims. The IAI calls for pragmatism and a level of moderation - for instance, it decries Abu Omar's demands that all Sunni women wear the niqáb by pointing out that women wearing the niqáb come under greater scrutiny from the American and Iraqi armies and that this imposes unnecessary burdens on them. It complains about al-Qaeda members killing good Muslims, attacking other jihadists, ransacking their homes, and of doctrinal and physical intimidation. Throughout, the statement blasts Abu Omar and al-Qaeda for seeking to impose its control over organizations which have acted independently and successfully for years, and for accusing all who refuse to submit to al-Qaeda of being American agents. The IAI then responds to a range of criticisms leveled against it. It denies having negotiated with the Americans (and says that it knows of no major jihadist group which has), but keeps the door open: doesn't Abu Omar understand the difference between negotiating to secure the fruits of victory and a surrender? It denies categorically having any relations with the Baath party or Baathists. It admits talking to Yosri Fouda of al-Jazeera for a documentary film, but denied that talking to al-Jazeera means that they are conspiring with the Mossad - pointing out that many al-Qaeda people had also talked to Fouda and to al-Jazeera. It says that the IAI will talk to any media which help it advance the cause of the Iraqi jihad - something which al-Qaeda of all organizations should understand (a less-than-veiled criticism of the publicity seeking of the AQI leaders). Finally, it makes a point of denying that it had received any financial or other support from any Arab government or Iran, only from Muslims supportive of jihad in Iraq. After all this, it turns to what should be done. It is witheringly critical of Abu Omar's attempt to describe everyone outside of the Iraqi Islamic State as kufr, and to make fighting the armies of Arab governments more of a priority than fighting the Americans. It then calls on the ulema of the Islamic world to issue clear fatwas in support of the jihad in Iraq. It calls on Osama bin Laden to intervene with al-Qaeda in Iraq to stop its divisive rhetoric and actions. And it calls on al-Qaeda in Iraq to review its actions and to correct its mistakes before it is too late. There's a lot of noise out there about tribes rising up against al-Qaeda, which I take with considerable skepticism, but this statement posted on the IAI website speaks for itself. It's the most concrete evidence I've yet seen of real splits between the IIS/AQI and the other non-AQ parts of the Islamist insurgency. It may or may not be a coincidence that the influential Islamist Hamid al-Ali almost simultaneously wrote that the Iraqi Islamic State should be seen as just one faction among many in the Iraqi jihad and should stop trying to monopolize it. (Both Ali and the IAI have come under pretty heavy fire in the jihadi forums, it's worth noting.) Whether this should be read as a sign of IIS/AQI strength rather than weakness, as suggested by Greg Gause, is an important question...the IAI statement could be seen as a desperate attempt to staunch the flow of support away from itself towards al-Qaeda, rather than as the reaction of a strong, confident movement. I don't know. Nor do I think that this should be read as an indicator of the success (or failure) of the American "surge" - I think it has more to do with the internal politics of the Sunni insurgency than with American efforts. But as with yesterday's post, consider this another data point [that] deserves attention.

Well, yes, please go plot the good Associate Professor's point on our wall chart here in the command bunker at once, would you, Mr. Bones? And remind me tomorrow or the day after to worry about who Greg Gause is. Humpty-Dumpty went smash four years ago, so there can't possibly be anything urgent about these latest press releases from His Majesty's assembled cavalry and infantry.

Answers Without Questions about "News-Approach"

Do you think there's maybe a link or three missing here, Mr. Bones?

Reidar Visser said [to Mr. Badger] I am glad you put that sensationalist NYT headline about Sistani in context. These “advisers” and “aides” of Sistani are just rank and file members of his bureaucracy – many of them may have closer ties to the political parties than to Sistani himself – but journalists like to call them “key advisors” whenever they manage to land an interview with them. They contradict each other all the time; the important thing to look for when it comes to Sistani is not the rumours but the fatwas and pronouncement which he actually issues via his office. Also thanks for great coverage of the national reconciliation process (or the lack thereof). It is a sad fact of this “process” that the media makes much of even the paltriest of steps forward, while less attention is accorded to the measures that could have brought some real rapprochement. Hence, we hear a lot about “meetings”, “contacts”, “conferences” and bills that are on their way through the governmental machinery. What really counts, however, is actual introduction of bills into parliament for adoption, and, of course, progress on the constitutional revision track.

