Hubal, Hubal, Bring Back Hubal!

A "manifestation of polytheism" might be rather fun, actually, especially if presided over by idolators with good taste who erect a Parthenon or two. In the modern Middle East, however, since the Ottomans snagged it, if not from well before that, the aesthetic level has been deplorable, be the theological level what it may. The Bani Shirk have not erected anything worth the dynamite it would take to get rid of it, and neither have the Bani Takfír.

Iran says Saudis can curb divisive religious statements Tehran : Iran announced on Sunday that the Saudi Arabian government has the ability to counter those deviant Salafi and Wahabbi clerics who have called for the demolition of Shia shrines. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said such statements will cause a "schism in the Islamic world."[1] Such statements are far from the declared position of Saudi officials, and Iran is certain that Saudi officials have the power to prevent such statements from being disseminated, Hosseini told reporters at his weekly press briefing. Some Saudi Wahabbi clerics have stated that the Shia shrines in Iraq are a manifestation of polytheism and should be destroyed. Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Taskhiri, the secretary general of the World Forum for the Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought, said such fatwas, issued by errant Wahabbi clerics, will allow the global arrogance (imperialist powers) to take advantage of the situation to sow discord among Muslims.[2] And this is not the first time that these aberrant clerics have made such statements, Taskhiri told the Mehr News Agency on Sunday. "This group consists of takfiri people who reject anything which doesn"t correspond to their views," he added. "Wahabbis think that holy sites are a manifestation of polytheism," Taskhiri said. "They deem anyone who opposes them to be polytheist. They believe Shias, Sunnis, and the Islamic world are polytheist." Takfiris are people who believe they are the only true Muslims. Ayatollah Taskhiri went on to say that nobody pays attention to what they say.[3] "They have sold themselves to the enemies of the Islamic world." [4] Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami, who is also a member of the Assembly of Experts, said here on Sunday that Muslims are expected to protest against these "mercenaries". The Foreign Ministry should inform the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Tehran that Iran regards the Saudi government as an accomplice in this case, Khatami added.

_____
[1] Will cause?


[2] It's a little sad, but thoroughly typical of peccatum originale, that the first time one runs into a grandiosity like "the World Forum for the Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought," it should be trying to put somebody at a distance, maybe even positively excommunicate her. (Perhaps, though, what the wahhábiyya do shouldn't be accounted "thought," nor the covens and conventicles where the deluded assemble to do their thing dignified with the name of "schools"?)


[3] Mohammed-‘Alí Cardinal Taskhírí doesn't exactly logically contradict himself, I suppose, but still, something odd is going on when an orator assures his audience that nobody does exactly what he is doing when he says nobody does it. Only Captain Nemo could pull that trick off with proper éclat.

To be sure, "Takfír? What's that? Never heard of it!" might not make effective agitprop either.


[4] His Eminence skates on thin ice at this point, if one may venture so outlandishly boreal a flower of rhetoric. Are not the salaries of [these people that nobody pays any attention to] paid by Messrs. Les Altesses Royales du Ryad?

The difficulty is not so much that Cardinal Taskhírí should consider Their Bedouin Majesties to be "enemies of the Islamic World." That's more or less par for the course, I'm afraid. But here His Eminence is quoted as good as uttering the insult flat-out in the course of an article that solicits a favour from the Great Cardboard Kingdom, asking it to please call off its theological attack dogs. It's just as well that whatever scribbler at the Tehran Times put this little confection together did not care to sign his name to it.


[5] It looks as if ’Ahmad Cardinal Khatamí was not cut out for a diplomatic career. Presumably nobody at the Islamic Republic's foreign ministry has to do thus-and-such simply because that one particular Most Rev. says it is a thing that should be done. However given the peculiar political structures of the evil Qommies, one may worry that this presumption is rebuttable.

It would be interesting to learn what His Eminence says when sticking more closely to his own appointed last. What is this "case" that he speaks of? What have these enemies of the Islamic world done that is forbidden by the Divine Law, or failed to do that the DL makes obligatory? The facts of the case appear to be that the Great Cardboard Kingdom has allowed certain of its court preachers to state "that the Shia shrines in Iraq are a manifestation of polytheism and should be destroyed." Such a human event is so very plausible that one feels scarcely tempted to dispute that it actually happened.

But what is the law applicable to the case? Exactly what are the ’adilla, "arguments," that Cardinal Khatamí deployed to derive the Divine Law ruling, ’an yastanbita l-hukma sh-shar‘iyya, that les altesses du Ryad stand in violation of?

It is no good dragging in westoxicated notions such as that even the mercenary court preachers of Sa‘údiyya are entitled to the protections of Amendment I, or self-evidently endowed with a "conscience," or with the Natural Right of Personal Judgment. That sort of thing would be meaningless to all parties involved in His Eminence's "case," with the possible exception of some Foreign Office officials at both Tehran and Riyádh, and even they would only be aware that what is left of Western Enlightenment will probably view the matter through some such alien spectacles, should we ever view it at all. Under Ja‘farí jurisprudence, though, such awareness might conceivably claim some standing at Qom, though not at Riyádh. That is to say, the principal of taqiyya, "dissimulation" or the like, might come into play, allowing His Eminence's derivation of the Divine Law ruling to be (not, of course, in any sense reversed or annulled, but only) hushed up if public or diplomatic proclamation of it would lead to grave damage or danger to the (alone true) Muslims. Cardinal Khatamí would have to recognize that as a move permitted by the rules of his own game, although he might well think it a bad move. Indeed, it probably would in fact be a bad move, insofar as the wicked West, at least, is likely to think better of those who want to leave other folks' shrines undemolished than of those who bark and bellow for demolition.

As to danger and damage potentially emanating from the Great Cardboard Kingdom itself, those who profess themselves boldly unterrorized of the militant GOP are not likely to be afraid of lesser opponents. "Nobody pays attention to what they say" sufficiently indicates the general contempt in which most evil Qommies hold the royal moderationites of Sa‘údiyya. There is no call to invoke taqiyya on that account, surely! The move would be perfectly regular, but it makes no practical sense in the present circumstances. Still, if it did make sense, exactly who inside the Islamic Republic's constitutional framework would have the last word about making it is not clear to this outsider.

One keeps thinking of things that are immaterial as regards Divine Law rulings. What is material? What is the law of His Eminence's case? Are the Cardboard Kings conceived of as masters to be held responsible for all the misdoings of their slaves? Or at any rate for those slave misdoings that "are far from the declared position of Saudi officials"? That would make sense, but how would the istinbát of it go? Suppose an ordinary private-sector master with a literal slave, where would a parallel "declared position" come in? Perhaps when the slave's misdoings constitute a breach of some definite contract entered into by his owner? No, that can't be right, because a "declared position" is clearly not a contract, the act of declaration being unilateral and not negotiated or contractual. If the wicked Qommies were to send a note to Riyádh pointing out to the Cardboard Kings a certain discrepancy between their "declared position" and their slaves' behavior, what would the Divine Law status of such a note be? "You really ought to do what you said you were going to do" sounds a very plausible maxim, yet has it anything at all to do with the Divine Law of ’Islám? The theological attack dogs would almost certainly point out to their owners in a flash that no humanly declared position can ever alter the fact "that the Shia shrines in Iraq are a manifestation of polytheism and should be destroyed."

Since the Great Cardboard Kingdom does not encumber itself with a constitution, there is no obscurity at all about who decides whether or not State action should be taken on the basis of Divine Law facts. Les altesses royales du Ryad will decide, and nobody else. This arrangement is far simpler than having a system with elaborate epicycles involving "Expediency Councils" and the like. It can also claim to be more traditional inside ’Islám than the elaborate machineries that the former Safavids have evolved for themselves since the year 1323/1906, not to mention the legal and constitutional complications borrowed straight from Europe by most other current régimes of the Greater Levant. Yet here again, what do either simplicity or tradition count for in the Divine Law derivations of the wahhábiyya?

Or of the hanbaliyya, if that traditional school be in fact adhered to by the theological attack dogs at Riyádh. It's rather typical of the GCK that exactly where its Divine Law jurisprudence comes from is a question shrouded in mist. The evil Qommies no doubt suppose that in Sa‘údiyya a mercenary ‘ulamá’ simply write fatáwá to gratify the latest whims of their sham-royal masters. The actual situation must be at least a bit different from that, however, unless we speculate that the Cardboard Kings are Machiavellian enough to dictate one thing to their theological attack dogs and quite a different "declared position" to their diplomats. According to our own received principle, such a speculation is to be rejected, and even les altesses royales du Ryad taken to say more or less what they mean, and more or less mean what they say, except when obviously lying to their subjects in dynastic self-defense. Like the GOP geniuses, whom they resemble in a number of other interesting ways, the Cardboard Kings scarcely seem intelligent enough to be cynics.

It would be easy to impute cynicism to the evil Qommies, and a dogma like that of taqiyya may seem to invite some such imputation. Nevertheless it is clear enough that the Twelvers are not in fact cynics, for it is inconceivable, to any sane adult, that all those ten thousands of mullahs could be acting together in a conspiracy. That is a thousand times less likely than that the Cardboard Kings simply hire mercenaries to make up Divine Law derivations for them ad hoc. Since the latter view is to be rejected, the former must be rejected a fortiori. BGKB.

East of Suez Watch

What we have here looks more like a triumph of fashionable tertiary-educationalist "narrative" claptrap than any more substantial substance.

A new third grade textbook for Israeli Arab students acknowledges that Israel's creation was a tragedy for Palestinians, Israeli officials said yesterday. The books issued by Israel's Education Ministry for the upcoming school year describe the events of 1948 and 1949, when Israel's creation drew fierce fighting and saw the displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians. The new textbooks give the Jewish narrative of the war, pointing out the Jews' historical connection to the Holy Land and their need for a state because of persecution in Europe, said Dalia Fenig, an Education Ministry inspector. But they also offer the Arab version of the war for the first time explaining why its results were tragic for Palestinians and referring to the Arab defeat as "al-Naqba," Arabic for catastrophe. "The new approach says, why should you hide anything? That won't make it disappear," Fenig said. She said the education ministry had no plans to introduce the Arab narrative into textbooks for Jewish students. Some hardline Israelis vowed to fight the decision, insisting it made Israel look as if it was apologising for its existence. Official Israeli histories of its birth, especially those for schoolchildren, have typically focused on the heroism of Israeli forces and glossed over the Palestinian flight, crediting the mass exile to voluntary escape, if mentioning it at all.

Apparently the Jesuit Education Fallacy still thrives unchecked out in the Greater Levant, the faith-crazed boondocks of the world. Whatever tendentious self-servicing nonsense you inflict upon a child early enough, it, the child, will never be able to grow up out of and learn better than.

Sure. Right. Of course!

... "The Democrats are on the right path" ... "the American loss" ...

