Worms

Yesterday I wrote dismissively of the Anonymous Liberal, guest-blogging at Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory blog. The Liberal was kind enough to stop by and clarify in comments. Today, then, I'll say something nice. Again posting at Unclaimed Territory, A.L. writes:

Sullivan seems to acknowledge that the neocon plan is not working and may even be counterproductive, but he is unwilling to take the "anti-war" crowd seriously until they offer forth some alternative grand sweeping strategy for fighting terrorism.

But what if there isn't one?

An excellent question. I'll try to answer in my way.

A.L. is posting at a serious blog, whereas I'm chucking cats into sanctuaries, in Mencken's inimitable phrase, and so A.L. treats Sullivan more kindly than I will. Andrew Sullivan is of that most despicable order of human beings: those who demand that society, government, and all civilization comport themselves specifically to compensate for Sullivan et al.'s personal fearfulness, cowardice, and inadequacy. Having neither the courage nor the intellect to look at the difficult world head on and admit to the fundamental precariousness of life; having neither the grace nor simple decency to admit that his terror-circumscribed life is infinitely less precarious than those people whose lives are destroyed not only by the end-stage blood-sport of monotheistic medievalism but also by the military policies which Sullivan himself advocates behind an unconvincing veneer of reasonableness; he expects that his timorous worldview, beset as it is by bogeymen, will be validated even as it proves inconsistent with reality, immature, and--let's not put too fine a face on it--plain wrong.

Where A.L. errs is in granting Sullivan his own self-serving premise: that what he wants is a "grand strategy." That's a euphemism. What Sullivan wants is a war.

What Sullivan wants is the West victorious, a conflagration fought on great battlefields with our heroes raising flags as they conquer capital after capital. What Sullivan wants is for the natives to cheer as we liberate them from the poverty of their backwardness. Civilize the savages! He is a brutish, bloodthirsty faggot who wraps his essential racism in colorful baubles of anti-homophobia and anti-misogyny, hoping no one notices the ugliness behind the decorations.

Sullivan won't take the anti-war crowd seriously because they won't consent to give him a war. He despairs of the current ruling crowd because they won't and can't give him the war he wants. The war he wants has no torture and no degredation, no abu Ghraibs, no rapes, no abiguous victories and petty defeats, no insurgencies, no protests. It begins and ends in a ticker-tape parade. It's a fantasy based on a fantasy of what the Second World War really was. It's the stuff of the imagination of adolescent boys. His glorious little war has been spoiled, but the nominal political opposition won't propose a new one. It's a war on terror, you damn liberals; get with the Sullivanian program!

The nattering of half-witted homosexuals on the electronic pages of Time, our mediocre nation's most mediocre magazine, is of small consequence ultimately, except insofar as it reflects the self-satiated conviction of virtually our entire culture that we are essentially in the right, and if our tactics are debased, that reflects merely upon our political leadership and can be remedied by "seriousness," or what have you. That's idiocy masquerading as analysis. The truth of the current conflict is more grave: We are in the wrong. That we describe our actions to ourselves as a response to "terrorism" only puts us in the long line of failed conquerers responding to their respective barbarians. That we were "attacked on 9/11" and then embarked on a self-described war against terrorism is entirely irrelevant. The War in Iraq, the failure in Afghanistan, the hall-of-mirrors domestic security measures, our global concentration camps (call them prisons if you must): these are not misguided tactics in a strategically defensible struggle. They are essential components of a policy of imperial war that neither advocates nor opponents of our Iraqi misadventure want to admit is imperial war.

Andrew Sullivan is a worm. But we are in a downpour, and the roads are covered with them.

Apu Is Not a Muslim

Roy Edroso, a funny man and also a wise one, says something true:

I'm supposed to go to London in a few weeks with Editor Martin. I see no reason to postpone or re-route. Terror only works if you're terrorized.

You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools; but that's the way I like it, baby, I don't want to live forever.

God bless you, brother.

Meanwhile, he links to an hysterical post by some dude calling himself "Ace of Spades," though by the looks of things--8/11 is like 9/11 without the 9! Just like 7/7 is like 8/11 is like 9/11 without the 8 or the 9 or the 11!--he should rename himself the The MaHaRal.

Down in the rebbe's comments, a poster named IreneFingIrene actually writes: "Why does 7-11 seem like a really good symbolic date for terrorism?" I guess that passes for pithy in Conservatania, or whatever. Far be it from me to ruin a good panic attack, but I note that the gentlemen and ladies of duskier hue reputed to run all those 7-11s are Hindu. But perhaps that's just further example of a general innumeracy among the whacko terror-pornographers: one god, millions of gods, what's the fucking difference?

