Getting Over Wars We Do Not Mean
Last month I said only bad options and wishful thinking remained to us in Iraq. John Kerry’s double deadline plan is a little of both. For all that it may be the least bad option going.
There are two big reasons why the pesky Iraqis haven’t formed a national unity government yet, the urgings of Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw notwithstanding.
1. There’s no actual national unity. Hence no national unity government. Without some minimal level of concord, Iraq’s factions will not, can not form a less imperfect union.
2. The current incumbents don’t need progress toward the formation of a new government. They’ve already got jobs. The checks keep coming in. They still get to feather their beds with patronage; the ones in charge of Things That Go Bang (Interior and Defense) still get to attack their enemies and the ones in charge of Raking In Gobs Of Cash (Oil and Construction) still get to skim the cream off the top of ministerial business.
Actually agreeing to a new government puts the power and perqs of the “interim†regime members at risk. If there were some “accountability moment†looming – frex, if failure to form a government in, oh, 90 days meant a new round of elections in which the principals risked discipline at the hands of a disgruntled electorate – they’d have some incentive to make a deal, but so far as I know there is no such provision.
That’s why Straw and Rice are a lot more anxious to get a new government officially formed than Messrs Jafaari and Jabr (among others). For the latter two, there’s nowhere to go but down.
Kerry’s deadline doesn’t address the first problem. It can’t. Nothing the United States can do, short of pulling a Silver Surfer gambit, will create unity where there is none. (The Silver Surfer at least once so despaired of humanity’s warring factionalism that he decided to attack the Earth in hopes it would unite against him. Damn if we aren’t giving it our best shot.) Kerry actually acknowledges this when he writes
If Iraqis aren’t willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they’re probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.
My emphasis. I’ve got some disagreements with some of the ways he construes the situation and constructs his argument, and like I say, it’s a bad option, but those are the only kind open to us now. James Joyner fixates on the risks of setting a deadline but passes too lightly over the risks of not setting one. David Ignatius confuses being able to get Zalmay Khalilzad on the telephone with justification for giving Iraq’s elites indefinite time to wrangle. John Henke, on the other hand, says Kerry’s plan fits the conservative/libertarian credo that incentives matter, though he doesn’t outright endorse it.
Comment by Leonard —
April 6, 2006 @ 8:57 am
Forming that government is just a matter of property institution design.
As you say, the men who might possibly form the govt don’t particular need to. Well, we’re the ones feathering their beds. So, we can create an incentive easily enough.
We just announce that every week that goes by w/o a government, we suspend 100m in military aid and construction aid. And when the first week goes by, we do it.
We might wait two weeks.
The problem is setting all-or-nothing ”deadlines” and whatnot when it is obvious to all concerned that we (meaning: Bushco or Amurrica more generally) have absolutely no intention of withdrawal. That’s stupid brinkmanship, like playing a game of chicken on a motorcycle.
Comment by Nell —
April 6, 2006 @ 9:23 am
some disagreements with some of the ways he construes the situation and constructs his argument
That’s putting it mildly. Apparently we’re never going to grow up enough to accept that anything could be the fault of Our Great Nation, whose intentions are always noble and pure.
It’s not just a matter of self-interested pols. The structural obstacles to a unified state are Kirkuk and its oil fields, sectarian and factional killing (including intra-UIA) that’s probably already too far along to stop, and the destruction by the U.S. occupation of just about everything that could make a unified state possible.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 6, 2006 @ 9:27 am
Nell, that’s an efficient unpacking of what I glossed as ”the first problem,” yes.
Kerry is a politician trying to talk tough while acting reasonable, so no, he’s not going to accept any blame on our behalf.
Comment by Ryan N. —
April 6, 2006 @ 9:51 am
Tales from Topographic Oceans: great album or greatest album?
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 6, 2006 @ 10:05 am
Heh. Ryan wins!
I got on a Yes kick last summer, which was a strange and disconcerting to happen to someone whose life was changed by Give ’Em Enough Rope. So I can say with authority that, no, Relayer is the greatest. In fact, I find that ”Gates of Delirium” really speaks to me these days.
I do like the nonsense verse albums like Close to the Edge and Tales, though. Once I got over the sense of betrayal that all that tenth-grade dorm time spent trying to figure out what the lyrics *really meant*, I was able to enjoy those records for what they are.
Comment by Ryan N. —
April 6, 2006 @ 11:02 am
Relayer is also an excellent choice; it’s in my top three with Tales and Going for the One (I’m still amazed at how good Gates is without Rick Wakeman playing). A few years ago, they went on tour and played Gates, Nous Sommes du Soleil, and Awaken – best concert I’ve ever heard.
If you’re not familiar with Anglagard, you should give them a try (either studio album is great). They’re similar in sound to Yes without being slavishly derivative.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
April 7, 2006 @ 2:56 am
Jon Anderson comments in an interview one or another of their concert-and-video albums that he often puts words together simply because he likes the sound; the goal is to create an interesting flow of sounds in many of the passages folks have most puzzled over.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 7, 2006 @ 6:56 am
Yeah, that pissed me off when I read that (or the initial 70s version of it). But at the time I had no recognition that there could be nonsense verse that wasn’t relentlessly comical; I’d never heard of L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry; I felt cheated.
I really need to do a proper blogpost about the Yes stuff. Because this blog hasn’t been self-indulgent enough lately.