1115.org

At the risk of emboldening the enemy, I’m afraid I’ve been having some subversive thoughts.

We may as well start with: who’s the enemy? It’s easier to make a list of who isn’t, actually.

Osama bin Laden isn’t the enemy, obviously, because we have all our resources and energy focused on other people and other things. We’ve even stopped putting out statements pretending we’re still serious about hunting him. One can only surmise that the Christian who George Bush claims to harbor somewhere in his bosom has won out, and George has found it in himself to forgive and forget. And if one is going to surmise that, one is forced to deduce that he forgave and forgot a long time ago. Because it was a very long time ago that we lost interest in doing very much about Osama.

Moqtada al-Sadr is clearly not the enemy, because he’s the BFF of our BFF.

The Shias in Iraq (which does, of course, include Moqtada al-Sadr and his band of merry men) are obviously not the enemy, because we’re allied with them, working hand in glove with them as they eradicate various Iraqis of a different persuasion.

The Sunnis in Iraq are obviously not the enemy, because we’re working so hard to make them full partners in the Great Democracy which is Iraq.

The Kurds in Iraq are obviously not the enemy. No explanation necessary.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq (affectionately, AQI) is obviously not the enemy either. They’re no longer important enough in Iraq to count as the enemy. (If they were, in fact, the enemy, we could safely exit Iraq now and leave it to the Iraqis to mop up AQI, given how little they count for any more.)

Iran shouldn’t really be the enemy either, should it? Because the friend of my friend is supposed to be my friend. And we are firmly on the side of the Shias, and so is Iran.

But then, when we ask: “Okay, so who’s the enemy?” that only leaves us with: “We are our own worst enemy.” And we’d apparently rather not cast ourselves in that role, so we have officially designated Iran to be the enemy. The enemy in Iraq, I mean.

There was a false start—an aborted attempt, really, to make high-profile claims not entirely supported by either the intelligence community or the intelligence (that has to be spelled it out since one does not necessarily imply the other, in the time of Bush). But the Bush regime is now ready to start laying out its case against what we’re going to have to start calling Triple-I (Iran in Iraq). And they’re doing it in the time honored way, since it worked so well for them before. Traditionally, you will recall, the first step is to leak it to some media whore (the likes of Judy Miller and Michael Gordon and Bob Novak). They went with Michael Gordon, presumably because the NYT continues to hire him; he obediently wrote up a nice little piece for Saturday’s edition. And they decided to supplement that with a different kind of whore. They went with Joe Lieberman; he obediently put out a nice little statement, also on Saturday. And then on Sunday, once the pumps had been primed, they held a nice little press conference in Baghdad to start making their case.

We’ll leave it to others to quibble about the quality of the evidence that is being adduced. And no doubt some very spirited quibbling will be witnessed in the days ahead. That is the inevitable consequence of the almost total lack of credibility the Bush administration enjoys in such matters—due entirely to its own past misdeeds, and its fumbled initial attempt to overstate the case again.

My subversive thoughts center on the logical inconsistency that characterizes our complaints about Triple-I.

Because there’s no getting around the fact that we are almost four years deep into a massive interference in Iraq’s internal affairs. Since March 2003, Iraq has been our Alice’s Restaurant. We had voices whispering in our ear: “You can do anything you want…”, and that is precisely what we have done in Iraq (though we did occasionally remember to remind everyone, including the Iraqis, that at some point along the way we had certified them to be a sovereign nation; and each time we issued this reminder, we did earnestly try to pay lip service to the notion, at least for a while). What we have been doing in Iraq has included supplying arms and ammunition to one or more of the warring factions (not directly, of course, oh no no no), and training their militias.

From our complaints about Triple-I, it is clear that our carefully considered position is that we can do anything we want in Iraq, but nobody else can. So when we put the full force of our might behind the Shias, and determinedly kept looking the other way (until very recently) as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army took advantage of the Alice’s Restaurant carte blanche to wreak merry mayhem on their enemies, that was only right and proper and fitting.

But (assuming the Triple-I allegations are true) when Iran provides material help to the same side (in what we would do well to remember is more of a civil war than a war against us at this stage), when Iran does that, they have no bloody right to meddle in the internal affairs of the sovereign nation of Iraq.

Clearly, we are saying Iraq is only our Alice’s Restaurant. It’s one of those old-fashioned establishments that still practices apartheid or segregation or whatever you want to call it. Iranians are not allowed in. Iranians can’t do anything they want. Only we have the right to take sides in the civil war, and do whatever else takes our fancy. Because we’re the good guys, remember?

(Please do try to remember. It doesn’t look like too many other people around the world do.)

See also: We’re Not Fools; We Just Choose To Turn A Blind Eye