Posted on 12/22/2002 7:19:45 AM PST by backhoe
Cockeyed optimist vs. Clear-eyed skeptic?
No surprises here, I'm sure, but I think the skeptics have the stronger case. It's not a matter of whose predictions will end up coming to pass, or whose predictions will be closer to what comes to pass. I don't care who wins that contest. I've got no predictions of my own. But I don't see how anyone, looking over the events of this past year, can truly believe that the US has had a single, sound, cohesive, morally coherent, well-conceived policy all along. To the "rope-a-dopers," every blunder, every instance of apparent backtracking, inconsistency, or appeasement, every creative new attempt to redefine the goal as something short of victory, every incident embodying what looks like failure of nerve or lack of seriousness about the war is supposed to be some kind of feint or deliberate diversion. The crazier our behavior, the more brilliant the hidden, underlying plan is supposed to be. Being smart, subtle, deliberate, flexible, cagey, prudent-- I'm all for it, and I'm sure that's part of what's going on. But is it the entire explanation? It seems unlikely.
Reading the newspaper these days, it sometimes seems as though practically every other item ought to be subtitled "this is no way to run a war." The administration seems to have been trying a little of everything, playing for time, undecided as to what should be done. Despite periodic outbursts of bellicose faux-Churchillian "we shall not falter" rhetoric, the President has been shying away from risk, hedging his bets by trying to please everyone just a little, and stalling, putting off the decision to act. Faltering. I don't see how this conclusion can be avoided. In this, it must be allowed, GWB is little different than the previous two occupants of the White House. But we need something better than that.
It's a complicated matter, and the decisions are tough ones. I don't envy those who have to make them. They can't be put off forever. I'm sure Stephen Green is right that they won't be, and that when the US finally does act it will be overwhelming and effective. Yet Bill Quick is right that all this pussy-footing around has not been without its costs. Remember all the ballyhoo about "moral clarity?" Even Michael Kelly doesn't write Moral Clarity columns anymore.
Maybe "moral clarity" was always a fatuous conceit, as the Europeans always claimed. Or maybe it is a luxury we can no longer afford. Maybe we're better off with "realism," with prudence (qua prudence) as our guiding light, stability as our goal. Yet, even in utterly practical terms, when "regime change" became disarmament, when casus belli gave way to "trust but verify," I'd say that was a small but substantive win for the axis of evil. Perhaps all that is just a rhetorical smokescreen for the consumption of those who enjoy or require such a smokescreen, not to be taken literally or seriously. Perhaps muddying the waters a bit is the only way of securing the approval of the "international community," and perhaps this approval really is vital to the success of the eventual campaign and must be courted at all costs. Perhaps. But we shouldn't kid ourselves: delay serves the interests of only one of the principal parties, and it ain't us.
Saddam will get his comeuppance one way or another, I'm sure, but I believe he sees US sabre-rattling, troop movements, UN resolutions, etc., as little more than a complex of empty gestures and idle threats. He thinks he can ride this one out, as he has in the past. Ultimately, I don't think he's right, but he may be. How many more "last chances" he will get, how many more "final stages" there will be, remains to be seen. As it stands, though, US aims, interests, and security are severely hampered by the fact that its enemies do not take its threats very seriously. There is only one way to change that. And if you think I'm talking about securing a grudging acquiescence from the French to an arms control exercise, you're mistaken.
Warning: this post makes what is arguably the most trivial observation possible about the Iraq WMD declaration.
I've noticed something strange about the pronunciation of the word "declaration." When it refers to something ordinary or unremarkable, as in a custom's declaration, it is pronounced exactly as you'd expect a word derived from "declare" to sound. Deh-clair-ation, rhyming with "narration" or "serration." Yet when the thing declared is unusually important or momentous, such as the Declaration of Independence, people tend to say deh-clor-ation, rhyming with "exploration." Say it aloud, and let me know if you get different results than I do. It seems like a difference in pronunciation that has a consistent semantic significance: a declaration is nothing special, while a decloration is a big deal.