UPDATE: See comments. The comment was misattributed. Apologies to Irene. Everyone laugh at Sinner instead.

BYOP

Bring your own paranoia.

In a smart post, Billmon hedges his bets. Juan Cole also cautiously weighs in, though the real meat is in his comments, where commenters show admirable skepticism.

This so-called plot is fake. It's bogus. If "details are still emerging," it's because the plot (I use the word here in its literary sense) is still being written. The sheer absurdity of it--no liquids on airlines! no travel bags! no toothpaste--evidences its improbability. The already-cliché, pre-written headline, "Mass Murder on an Unimagineable Scale," evidences its absurdity. The institution of security measures after the supposed foiling of the attack evidences its absurdity. I want to be clear. I am not contending that this is the cynical overstatement by our government of a half-witted fantasy, à la the Miami Sears Tower bombers. I'm saying that it is a fantasy written and constructed by our government and the British government for the purposes of domestic control. I'm saying that it is a falsity crafted to provide legitimacy to further expansion of the police powers of the American and British states. I'm saying that their government and ours are lying. I'm saying I believe that to be the only rational conclusion. I'm saying that we must consider foursquare the monstrosity of a government thus capable.

The Times happily reports that "old fears resurface with plot," as the front-page teaser read in today's print edition.

Down the rabbit hole.

There Ain't No Precedent Like a Precedent

Voters in 1972 did not have any historical context for understanding what was happening in Vietnam.

-Anonymous Liberal at Gleen Greenwald's place

I occasionally listen to Michael Savage's radio program as an excercise in masochism and also because he is, though a sick, sick man, perhaps the finest radio performer currently on air (that's an entertainment industry judgement, but there it is). I'm beginning to think he may be right when he says that liberalism is a mental illness.

No context for understanding Vietnam! UH-HUH. "The Forgotten War" indeed.

In any case, what truly irks me is this remarkably smug attitude: The critics are wrong because we're nothing like those damned pacifists protesting Vietnam. You're damn right you're nothing like them. You lack their courage. You lack their moral vision. You certainly lack their music. The antiwar movement in the Vietnam era lived up to its name. It didn't oppose the war because it had been waged "incompetently," nor because it was "a distraction from the real war on terror/communism," nor because it was fought with "bad intelligence." They were not concerned with the petty gains of electoral victory, and they didn't compromise themselves with endless chatter about how goddamn tough and intelligent they were, how much better and more skillfully they'd wage war if only someone would put their liberal fingers on the trigger. They didn't whine endlessly that the war was "degrading the quality of the military" or "hurting troops" or "overextending the military," which of course we need to keep our clients in line.

The antiwar movement of the Vietnam era, unlike today's pallid non-imitation, was brave enough to say not simply that the war was incompetent, unwise, or a distraction from some bigger, even more ephemeral war, but that it was wrong. It was wrong in all its aspects. There was not an ounce of right in it. There was not an ounce of goodness in it. It diminished us. It made us villains.

They were willing to say so and damn the consequences. Today's antiwar Democrats aren't fit to drink their bongwater.

Qui saurait, Bérubé

What is gained by claiming, on the basis of an imaginary conversation with bin Laden, that bin Laden has a moral calculus (albeit one that “sane people will reject”) whereas Bush and Cheney do not?

-Michael Bérubé

The Professor is in the middle, or reaching the end, or just beginning a series in which he takes on "the left", or "the really, really, really left" or something, for their hyperboles and moral equivalences and various and sundry sins. Unspoken but nonetheless underlying every word is a singular concern: that the electoral prospects of Democrats are damaged when far left academics provide rhetorical fodder to rightists by making radical claims about American imperialism.

It is true that the electoral prospects of Democrats are harmed when far left academics provide rhetorical fodder to rightists by making radical claims about American imperialism.

The Professor, whose writing betrays a desire to make a moral rather than a tawdry political case, never explains why such academics (or other far lefties) should care.

In this latest installment, the Professors subject is a rambling article by Michael Albert. It's a slow-moving target, but even so, The Professor fumbles.

OK. But even still, I have to wonder about these public talks at which everyone “understands” the argument that bin Laden ranks a bit higher on the moral scale than Bush and Cheney because Michael Albert has imagined having a conversation with him about the cost-benefit ratios entailed in the attacks of September 11.

