Around here, we occasionally refer to the songs-and-dances issuing from Washington and the Green Zone as “Kabuki” — a fitting description, since
Kabuki (æŒèˆžä¼Å½, kabuki) is a form of traditional Japanese theatre[; t]he word kabuki is believed to derive from the verb kabuku, meaning “to lean” or “to be out of the ordinary”, so kabuki can be interpreted to mean “avant-garde” or “bizarre” theatre.
But now that I think about it, maybe we’d better capture the essence of what goes on in Iraq if we just say “Noh”:
Noh (能, NÃ…), or NÃ…gaku (能楽, NÃ…gaku) is a major form of classic Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. … By tradition, Noh actors and musicians never rehearse for performances together. Instead, each actor, musician, and choral chanter practices his or her fundamental movements, songs, and dances independently or under the tutelage of a senior member of the school. Thus, the tempo of a given performance is not set by any single performer but established by the interactions of all the performers together.
This morning’s Eugene Robinson certainly sounds like Noh to me:
The next time you hear confident assurances from the White House and its supporters that the “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq is working and that something called “victory” is within sight, remember the Yazidis.
The who? Before Tuesday, you almost certainly would have asked that question — before two villages in northern Iraq, populated by an obscure religious sect, suffered what is now officially the deadliest terrorist attack of the war, with more than 400 people confirmed dead. The final toll is expected to rise, but the coordinated suicide truck bombings in the Yazidi towns already constitute the second-worst terrorist attack of modern times, trailing only the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001. …
It was al-Qaeda, U.S. military officers quickly announced. And maybe it was. Maybe it was part of an al-Qaeda effort to create chaos in an area near the Kurdish-controlled provinces that are often held up as the great success story of the U.S. invasion — an oasis of relative peace and tranquility if you want to overlook episodes of friction between Yazidis and Sunni Muslim Kurds.
But the White House and the U.S. military leadership in Iraq generally blame al-Qaeda for trying to foment sectarian and ethnic violence by driving wedges between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. In that context, the Yazidi sect is so tiny as to be inconsequential — hardly worth al-Qaeda’s time and effort.
The bombings Tuesday looked more like an act of genocide, an attempt to erase as many Yazidis as possible from the face of the earth. The motive for this atrocity might not have been political but religious; it might have been the work of Muslim fundamentalists trying to settle a centuries-old local grievance, rather than the work of Muslim fundamentalists trying to drive the Americans out of Iraq or establish a new caliphate in the Middle East. …
I don’t think anyone knows with certainty where “al-Qaeda in Iraq” ends and “the Sunni insurgency” begins. I don’t think anyone knows with certainty how the various Shiite factions will ultimately line up — or even if a unitary Iraq, having been shattered by the U.S. invasion, can ever be reassembled.
What I do know is that anyone who says American forces have to stay in Iraq because they’re protecting the Iraqi people should tell that to the Yazidis. Those who are left.
Actually, I’d say what we’ve really got is Washington and the Green Zone performing Kabuki while the rest of Iraq does Noh.
Take this “Petraeus Report” dance number . . .
After Bush spent all summer talking up “my man Dave” (thereby convincing Dave’s buddy-generals that he’s set to become The Decider’s next four-star straw man), day before yesterday came LAT’s 29th-graf-of-35 letting-slip that, oh by the way, it won’t be Dave (and Ryan)’s Report nearly so much as the White House’s, “with inputs from officials throughout the government” that merely “reflect evaluations by” Dave and Ryan. And in any case, “… though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data.” SO much easier to interpret your own carefully-selected-and shaped data than someone else’s who-knows-what, isn’t it?
But wait, there’s more. Yesterday WaPo made much of a fresh “clash” and “skirmishing” between “senior congressional aides” and “White House officials” — an “indication of the rising anxiety on all sides” — over the WHOs’ proposal to limit “the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration’s progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.”
Okay, since Dave and Ryan might come out with just any old thing right there on C-SPAN (and within the hour, YouTube), better their bosses Bob and Condi handle it in public, surely? Well no-o-o-o, thought the Dems.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told the White House that Bush’s presentation plan was unacceptable. An aide to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said that “we are in talks with the administration and . . . Senator Levin wants an open hearing” with Petraeus.
Those positions only hardened yesterday with reports that the document would not be written by the Army general but instead would come from the White House, with input from Petraeus, Crocker and other administration officials.
“Americans deserve an even-handed assessment of conditions in Iraq. Sadly, we will only receive a snapshot from the same people who told us the mission was accomplished and the insurgency was in its last throes,” warned House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.).
“That’s all the more reason why they would need to testify,” a senior Foreign Relations Committee aide said of Petraeus and Crocker. “We would want them to say whether they stand by all the information in the report.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to reporters.
(John Warner and Carl Levin meanwhile slipping off to Iraq Wednesday night for their own look-see, says WaPo.)
Well, it was just too many for Laura Rozen:
Add me to the list of the puzzled. Many signs are from those advising Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus that he and his advisors think they have a strategy that they say is somewhat succeeding and don’t want Congress to pull the plug. In other words, Petraeus and the White House are ostensibly pretty close in advocating a continued large scale US presence in Iraq for as long as possible.
So it’s bizarre that the White House is apparently indicating that it wants to preempt his findings and hijack the Petraeus report from Petraeus, and confine Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker to testifying before Congress in closed session.