Compliments are always nice, Mr. Bones, but in this case we should remember two things, (1) our own grave doubts about the rightness of Responsible Nonwithdrawal Boulevard, and (2) the amazing ignorance of neoliberateds (and other natives of the Greater Levant) about American politics.

Anyway, here's the donkeys' bouquet:

The United Iraqi Alliance, a Shia coalition and the largest bloc in parliament, which includes Maliki's Da'wa party, agree that US troops need to bolster Iraqi forces and help defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq prior to a pullout. "The Democrats are on the right path," said United Iraqi Alliance MP Kareem al-Enizi. "They understand the size of the American loss in Iraq and want to save the lives of their soldiers. The American soldiers can't do more than the Iraqi soldiers. With training and weapons, Iraqis will be capable of handling security."

M. al-Enizi sounds pretty plausible about the future prospects of the former Iraq, but as you can see, he's more than a bit back-handed when it comes to praising the party of General Jackson: "Naturally, being what they are, their first thought is to save the lives of their soldiers!" Well, thanks a lot, of course, sir, but . . . .

And "the size of the American loss in Iraq"?

Did I sleep through a half dozen Cannaes and Gettysburgs and Waterloos that M. al-Enizi (ten thousand klicks away!) and the rest of my party here in the holy Heimatland know all about? That seems rather unlikely. To speak of "the American loss in Iraq" does not make much sense even in terms of M. al-Enizi's narrow self-interest. He appears to want many fewer armed paleface GOP extremists (and their Party paleface hirelin's) running around his country, but he also wants lots of financial and logistical support from Uncle Sam. That's reasonable enough from his point of view, and maybe even reasonable enough absolutely, but M. al-Enizi ought to worry that if he informs our poor Sam that the former Iraq has now become "an American loss," Sam might actually listen to him and then decide to cut his losses a little, as for instance by ditching M. al-Enizi, and the United Iraqi Alliance, and all the Green Zone collaborationist pols. and even "Iraq" itself. No great loss! That is to say, no great loss!

M. al-Enizi really ought to be more respectful. Uncle Sam is a Sole Remainin' Hyperpower -- nay, Sam is THE Sole Remainin' Hyperpower! Whatever the final score in the Crawford-Tikrit thug-on-thug OnePercenter dynasty grudge match, Sam will be SRH still, and the former Iraq will only be, at best, .... well, let's stipulate politely that it will be all that M. al-Enizi and the UIA would wish it to be, a very nice place to visit, a place, if God will, that one might even think of living in without being deranged or suicidal or on the payroll of some other Power's mukhabarát, yet still not quite up there in the holy Heimatland class as a Power, after all.

With M. al-Enayat "the size of the American loss" is to be presumed either a slip of the pen or an ignorance of the politics. However there are certain districts of Farther Cloudcuckooland where the bird-brained actually do nebulously think like that. How about this specimen, Mr. Bones?

.... Republicans and Democrats both recognize deep down inside that complete military defeat will mean complete withdrawal, but they can't say that yet for domestic political reasons.

As you can probably guess, Mr. Bones, the precincts of Farther Cloudcuckooland in question are overwhelmingly populated with armchair Sunni chauvinists and those who fellow-travel with armchair Sunni chauvinism and Sunnintern agitprop from the Anglo-Arabian Press Trust. "Iraq wins, America loses!" is a very peculiar sort of bumper sticker, scarcely one SUV in a thousand bearing a bumper sticker about the former Iraq and the Crawford aggression bears that one or anything equivalent to it. Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh are all in an imbecile wet-hen fuss about "America loses," but they would never dream that "Iraq" gains what GOP invasionism loses in this zero-sum game, they'd chalk up the supposed gains to Islamophalangitarianism or Globoterror or some other of their own pet hobgoblins.

Still, I suppose we might be less censorious about Dr. Birdbrain and his Sunninterni ideobuddies. After all, we really do recognize, do we not, Mr. Bones, that utter defeat would necessitate total withdrawal? All we really gotta do with Dr. Birdbrain is turn the crank's own crank the other way around: given that Responsible Nonwithdrawal is now patently -- not to say "blatantly" -- the wave of the future, it follows at once that there cannot have happened any "complete military defeat." Maybe we elderly slack off at times and even doze off, but we can be quite sure that we have not missed our Uncle Sam's neo-Iraqi Cannae or his neo-Iraqi Waterloo. If anything like that had happened, the militant extremist GOP would have been shoved out of its semiconquered neo-provinces already. Yet there they are bestridin' the bushogenic quagmire still, there they are, behold them! Behold them surgin' rampantly under the auspices of the Big Management Party's Leaders's fair-haired boy, Neocomrade Dr. Gen. D. Petraeus of West Point and Princeton! Behold Neocomrade Rear-Colonel Freddy Kagan of AEI expoundin' in every issue of the Weekly Standard how swell it's been goin', and then all the rest of the Bani Kagan shout "Alleluia! Amen!"!

Do you suppose Rome was like that after Cannae, Mr. Bones, or Paris after Waterloo, the least bit like Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City are now? If so, you suppose very oddly. The jubilations of these cheapjack Boy-'n'-Party jubilators are indecorous and almost vomit-inducin', Mr. Bones, yet they'll serve as evidence that "complete military defeat" can only be regarded as an equal-but-opposite specimen of the poet's "Bilge, and party cries, and Man's incorrigible mind."

As to Real Policy and the underlying Correlation of Forces, an informal coöperation between M. al-Enazi's United Iraqi Alliance and Gen. Jackson's Democratic Party seems highly desirable to me, although I should admit that I rather mistrust my own judgment hereabouts. It's no trouble and scarcely even problematical to reciprocate "The Democrats are on the right path" with "The United Iraqi Alliance is on the right path," considering what other paths are available to be seriously recommended out there in that Kennebunkport-Crawford-blessed Land of Peace and Freedom. The path of the Free Kurds plainly leads out of the former Iraq altogether, and it's an excellent path for them, may Father Zeus and Ambassador Galbraith hasten their total and unconditional independence!

Meanwhile, back in the authentically neo-Iraqi neo-Iraq, there is the Path of the rootless cosmopolitan community, the Way of Dr. Chelabí and of Dr. ‘Alláwí . Would not that be a better Path than the U.I.A.'s, O Bones?

You must admit it has its attractions, Bones! How should it not, being essentially our own Jefferson-Jackson path exported to somewhere out east of Suez? I hesitate about the exportation angle, myself. Has not their Big Party neocomrade Herr Prof. Dr. Bernard Lewis proved that that as soon as Greater Levantines borrow anything whatsoever from Wunnerful US, they immediately wreck it or pervert it? Who can guess what Frankenstein monsters might emerge from under the overcoats of Mr. Jefferson and Gen. Jackson if our own stuff was simply translated from Boston in the 1770's to the invasionites' brave New Baghdád of 2003-2XXX?

Well, actually there is a certain amount of evidence about this question, and it suggests that in fact nothing ever emerges from under those overcoats at all. Donkey stuff, "liberalism," just does not "take" in the Greater Levant. M. Albert Hourani wrote an important book about the indigs' long exposure to it and the non-consequences thereof. Dr. Chelabí and Dr. ‘Alláwí run true to Houranian form, they don't "take' either in Peaceful Freedumbia, not even with all of Rancho Crawford's dynastic management skills and military might and taxpayer dollars and AEIdeologues and Heritagitarians and Hoovervillains to back the rootless cosmopolitans of "Iraq" up from afar. Whatever the merits of the product vended, why bother tryin' to vend, in the face of such absolute Sales Resistance as "liberalism" has consistently met with in the Greater Levant?

"If you can't lick 'em, join 'em" leads from there straight to M. al-Enizi, but I suppose it won't do to pass the former Sunni Ascendancy in "Iraq" over as if it had never existed, or as if the present political landscape in Peaceful Freedumbia is not littered with zillions of shreds and smithereens left over from the Good Old Days. To talk about a "Way of the Sunnis" in the former Iraq as of 23 July 2007 would be only cheap sarcasm. One does not, being a donkey, make fun of political and military and intellectual cripples. One averts one's gaze, one hurries on back to M. al-Enizi to say "The United Iraqi Alliance is on the right path," gracefully returning his compliment and hopefully concealing one's own misgivings a bit better than M. al-Enizi concealed his about us.

There's a very plausible coöperation here between unitedly allied neo-Iraqis under the yoke of Crawford and us palaeo-Democrats in America, but there are also very obvious dangers on both "our" Tikrit-Sunnintern flank and "our" Kennebunkport-Crawford flank. The thing is worth doing, and I'm all for doing it, myself, yet if 'twere done, 'twould have to be very, very gingerly done -- "Softly, softly catchee monkey"! UIA and "Democrat Party" may be equally obnoxious to external thugs and thugmongers, but "we" do not share exactly the same enemies, not to speak of sharing exactly the same qawá'id, "principles." One might say we speak different languages, perhaps. And yet "we" do agree that principles are language-independent. I think.

Maybe There's Hope For Us All?

(But then again, maybe there is not?)

One of the great noncartoonist kibitzers of our epoch starts off admirably, displaying ten times more familiarity with Crawfordology, and even with US politics generally, than most of his pen-deployer peers:

These are points Qalamji has made before, but he thinks this is the time to re-emphasize them: What the Democrats are out to defeat is the Republicans, not the project for control of Iraq. The expression "withdrawal" is merely a cover for re-assigning troops so that the troops themselves are safer; Iraq will still be occupied. It is difficult for some to face this situation, and there is a temptation to cling to fantasies about an easy victory, an early withdrawal, or at least the idea that what Bush and the Democrats are focused on is finding a way to make an honorable withdrawal.

Hardly anything there is exactly right, except the words emboldened, yet with one exception it is all within shouting distance of recognizable reality. Oddly enough, the most Cloudcuckooland stuff happens to be the rest of the same sentence that contains the most nearly reality-based stuff, i.e., "the project for control of Iraq." The Saracen rhetor himself intended an antithesis, obviously, but not exactly between sanity and dottiness.

It is difficult for some to face a situation in which the former Iraq has been turned inside-out and upside-down, with thousands lawlessly killed and tens of thousands kidnapped under pretext of "arrest" and hundreds of thousands forced to flee from their neo-liberation by the forces of invasion, without there being any Master Plan of Control behind it all. Sweet puppies -- Mr. William James's "tender-minded" sentimentalists-cum-philosophical-monists -- are appalled by such a ghastly spectacle, as indeed every decent adult must be. But not every decent adult feels that such a spectacle so threatens her preferred Weltanschauung that what she apparently seems to see must be instantly explained away as not really there to be seen.

However it were better we humble should confine ourselves to apologizing for, say, Sen. Clinton versus Mr. Wolfowitz rather than attenpt the Aristotle-v-Parmenides litigation.