That's a callow misrepresentation. Albert's thinking isn't graceful, and his "thought experiment" is a peurile illustration of the political and moral calculations of waging war. But The Professor asks:

What is gained by claiming, on the basis of an imaginary conversation with bin Laden, that bin Laden has a moral calculus (albeit one that “sane people will reject”) whereas Bush and Cheney do not?

The "imaginary conversation" is only a rhetorical device to illuminate this difference: that whatever his aims or goals, the policies of Osama bin Laden have killed many less people, indeed many less innocent people, than the policies of Dick Cheney and the dauphin. That Albert chooses to make this case via a retrospective examination of hypothetical casualty figures is a great weakness in his writing, when the plain-as-day examples lie right in front of us. It is true that more people were killed and are being killed in Afghanistan than died in New York. It is true that many, many, many more people were killed and are being killed in Iraq than died in New York.

In part this is a matter of military capability, but in larger part, it is the old imperial calculus that if the achievement of "good" ends requires great death and destruction, so be it.

It is impossible to say who made what moral decision, but it's perfectly clear that on the unforgiving basis of dead bodies, Osama bin Laden has been less destructive than Dick Cheney.

Now, Dick Cheney claims to be pursuing war in service of democracy, whereas bin Laden claims to be pursuing war in service of ejecting Westerners from his holy lands and ending their interference in the internal affairs of Muslim nations. Those may not be morally commensurate goals, but certainly they're politically commensurate. On either side of this conflict exists the megalomaniacal belief that a particular system of governance is so inherently superior that it justifies mass killing in order that it be implemented. I advocate limited, democratic government, secularism, and civil liberty at home, but it is not the place of ours or any government to inculcate such principles in other peoples, except insofar as they may look to the example of freedom and, desiring it for themselves, affect their own revolutions.

So in the instance of both the United States advernturism and Osama bin Laden's terrorism, the root assumption of innate superiority conferring a right to kill is the same. What remains, as I noted, is capacity; capability; power. In that regard, Osama bin Laden is a pissant.

To say so is a crime in The Professor's book because it doesn't play well among the citizens of our great grazing Republic, and therefore harms the chances of the nominally liberal party in elections. Some of us have concluded that such foreign policies will be pursued regardless, and so we just don't give a damn. Will Ned Lamont and other Democrats oppose war in Iraq? Yes, because we're losing, or because it seemed we might lose back at the beginning. Will he oppose imperial war on principle?

No.

Richard Reid, Miami, Transatlantia

"This was not a situation with a handful of people sitting around dreaming about terrorist plots."

-Michael Chertoff

It's a funny bit of the contemporary English-language idiom that a sentence thus begun with a negative statement usually indicates positively the attribute being denied. Let me give you an example:

I'm not trying to be a dismissive asshole here, but it strikes me as both sad and hilarious that our bald-pated Reichsmarshal for the Protection of the Paterland must now begin each sky-is-falling pronouncement by disclaiming that he's merely claiming the sky is falling. When last we met Colonel Mustard, he was busy informing us of the dire threat to Chicago, city of big shoulders and Boystown, posed by a group of undereducated boobs playing Karate Kid cum Muad'Dib in a warehouse in Miami. Prior to that, a string of lamentably lame "terrorist plots" from José Padilla, who couldn't figure out the mechanics of a Dirty Sanchez, let alone a dirty bomb, to Richard Reid, the details of whose shoe-bombing plot were but precursers to the Lady Clairol Bomb Plot of 2006.

They must be giggling in the hottub of the Ritz: Islamabad right about now. It seems no longer necessary to actually commit acts of terrorism, what with their willing accomplices in London and Washington so eager to clamp shut their airports, cancel their flights, and force their passengers to turn in their Gatorade, shaving cream, and personal lubricant. Look at the fucking chaos at Heathrow, and at the cascading effect it's having on most of the international airports in Europe and the US. Look at the absurd new security measures making the lives of travelers even more hellacious than they already were . . . no small feat. The stocks of major American carriers are dropping even as we speak. This is what happens when a plot is foiled! Lord help us should some mad monotheist ever succeed.

Martial law, ladies and gents. Be it. Live it. Love it.

