Right Way Wrong

You will recall Dinesh D'Souza as the pirssy authoress of the tract, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11. In it, he posits in Reader's-Digest prose that due to America's abundant fags, inadequate subjugation of womenfolk, Planned Parenthood clinics, and unremitting acceptance of the Holocaust as an historical fact, it was not only inevitble but, heck, understandable that Osama bin Laden, the Oral Roberts of Saudi palace-builders, would assign a bunch of clean-living mamma's boys to dispatch 3,000 little Eichmann's for their unquestioning complicity in the secret, international machinery of the Jew-Run Media. Al-Qaeda and suchlike, in this formulation, are only the moral mirrors of the United States, gazing hither and yon across the globe for those societies eager for remaking, realignment, and regime change. They, unlike us, are on the right side of history, however, and when the mushroom clouds clear and the magnetic dust of the last archived reels of Schindler's List and Seinfeld blow away like baby spiders on a breeze, there will remain gaunt men and women swaddled entirely in black, with chicken wire over their faces, ululating and firing off Kalisnikovs, neither drinking nor aborting nor buggering nor producing anything with a laugh track.

I was on my way to the wine store yesterday, and while scanning the radio dial, I heard the vaguely familiar, feminine whine of D'Souza's voice, commenting that "Iraq is Iraq; Vietnam is Vietnam." (Groucho: "And if you stew apples like cranberries, they taste more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now tell me what you know.") D'Souza lolled his way through the usual "Iraq and Vietnam, hell, they're not even spelled the same" sorts of dissuasive yabber, then mentioned that "military tacticians" from Sun Tzu to Karl von C. have all observed that "strength in war can be measured as resources times will." Strength in marriage can be measured in height times love. Likelihood of weight loss can be measured in body mass divided by chocolate. Gas mileage is best expressed as drag coefficient minus hood ornament. D'Souza warns that in Iraq we are "in danger of losing a war [Pinter pause] that we can win."

But why, Dinesh? Because as I listened, I wondered: aren't our sectarian enemies, those brutal revanchists striving to turn Iraq into a theocratic appendage to the global caliphate, such as we're always warned, in fact our friends? Do they not seek, through regrettable but necessarily violent means, to eject the culturally leftist Americans from their holy territory, to restore women to their rightful domestic roles, to eliminate the corrupting influence of the decadent West from the lands of the Prophet and his people? Ought D'Souza not ally himself with these warriors in the broader culture war, and cheer them, their means, and their ends? If Islamism is not the enemy of justice but its friend, then isn't D'Souza just the second string sub who grabs up a fumble only to run it into his own end zone?

Victory Is Ours! Retreat!

Your basic Donkle Netroots™ puh-wog-wessive has got a tremendous hard-on for The Troops®, as we've seen. Whereas the rightwing affinity for the military is more instrumental, a mere pyschology of compensatory masculinity and racist paranoia about the various fertile, febrile, dusky hordes overrunning the world like so many Mongols, or Hannibals, or whomever, Les Racines de Net, despite their endless pretensions of sanscullotery, are totally ga-ga over Our Boys, who carry the light and life of empire, all that is good and dear, the moral core of the nation, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, amen. George Bush makes a retarded Caesar, but if Wes Clark crossed the Potomac with a couple of legions, they'd paint him purple and name him Dictator for Life. As Arthur pointed out in a late addition to his Dominion over the World series, hardly a day goes by without some Kossite-Atrioid lamenting the tout petit grand army of the Republic. They positively love 'em some grunts, and as they will tirelessly remind you, it was Democrats back in the halcyon early days of the war who loudly crowed for more troops, a pre-deluge surge, such as it was. The name of Eric Shinseki, who said that conquering Iraq would require a half-million men, is clutched talismanically and close to the breast, like a rosary, or Barbara Bush's pearls. The Donkle has no particular ideological opposition to invading other countries and killing foreigners, provided the war is not "sold with lies" or executed "incompetently." (All wars are sold with lies, and competence is as rare a commodity on the battlefield as anywhere else, and yet . . .) They still go into raptures over Bill Clinton's Kosovo campaign, even though it accomplished nothing but more misery and bore an eerie, prescient resemblance to Israel's mad bombing of Lebanon, about which, to be fair, most libbloggers were equally, tellingly silent. Kleagle Kos, bird-beaked and bird-brained, is himself an ex-military man, who claims to have loved Ronald Reagan, the liberator of Aushwitz and executioner of Latin America, even though Kos was too young to love anything other than junk food and furtive masturbation during the reign of that particularly Tussaudian icon of American imperial dreaming. What was that old American motto? Progress is our Product!