OK, then, sure! M. Qalamjí is quite right at a certain level, the next "President Clinton" is not likely to move ALL the armed forces deployed by the militant extremist GOP out of ALL the provinces of the former Iraq. This prospect is very deplorable -- and I hereby put in on the record that I deplore it! let GOOGLE be my witness!-- but all the same, the Dragon Lady To Come will be quite as innocent of any Master Plan of Control as George XLIII and his Party co-conspirators are at the moment. She'll be innocent in a slight different way, innocent like a donkey rather than like an elephant, but innocent all the same. (In both cases I mean "innocent of any masterful control planning," of course, not innocent simpliciter. There's utterly no question of the latter.)

M. Qalamjí seems not to have enjoyed the West Point sort of education. "[R]e-assigning troops so that the troops themselves are safer" is a curious military maneuvre quite apart from what label one attaches to it. What would the former MacNamara or the now Petraeus make of that, I wonder, counterinsurgencywise? Not a hard question: the braniac twosome would surely say that counterinsurgency is to be abandoned in favour of something else. And I'd venture to gloss that answer by pointing out that MacNamaran counterinsurgency really did more or less purport to be a Master Plan of Control. Extending my gloss, should there be enough margin to scribble in, I'd note that as regards the GOP aggression against Mesopotamia, "counterinsurgency" and "Master Plan of Control" are mutually interchangeable notions, and both of them interchangable with the notion of the ever-victorious Surge of '07™.

Important consequences follow at once, notably

(1) From March 2003 to (roughly) March 2007, the GOP geniuses, the neo-politicized MBA's from the Harvard Victory School, didn't have any Master Plan of Control for the former Iraq whatsoever.

(2) Now that they've finally got one, the object of Control is not the former Iraq as a whole, but only the last-ditch Sunni shootists.

M. Qalamjí is by way of being a last-ditch-Sunni-shootist fan:

The thing everyone should keep in mind at this point is that when the Americans talk about an honorable withdrawal, their idea is to convince the resistance to lay down their arms, and by joining the political process and joining in the governing authority, actually help ratify the occupation [by the Americans] who, when they first came, came to stay, and not to leave voluntarily. If we put these discussions [about negotiating and joining the political process] to one side, and take up instead the language of reality, then what we hear from the American politicians with respect to Iraq is the exact opposite of what is actually happening, because the American forces, on the one hand, while continuing to talk about withdrawal, are in fact launching ever more violent attacks against Iraqi cities, using the worst weapons of killing and destruction, including banned weapons, . . . .

(( Mr. Badger's [bracketeering] is, -- ah, well, but that's only Mr. Badger with his bracketeering, after all! ))

"Launching ever more violent attacks against Iraqi cities, using the worst weapons of killing and destruction, including banned weapons" does not sound much like what the MSM report lately. It sounds rather suspiciously like noises we heard months and years ago. The "banned weapon" that Dr. General Petraeus seems in fact to be mostly deployin' at the moment is simply neo-MacNamaran Counterinsurgency, the mere actual possession of, and the seriously attemptin' to implement, some Master Plan of Control, though it be only narrowly conceived. Maybe masterful control plannin' is quite as inhumane as poison gas or "waterboarding," maybe there ought to be an International Law against the use of it in war, but still, at the moment there technically ain't any such law.

Swing back left, O pendulum! I trust I am not be to accounted a factious accomplice of Dr. Gen. Petraeus simply for refusing to become factiously complicit with M. Qalamjí and his attendant badgers, surely! Come home, O pendulum, and help us find the Via Media!

Not all that hard, really, at least on the negative side. The braniac Petraean neo-MacNamarianity comes far too little and way too late. Ms. Conventional Wisdom's professional figures of rhetoric don't often agree with my homebrew ditto, but in this case Sappy is right: the clock will run out for the Kennebunkport-Crawford Dynasty's Party's Boy's occupation policy in the Holy Heimatland no matter how much progress Dubya's ole buddy "David" makes somewhere out there in the negligible boondocks of the world.

Yet the cause of M. Qalamjí (and all his consociated quadrupeds) is even more hopeless still, for there will never be any neo-neo-liberated "Iraq" comparable to the "Algeria" that emerged after the FLN's deal with De Gaulle, no "victorious insurgent resistance" sort of a neo-neo-Iraq such as Qalamjís (and Badgers) obviously crave.

"President Hillary," as I conjecture or scenario-ize, won't much mind that both the militant extremist GOP and the extremist militant Sunnintern have alike discredited themselves over the former Iraq. She'll withdraw all the GOP's witlessly misdeployed troops to safe havens, not "so that the troops themselves are safer" but only so that they are properly poised to strike at real, rather than imaginary, enemies, if and when such strikes should become necessary in order to _____________

And there's the Blank of Blanks!

Easy enough to fill it in with cheap cynicism or even cheaper trashy Party Spirit, whether Crawfordite or Sunninterni, but perhaps if that virgin blankness can only be left blank, we may outlive our symptoms of decline even yet?

Alio modo, "What is it you want to rule the world FOR this week, O Weekly Standardizers?"

BGKB. KECEKE.

Time for a Corrupt Bargain?

(Where are you now, Henry Clay? John Quincy Adams?)

As usual, the summatorialist at Slogger City can't find much news about the former Iraq in the neoliberateds' own press, but he can go on at length with some help from the Anglo-Arabian Press Trust, today starring Al-Hayát, which said that

[T]he IAF suspended its boycott as part of a larger political deal, brokered by the US, and intended to expand the scope of Sunni participation in the political system. The London-based newspaper said that, according to “observers,” the Maliki government struck a “deal” with the parties of the opposition, “with American pressure,” in order to guarantee the support of said parties for “the passing of several laws ... chiefly the oil law and the de-Ba'thification law.” The government, and the US behind it, is eager to promulgate these strategic legislations “in order to achieve a larger proportion of the 18 benchmarks set by the US Congress (to gauge the success of the Surge Plan,)” claimed the newspaper. In Al-Hayat’s scenario, the Sadrists and the IAF will allow the passing of these strategic laws in exchange for certain political gains. The newspaper was not very clear, however, in describing what the quid pro quo entailed. For one, the paper claimed, the original conflict between the Sunni coalition and the government (the parliament’s decision to unseat IAF’s Mahmud al-Mashhadani as its Speaker), will be resolved by “expanding the powers of the presidential council,” which will allow the Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashimi, a larger role to play in executive decisions. Soon after these reforms come into effect, the paper continued, the IAF will choose a replacement for Mashhadani. Second, al-Hayat said, the attributes of the (Shi'a) Prime Minister will be reduced along with his influence over the Executive, which has been a long-standing demand by the Sunni front.

It would be interesting to learn exactly how the Sunni International (exclusive of the "Iraq" Sunnintern outlet) gauges the Surge of '07™ and the benchmarkmongers as well as the benchmarkees. I fancy that over at the Supreme Presidium the commissars are feeling a little swindled by the militant GOP at this point. They never did get to be half of Bush's brain, as I thought they might when the Surge was but a pup. It looks as if "David" (Dr. Gen. Petraeus of West Point and Princeton) has expanded to fill the whole available vacancy. DP's surgent reasons were originally compatible with the surgent reasons of the Sunnintern, which would have made the conjectured temporary alliance feasible, but naturally they were never identical, for DP is not interested in any sort of faith-basin' but his own technical kind.[1]

The Sunnintern's enthusiasm for MacNamaran Counterinsurgency, considered abstractly, is great, but not infinite. Above all, enthusiasm cannot be uniform and consistent. Having subjects of their own to keep down, the Arab Palace branch is naturally attracted. Knowing what they'd be subjected to if they didn't stick to the UK and the more respectable parts of Beirut, the Street Arab branch is rather less keen on it. Concretely, however, the Surge of '07™ (as originally projected), that mighty Petraeo-MacNamario-Crawfordian shotgun, was to have one barrel aimed at the Rev. Señorito al-Sadr and heretical "militias" more generally (plus perhaps also the Safavids lurking sinister in the background), the other barrel at Ba‘thís and takfírís, who, although nominal coreligionists, were not so congenial as to be indispensible.[2]

But then only one barrel went off -- and that is the essence of this phase of the Occupation Policy Crisis. "David" advances from glorious victory to glorious victory, buying up every last shaykh on the market in al-’Anbár and elsewhere, or so the Wingnut City Daily Bodycount reports with partisan glee. Nobody at all reports that Muqtadá and the Twelver militias have been clobbered the way the Sunnintern gentry were led to expect that they would be clobbered. Why, if the AAPT knows what it is talking about in the story summatorialized, the Sadr Tendency have now become virtual good guys, as far as Rancho Crawford is concerned! The Sunni International would be only human to feel a little miffed at the way things have surged out against them. Strictly speaking, the Republican Party extremists never actually made any promises, to be sure, but still ...! [3]

Anything that is bad for poor M. al-Málikí is bound to please the Sunnintern, I daresay, so the particular corrupt bargain that Al-Hayát writes a scenario about would not be all bad by any means. Naturally they'd be pleased if there were fewer anti-Ba‘th noises coming out of the Green Zone. The oil bill is harder to gauge: is it more important to Sunninternis that their coreligionists in "Iraq" be assured a proportionate share of the loot, or that strict central control be insisted upon, even though for the moment poor M. al-Málikí is still deplorably at the centre? Most likely the latter, although I would not claim to be sure about this point.

As the summatorialist remarks, "The newspaper was not very clear, however, in describing what the quid pro quo entailed." About par for the Sunnintern, that would be! -- a clear enough idea of what they'd like, but only murk and mist as to what the other side might like, or what they'd be prepared to relinquish. In this case, though, why not guess that permitting poor M. al-Málikí to continue to be addressed as M. le président du Conseil des ministres is quite enough quid pro quo to be getting on with?


So far we have discussed only possible Corrupt Bargain A. At Slogger City they know, or anyway they scribble, about a more comprehensive Corrupt Bargain B also:

The Lebanese al-Akhbar newspaper, which toes a leftist/Arab Nationalist political line, had a more “interesting” explanation for the IAF return. According to the newspaper, an American-brokered deal will give the Sunnis the presidency in the future, while the post of the Parliament Speaker will be turned over to the Kurds. Al-Akhbar said that, according to “sources close to the centers of decision-making in Iraq,” the political institutions of the country will undergo a “radical change,” entailing the restructuring of the three presidencies (the President, the Prime Minister and the Speaker) and their attributes. The paper added that the coming reforms were designed “by the occupational authority, in conjunction with the UN mission and the ruling establishment in Iraq.” In addition to the Sunnis “recouping” the President’s post, al-Akhbar confirmed al-Hayat’s report regarding an expansion in the attributes of the President. These reforms, the paper explained, seek to satisfy Sunni demands for greater participation, “give an increased impetus for the political process, and decrease the intensity of the resistance in Iraq.” What proves the existence of a “deal” behind the IAF return, al-Akhbar said, is the fact that the controversial Mahmud al-Mashhadani headed the last parliamentary session without any signs of protest from the political parties that had voted him out a few weeks back.

