As with Sheik Sadun, the man I studied in Haditha--Sheik Mohammed Hussein Shaffir--has foibles and flaws; he's involved in at least one sideline of organized crime, probably several. But I actually took the time to talk to the Marine Corps about their support of him (as well as the citizens of Haditha, its business leaders, the U.S. State Department, Iraqi politicians, the Iraqi police, et al.). What I realized, after some unbiased investigation, is that the players being prepped to take power in Anbar are in the positions they are for some very pragmatic reasons--namely they're still alive and they can kill terrorists (thousands of their counterparts have been assassinated).

You overlook an essential point: this place is still a [expletive] war zone, you ignorant cur. Fallujah and Anbar are just out of an internecine civil war/insurgency (if it's indeed finished), that's followed a destructive invasion, which came on the heels of 12 years of debilitating international sanctions and 30 years of repressive authoritarian rule. It's not a bastion of [expletive] Rotary Club nominees. When you pick from an attenuated (and flawed) lot, you take what you get--that's a simple law of nature.

When war comes (and to repeat, we're well beyond the point of talking about whether that war was just or not) anybody with a pot to piss in picks up--with their pot and all their belongings--and moves away; in this case to Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia. Those left behind are generally not the richest or the best educated of the lot. They are the fighters and the scrappers--the survivors. When it comes time to put the pieces back together, it's going to be those who stayed--and who are still standing--that lay down the first blocks in the new foundation.

The people with money will eventually come back, with their pots to piss in and all their wealth and education--and will eventually be incorporated back into the social structure (I'm a Marxist, so I figure they'll probably end up running it, as they always do). But they're not going to come back till the violence is gone (and even a couple of years after that). So ironically, it's the plebes--those survivors lacking celebrated family names, abbreviated titles or BMWs--who fought so hard for the security that will afford the patricians their return (men like Mohammed Shaffir and probably Aifan Sadun).

Those scrappers are often brave, but they're survivors first; and in a conflict as dirty as a religion-on-religion civil war, they're often tarnished. It's these characters--and the tribe (I don't care how much the military likes or dislikes a particular front runner, if his tribe is the strongest and he's its sheik, he's going to be the area's leader)--that will control the government until normalcy resumes. How long will that take? Who's to say? I couldn't see it taking less than ten years.

S.D Liddick describes himself as a Marxist, which I found rather amusing considering that he is here acknowledging how the sausage of a civil society gets made from the abattoir of anarchy. Why can't he appreciate the sausage-making required for the creation of national wealth? Intellectual maturation is apparently like global warming--not necessary global.

There is further irony in Liddick's characterization of the U.S. as an imperium, and its actions in Iraq as colonial in nature. Consider the dichotomy present in his evaluation of the U.S. military.

The military has been surprisingly forthcoming with me and all I had to do was ask. Marine Corps Colonel Patrick Malay sat with me on three different occasions, for long discussions about security in his area of operation in Anbar. One thing I learned quickly is that the military's officer corps is filled with the best of America's minds--kids that aced their college entrance exams, were the captains of their ball teams, and had to be nominated by senators to go to the schools they did. These are the guys (along with their much more experienced superiors) that are deciding strategy--and they're [expletive] smart. I was allowed to sit in on a couple of their high level briefings--again, all I had to do was show some kind of aptitude for objectivity--and I can tell you their comprehension of the situation on the ground is apt, their thinking clever, and their intentions centrally wrapped up with the Iraqi people.

An imperium is fundamentally a racist enterprise, with a fundamental view that the imperialists have the right to rule inferior peoples. Liddick clearly hasn't reconciled his observation of U.S. military personal, their actions and objectives with that reality. None of the truly imperialist nations in history have ever given a damn about the welfare of their subjects, and certainly not about their ability to engage in self-rule. The actions of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan are clearly anti-imperial.

Of course, the reality of U.S. motives requires one to create a new categorization for U.S. actions, one that doesn't fit the classical definitions. Iraq shares the characteristics of mobilization with imperialism, but its motivations are entirely different. Instead of, as Liddick implies, "natural resources and geopolitical advantage", the U.S. is clearly seeking to create partners that share basic values of democracy.

Democracy has become such a weasel word, used most often by people with no real use for it and the ambiguity for their personal power that it represents. Yet the institutions that underlie a democracy are clearly what the U.S. is working hard to put in place in Iraq, just as it did in Europe more than fifty years ago. What's the upside for the U.S.?

Certainly Iraq's resources will become available for trade, but that's a vastly different paradigm from the imperial model which is tantamount to looting. Geopolitical advantage? Well, there is certainly geopolitical value in creating allies where there were none before, but most obviously we can see from the model that already exists, that democratic countries share common values, institutions and objectives that breed cooperation rather than confrontation.

The famous "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention" holds that no two countries with a McDonald's restaurant have ever gone to war with each other. Its a fundamental reason I supported the war in Iraq from the git-go.

One final bit of cognitive dissonance. Liddick's criticism of Dhar Jamail surrounds his moral condemnation of an Iraqi society that doesn't meet his standards for social justice. Jamail's high horse is a familiar one--the left has been riding it for six years and will likely continue their condemnation of any and all progress in Iraq on that basis. Yet the inescapable conclusion of the left-wing alternative (smart diplomacy?) is to do precisely what Jamail condemns--make deals with bad men. We don't go in and take down the Mullahs in Iran, we "make a deal".

Looking for intellectual consistency in the left's argument is a futile exercise, because utlimately the arguments are political, not syllogistic. Its the five year old's concept of fairness--whatever is good for the left politically is right, whatever is bad for them, is wrong.

I'd recommend reading both articles. Read Liddick's to see someone in the process of recovering from insanity, and Jamail's for the entertainment value.

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden remarks Liddick's miracle cure