Pushing the Party to the Left

I haven't written, except in passing, about the Lieberman-Lamont primary in Connecticut, in which a delerious incumbent with the head of a Tex Avery bulldog battles for--what's the expression?--"his political life" against a "multimillionaire cable executive" for--all sides seem to agree--"the soul of the Democratic Party." The assignation of souls to political parties is even more perverse than the ascription of personhood to corporations. The idea that such a soul lives or perishes by the pro- or antiwar whims of any given Senator from any particular suburb to the New-Yorkian megalopolis is even more absurd, particularly since the supposedly antiwar candidate is not, in fact, antiwar, but rather anti-this-particular-war. It's all, in any event, meaningless. The Senate does not conduct the foreign policy of the empire, does not declare its wars, does not bring them to an end, although it occasionally requests that generals and Secretaries decline to answer its questions in long, symbolic sessions on the windy, symbolic Capitoline. Congress long ago abdicated those powers. It is a willfull delusion that they will return, pro-, anti-, or either/or-war.

That said, I much enjoyed Marty Peretz's gouty ruminations on the world-ending catastrophe of the litmus-testing of Joe Lieberman. "Just becuz ya don't like the way the guy does bizniz, that's-ah no reason not ta do bizniz wit 'im." That Democratic enthusiasm for the bombing of foreign nations, such as it was, has been attrited by our current encounter with folks who fight back is no reason, in Peretz's formulation, to vote against whatever Slim Pickens is currently riding the bomb out of the belly of the aircraft. The op-ed is full of laff-lines like, "If Mr. Lieberman goes down, the thought-enforcers of the left will target other centrists as if the center was the locus of a terrible heresy, an emphasis on national strength." From an editorial perspective, that final comma would read better as a colon, and the entire sentence would read better not being read at all. Note "centrism," not "moderation." I'm certainly no moderate, but I still note that at least the idea of the moderate exists outside the crass interparty positionalism of "centrism," a word indicative of nothing more than the teeter-totter fulcrum point between Donkey and Elephant, wherever they reside on any given day of the week. It seems silly, moreover, to lurch from condemning "a middle-aged patrician, seeking office de haut en bas[!], and almost entirely because he can" to making the gentleman out to be an avatar of the Left! It's a strange Left indeed that makes affinity and alliance with a quarter-billionaire, no less a "patrician." Peretz speculates that there is some sort of arrivisme in the Dems who cast votes for Lamont, "from the stock of Morgan partner Thomas Lamont and that most high-born American Stalinist, Corliss Lamont." The feel that "they have arrived." I'll go out on a limb and suggest that 95% of Connecticutians from any "stock" haven't a goddamn clue who Corliss Lamont was, nor yet Thomas. It seems awfully strange to call the guy who eventually wrote Why I Am Not A Communist a Stalinist, like calling Mr. Midge Decter, author of the famous Commentary article, "Bring Me More Negro Women So That I May Mate With Them," America's most high-minded misceginator.

Amusingly, Peretz himself seems to have a "My Negro Problem--and Ours" moment, in the form of:

The Lamont ascendancy, if that is what it is, means nothing other than that the left is trying, and in places succeeding, to take back the Democratic Party. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Maxine Waters have stumped for Mr. Lamont. As I say, we have been here before.

Where's that, Selma? Could he not have tossed in Cindy Sheehan, whose Church of the Most Excellent Grievetude is paler than a Procul Harem number? What, precisely, is Peretz trying to say here: that if Ned Lamont wins a primary, the darkies will take over? I know you've got to play to your audience, and it is the Journal op-ed page, but the "How come niggers can call each other niggers?" routine is better performed by the Bull Connor of Sociology, Charles Murray, who's got pictures to prove it, whatever it is.

Regardless, the most monumental statement in the whole piece comes midway:

But one fault cannot be attributed to the U.S., and that is that we are on the wrong side. We are at war in a just cause, to protect the vulnerable masses of the country from the helter-skelter ideological and religious mass-murderers in their midst. Our enemies are not progressive peasants as was imagined three and four decades ago.

This from a fellow who accuses Lamont of simple-mindedness! It's telling, if not revelatory, to finally hear the real ideological gauntlet clang onto the table. American know-how and self-reliance were always in large part myths, but not all myths are inherently harmful, and a people steeped in the idea that they, each of them, are the masters of their fates and the kings of their castles are naturally averse to the insipid, be-safe-feel-safe tyranny creeping everywhere these days. Now we see clearly: to the court and courtiers in Washington, we are but "vulnerable masses" to be protected from the murders in our midst. After all, these are not the "progressive peasants"--the Vietnamese, apparently, who also confounded Peretzian preconditions by fighting back. Not just Helter-Skelter, but Here, There, and Everywhere!

Words of Wisdom, Marty. Let it be.