That nifty scheme is so exceedingly Lebanese-ey, so seedier-than-thou, that one hesitates to believe it is true, even though the AAPT's Beirut branch and the Sunnintern's Street Arab branch vouch for it. There is/was of course nothing in Khalílzád Pasha's "constitution" for the happy Land of Peace and Freedom about the theocommunitarian identity of particular officers of state.[4] (Three guesses which direction that brainstorm invaded from!)

But let's suspend our disbelief, should we have any, and wonder whether the nifty scheme could work. Can "the occupational authority," even "in conjunction with the UN mission and the ruling establishment in Iraq," really pull off a trick like that one?

Probably not. Almost certainly not. Corrupt Bargain B simply does not address the true underlying difficulties of the miltant GOP's semiconquered Mesopotamian provinces. Tinkerin' with "the political institutions" along those lines would rather aggravate the Khalílzádian gridlock than obviate it -- a feat I had not thought possible, yet here it is! "Restructure" the next neorégime's executive arm as a faith-quota'd Gang of Four and you're only more guaranteed than ever that the next neorégime's executive arm cannot possibly be a genuine power center. If that's the kind of thing you like, O Occupational Authorities, why not impose the ancient Polish Constitution on the wretched indigs in toto and allow any quasideputy to "explode" the whole quasigovernment anytime she pleases?

" Nie pozwalam! Zlota wolnosc!! Freedom Means Peace!!!"

But of course "the political institutions" are not fundamental in the bushogenic quagmire any more than the Khalílzád Konstitution is fundamental. The real quicksand that the House of Occupation has been erected on consists in the utter disintegration of the Arab Sunni theocommunity that followed overthrow of the age-old Sunni Ascendancy. The newspaper account of Corrupt Bargain B vaguely mumbles "seek to satisfy Sunni demands for greater participation," and the key point can be phrased that way if anybody likes: "Sunni demands" are not going to be met by Corrupt Bargain B. The TwentyPercenters don't want "greater participation," they want their natural mastery, their Sunni Ascendancy, back. "All or Nothing!, Rule or Ruin!" -- that's the ticket, and since in their present total incoherence as a theocommunity, the TwentyPercenters of the former Iraq couldn't possibly rule, Ruin awaits.

Exactly what shape Ruin will present herself in is all that is left to be discussed. Perhaps there will be flat-out partition, locking them up in a cage with nobody to be natural masters of but themselves. Perhaps there will be some hillbillies-and-heretics travesty of an "Iraq" that the TwentyPercenters are trapped inside forever. Perhaps (but this scenario seems less likely) there will be a Polish-style partition, partition plus annexation, with the TwentyPercenters eventually finding themselves subjects of His Hashemite Majesty or of les altesses royales du Ryad or some other Sunninterni neighbor.

All the King's horses and all the King's men -- that is to say, even "the occupational authority, in conjunction with the UN mission and the ruling establishment in Iraq" -- could not avert Ruin from the TwentyPercenters except by a sudden mass conversion to theological correctness that would require supernatural intervention. Few aggressors in history have ever been less competent at managing their conquests than the aforesaid Occupational Authority, yet the bushogenic quagmire would perplex the aggression competence of Jenghiz Khan himself, because what is called for virtually amounts to being competent to make two plus two be some number other than four.

Can't be done. Not gonna happen. Force can't do it, and Fraud can't do it either.


____
[1] "MacNamara Saves!" is a curious faith to base any thing on, even a technical thing, seeing that the guru selected failed to save himself. Still, who knows for sure? perhaps if Sen. Humphrey had been elected in 1968, and the whizkids had had more time, and . . . .


[2] Judging from the experiences of unzionated Palestine, I'd venture (or perhaps "gauge") that it is pretty well impossible for one to be so congenial to the Sunnintern that they won't let one down, probably sooner rather than later. That is why the Sunnintern outlet in the former Iraq must be treated separately: it is, so to speak, the leg caught in the trap that the jackal may feel obliged to chew off to get the rest of herself free. On Thursday we had certain theologically correct neo-Iraqi Arabs complaining to the Guardian about being nibbled at:

"We are the only resistance movement in modern history that has received no help or support from any other country," Omary declares. "The reason is that we are fighting America."

Later on in the same press release,

The plan is to hold a congress of the seven groups to announce the front's formation and then move towards the establishment of some form of public presence outside Iraq, though it is hard to see any state being prepared to risk the wrath of the US by hosting such an outfit. "It would need UN protection," Zubeidy suggests.

The founding fathers of POIR, the Political Office for the Iraqi Resistance, seem to me a bit naïve in some respects, including the United Nations respect, but at least they are not such fools as to expect anything from the Arab League, which stands to the real Sunnintern about as the UN does to "the international community."


[3] The Boy-'n'-Party perps' side of this sad tale of semibetrayal is unlikely to be of much interest to the Sunnintern and the AAPT, and the chances that such omphaloscopic folks will be edified by finding themselves the jilted instead of the jilters for once are negligible.

Students of real policy may want to notice that the Sunnintern never had anything solid to offer the aggressors and occupationists of Crawford. I had conjectured that the vacuum between the ears of George XLIII would suck them in as well as Dr. Gen. David of WP&P and Rear-Col. Freddy of AEI. There was never any question of the Sunninternis thrusting themselves in "proäctively." Perhaps they lied to the militant GOP that they could turn off the insurgency / resistance / guerilla / terrorism in the former Iraq anytime they chose. Perhaps they did not bother to lie, whether because the falsehood was so patent that even a GOP genius might detect it, or, more likely, because such a lie invited a response to the Arab Palace branch of the Sunnintern along the lines of "So why haven't you stopped it already? We thought you guys were supposed to be our allies, for Christ's sake! Don't you remember how many dollars we've thrown at you?" And so forth, and so on.

Be that as it may, the Sunni International never had anything positive to offer the Busheviki beyond a definite idea of what they'd like to see happen in the Greater Levant at a time when the occupation policy of Khalílzád Pasha had been judged a failure down at the ranch. That was also a time when the abominable Hambakers were insolently threatening to shove their product into the post-Zalmáyan void, a product instantly detestable to unilateral cowpoker vigilantes. Unlike Sunninterni aliens, the ISG/CFR "bipartisan foreign-policy élite" possess a certain amount of traction in Beltway City DC, if not at Crawford TX, so they can, on occasion, push themselves in as well as get sucked in. Indeed, they appear to be doing some pushing at the moment. The idea of Congress solemnly announcing that the occupation therapy recommendations of the Hambakerites are the law of the land is about as absurd as political absurdity ever gets in the Holy Homeland, even in the silly season. All the same, that such a joke could ever be cracked at all may indicate which way the wind is blowing.

(How do the Sunninternis and the AAPT gauge the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, I wonder? Perhaps we shall have an opportunity to find out. Meanwhile it seems safe to conjecture that they must like it less than their own stuff, for after all, of whom is that not the case? As regards the points conventional wisdom mentions most frequently, talking to Syria is perhaps mildly welcomed, talking to the evil Qommies is fort mauvais, and the notion of having an International Congress impose upon the inhabitants of the former Iraq what the militant GOP has signally failed to impose is perhaps mildly unwelcome. Unless perchance the Sunnintern deludes itself that it would have a major rôle in determing what is to be imposed by "the international community." But God knows best.)


[4] The word "constitution" does occur in today's Slogger City summatorial, as it happens, it even occurs twice, but only in a completely different connection, about a referendum on Kirkuk. The Sunnintern and the AAPT evidently consider constitutionalism unimportant in the former Iraq, and they are well warranted in so doing, I fear. Corrupt Bargain B would certainly, and Corrupt Bargain A very probably, call for an amendment or a whole series of amendments in any genuinely constitutional State.

Invasion-language commentators, who mostly take genuine constitutionalism for granted, usually fashion a benchmark for themselves and their neo-Iraqi subjects out of formally revising the Khalílzád Konstitution so as to provide scads and scads of affirmative action for all those sore oppressed Arabophone Sunnis. Nevertheless, the whole ethos and ambience of that assumption is radically alien to the Greater Levant, where everybody (except the Jewish Statists) has a constitution, but nobody pays any serious attention to it.

It would be just as well not to bother to engage in pious make-believe about this.

Asking for Trouble

"Arab media and research centers based in several Arab and regional countries are conspiring against Iraq, its people and the whole political process . . . . They consider killing women and children, bombing markets, targeting historical buildings, destroying power lines, and the electricity network. . .as Jihad . . . . In spite of the challenges and the critical period Iraq is going through . . . . We stopped a lot of deterioration . . . and started chasing terrorists until they fled to neighboring and Arab countries, and they carried evilness with them, which we hope will not be transferred there. . .although these countries did not stand with us in facing terrorism. . . . [Clergymen and tribal heads] are key figures in mobilizing the public opinion. . . [T]he government does not take the responsibility alone, but needs the support of the people . . . because its power springs from the people . . . [N]ot to use force in solving problems, even against outlaws . . . we want to solve them through negotiations . . . and we need the efforts of the tribes to educate their men that Iraq today is calling upon all of its sons to return and participate in its rebuilding . . . We are not sectarian . . . and we are not with terrorism, but we work on unifying the Iraqi people, imposing the law, and quelling sectarian violence . . . [and to stand against] administrative and financial corruption, and against the conduct of some of the government officials who are blackmailing citizens . . . and deliberately offending the government.

How will the Sunnintern and the Anglo-Arabian Press Trust respond to that nastygram from poor M. al-Málikí? Does this roaring mouse -- who recently announced the militant GOP could go away any time it likes as far as he is concerned -- understand the correlation of forces accurately? Or is it only the silly season at brave New Baghdád?

Please stay tuned.

"Experts in Shiite politics"

Experts in Shiite politics believe that efforts to isolate Mr. Sadr are bound to fail. “Sadr holds the political center in Iraq,” said Joost Hiltermann, the director of the International Crisis Group’s office in Amman, Jordan. “They are nationalist, they want to hold the country together and they are the only political organization that has popular support among the Shias. If you try to exclude him from any alliance, well, it’s a nutty idea, it’s unwise.”

Hmm. Does one have to be an international crisis groupie to take an interest in Twelver Politics, then?

Perhaps, in the wake of Rúholláh Cardinal Khomeiní, one really more or less does.