Today the WaPo published an unusually cogent editorial--which is not to say good--the gist of which is nearly summarized in its lead paragraph:

ON TUESDAY nearly every member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warmly endorsed Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, and a number wished him success or "Godspeed" in his mission. Yesterday some of the same senators voted for a resolution that opposes the increase of troops for Gen. Petraeus's command--even though the general testified that he could not accomplish his mission without the additional forces and hinted that such a resolution could encourage the enemy. Such is the muddle of Congress on Iraq: A majority may soon go on record opposing the new offensive in Baghdad even while encouraging the commander who leads it.

The Non-binding 110th loves this trick, which was also used to great effect as they opposed The Surge and The War by agreeing to pay for it. Netrootsia instantly quaked. Over at John Amato's Crooks and Liars (a site I do like and use frequently), something named RJ Eskow wails:

The WaPo editorial page is starting to read as if it's being edited by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The lead piece today is an attack on Congress for combining its kindly treatment of Gen. Petraeus with resistance to a "surge." Apparently, the editors think it's the Hill's problem that we're sending a good general to carry out a lousy mission. If they think Petraeus is so great, they're saying, why don't they give him what he says he needs?

Note to the Editors: The General has to say he wants an escalation. If he didn't say that he wouldn't get the job. And after much obfuscation, the Post finally gets around to making its point: against all common sense, they're backing the surge.

This, you may recall, was the Eichmann defense. "Hey, I didn't have anything 'gainst them Jews pers'nally, but when da boss says jump, well, I jumps!" In a post accusing the Post of a lack of interpretive clarity is this bizarre claim-by-implication that General Petraeus, being a right honorable gentleman, actually hates the shitty, impossible task of winning an unwinnable campaign, but has to lie through his teeth in order to get the job! This is a basic tenet of the Donkle Internet Philosophy. Those deemed good are universally believed to privately hold the same Netrootsian opinions, even if they say precisely otherwise. To once again cite Arthur Silber, the pressing item for our moral examination is not the depressingly common human specimen, who is told to torture and does, but the rare and vital person who is ordered to torture and says, "No. I will not." I don't expect mass defections from the American military rank and file in protest of the war, but if the most brilliant, most subtle, and most honorable man in the whole of the damnable army won't stand up, say, "No," and resign his commission rather than futiley prolong this catastrophic, criminal debacle, then he is neither brilliant nor subtle nor honorable. He's just another craker pantywaist engaged in a vicious farce that he's too fucking stupid to understand.

The Sun Can't Stop Setting on the American Empire

Rice said the new approach reflects growing Arab concern about Iran's attempt to project power through its proxies: "After the war in Lebanon, the Middle East really did begin to clarify into an extremist element allied with Iran, including Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. On the other side were the targets of this extremism--the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Palestinians--and those who want to resist, such as the Saudis, Egypt and Jordan."

David Ignatius is a relatively reliable stenographer to the court du dauphin des États-unis. So this is what the governing elite thinks about the Middle East.

Several tempting questions: What is the difference between "the Lebanese" and Hezbollah? What is the difference between "the Palestinians" and Hamas? I know that the American habit is to presume innate illegitimacy in any election of whose results we disapprove, but at some point, on some level, even wishing away all the moral objections to American imperialism in the Middle East, there remains an apparently insurmountable practical impediment to our rule and hegemony in the region: We cannot and will not accurately identify our allies and enemies there. This is where the imperial rubber meets the Appian Way, such as it is. If you wish to conquer the barbarians, and doubly so if you wish to rule them, you must at very least learn to discern which tribes are your enemies and which are your friends, and how firmly each is tethered to their side in that fight.

Put aside the question the question of which party is responsible for the most recent Israeli-Lebanese war. Put aside the question of who attacked whom, or of which side kidnapped the other's citizens or soldiers first. There remains a singular reality. Hezbollah is the most popular political party in Lebanon. It is the most popular entity in Lebanon. It was the most popular prior to the Israeli campaign, and no matter how many bouquets and scrims and garlands and fancy lights the American government throws between its perceptions and the Lebanese reality, it's a plain and simple fact that no people will perceive the aerial bombardment of their territory by a foreign country as an effort to eradicate some select group therein. Imagine that France began bombing the plains states in order to wipe out the Republican Party. There you have an accuarate analogy for Israel's policy in Lebanon, and from there you can extrapolate a response. Hezbollah is more popular than ever. It is not a foreign influence in Lebanon. It is not a cancer on the Lebanese body politic. It is Lebanon, and the United States and Israel made it so.

Hamas, likewise, is the predominant political entity among Palestinian peoples. It isn't obligatory to like it, but it is obligatory to recognize it. They didn't acquire parliamentary majorities by rigging Diebold machines or taking closely contested election results to court. They routed Fatah. They represent--at least--a near-majority opinion of Palestinians.

