Iraqiana: keeping it real

■"Key Iraqi see loose alliance as future: Shiite leader's vision at odds with others'," by Rick Jervis, USA Today, 12 December 2005, p. 1A.

■"Hollywood's Crude Cliches," op-ed by Richard Cohen, Washington Post, 13 December 2005, p. A27.

■"China and India Jointly Pursue Syrian Oil Assets: Alliance Marks New Tack By Former Energy Rivals; A Threat to Western Firms?" by Shai Oster and John Larkin, Wall Street Journal, 12 December 2005, p. A17.

I said it many times before and I stick with it: we're heading for a loose federation of three mini-states in Iraq. The pretend colonial creation of a state yields, in their near-term, to a tripartite solution. Kurds want it. Shiites want it. Sunnis better get used to it.

The bribe (shared oil revenue) has been offered: take it or leave, Mr. Triangle.

We don't stay to fight terrorists (throw those in as the bargain). No, we stay to enforce an emerging peace between three states that would otherwise go to direct war. This is global policing and peacekeeping at its best. It keeps the Big Bang's effects still alive in the region, providing whatever impetus remains for progress on pluralism (more importantly in the economic realm than the political one).

And it shows that it was never about the oil.

Listen to Richard Cohen's brilliant riff on the George Clooney paranoid thriller "Syriana" (reminding us all what a stunning brilliant columnist he often is):

A movie does not have to stick to the facts.

Still, if it is going to say anything, then it ought to say something smart and timely. But, the cynicism of "Syriana" is out of time and place, a homage to John le Carre, who himself is dated. To read George Packer's "The Assassin's Gate" is to be reminded that the Iraq war is not the product of oil avarice, or CIA evil, but of a surfeit of altruism, a naÔve compulsion to do good. That entire collection of neo- and retro-conservatives--George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and particularly Paul Wolfowitz--made war not for oil or for empire but to end the horror of Saddam Hussein and, yes, reorder the Middle East.

They were inept. They were duplicitous. They were awesomely incompetent, and, in the case of Bush, they were monumentally ignorant and incurious, but they did not give a damn for oil or empire. This is why so many liberals, myself included, originally supported the war. It engaged us emotionally. It seemed Ö well, right--a just cause.

It would be nice if Hollywood understood that. It would be nice if those who agree with Hollywood--who think, as [director and screenwriter] Gaghan does, that this is a brave, speaking-truth-to-power movie when it's really just an outdated clichÈ--could release their fervid grip on old-left bromides about Big Oil, Big Business, Big Government and the inherent evil of George Bush, and come up with something new and relevant. I say that become something new and relevant is desperately needed. Neoconservatism crashed and burned in Iraq, but liberalism never even showed up. The left's criticism of the war from the very start was too often a porridge of inanities about oil or empire or Halliburton--or isolationism by another name. It was childish and ultimately ineffective. The war came and Bush was re-elected. How's that for a clean whiff?

Meanwhile, who's pursuing Syriana's oil nakedly?

Why China and India, of course, in collusion no less, as they begin to realize their growing collective buyer's clout in the marketplace.

That's how pathetically off-target George Clooney's movie is.

Of course, I will see it anyway, cause I really like George Clooney and because I enjoy a good yarn.