J. Hiltermann turns up prominently in the media as yet another paleface planmonger, but his self-presented credentials do not suggest any special expertise of the sort attributed to him by the NYTC employee:

Areas of expertise: * Iraq: political transition, constitutional process, the situation of the Kurds * Jordan * Israel-Palestine * Middle East region: security threats, authoritarianism and democratisation, political Islam

The groupies' more general blurb runs as follows,

Joost Hiltermann manages a team of analysts based in Amman and Beirut conducting research in the countries of the Middle East and writing policy-focused reports on the factors that increase the risk of and drive armed conflict. The crisis in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are Crisis Group’s two priorities in the region, but research is conducted as well in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

Is the politics of the Rev. Señorito al-Sadr a factor that increases the risk of, and drives, armed conflict, then? Various opinions might be entertained, policy-focused or focused elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Ms. Rubin, who appears to have relapsed into taking her "Iraq" prefabricated from the Proconsular Palace of the Party and the Green Zone Officers Club, is rather at odds with her own expert (?) quotee:

HE says, "they are the only political organization that has popular support among the Shias." SHE says,

The mainstream parties talk about Mr. Sadr carefully. Some never mention his followers or the Mahdi militia by name, but speak elliptically of “armed groups.” Others acknowledge his position but are reserved on the challenge he poses.

But perhaps there is no difficulty. What could be more "mainstream" nowadays than to dispense with "popular support"? If that plan works for the militant GOP extremists here in their Homeland, why shouldn't it work for them at New Baghdád as well?

Suddenly Everybody Is Winning!

Who's to impose what on those haplessly sovereign and inky-fingered neo-Iraqis? It's rather a complicated situation, as I believe has been pointed out elsewhere, but in the last few days a number of impositionists have started talking as if they think they've been making pogress for their own panaceas.

The front runner in the "Right at the End of the Tunnel Sweepstakes" is Ambassador Peter Galbraith. Strict critics may think he's a cheater, though, because he wants to impose very little, and he mostly wants to impose it upon Crawfordites instead of their semiconquered native subjects. Success, from the Galbrathian standpoint , is when he gets the man Lugar of Indiana to say things like

Few Iraqis have demonstrated that they want to be Iraqis ... In this context, the possibility that the United States can set meaningful benchmarks that would provide an indication of impending success or failure is remote. Perhaps some benchmarks or agreements will be initially achieved, but most can be undermined or reversed by a contrary edict of the Iraqi government, a decision by a faction to ignore agreements, or the next terrorist attack or wave of sectarian killings. American manpower cannot keep the lid on indefinitely. The anticipation that our training operations could produce an effective Iraqi army loyal to a cohesive central government is still just a hopeful plan for the future.

After applauding these sentiments of the repentant aggression fan, Galbraith goes on reword them his own way:

We need to recognize, as Lugar implicitly does, that Iraq no longer exists as a unified country. In the parts where we can accomplish nothing, we should withdraw. But there are still three missions that may be achievable -- disrupting al-Qaida, preserving Kurdistan's democracy and limiting Iran's increasing domination. These can all be served by a modest U.S. presence in Kurdistan. We need an Iraq policy with sufficient nuance to protect American interests. Unfortunately, we probably won't get it.

None of this morning's specimens aspire to impose anything that much appeals to me, so if Ambassador Galbraith thinks he is failing rather than triumphing, perhaps that's OK too.

His "sufficient nuance" is a curious business. I should have thought the main trouble with almost all Homeland impositionists (foreigners and indigs are different) is that they refuse ever to be crude enough about "to protect American interests." It's like pulling teeth to get any Yank impositionist to say exactly what she conceives those interests to be. The result of this shyness is unfortunate in the present state of the quagmire, where everybody outside the fever swamps of Rio Limbaugh agrees that occupation policy for the former Iraq must be made at least somewhat less ambitious and aggressive. Having no defined war aims means that there are no minimum war aims, and no way to talk about defining a set of the latter that might be effectively implemented.

Ambassador Galbraith of course wants to sneak in the absolute independence of the Free Kurds as a war aim and a (nuanced, indeed!) national interest of his Uncle Sam. He is so isolated in taking this position that not much harm can come of him except by way of confusion over "limiting Iran's increasing domination," language which appeals to what's left of the gung-ho Kiddie Krusaders, who are certainly not thinkin' of Free Kurdistan when they bark and bellow. [1] However the Free Kurds are free enough to be getting on with already, and as for the Big Party's other spear-won provinces in the neighborhood,

[T]here will be no Saigon moment in Iraq. Iraq's Shiite-led government is in no danger of losing the civil war to al-Qaida, or a more inclusive Sunni front. Iraq's Shiites are three times as numerous as Iraq's Sunni Arabs; they dominate Iraq's military and police and have a powerful ally in neighboring Iran. The Arab states that might support the Sunnis are small, far away (vast deserts separate the inhabited parts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from the main Iraqi population centers), and can only provide money, something the insurgency has in great amounts already. Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today -- a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part.

Not absolutely certain, that, but it is the most sensible way to bet all the same. The only trouble with Peter Galbraith saying so too is that he is so relentlessly Kurdocentric that one has trouble believing he much cares what happens to any of the rest of Crawford's neoliberateds. Would he object, if contrary to likely expectation, the Sunni Ascendancy racket was somehow reëstablished? It does not seem too likely. [2]

==

Exhibit B, "Professor Righteous Virtue," let us call it, could not agree less with Ambassador Galbraith and the man Lugar. RV's own kind of interpretation is thus described:

This kind of interpretation focuses on widespread ideological resistance to federalism among Iraqis, as a far more profound force than calculations about oil and money.

That major triumph of invisibilia over mere visibilia is not quite all the way around the bend. Dr. Virtue does not actually claim that his "widespread ideological resistance to federalism" trumps the religionism of our neo-Iraqi subjects as well as their devotion to Lord Mammon. Unfortunately, he pretty clearly supposes that it does. Gazing downwards from so sublime a superidealistic and metafactual plane, naturally he takes a dim view of the Supreme Council with their fiendish plans for disunity. He thinks he's winning, impositionwise, mainly because he thinks that SIIC/SCIRI is losing. Yesterday's bulletin from Outer Virtuestan was titled The Supreme Council Marks Fourth Anniversary of Baqir al-Hakim’s Assassination: No Mention of Federalism . No news is good news, needless to remark. Except that maybe it isn't:

There are two possible explanations as to why the Supreme Council apparently has toned down its federalism rhetoric in 2007. One recurrent argument is that they do so for purely utilitarian reasons: they recognise that many Arab states are highly critical of the concept of a single Shiite region (and therefore the Supreme Council do not wish to isolate themselves), or they may be trying to pose as “moderates” for a US audience. This is way of reasoning which is broadly similar to “rational” explanations offered for the federal attitudes of other players in Iraqi politics as well: the Sadrists are “against” a Shiite federal entity because their core electorate supposedly is in Baghdad and therefore outside the projected region; similarly the Sunnis are “against” any federalism because “their” federal region would have no oil.

That's all only Explanation I, notice: either the fiends are pandering to (Ia), the Sunnintern, or (Ib) they are pandering to the Crawfordites. No matter which, they remain fiends and Dr. Virtue has no use for them at all, no more than he has for "rationality" or "moderation." Explanation II is much cheerier, however:

An alternative explanation is that the Supreme Council is beginning to understand the limits to the popular appeal of the idea of a single Shiite entity. This kind of interpretation focuses on widespread ideological resistance to federalism among Iraqis, as a far more profound force than calculations about oil and money. Interestingly, for the first time, there is now greater harmony between the message of the Supreme Council and the tone of the leading ulama of Najaf, with focus on “unity” and even condemnation of armed groups outside the governmental system. Still, the link to the grand ayatollahs remains tentative, Hakim on this occasion “renewing his praise for the religious leadership and, in their vanguard, Imam Sistani”. If the Supreme Council were to aspire to a role as a true force of reconciliation in Iraq, it would have to go even further: it would need to openly declare a break with its long-time sponsor, the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, and it would have to translate its new-found, apparently more flexible position on federalism into formal concessions in the ongoing constitutional revision process. That could bring Sunnis and many non-sectarian Shiites fully back into the political process in Iraq, and only then would the party deserve the label “moderate” which is so often designated to it by US commentators.

Like Ambassador Galbraith, Dr. Virtue insists on dragging in the evil Qommies in a manner that has itself a certain air of pandering about it, appealing to other people's silly notions that one does not even begin to share. He doesn't give a discernible hoot about the Free Kurds, his ferocious ideology of antifederalism has nothing to do with them. In principle RV and PG could pander together to the real core anti-Safavids, whose own fear and loathing of Iran has no more to do with its alleged support of the Supreme Council than with its Kurdish minority problems. However this theoretically viable alliance is unlikely to be consummated, for Galbraith is, loosely speaking, a partitionite, and therefore a monster himself in the eyes of Virtue.

Unlike the isolated ambassador, Dr. Righteous Virtue agrees to a large extent with Ms. Conventional Wisdom (and with Rancho Crawford and with Ann Arbor and with the ISG/CFR gentry) about the basic outlines of a revised occupation policy, only he is rather more specific about details, as befits a tertiary educationalist: "formal concessions in the ongoing constitutional revision" are now to "bring Sunnis and many non-sectarian Shiites fully back into the political process in Iraq" and then everything will be OK. This ploy, too, is perhaps just a tad disingenuous on RV's part, since neither the Crawfordites, who can actually do the imposin', nor the Arab Sunni TwentyPercenters, for whom the imposition of Affirmative Action™ is solicited, are on the exact Virtue wavelength. The former will settle for anythin' at all they can call "success and victory" without actually bein' laughed at. The latter will settle for nothing short of restoration of the Sunni Ascendancy.

If one insists on a very strict match, Dr. Virtue is even more isolated than Ambassador Galbraith, who has all those Free Kurds solidly behind him. RV is the leader of a sort of party of zero, since as a non-Iraqi he can't really be a member of his own factionette. If by some fluke, however, Conventional Wisdom et al. turns out to be right and the happy Land of Peace and Freedom can really be stabilized on a five-votes-per-Sunni basis, obviously somebody will have had to twist the arm of the Supreme Council mercilessly, and then Dr. Virtue can point us all back to yesterday's article and claim to have told us so. (If you decide to bet on that, ask your bookmaker for very long odds.)

==

The third party that seems suddenly to think it's winning is a far more serious contender, namely the Sunnintern, or at least the Times of Bazzázístán. Over at "Iraq Today," successor to "Today in Iraq," there is a curious invasion-language gloating about how poor M. al-Málikí is doomed because the extremist GOP palefaces are already on their way out the door

Iraqi politicians naively thought that marching on the same path of lies would hold the U.S. administration a hostage to their shortsightedness. Instead of using their own capabilities to run the country, they thought no matter what happens the world’s most powerful country would remain on their side and believe their lies. Iraqi politicians believed they could extort the U.S. The extortion was mutual, they thought, because the U.S. would never give up Iraq. Little did they know that the best strategies are those which adapt to the situation and that time would come when Iraq would turn into such a liability and burden that the U.S. itself would like to get rid of.

