The Government Won’t Yield To Violence?

by Pat Lang

Acceptance of the charter won’t open any magic doors, but it would demonstrate that the government won’t be moved by violence,” Jonathan Lindley, head of the Middle East unit at the Royal Services Institute, a London-based research organization, said in an Oct. 7 interview. “If it fails, it will be a setback.”


Shiite Muslim and Kurdish negotiators said Oct. 12 they had reached an agreement with Sunni politicians on the constitution, ending months of wrangling and ensuring the charter’s passage. ” (Bloomberg)


Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

Full results of the referendum won’t be known for days.


They won’t yield to violence? Are we to believe that the “Shiite Muslim and Kurdish negotiators” reached this agreement with some of the Sunni Arabs on the constitutional draft because their hearts were filled with the milk of human kindness?


Something caused the ruling ethno-religious coalition to decide to, at least theoretically, give up something of value to the Sunni Arabs. There is no free lunch, not in America and not in Iraq.


Think Hegel! Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. That is called dialectic, and not the marxist kind either.

  • Thesis (constitutional draft rogering the Sunni Arabs)

  • Antithesis (Sunni Arab-backed guerrilla war of great ferocity and persistance)

  • Synthesis (deal on the constitution).


Now if one were a Sunni Arab Baatho/nationalist insurgent, would one not believe that one’s antithesis was the cause of the subsequent synthesis?


Therefore — The government has ALREADY yielded to the pressure of violence, and one might think that further politically targeted violence would yield yet more and BETTER syntheses.


As if, in demonstration of this hypothesis, we have learned Friday night of a massively effective strike against the power grid in the Baghdad area.

The spinners are spinning. The official and un-official spokesmen for the adminstration are minimizing, but the fact is that the insurgents were able to analyze this target system (partly through previous experimentation) and then strike a node that blacked out the city on the eve of the referendum, thus promising more and better antitheses.


I predict that the constitution will pass the referendum and then, after a few days of giddy talk, the war will go on.


Think Hegel.

by Pat Lang

Acceptance of the charter won’t open any magic doors, but it would demonstrate that the government won’t be moved by violence,” Jonathan Lindley, head of the Middle East unit at the Royal Services Institute, a London-based research organization, said in an Oct. 7 interview. “If it fails, it will be a setback.”


Shiite Muslim and Kurdish negotiators said Oct. 12 they had reached an agreement with Sunni politicians on the constitution, ending months of wrangling and ensuring the charter’s passage. ” (Bloomberg)


Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

Full results of the referendum won’t be known for days.


They won’t yield to violence? Are we to believe that the “Shiite Muslim and Kurdish negotiators” reached this agreement with some of the Sunni Arabs on the constitutional draft because their hearts were filled with the milk of human kindness?


Something caused the ruling ethno-religious coalition to decide to, at least theoretically, give up something of value to the Sunni Arabs. There is no free lunch, not in America and not in Iraq.


Think Hegel! Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. That is called dialectic, and not the marxist kind either.

  • Thesis (constitutional draft rogering the Sunni Arabs)

  • Antithesis (Sunni Arab-backed guerrilla war of great ferocity and persistance)

  • Synthesis (deal on the constitution).


Now if one were a Sunni Arab Baatho/nationalist insurgent, would one not believe that one’s antithesis was the cause of the subsequent synthesis?


Therefore — The government has ALREADY yielded to the pressure of violence, and one might think that further politically targeted violence would yield yet more and BETTER syntheses.


As if, in demonstration of this hypothesis, we have learned Friday night of a massively effective strike against the power grid in the Baghdad area.

The spinners are spinning. The official and un-official spokesmen for the adminstration are minimizing, but the fact is that the insurgents were able to analyze this target system (partly through previous experimentation) and then strike a node that blacked out the city on the eve of the referendum, thus promising more and better antitheses.


I predict that the constitution will pass the referendum and then, after a few days of giddy talk, the war will go on.


Think Hegel.




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Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)


“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2