"Sensationalist NYT headline"?

At the NYTC the management must be deliberately aiming at a dull exterior finish, at making the printable news seem more like school than like recess. Therefore, no sensational headlines, and no comic strips either. I'm still a little shocked that they should condescend to admit coloured photographs, myself, Mr. Bones.

Dr. Visser's threshold of sensationalisation is likely to be lower than our own, but Norway must be even more so than we think of it as, if our poor old Aunt Nitsy can really look like a yellow journalist tart to him.

Recall that you and I felt a slight jolt at the original (reportedly mistaken) report ourselves. We did not guess that the report was mistaken, of course, we only thought it a bit out of line with our own conception of M. al-Sístání's line. An easy jolt to get over it was, with a little reflection on our part that perhaps Mercy and Justice are not on quite the same terms at Najaf as here in the former Christojudaeandom. Our notions are that "leading clerics" probably ought to err in favour of Mercy, that it is somehow vaguely indecorous or unbecoming for them to insist upon strict Justice. Clearly all that was but a mote in our own eye, and nothing at all to do with M. al-Sístání! Five seconds' reflection revealed as much, and then we devoted perhaps another five seconds to remembering all the crimes of the Ba‘th against the Twelvers in general, and against the Najaf Hawza in particular, all the deluge of causes that might make even a "quietist" "cleric" hesitate to be quite as forgiving and forgetting as we aliens busybodies might prefer other folks' quietist clerics to be. Ten seconds thought in all, then, Mr. Bones, and that was that. We had accommodated the slight jolt.

And now it seems we must unaccommodate it. But that's easy enough, we have only to say "Ahmad Chalabí" and hey, presto! suddenly we know where we REALLY are. Those nice old gentlemen with their beards and their turbans and their scarcely comprehensible disputations about _istishab_ and whatnot are much as we would wish them to be, and the real snake in the grass is not merely of a known species, the neo-conman, but individually and by name only too familiar to us. Indeed, one might even score this round "Najaf 1, Crawford 0," since the principal nice old gentleman seem to be a good deal less vulnerable to Chalabí snow jobs than mediocre middle-aged Yalies are.

So we think in Massachusetts, Mr. Bones, but in Norway Dr. Visser thinks otherwise. He was sensationalised by report of the spectre of a Stern Unforgiving Sistani, it looks like, and now that it is reported that there exists no such hobgoblin, he, too, will have to reconsider his mental accommodations. There should be a soft landing for him as well, unless I misunderstand his very peculiar vicarious partisanship altogether -- as possibly I may.

But it is Mr. Badger's alleged contextualization that interests me most:

Certainly the lies in and of themselves are important, but equally important is the news-approach that eliminates local background, making people tend to accept cartoon-like lack of background as something perfectly normal.

Ah well, if its only to be a matter of "news-approaches," then! De gustibus non disputandum, and we still remain free, Mr. Bones, to skip over all those local-background heaps of anecdotal evidence that various persons keep heaping up for various purposes, a few of those purposes possibly innocent.

Look at Mr. Badger's own practise, Mr. Bones! Does he anthologise for us ignoramuses random subject-on-the-street interviews after the fashion of Anthony Shadid or Nir Rosen, for instance? Not at all. What he really likes best in the invasionized neo-Levant is the mind-bending coffee-house intellectual and ineffectual stuff. And so do we, and that's why we read him and get bored much sooner with journalism-schooled Shadids and Rosens who try to write "vivid" stories with "impact" about the GOP's colonies on the same lines as they would scribble such stories about the GOP Heimatland itself.

They labour in vain, it seems to me, all these vivid-impact purveyors, no matter whether they try to spark up al-Fallúja IQ or only Philadelphia PA.

How then, Mr. Bones? What sort of "news-approach" should WE aim to impose, then?

Astaghfirulláh KECEKE.