And just for fun, let's toss in Kristol Minor, equally without comment:

Now the Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media, and the foreign policy establishment have mounted their own surges against the surge. So far, Bush is beating them back. If Bush can hang tough, and General Petraeus can keep on surging, the Defeatists will fail. And the United States will have a good chance to succeed in Iraq. ... But Bush has the good fortune of having finally found his Ulysses S. Grant, or his Creighton Abrams, in Gen. David H. Petraeus. If the president stands with Petraeus and progress continues on the ground, Bush will be able to prevent a sellout in Washington. And then he could leave office with the nation on course to a successful (though painful and difficult) outcome in Iraq. With that, the rest of the Middle East, where so much hangs in the balance, could start to tip in the direction of our friends and away from the jihadists, the mullahs and the dictators. (...) What it comes down to is this: If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president. I like the odds.

_____
[1] In a very mild way, perhaps vindicating the liberty of the Free Kurds might make Uncle Sam look a little less bad to Princess Posterity and her historians, even despite militant GOP extremism. One would have had to swallow a massive dose of the "soft power" snake oil, however, to attach much importance to that. Hopefully Mr. G. does not seriously mean to suggest a geopolitical joke about Free Kurdistan being an important bastion in the world-historic struggle against the evil Qommies. But probably he only inflicts that particular "nuance" on us in order to try to embed his own pet earmark into the Salvation of Mesopotamia Bill of 200X.


[2] If having assured the independence of Free Kurdistan and its safety from ever being mucked about with from Baghdad ever again would look good in the textbooks of 2157, why should not having smashed the Sunni Ascendancy insisted upon by Turks and Brits and Mecca monarchists and barracks-based republicans all alike -- and to that extent installing a bare minimum of democracy -- look rather good as well? To be sure, it is not certain that Ambassador Galbraith worries about the judgments of Princess Posterity at all, and, indeed, perhaps it is foolish for anybody to worry.

I'd guess, though, that PG is still under the spell of St. Woodrow Wilson to the extent that the formula of "national self-determination" has implications -- democratic implications -- about what happens inside the borders as well as where the borders are to be drawn. But God knows best.

And Then She Had This

She (H. Cobban) knew in advance that this was comin' from him (G. W. Bush):

And then we have this... I knew it had to come into the speech somewhere! "The conflict in Gaza and the West Bank today is a struggle between extremists and moderates. And these are not the only places where the forces of radicalism and violence threaten freedom and peace. The struggle between extremists and moderates is also playing out in Lebanon -- where Hezbollah and Syria and Iran are trying to destabilize the popularly elected government. The struggle is playing out in Afghanistan -- where the Taliban and al Qaeda are trying to roll back democratic gains. And the struggle is playing out in Iraq -- where al Qaeda, insurgents, and militia are trying to defy the will of nearly 12 million Iraqis who voted for a free future. Ceding any of these struggles to extremists would have deadly consequences for the region and the world. So in Gaza and the West Bank and beyond, the international community must stand with the brave men and women who are working for peace."

However, once put in firm possession of it, the analyst offers no further comment. I'm afraid it looks as if she doesn't take this particular slice of Boy-'n'-Party baloney very seriously in conection with the just pacification of Planet Earth. "Extremism" is, chez Dubya , only a verbal tic or psychological symptom, a sort of King Charles's head that is bound to pop up sooner or later in any reasonably long stretch of George XLIII bloviation about international aggressions and occupations and so forth and so on. "Kids say the darndest things. Why, there's little Georgie playin' with his tin moderates and extremists again!" It would go over the line to add "Ain't he cute?, because clearly Dr. Cobban and the orthodox Cobbanites don't find it ingratiating. We need not dispute about their taste in kiddyisms, but it is of some political importance that they are not the least bit afraid of militant Republicans who come bearin' "moderation." The Cobbanites do not rise in wrath and attempt to snatch the tin figures out of his hands as being so many matches that could lead to serious problems in hands like those. They don't even seem to want to protest that The Boy is playin' with toys that more properly belong to themselves.

Over at the other end of the spectrum, however, where perpetual conflagration is devoutly and, as it were, immoderately wished for, they take their Little Brother more seriously. The dossiermongers and jihád careerists need not annotate yesterday's oration specifically, for they have already complained of their Party leader's strange blindness to exactly what it is that he has in his hands. In a sense they, too, consider him typically juvenile, but not because he likes to play silly verbal games. Far from it, their trouble with the laddie is that he cannot connect up obvious dots the way a grown-up should. Given dots like Gaza and the Lebanese God Party and the Taliban and "al Qaeda, insurgents, and militia," how can he possibly fail to grasp what he's up against? Didn't he attend Yale? Yet obviously he can and does. After only a week or two of screechin' the alarm against "Islamic fascism" last fall, he abruptly gave it up. [1]

Now according to our established guidelines, Mr. Bones, we are to assume that the Crawfordites actually believe the baloney they talk. Very few people in politics are clever enough to be cynical, and the current crop of GOP geniuses are most assuredly not among the few. If Little Brother talks up his Kiddie Krusade as bein' about moderates-versus-extremists, not Western Civ. against Eastern Barb. or the like, that must be what he really thinks he is doin'. [2]

Expressions like "false consciousness" or "ideology" are not automatically excluded, but that school of political psychoanalysis should never be one's first resort. Such categories are not to be recurred to until after one has decided that the patient cannot possibly mean what she says and say what she means. Highly intelligent people (in the strict IQ sense) can go badly astray here if they have not enough imagination to fancy others believing what they themselves know is absurd and contemptible. It seems a very easy exercise to imagine that Boy and Party really do believe themselves moderates and all their enemies extremists, although one's final judgment on that belief be not far from "absurd and contemptible." The Crawfordites and their base-and-vile undoubtedly ought to know better than that, yet it is as plain as day that in fact they mostly don't. [3]


Pater dimitte illis non enim sciunt quid faciunt. [Ev. Luc. XXIII:34]

___
[1] Oddly enough, those theorists of the Kiddie Krusade that I read frequently have never mentioned that interlude afterwards, to wonder, like their Neorabbi Bernie Lewis, about "What Went Wrong?" that it was aborted. As a matter of mere fact, it appears that Dr. Rice and Neocomrade K. Hughes asked Himself Above to please knock off the Anti-Islamophalangiterianism shtik because it was tendin' to make it harder for them to handle the lesser breeds without. Since he did indeed knock it off, one speculates from afar that K. Rove advised that it did not pay enough dividends in domestic politics to merit bein' persisted in. Considering how little the invasionist crew care for alien opinion, the perceived rewards at home must have been very scanty indeed. Or so I guess.

"Mere fact" does not go very far in Crawfordology, however. Had Deep Ideology persuaded the cowpokers that Islamophalangitarianism is the true ultimate enemy of all decent Dynasty and Party values, the fact that Televisionland and the electorate are not much interested in buyin' that product would not have deterred them from purveyin' it, no more than minor factual complications of diplomacy would have. One can only infer that they sincerely don't believe it. (Dr. Pipesovitch and Bob Cardinal Spencer take that view of the case also, although they are aghast at such a failure of insight whereas I but note it with interest.)


[2] The orthodox Cobbanites do not, I think, agree with this estimate, although the matter is not altogether clear. Dr. C. professed to detect "racism" in yesterday's presidential performance:

Bush goes on, embedding some fairly racist assumptions about the nature of Palestinians into his discourse: To make this prospect a reality, the Palestinian people must decide that they want a future of decency and hope -- not a future of terror and death. They must match their words denouncing terror with action to combat terror. The Palestinian government must arrest terrorists, dismantle their infrastructure, and confiscate illegal weapons -- as the road map requires. They must work to stop attacks on Israel, and to free the Israeli soldier held hostage by extremists. And they must enforce the law without corruption, so they can earn the trust of their people, and of the world. Taking these steps will enable the Palestinians to have a state of their own. And there's only way to end the conflict, and nothing less is acceptable. Israel has a clear path. Prime Minister Olmert must continue to release Palestinian tax revenues to the government of Prime Minster Fayyad. Prime Minister Olmert has also made clear that Israel's future lies in developing areas like the Negev and Galilee -- not in continuing occupation of the West Bank. This is a reality that Prime Minister Sharon recognized, as well. So unauthorized outposts should be removed and settlement expansion ended. At the same time, Israelis should find other practical ways to reduce their footprint without reducing their security -- so they can help President Abbas improve economic and humanitarian conditions. They should be confident that the United States will never abandon its commitment to the security of Israel as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people.

If there is any envenomed sting of "racism" there at all, it can only be at the very end, with the Tel Aviv statelet to be not just plain recognized like everybody else, but recognized-as-Jewish-Homeland. Insofar as that formula implies anything more than, or different from, acknowledgement of the Czech Republic as "Bohemian Homeland" by the conventional exchange of ambassadors et cetera, the formula might be racist.

Or then again, it might not. There is no need to resort to political poison gas like the R-word merely because Mr. Bush blatantly expects the occupied to make 95% of the concessions in Palestine, their occupiers only 5%. Especially at the moment, that asymmetry could easily be only a natural solidarity of right-wing occupationist régimes that has nothing to do with anybody's racial affiliations.

The Party perps themselves are of course "color blind." Everybody knows that. Haven't they insisted on that point often enough and loudly enough in other contexts?

What they are not is "lobby blind," so to call it, and if they were, that would be a deficiency in them also. M. Pascal and I don't award anybody points for thinking well on the basis of not seeing what is obviously there. Once in a while it is meritorious for a statesman to judiciously pretend not to see, but the Palestine Puzzle is not an exception in this respect. The lobby blindness of the militant Republicans is matched, though scarcely counterbalanced, by a lobby obsession on the part of most Arabs and Gentile Palestinians, as if my poor Uncle Sam had never been anything but a shameless pro-Zionist liar about allegedly wanting a fair settlement.

Fundamentally irrelevant developments since September 2001 have reinforced this misapprehension. The lobby-obsessed no doubt collect awful examples of Anti-Islamophalangitarianism in much the same way that MEMRI carefully culls its stinkfruits from the indigenous press of the Levant, failing to notice that the terrorized or careerist Pipesovitches and Spencers do not control Rancho Crawford but rather complain of it. The lobby-obsessed already "know" what Uncle Sam is "really" up to, they know it so well that all evidence to the contrary might as well be invisible. If Dr. Cobban had been briefed for the opposite side of the controversy, she might, with equal looseness of epithet, call that "fairly racist."

A more accurate and neutral description of it might be Big-Party Spirit, a hypertrophied narcissism that accounts blindness a badge of loyalty, as if devotion to Wunnerful US somehow consists mainly in deliberately making oneself deaf to almost everything THEY say, attending only to this week's Awfulest Examples Ever. Some of the offenders on both sides no doubt conceive the wunnerful usness of their own preferred US in ways that can legitimately be considered race-based, maybe even racism-base. Most, however, do not. Race-basin' undoubtedly can lead to the misbehavior in question, but so can quite a number of other factors. Further research is required.


