I think I have this Ahmad Chalabi thing figured out.

Before I begin, let me grant that he has been a controversial figure all along, loved by the Pentagon and hated by the State Department. Of course, this tends to improve my estimation of him, but then you probably would have guessed that. His past doesn’t matter, though; what does is the past month.

Rewind to two weeks ago, when David Brooks wrote a piece arguing that we needed to find circumstances in which to “lose” some conflict with the new Iraqi government. This gives the new Iraq the credible appearance of being opposed to American interests, which in turn devalues the next best anti-American option, the violent insurgency. By losing something, we win much more: popular support for the new Iraqi government and popular disdain for the insurgents–something I think would come naturally for Iraqis if they felt they weren’t cuddling up to America too much in the process. (Lametably, the Gray Online Lady is a bit hasty in archiving her columns, so you can’t read the full Brooks. The column is aready in pay-three-bucks-for-a-permanent-link mode, and I’m too cheap to pay it. However, the abstract is sufficient for my current purposes.)

So on Thursday, we bust into Chalabi’s place and break some picture frames and stuff. Iraqi judge Hassan Muathin insists the action was to serve an arrest warrant on several member’s of Chalabi’s entourage who were accused of stealing state vehicles. U.S. forces were reportedly only present as backup. The Coalition Provisional Authority makes it own accusations of fraud, extortion, and false imprisonment. Whatever.

Then on Friday, the Governing Council denounces the U.S. for the raid. Nobody on the Council seems to love Chalabi–who actually does, come to think of it?–but they seem hopping mad that we woke him up at an ungentlemanly hour and broke that one framed picture he had of himself. Later in the day, the Pentagon says they have an open-and-shut case that Chalabi has been spying for Iran. Never mind the parking tickets; this is serious, and we’ve got the pictures. (Note that Chalabi-as-Iranian-spymaster was not news as of May 21, 2004.)

So if I were a conspiracy theorist–and I should pause to remind the reader that I am not–I’d see an interesting chain of events here: an influential op-ed writer suggests we find some way to lose in order to win; we break into a prominent, but controversial Iraqi leader’s house and rough some guys up; the Governing Council gets all up in our face for it; we dredge up a month-old pretext of espionage. Does any of it matter? Probably not much. Chalabi was never going to hold significant office in the new Iraq anyway, since everybody seems to hate him. Did we look like brutes in the process, and do new Iraqi leaders get to denounce us for it? You’d better believe it. This stuff is solid gold.

If the whole scheme involved Halliburton or somehow reflected very poorly on the Bush administration, this conspiracy already would have been floated and discussed at length at Democratic Underground. Maybe it already has, but I haven’t checked. (I don’t read DU at all, as life is too short.)

At the end of the day, I don’t believe for a second that this was deliberately contrived as a means of answering Brooks’ suggestion. Even if in that case, though, it still might serve the purpose he suggested, which was a very good purpose indeed. This little chain of events could work out very well. Let’s keep our eyes on it.

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• Posted by Tim on Saturday, May 22, 2004 at 1:18:47 pm PDT
• Category: September 12
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