Until this weekend, I had thought that the Declaration of Independence was the only case where declaration is pronounced decloration. Now, it turns out, the Iraqi government's recent scanty list of its WMD programs is a decloration as well. At least, that's how everyone is saying it on TV.
Testing it out on myself, I, like almost everyone else I've ever heard, say the Decloration of Independence. Reading it aloud, my eyes see the word "declaration," but "decloration" comes out of my mouth. I suppose my internal semantic-phonological calibrator is out of synch with that of all the TV people, though, because my inclination is to call the Iraqi WMD document a declaration. Rightly or wrongly, it doesn't seem to rise to the exalted level of a decloration. Maybe I instinctively understand something about this document that they don't; or maybe it's the other way around. Or maybe the whole thing is just a big insignificant coincidence or lack thereof. I'm not sure, and my brain is beginning to hurt.
Told you it would be trivial.
What goes for ethics also goes for history, literature, the rest of the humanities and the social sciences. The “late Marxist” sees them all, as traditionally understood, not as subjects for disinterested intellectual inquiry but as forms of social control. Never ask what a painter, playwright, architect or philosopher thought he was doing. You know before you even glance at his work what he was really doing: shoring up the ruling class. This mindset has made deep inroads—most notoriously in literary studies, but not just there—in university departments and on campuses across Western Europe and especially in the United States. The result is a withering away not of the state but of opportunities for intelligent conversation and of confidence that young people might receive a decent liberal education.
Well, how about that. He did the right thing after all. And it looks like Bill Frist is in.
These wise words from Peggy Noonan on Republicans and race are no less relevant and valuable:
Maybe it isn't fair, but think of it this way: The history of the Republican Party on race is mixed. Yes, that's true of the Democrats too, but Democrats are perceived today as sympathetic to the movements for freedom that have marked the past century, and Republicans are not. This has some implications. It means Republicans have to go out of our way to show that our hearts are in the right place. But there's another thing that is even more important. If we are tougher on ourselves, maybe that's good. Why shouldn't we be tougher on ourselves?
If the Democrats all too often treat race as if it were a card to be played in a game, and if the Republicans in contrast attempt to struggle through the issue and be serious and go out of their way to expunge the last vestiges of the old racial ways, isn't that something we should be proud of? History is watching. It will know what we did. What will history think if it sees a new seriousness on race from the Republican Party? I think it will say: Good. And I think that matters.
On the other hand, it is a virtual certainty that Democratic Party spokesmodels will, in the coming months, go way overboard trying to continue to exploit this now-neutralized issue. The smart ones will leave it alone, recognizing that this is a loser for them as well as for everyone, and will seek to avoid the inevitable appearance of demagoguery and opportunism that would result: very few will be able to resist, however. The ones who do resist will find themselves in the position of continually having to defend scurrilous and ridiculous attempts to characterize the Republican Party as a party of racism. It won't work, because it isn't true. Had Lott remained in power, Republicans would have had more explaining to do than they could have managed, though it still wouldn't have been true. But it would have worked.
A Corner correspondent, reflecting on Trent Lott, Cardinal Law, and the possibility that Lott may manage to get enough support from fellow Republican Senators to allow him to hang on, poses some pointed questions:
If Trent remains, what does the world look like come January 7th? More pointedly, do you envision a time when the President can again appear in the same room with the Senate majority leader? (I can't.)
Can you then justify electing a leader who subsequently becomes for the president his party's own Yasser Arafat, with whom he will never meet nor shake hands? Will you put the President in that horrible position?
Forget about the passing of a conservative agenda -- can the party or the conservative movement themselves hold together and withstand that strain?
So, in the end, if Lott is incapable of doing the right thing, who will?
And if the answer is, not nearly enough to make him go, then what?
My sense is: GOP despair, dividedness, destruction, self-inflicted death. Of course, I may be overstating things. But what if I'm not?"
Jonah Goldberg complains:
[Krauthammer] relies on the overused dichotomy between "neocons," "traditional cons," and "paleocons."