Some Salutary Scandalum Magnatum

From Professor Lynch:

Lucky timing Fortunately for me, my week on the road coincided with the Arab summit in Riyadh, which means that nothing of any real value was missed. Much adulation of the Custodian of the Holy Places in the Saudi media (and American), and blithering on about how this time things might go differently because of the astonishingly amazing Custodian et al - a relief, because saves me the trouble of trying to catch up! Because nothing much is likely to come of any of it - the Iran stuff likely more important than the Israel stuff, from what I can tell. Posted on April 03, 2007 at 01:38 PM

Speaker Pelosi gets her putdownance too, in the peanut gallery attachment to the above. In response to the direct question, "What do you make of Pelosi's visit to Damascus?," the professor talks some scarcely intelligible jive about the petroleum market: no Nancy, no Syria.

(Ah, if only ignoring vainglorious showboaters would really make them go away!)

The Great Divide

What plan do you suppose Ann Arbour really want to impose on the neo-Iraqis, Mr. Bones?

Perhaps -- though only perhaps -- we had a brief glimpse of the true Colean Vision this morning:

MENA in Cairo is reporting that Harith al-Dhari, a leader of the Sunni fundamentalist Association of Muslim Scholars, is denying reports that the US has reached out to Sunni Arab insurgents in Iraq. "America might have spoken with ineffective parties that have no say whatsoever in the Iraqi resistance," al-Dhari is quoted as saying. He also maintained that the US presence in Iraq fuels the violence, and that plans for federalism are aimed at breaking up the country. Al-Dhari's allegation is given some credence by the denial being issued by Salah Umar al-Ali, an ex-Baathist dissident, that he had been contacted by the Iraqi government in an attempt to reach out to the ex-Baath leadership. The claim that the Iraqi government was talking to him was carried by al-Hayat recently. If Iraqi officials are lying to al-Hayat about al-Ali, they are probably lying about the whole range of alleged contacts. So far, both Bush and al-Maliki seem still determined to crush their enemies rather than trying to bring them in from the cold.

Before we get to what may be the great discrimen rerum between Prof. Cole and Ms. Sapientia Conventionalis, there is at least one minor distinction to notice, a matter of low fact rather than lofty "narrative" or ideology. M. al-Dárí speaks of "ineffective parties that have no say whatsoever in the Iraqi resistance," which implies the existence of other parties that do seriously matter. Prof. Cole and Sappy and the militant Republicans all agree with the fugitive statesman about that point, as far as I can discern. It is possible that poor M. al-Málikí and the U.I.A. caucus know better.

Not to beg the question, we might say rather "perhaps they think differently," but why not beg the question, since we've already decided that our answer is better? Sobie spiewamy a Muzom, Mr. Bones, we are not out to persuade anybody or market any product.

If our own hypothesis is correct, the sort of imposition that Ann Arbour and Times Square and Rancho Crawford more or less verbally agree on is bound to fail. They cannot pander to "the Arab Sunnis," because there no longer exists any such political creature to pander to. Push Affirmative Action beyond the limits of sanity, not to mention equity, let the natural masters of "Iraq" have ten or twelve votes apiece while Twelvers get only one -- nothing will come of it all the same. The "community" that M. al-Dárí fancies he speaks for has passed beyond fragmentation into outright disintegration. The fugitive pol probably thinks he stands admirably in the middle of the road, a bitter enemy of the Green Zone neo-régime, but not actually shooting at its agents and their paleface patrons. But it is much more likely that he is really only in a void. Most of the rest of the natural masters at least recognize one of the three principal neo-régimes, that of the Ba‘th, that of the Islamic Emirate, or that of the GZ collaborationists. Whatever M. al-Dárí may think in all sincerity, setting up on behalf of "None of the Above" is probably not going to prove a helpful contribution towards Sunnite ‘asabiyya.

