It sounds like Nic is proposing something much like what I did last
year[0], for much the same reasons.  Though AFAIK Emacs currently
ships with only two anaphoric macros, namely `ibuffer-aif' and
`ibuffer-awhen', others such as `acond' would also be welcome
additions to elisp proper.  These macros and others are discussed in
more detail here[1].