If Hezbollah and Hamas are "extremist," then the Palestinians and the Lebanese are extremist. (Martin Peretz rubs his hands together and gloats: Told ya so!) Our other purported allies in the region are semi-theocratic hereditary monarchies, and the notion that hereditary rule in the twenty-first century is anything other than "extreme" would be laughable were we not governed by a surnamed Bush. The Saudi monarchy is regarded by many Muslims as a coterie of apostate, degenerate, luxury- and license-besotted deviants, but they've managed to hang onto power by telling their restive, under-employed young men that the United States is even worse. Osama bin Laden, our once and future Hitler, detests the House of Saud for "inviting" the American military onto the Arabian peninsula even more than he detests the American military for taking them up on the offer. This notion of supporting the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies while working to undermine the popularly-elected popular movements in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories is laughably, farcically absurd. Needless to say, David Ignatius believes that "Rice's realignment idea has the virtue of offering a basis for discussion and careful thinking about a region perched on the edge of a volcano."

Colonialism is one of the great evils in this world, and I am of the belief that imperial projects are necessarily doomed in the long run and morally unacceptable regardless, but even so, there is a perverse embarrassment in recognizing what a lousy, second-rate conquerer our nation is; there is a sort of historical shame in recognizing that we are the laziest, stupidest, most incompetent bunch of world-shapers since Mussolini first stuffed his shirt and marched on Rome. Barring those goofy fascisti, I can't think of a preeminent power so goddamn bad at being powerful. The governors of our nation want to rule the world, yes, but they'd rather tell themselves pleasant lies about the natives and go on drinking Claret and eating tea sandwiches at the club.

Umkhonto we Sizwe

You've must read it to believe it:

Poor Tom Friedman. He is looking for a Muslim Martin Luther King. There is none, Tom. If one were living on earth, they'd break his windows. Imprison him. Or kill him. Finished. (Via Yglesias)

Now it's possible, I suppose, that Marty P. and Alan D. and Abe F. and the rest of that tribe of garrulous, warmongering blights on my once-held, always-cherished folkways might be spending their weekends locked in some cottage on the Cape, communing with the waking spirit of MLK in a grotesquely heterosexual re-edit of The Changing Light at Sandover. Thus the belief that he still walks among us. But to the rest of us, King is dead, and Marty Peretz is, as Kushner said of America (by way of Roy Cohn), mostly terminal, crazy, and mean.

That's a bit unfair, though, because Marty's error, and Tom Friedman's error, and most Americans' error, is to recall King as they remember Christ: a slightly chipped, beatific portrait in oil, two fingers raised, head aglow, bird of the Lord above his head, apostles all around. The real Martin Luther King, Jr. was a radical "Christian Socialist" who, like such true Americans as Mark Twain, grew bitter as he aged, appalled at the hoary, violent, incontinent monster that was and is America. I carry no brief for socialism, nor yet for Christianity (as if there's any particular difference), but I have a squishy spot for anyone who can stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial and decry "the tranquilizing drug of gradualism." But so be it. It's our depressing habit to recall black leaders in impotent Christitude. Scourge 'em and beat 'em. They love that shit!

Otherwise, Jimminy Carter, one of the men who did most to originate America's Help-Me-Rhonda policies in the Middle East, made a minor attempt at atonement for past sins by writing an historical romance entitled Golda Meir and P.W. Botha: Love at Last Sight. Marty and the Gang all leapt to the bait, screaming that not only is Isreal nothing like South Africa, and not only is the treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories nothing like Apartheid, well, even if it were, where's the fucking Palestinain Mandela, huh? In this version, Nelson Mandela practiced only Satygraha, the African National Congress was just a forerunner to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Robben Island was punishment for not moving to the back of a bus or something.

The Palestinain Nelson Mandela probably belongs to Hamas, you fools. And yes, their Martin Luther King, Jr. was probably jailed, and is probably dead.

Yet It Remains a Sought-After Position!

" One of the most dangerous jobs in the world is to be number three in the al Qaeda organization, because a lot of them are now dead or in custody."

From an interview with Richard "Dick" Bruce Cheney, Vice President of the United States, Ruler of the Land and the Air, of the Birds of the Sky and Fishes of the Sea, Liberator of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, King of Kings, Son of Man, Imperator of Territories, Chief of All Men Living and Dead, Forever and Ever, Amen

Largely United

"This is where matters stand tonight, in the here and now. I’ve spoken with many of you in person. I respect you and the arguments you’ve made. We went into this largely united in our assumptions and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field and those on their way."