So puzzling that one is suspicious: is the White House ultimately going to “give in” to Congressional pressure and “let” Petraeus testify, only to have it revealed, that, what do you know, it turns out that the good general too thinks the surge has done wonders and, with time, might reduce violence to a degree that greater political reconciliation takes hold. He even forecasts that over the next year, he might be able to move troops out of the areas where violence has gone down, hinting at a lower US troop presence by next year, without offering too many specifics.
Of any reported White House effort to silence or sideline Petraeus, one of the general’s close associates emails me, “I do not believe it.”
I am not sure I do either. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the White House is seeking to control the optics with Congressional Republican leaders anxious about how basically continuing a maximal US presence in Iraq will affect their ‘08 reelection prospects.
And lo, whaddya know — Gordon Johndroe at yesterday’s gaggle:
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will testify to the Congress in both open as well as closed sessions prior to the September 15th report. That has always been our intention. … I expect that Secretary Rice and Secretary Gates will also testify during this time period. They often testify before various members of both — of various committees of both Houses. But it was never an either/or, because Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus will be testifying.
This is a play Steve Benen has seen before:
Obviously, with [Wednes]day’s news that the White House, not Petraeus, will prepare the report on current conditions in Iraq, Emanuel and other Dems are hoping to take advantage of the opportunity. Petraeus has credibility; the Bush White House does not. Petraeus’ opinions are taken seriously; the Bush White House’s are not. Petraeus has the stature to change people’s minds; the Bush White House stopped even trying to persuade people quite a while ago. … Petraeus’ credibility is not the issue; the White House’s is.
Sigh. Okay, while all this primo Kabuki entertains DC, let’s check out the Noh farther east . . .
Remember that Gulf News report that Laura found Wednesday? The one headlined “Baghdad set for shake-up” and announcing that “the US administration on Tuesday set the stage for ‘major’ political changes in Iraq. The changes will be in ‘the structure, nature and direction of the Iraqi state,’ a senior American official in Baghdad was quoted by AP as saying”?
Eh, not so much.
Oh, Jalal Talabani called an emergency political summit, all right, and some Shiite and Kurdish “moderates” formed a new coalition, all right, but as we’ve heard from Abu Aardvark (Marc Lynch):
There’s no other way to spin this: this summit was billed as the last chance, and it has failed.
… Iyad Allawi’s bloc was pointedly not invited, despite his public indications that he was quite available. Nor were the Sadrists.
I thought there was at least a chance that they would cobble something together out of desperation and find ways to lure the Sunni parties back in – if for no other reason than that, by the accounts I’ve seen, American officials on the sidelines were heavily pressuring them to come back with something. It probably wouldn’t have resolved the underlying problems (government spokesman Ali Dabbagh made it clear in advance that no substantive issues would be discussed), but I thought they might well emerge with a face-saving compromise. They did not. Instead, Talabani announced the formation of a new four party coalition in support of the current government without any Sunni representation. What’s left is a government stripped to its sectarian base – the two Kurdish parties and the two major Shia parties – and a world of political hurt.
“[P]oliticians from the largest Sunni bloc in parliament said they would remain apart from the new group, asserting that the ruling Shiites still have not met their demands for greater participation,” confirms WaPo’s Joshua Partlow.
The Sunnis’ stance effectively undermines the coalition’s chances of breaking the political gridlock that has frustrated U.S. and Iraqi officials.
“We have lost hope, frankly, that this coalition will be the ideal solution to the strangling political crisis that the country is going through,” said Abdul Kareem Samarrae, a Sunni lawmaker, on al-Hurra television. “We hope that this is a genuine chance to solve those problems, but we think that this is merely a political cover for a government in its last few days or weeks.” …
[Nonetheless, t]he leaders [of the new alliance] issued a three-page statement outlining such general and oft-stated goals as unifying and strengthening the government, building up Iraqi security forces and providing basic services.
“This is a step to motivate the political process, for we could not leave Iraq like this in a semi-paralyzed situation,” Talabani said. “We hoped that this movement would be wider, as I have told you, but we made great efforts with our brothers at the Iraqi Islamic Party,” he said, referring to a major Sunni Arab party.
Some Iraqi officials interpreted the new alliance as an attempt to manufacture a majority in parliament to help push through several pieces of stalled legislation. But with the Shiites and the Kurds already in close alignment, the announcement struck several observers as little real progress. The agreement also does not replace the current political blocs in parliament, but adds another layer of alliances to them.
The locals aren’t the only ones scratching their heads over what the point may be, according to NYT:
A senior American official in Baghdad, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject, said that any alliance leaving out Sunnis would also lack the credibility needed for real reconciliation among the country’s three main factions, Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
"The core issues in Iraq, those things which the political leaders need to grapple with and are grappling, with [sic] have to be solved by all three communities, " he said. "So in that sense it’s hard to assess what this particular move means today. "
Leave out the Sunnis and the Sadrists (off “rehearsing” their usual roles in places like Qahtaniya and Tarmiyah), but expect to reach Act V all together on the same script? Laura looks for a rather different denouement:
A cynical observer might predict: a rush of legislation being passed by the reengineered Iraqi parliament just in time before the September non-Petraeus Petraeus report, fulfilling several of the Congressionally-mandated benchmarks.
Well. Whatever performance these strutters have in mind to stage, even those of us up here in the cheap seats — not to mention the groundlings — can expect about the same view as this guy . . .
lotus