[3] Anyway, what do we want? Would we approve of militant GOP extremism any better if it frankly reverted to Barry Goldwater and annouced that certain Dynasty or Party values are so precious that even immoderation in pursuit of them should not be accounted vicious?

As things stand, one may at least hope to be able to practice a little political ju-jitsu on them from time to time, persuading these avowed Knights of Moderation to abandon at least a few of their wilder schemes of thuggery and self-preference.

When Bozo Meets Braniac ...

... wouldn't you expect it to be Master Bozo rather than Dr. General Braniac who gets scapegoated, O some-sayers?

Bush Leans On Petraeus as War Dissent Deepens General Set Up as Scapegoat, Some Say By Thomas E. Ricks Almost every time President Bush has defended his new strategy in Iraq this year, he has invoked the name of the top commander, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus. Speaking in Cleveland on Tuesday, Bush called Petraeus his "main man" -- a "smart, capable man who gives me his candid advice." And on Thursday, as the president sought to stave off a revolt among congressional Republicans, he said he wanted "to wait to see what David has to say. I trust David Petraeus, his judgment."

Whether on purpose or not, Mr. Ricks reminds everybody of the bozodom right off. Of the inveterate bozodom, one should say, since even before Floridagate 2000 that was the way Little Brother talked -- as if the United States of America were of interest primarily as it figures the biography of Wunnerful Him. Normal pols with troubles as bad as the Big Management Party's have become, troubles that they hoped DP could deliver them from, would praise DP directly and try not to be noticed themselves. Not Master Bozo, however. What the remnants of the aggression faction need to know is mainly that the Dr. Gen. has been vouchsafed the favor of Kennebunkport-Crawford dynasty trust. With that in hand, how shall he fail? (Remember how M. Vladimir Putin of Muscovy won the Bozo Trust Prize too, once upon a time? For that matter, so did poor M. al-Málikí at brave New Baghdád, heaven help him!)

The weirdness and indecorum of this syndrome are even worse than they look at first glance, since as a matter of fact Little Brother of Yayle and Harvard Victory School almost certainly does not trust Dr. Gen. David Petraeus of West Point and Princeton in any political or violence-professional sense of importance. That is to say, the Bozo Trust Prize is so priceless a boon that even a fake copy of it is now to save the day.for the militant GOP! (Presumably even in theory this shtik only works as long as the militant elephants don't spot the fakery. Ideally there ought to be clinical trials: does real K-C dynastic trust save more patients than placebos feigned to be K-C dynastic trust? Considering the exact nature of the patient, however, the suggestion is no doubt unworkable.) [1]

But let's hurry on to the scapegoat bit, shall we?

Some of Petraeus's military comrades worry that the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve. "The danger is that Petraeus will now be painted as failing to live up to expectations and become the fall guy for the administration," one retired four-star officer said. Bush has mentioned Petraeus at least 150 times this year in his speeches, interviews and news conferences, often setting him up in opposition to members of Congress. "It seems to me almost an act of desperation, the administration turning to the one most prominent official who cannot act politically and whose credibility is so far unsullied, someone who is or should be purely driven by the facts of the situation," said Richard Kohn, a specialist in U.S. military history at the University of North Carolina. "What it tells me, given the hemorrhaging of support in Congress, is that we're entering some new phase of the end game."

Hmm. That's not the weightiest evidence ever assembled, Mr. Ricks: one probably envious and certainly anonymous violence pro, one shot at Lexis-Nexis, and then Dr. Kohn, who paints himself into a rather peculiar corner. His credentials in Mil. Sci. are evidently supposed to reinforce a purely political judgment. How exactly does that gimmick work? The worthy educationist seems to be a babe in the woods about Pol. Sci.: fancy anybody supposing that Dr. Gen. Petraeus "cannot act politically"! It is a shame that Field Marshall Douglas MacArthur had to fade away before hearing that pleasantry.

Mr. Ricks must be devoted to his bassackwards approach, however, because he promptly does it again:

Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, a skilled strategist, concluded that the president is sending the message that Iraq is "a purely military problem." The lesson, he said, may be that "the military action and the political objectives are parting company." That is, he explained, the United States may make some progress by fighting insurgents and training Iraqis, but that won't affect the Iraqi leaders' ability to achieve reconciliation.

Though his qualifications seem no more suitable than Dr. Kohn's, Gen. Gregson at least talks rather better sense. [2] I don't think Little Brother and the Big Party are in fact doin' what he attributes to them, but it would be rather good (political) strategy on their part if they were. The very fact that the Party perps have never yet done anythin' as rational as that in the entire course of their aggression and occupation policies seems to me a strong argument that they aren't doin' it now either.

In any case, Gen. Gregson conflates real politics (Kennebunkport-Crawford politics, maybe even Reid & Pelosi) with the native "politics" of Green Zone collaborationists in a way in which Televisionland and the electorate are not at all likely to do. K. Rove is far more competent in his own sphere of Party twistification than his boss is at anythin' and would therefore certainly have vetoed that plan if he ever heard of it. If you suppose that Neocomrade Rove was bypassed and that Little Brother is in fact tryin' to signal that there is nothin' out there in the GOP-blessed Land of Peace and Freedom but "a purely military problem," you must surely grant that he is doin' it very badly indeed, even by his own low standards:

... Our strategy is built on the premise that progress on security will pave the way for political progress ... advance the difficult process of reconciliation at both the national and local levels ... We are starting to take the initiative away from al Qaeda -- and aiding the rise of an Iraqi government that can protect its people, deliver basic services, and be an ally in the war against extremists and radicals.

That's from yesterday's weekly propaganda broadcast . In a pinch, one might maintain on the basis of it that at this point Little Brother's sole interest in GZ collaborationists is to enlist them in the Big Management Party's Kiddie Krusade or Long War -- "be an ally in the war against extremists and radicals" --, but that cannot be what Gen. Gregson or Dr. Gen. Petraeus would refer to as "a strictly military problem." [3]

Our own view remains that Little Brother and Big Management are not now, and never have been, interested in any sort of strictness, that they'll take anythin' whatsoever or its exact opposite as long as K. Rove can dress it up as Success and Victory for Boy and Party without seemin' clinically demented to Televisionland and the electorate. That strategy would seem to leave Dr. Gen. Petraeus quite a lot of leeway: the cowpokers don't give a hoot what he does as long as he damwell does it for 'em and does it soon! One might accordingly speak of "a strictly Petraean problem," but that's rather different from what Gen. Gregson actually said.

Meanwhile, the Ricksian backhand approach culminates in a doozy:

When Bush and his aides shift military strategy, they seem to turn on the generals on whom they once relied publicly, said Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official. ... Shinseki ... Casey ... Pace .... "This is an administration that wants to blame the generals," Korb said.

One can be grossly unfair even to H.R.H. the Prince of Darkness! Needless to say, the bozos of Big Management do not at all want to blame their violence pro hired hands, what they want is plainly that there should be nothin' in sight that requires to be blamed on anybody at all. Unfortunately they haven't a clue how to get there from here, so from time to time a certain amount of blamin' becomes unavoidable, and, given a choice between speakin' of technical failure and admittin' to a BigManagerial (or so-called "executive") failure on their own part, they invariably prefer the former. The spooks have been victims of this Boy-'n'-Party self-protection instinct quite as much as the generals have. [4]

Consistent right down to the bottom line, Mr. Ricks concludes with yet another Mil. Sci. professional doing amateur politics:

A senior officer in Iraq said [that in September] Petraeus will point toward several kinds of progress, such as improving security in Baghdad and the shift of tribal alliances in Anbar province away from the insurgency. But others note that those points were made in the interim report released by the White House on Thursday, without much effect on the political debate. "I am sure in September he will report some progress, but probably not enough to stop the tide to get out now," predicted Brian Linn, a military historian at Texas A&M University.

The whole scribble seems to be working up to a conclusion that Mr. Ricks finally decides is so improbable that it would be better not to mention it. In some parallel universe, however, one not too far removed from our own, the militant GOP extremists will take advantage of the Petraeus-Crocker report on the ever-victorious Surge of '07™ to finally pull a kissinger and wash their hands of Peaceful Freedumbia once and for all, protestin', in the best approved Pontius Pilate manner, that it was "a strictly military failure" and therefore not really their fault at all . . . .

The neo-Iraqi victims of Big Management should be so lucky! It's far too good to be true and belongs nowhere but in the Memoirs of Rabbi ben Trovato, unfortunately.


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[1] President Carter made himself look pretty silly with a mere two words, "Trust me!" George XLIII Bush in effect revises that to "Trust my trust!" The loss in brevity is more than compensated for by the vast increase in silliness.

To be sure, JC was even more so than Dr. Gen. Petraeus, probably the "smartest President ever" judged purely on a scientistic IQ basis. After being almost alway the cleverest person in the room all his life, JC's "Trust me" properly meant something like "We haven't time to argue about it, but you'll soon see that I am right!" Master Dubya is not at all like that.


[2] Both Mil. Sci. "authorities" have every right to their opinions as subjects of Crawford, naturally. on the same basis as you and Mr. Bones and I do. However, that cannot have been why Mr. Ricks contacted them.


[3] Master Dubya's good ol' buddy David is notoriously a neotheorist of MacNamaran "counterinsurgency," a Mil. Sci. intellectual who as good as denies that such a creature as "a strictly military problem" could even exist in an environment like the bushogenic quagmire. That does not prove that the chickenhawk Party bozoes think so too, of course, but it does leave open the possibility that they might.


[4] Citizen Korb is not quite what I expected him to be, i.e., not a Clinton appointee. Au contraire:

In 2005 Korb, Robert O. Boorstin, and the National Security Staff of the Center for American Progress published a position paper called "Integrated Power: A National Security Strategy for the 21st Century". In it they criticized President George W. Bush for invading Iraq and for devoting inadequate resources to the fight against Islamic fundamentalism. The authors also detailed plans to increase the manpower of the United States Army, to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, to spread liberal democratic values throughout the Middle East, and to reduce American dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. Ricks rather unfairly shoots out of the bushes when he does not give his readers any inkling of those credentials.

Hush!

Keep your mouth shut, turn those talk-show Ludendorffs off, clear your mind of Party cant, and just listen: . . . can't you hear it, that faint rustle over on the vigilante cowpoker side of the aisle, quietly a-buildin' . . . ?

Anticipation for the Warner-Lugar plan had been quietly building all week, particularly among the Republicans who have called for a new course in Iraq. The senators said lawmakers from both parties had expressed an interest in endorsing the plan, although it remained an open question whether it went far enough for Democratic critics of the war. The proposal would require Mr. Bush to present to Congress by Oct. 16 contingency plans to switch to a narrower mission in Iraq, including the protection of Iraqi borders, training Iraqi forces, protecting American military personnel and going after terrorists. The senators said the plan should begin by Dec. 31.