The Democrats have recently grown a spine of non-binding steel, and they have a Reagan man in the ranks to deliver staccato rebukes to a drifting president, which is nice if you're into that sort of thing. But what the dauphin said, and what I've excerpted above, is true. The critical moment for Iraq has passed. The critical resolution did pass. Even were the Democrats to slap black gaffer's tape across the gaping pie-hole of Joe Biden and come to the floor with binding legislation to force the end to our bloody occupation and our involvement in the bloodier civil war it's now spawned, it would not be a victory of any particular principle or value worth holding, but rather a minor mitigation of the resounding defeat of such principles. At every opportunity to say no, they failed. At every opportunity to stand up, they sat down. They hadn't the courage to act on conviction, or more likely they simply had the wrong convictions, and let's not confuse exigency and desperation to preseve American's preeminent position as the indisoluble, no: indigestible, no: indispensible nation for recognition that there are some things this nation doesn't have the moral right or the practical means to do. "Largely united in our assumptions and convictions." Yes, indeed.

If you doubt it, consider that the moment of greatest, loudest whoopery in the chamber last night followed the dauphin's line-in-the-mud line that "the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons." Dennis Kucinich nearly lost his toupee in the updraft as every other member of his party leapt to their hooves all around him. There is a lesson here: The failure of the occupation of Iraq has not fundamentally altered the premises and assumptions of the governing class. There is little or no hard evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but even were this not the case, even were Iran to be shown conclusively to be attempting the construction of some destructive nuclear device, wouldn't that simply be evidence of a state acting rationally to acquire some minor deterrent against the imperial military policies of the United States and its Western allies? North Korea, after all, gets six-party talks. Pakistan, a nuclear power and hotbed of the very "radical Islam" against which we're puportedly waging a neverending war, is a hallowed ally in that very war. India, a major nuclear power, actually gets the extra-legal transfer of American nuclear technologies! Iraq, which had no weapons, gets invaded. What incentive is there not to pursue weaponization?

What the Congressional Democrats see as clearly as their Republican partners and Republican president is that the war in Iraq has demonstrated unacceptable limits to the American ability to dictate the internal affairs of other nations. If they differ from the President and the majority of his party, it's only that they see no strategic value in doubling-down a lost bet on Iraq in hopes of recouping that loss. But by no means are they leaving the table. They're just advocating taking the loss and going in for another hand. This purported debate over the final disposition of our Iraqi misadventure is legerdemain. It conceals in its details and its nonsense-talk of "surges" and "phased redeployments" a darker truth: that Democrats as much as Republicans do believe that we are at war, legitimately, with a large portion of the world, and that those weak nations which don't acquiesce to our hegemony invite reprisal, which is our right to take.

Not-so-carefully-crafted Euphemism.

They had hoped more members of Congress would embrace the advice that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) gave the president during one session in the Cabinet Room. "Mr. President, I have two words for you," Lieberman said, according to officials who were present. "'Be bold.'"

That advice, at least, Bush would take to heart.

It has such a ring of untruth that it must be true. It's so absurd that it must have really happened. The Junior Senator from Connecticut arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania and waved a chummy hello to the guards at the gate. His car dropped him at the West Wing entrance. He received his visitor's badge and tarried in the waiting room. He passed pleasantries to this or that familiar White House staffer. He stared at the ceiling. He contemplated his lunch. He was ushered into the Cabinet Room. He shook hands with the President. The President had been arrayed for maximum thoughtfulness. His staff has spread the accoutrements of a contemplative morning like a half-eaten continental breakfast. Here an open file folder. There a marked-up map. A Blackberry chirping with unread messages. A tablet: half-annotated, half-doodled. "Well, Joe . . . ?" He trails into the question. He has an air of dissipation.

"Mr. President," Joe draws himself to his full heioght of four feet, eleven inches. His high collar tugs at his low jowls. "Mr. President, I have two words for you." He pauses, counts. Wouldn't want an unaccounted article or preposition to ruin the symmetry of thge staff-prepared quotation: "'Be. Bold.'"

To those of us living outside the Narnian borders of the Beltway, it's difficult to conceive that this is how people actually talk. It's hard to accept that this verbal commedia dell'arte of fixed and repetetive gesture isn't just played to us, the audience. The actors communicate with each other through the same hollow rhetoric once intended only for public consumption. Will and resolve aren't just paired bywords for the talk circuit. To the governing class, they have real-world antecedents as concrete as profit and loss, though infinitely less identifiable. Moving forward, taking back the country, finding a new path. They talk about these things like you talk to your accountants about revenues, like I talk to my contractors about shut-off valves and steam-pipe fittings. "This isn't about proceduralism, it's about keeping our promises," the Speaker of the House said this weekend, as if there resided in the phrase "keeping our promises" some particular ontological truth.

While it's easy enough to think and speak of the disaster in Iraq as the triumph of grand plans and hypotheses over physical and cultural reality, it's probably an overestimation. Seventy-five people died in a marketplace bombing. How bold is that?