As we said, however, the Crawfordites and the respectable American press and Prof. Cole all assume the contrary. "Arab Sunnis" constitute a panderable-to entity in their view, and thus the intramural disagreements of these planmongers are mainly about the exact techniques that will ensure success. As to poor M. al-Málikí and all his "sectarian" "fundamentalists," no doubt 95% of the reason they don't care for that sort of imposition is that they don't think "the Arab Sunnis" deserve to be pandered to. Yet there may be a small percentage of political insight involved as well, especially in the immediate vicinity of the Rev. ‘Abd al-‘Azíz al-Hakím.

It is rather a strange consensus than Juan and Sappy and Dubya have somehow converged upon. Why should they be most eager to make concessions to the folks that are actually shooting at the Occupying Power and its neo-régime? If their maxim is "The wheel that squeaks loudest must have the most grease," such a policy might be rendered more intelligible, but I have yet to hear any of them allude to the proverb in question or to anything like it. Even if they did, there are certain antecedent objections to a policy that positively rewards troublemakers that probably ought to rule it out. In fact, they did not leap straight to this odd consensus the morning after the aggression, it is a corner they have painted themselves into gradually -- perhaps one might even say, dialectically.

For the moment, however, let us pass over the history of it and return to the quotation we started with. The sting is in the tail: Bush seem[s] still determined to crush [his] enemies rather than trying to bring them in from the cold." (Poor M. al-Málikí does not really belong in that sentence. Perhaps we may get back to him briefly at the end.)

So there is our Great Divide, Mr. Bones: at Ann Arbour it would no doubt be flatly denied that any such consensus exists at all. Mr. Bush and the GOP extremists are only pretending to want to pander to "the Arab Sunnis," whereas Don Juan -- along with (I presume) conventional journalistic wisdom -- really and sincerely wants to impose that plan.

The practical and theoretical upshot is interesting. Since Don Juan's actual powers of imposition are indistinguishable from zero, what are we to infer if the policy in question does not in fact work out? By his hypothesis, that would be chiefly because the Crawfordites will have never wanted it to work; by ours, chiefly because the object proposed is intrinsically impossible. Whether the militant GOP will fail to do what nobody can do after really trying or only pretending to try to do it is a separate question for us, and a somewhat less important one than the success-or-failure question.

Still, and as usual, we are willing to stipulate other people's political sincerity. Crawfordology is far from an exact science, but it sure looks as if the invasionites would be very pleased to bring "the Arab Sunnis" in out of the cold. We doubt that pulling that trick off is possible at all, and even if it were, that such a troupe of clowns as the Bushies could manage it, but there is no evidence I can think of to suggest that they would not like to.

In order to suggest that such evidence might exist, Don Juan had to resort to that amalgamated final sentence of his that we disassembled. It would be absurd to deny that poor M. al-Málikí and the U.I.A. are not eager to go along for this particular ride. Of course the invasionites have the whip hand over them, and they are required to pretend to want whatever Crawford thinks they ought to want, but their real attitude is so patent that even the invasion-language press has noticed it.

Prof. Cole seems to be guilty of a serious offense against the received canons of tertiary education, namely simplism. It is not just a dichotomy of "pretending" and "sincerity" that is called for in such a case, one must further distinguish between "sincere pretending" and "pretended pretending," so to speak. JC is entitled to his guess that the President is "sincerely pretending" to want extreme Affirmative Action for the Arab Sunnis of neo-Iraq -- that is, that Master Dubya authentically and unfeignedly wishes so to pretend. Our own guess is that the laddie is not pretending at all. Take your pick, but don't muddle up either choice with what poor M. al-Málikí has been reduced to.

(The question of whether poor M. al-Málikí or his minions has been guilty of "lying" to a Sunnintern organ like Al-Hayát about secret contacts with this or that subfragment of the former Sunni Ascendancy in "Iraq" may be too speculative to be worth bothing about. If pursued, though, the same sort of distinctions would be appropriate. Were they sincerely seeking negotiations? Were they sincerely attempting an impossible thing? Were they only pretending to seek negotiations, whether because they themselves wanted to pretend or because Khalílzád Pasha forced them to? Furthermore, if what they say about the matter is factually inaccurate, and they know it, do they expect anybody to be deceived by these "lies" of theirs? It's quite a can of worms, really, and perhaps not important enough to be worth the trouble of trying to sort it out exactly. But God knows best.)