Why should donkeys and journalists and educationists have all the fun nowadays, why can't elected pols from the Big Management Party become paleface planmongers too?

Little Brother and Oilslick Dick no doubt sincerely consider that the Ollie North Constitution grants them exclusive powers of superlegal invasion and semiconquest and occupation and Petraeo-MacNamaran counterinsurgency, yet why do they have to insist on their special privileges so brattily and so relentlessly? The rest of the OnePercenter political class might be induced to go along with all Uncle Sam's belligent powers remainin' vaguely in the hands of respectable "people like us," credentialled HVS MBA CEO GOP bigmanagers with a track record of success, people who actually know what it takes to meet a payroll (&c. &c.), whereas askin' 'em to take political risks for the Cheney-Bush Aggression Trust without even bein' put on its board of directors ornamentally is a bit steep. If the Big Management movement can't hang together more successfully than than Mr. Zeleny reports in this mornings New York Times , why, possibly Dr. Marx will have the last laugh after all!

To some slight extent the above questions are real as well as rhetorical. Unfortunately the Executive and its Boy are not on the same wavelength even strictly as a gruesome twosome: while Mr. Cheney tries to erect pseudoconstitutional ramparts around Master Bush's sole discretion, the latter keeps on talkin' as if he had surrendered the said discretion to the Big Party's violence professionals lock, stock and barrel. Little Brother does not, of course, mean what he says along those lines; the Big Party's generals and colonels remain mere hired hands, not significant decision-makers. (If Rear-Col. Freddy and the rest of the Bani Kagan think otherwise, they'll be in for a rude awakenin' even if the ever-victorious Surge of '07™ in some sense "works.")

I wonder whether the Lugars and Warners call that silly bluff when they conspire with the perps in private? The idea of runnin' the New Baghdad Railroad Company on the basis of advice from the cleanin' crew or the programmin' staff must offend them doubly, both as US Senators and, more importantly, as private-sectorian BigManagers. Once Master Bush had explained to them that he's only pretendin' to let Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and Freddy of AEI and so on be his brain, pretendin' so as to stall for more time for Stay-the-Course to begin to take effect, as who can doubt that it soon will?, the Lugars and Warners must have fallen back on their own private judgments of the true prospects for Stay-the-Course. It appears that that judgment is negative.

It is not, however, extremely negative. Conventional wisdom supposes that Little Brother and the Big Party will only be permitted to futz around and micawberize as usual in the former Iraq until the middle of September. Warner and Lugar would generously spot the Leader of their Party three-and-a-half additional months for stallin' and futzin': "the [new, improved] plan should begin by Dec. 31." Master Bush and Mr. Cheney may find such generosity inadequate as well as uppity, when the really critical deadline to be stalled through falls in early November of next year. (That's how I'd guess they perceive the true state of their aggression, anyway.) However a series of different stalls glued together will do the trick for them quite as well as one sudden outbreak of total national masochism -- "patience" -- would, and Mr. Cheney, at least, ought to be able to see the point.

Cassandra and I are inclined to think it a waste of time to pick on the Warner-Lugar paleface planmongerin' in any detail at this point in time. Most likely it won't be approved by Congress at all. Next most likely, it will be approved but then Little Brother will veto it, regardless of who may sponsor it. If it survives those two obstacles, it won't go into effect on New Year's Day 2008 in any case, because by then the executive GOP geniuses will have come up with some other way of stallin', which they will simply proclaim to be perfectly consistent with the Warlugar Resolution "as they understand it." [1]

On the other hand, something not unlike the Warlugar Resolution may arrive eventually, though it be under "President Clinton" in February 2009 and no earlier. So let's have a quick look at it: "switch to a narrower mission in Iraq, including the protection of Iraqi borders, training Iraqi forces, protecting American military personnel and going after terrorists." So what's "narrower" about that, eh?

Not a hard question: the narrowness of it can only have been conceived by the Warlugar faction as a matter of ditchin' poor M. al-Málikí's quasigovernment, or whatever additional GZ neorégime may have replaced it by the time the proposed narrowin' takes effect. Unfortunately even that little is not perfectly certain, considering that we are not told exactly what those "Iraqi forces" are to be trained for. Will they, too, only attempt to secure the "their" country's borders, or will they, perchance, be tryin' to put some collaborationist neorégime in effective control of "its own" territory? That seems not unlikely.

The only residual minimum of narrowin' that cannot simply evaporate (without undue twistification) would seem to be that Warlugar invasionites, as opposed to Cheney-Petraeus invasionites, will give up carin' about the exact nature of their collaborationist neorégime. Being me, I phrase the crucial-seeming points my way. Presumably the Warlugarites' own language runs more like "Above all, let's make sure we stay out of the natives' [exp. del.] civil war!" Their account of what the native auxiliaries are bein' trained for might be "to enforce law and order," which certainly sounds high-minded enough to be gettin' on with, does it not? [2]

Of course the whole mess of pottage has been concocted to appeal at Kansas City rather than Sadr City, so it's a bit beside the point to wonder what would happen to the neoliberateds if Warlugarism is ever actually imposed upon them. If you're eccentric enough to care about such trifles, yourr judgment will probably depend on vicarious partisanship in favour of some neoliberateds at the expense of others. Unlike most vicarious partisanisers know to me, I am predisposed in favor of poor M. al-Málikí and the UIA, or, at any rate, decidedly predisposed against all the countless TwentyPercenter factions and factionoids and factionettes, whether Ba‘thí or faith-crazed or only (?) yearning to restore the good old days of Sunni Ascendancy, without which no proper "Iraq" is possible at all, as every schoolboy knows.

Warlugarism might not be all bad, therefore. Assuming that armed forces responsible to the militant Republican extremists actually manage to seal the borders of "Iraq" even-handedly, the existing neorégime of majoritarian underdogs and unnatural masters could probably manage to hang on. If it did once start to totter, the evil Qommies could not march in to prop it up, but it is more important that without external intervention from the Sunnintern, there is no very urgent reason why it should start tottering in the first place [3] -- which is not to expect it will actually control much of the former Iraq any time soon, though.

Warlugarism remains very bad on balance all the same. It's no more than Responsible Nonwithdrawal, detestable political spinach as regards its objectives, and not impressive as strategy and tactics either. How should it be? The Warlugarites are only tryin' to please Peoria and don't even pretend to be doin' much more than that. Are there no intelligent adults in the ranks of the Kiddie Krusaders at all, then, able to recur to first principles and decide how to do this narrowing process -- which undoubtedly does need to be done, if they are to have themselves any Long War at all -- in a manner less unworthy of a Harvard Victory School master of business administration? Can't some of their Party tank-think señoritos reconsider why they aggressed their way into the former Iraq in the first place and work out a sensible minimum program of nondefeat that would be sustainable?

It should not be difficult to come up with a better product than "protection of Iraqi borders, training Iraqi forces, protecting American military personnel and going after terrorists," in which only the last item makes any sense at all as an ultimate target.[4] The other three items taken together only add up to it somehow being necessary for the Big Management Party to stay in "Iraq" because they, somehow, happen to find themselves in "Iraq" at the moment. Whatever Peoria makes of such authentic or feigned amnesia here and now, it is unlikely to recommend itself to Princess Posterity after a century or so. Be their act what it may, and whether or not they want to talk to America about what act it is, 'twould do nobody any harm at all if they'd please try to get it together a little more rigorously.





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[1] Outside the ranks of the history-is-bunk Party, it will be recalled that Chancellor Michaelis, speaking for the General Staff, found the treaties of Brest-Litovsk entirely compatible with the Reichstag's famous Peace Resolution, "as he understood" the latter. One cannot expect Harvard Victory School MBA's to have casestudied that particular case, but they do seem to have independently reinvented this particular stick to shove into somebody else's wheels. Should the Warlugar Resolution survive the Legislative and go unvetoed by the Executive, doubtless Little Brother will attach one of his Ollie North Constitution "signin' statements" to it so as to reserve himself all the wiggle-room in the world. Poor Dr. Michaelis doubtless wasted his university years on Greek and Latin and jurisprudence instead of bigmanagerial techniques, but he didn't do so badly with what was in fact available in 1917-18.

In 2007-08, it won't take much twistification of "the protection of Iraqi borders" or "going after terrorists" to give the Kiddie Krusaders whatever they want to grab. One test of the sincerity of the Warlugar faction will be whether they stick in lots of hard numbers about warm bodies and almighty dollars that would be much harder to artfully dodge. On the other hand, the more of that devilish sort of detail gets included, the fewer Senators and Representatives from the OnePercenter classes will vote for the bill, and the more likely it is to be just plain vetoed.


[2] Despite over four years of Big Management under GOP auspices, there is a remarkable amount of ignorance about the happy Land of Peace and Freedom, not least in Party circles. A good many Warlugarites may simply not be aware how out of place "only to enforce law and order" is in the really existing bushogenic quagmire, as if they, or anybody else, could discuss that matter without first decidin' exactly WHOSE Rulalaw is to be imposed. Others of them, though, are bound to be cynics who in cold blood care nothin' for anybody's Rulalaw except the GOP's, which Senators Lugar and Warner have provided for carefully under the rubric of "going after terrorists."


[3] Ms. Conventional Wisdom and I disagree about the current occupation policy on at least one significant question. She takes it for granted, as much at Ann Arbor as at Rancho Crawford, that imposing ferocious Affirmative Action measures for the allegedly oppressed TwentyPercenters would tend to stabilize the collaborationist neorégime, maybe even pacify the whole colonial shebang. I begin by thinking the contrary, so adoption of a Warlugarite occupation policy seems likely to produce unanticipated consequences that for once would be mildly beneficial, actually strengthening that neorégime that the Big Management Party might superficially appear to be tossin' off the sledge to the wolves. A good stumble by the inveterate stumblebums for once, think of that! (Once it's put like that, though, it seems a sure thing that Oilslick Dick and George XLIII will fight tooth and nail to make sure it never happens. But that's only what I already told you is likeliest to happen.)


[4] The Democrats might notice this point also and try to use it against the aggressionites, saying perhaps "Since all that you folks ultimately care about is fightin' Globoterror, why don't we all just write off your irrelevant doo-doo in the former Iraq and start seriously fighting Globoterror?"

Such a challenge won't actually make any impression on the Party perps, who in fact have a number of other things on their minds over and above Globoterror, but all the same, this Warlugar bluff demands to be called. Let's find out whether they they can be compelled to mention what GOP invasionism really wants out loud, with no silly attempts to euphemize about "stability" or the like. Even if they don't answer at all, as probably they will not, they might get some of those AEIdeologue and Hoovervillian señoritos of theirs to think about it and report back secretly to Party Central. Even if their true goals are so abominable as to be unmentionable, it would be, as M. Pascal and I consider, a good thing if they could think better about them rather than worse.