India launches the world's first organic Navy, planning to deploy dolphins to blow up enemy warships and submarines. Early trials have succeeded in training dolphins to plant the "Maindeka" limpet mine onto enemy ships. O.P. Yadav, a general manager of India's Kirkee ammunition plant, which supplies the mines, told Indian reporters that the 15 lb limpet mines, magnetically fixed to enemy hulls, can sink ships of any size.
A man who has no use--let alone no feel--for colorblindness has no business being a leader of the conservative party. True, if Lott is ousted, he might resign from the Senate and allow his seat to go Democratic, thus jeopardizing Republican control of the Senate and undoing the great Republican electoral triumph of 2002.
So be it. There is a principle at stake here. Better to lose the Senate than to lose your soul. New elections come around every two years. Souls are scarcer.
The great Angelo Codevilla has another terrific essay on our wayward foreign policy and incoherent "war" aims posted at the Claremont Institute website. As always, it is elegantly written and, by my lights, utterly persuasive. Are you uneasy about the administration's handling of the war, but not always able to put your finger on why? Me, too. Codevilla can help:
Terrorism is not a militarily serious matter. All the world's terrorists combined cannot do as much damage as one modern infantry battalion, one Navy ship or fighter squadron. Nor is terrorism such a bedeviling challenge to intelligence. It is potent only insofar as terrorism's targets decide to deny the obvious and pretend that the terrorists are acting on their own and not on behalf of causes embodied by regimes. Terrorism is potent only against governments that deserve contempt. The U.S. government earned the Arabs' contempt the hard way, by decades of responses to terrorism that combined impotent threats, solicitude for the terrorists' causes, outright payments to Egypt and the PLO, courting Syria, a "special relationship" with Saudi Arabia, and a pretense that Islam was as compatible with American life as Episcopalianism. Killing individuals who do not count engenders hatred, while sparing those who do count guarantees contempt.
Victory against terrorists requires precisely the opposite approach: expend little or no energy chasing the trigger pullers and bombers. Rather, make sure that any life devoted to terror will be a wasted life. This means leaving no hope whatever for any of the causes from which the Arab tyrannies draw such legitimacy as they have: people who give their lives for lost causes exist more in novels than in reality. It means discrediting and insofar as possible impoverishing (rather than paying for) Arab regimes that foster opposition to America. It means using military force to kill the regimes—the ruling classes—of countries that are in any way associated with terrorism.
Such regimes cannot be other than matrices of terrorism; they are riding tigers. Should the people who run them try to change, they would perish at the hands of internal enemies. America cannot possibly reform them. The choice is to suffer them, their causes, and their terrorist methods — or to kill them.
Every so often I'll receive a petulant email demanding: "whose side are you on?" (Or more often, "who's side are you on?") The latest trend in this venerable tradition (if venerable is the word I want) is to include the admonition that I ought not to "pile on" this or that public figure or policy; or that "piling on" x without also "piling on" y reflects a contemptible hypocrisy that ill-disguises my true sinister motives.
These people have clearly misunderstood my motivation in maintaining this little weblog. I have no interest in supporting any particular person, group, party, or position. I'm not interested in "piling on" particular people and refraining from "piling on" others in order to support any particular theory as to whom people ought to vote for or blame or impeach or attack or applaud worshipfully; nor do I imagine, nor even hope, that my admittedly inconsistent piling on will win me brownie points from others who have "piled on" and refrained from "piling on" the same people I have "piled on" and "on" whom I have refrained from "piling." Any "piling on" I do stems purely from a self-gratifying mean-spiritedness. It is "piling on" for the pure sake of "piling on," and (usually) for no other reason. I reserve the right to "pile on" anyone I feel like. If I haven't "piled on" someone you think ought to be "piled on," that's tough. "Pile on" 'em yourself if it means that much to you.
That's my pile on policy. Please make a note of it for future reference.
Concerning Sen. Lott, I can't hope to improve on the admirable flurry of columns from hard-line conservatives calling for his departure. But I confess that I am amazed by the narrowness of their attack. Every one of them concentrates exclusively on the civil rights question. Of course black citizens ought to be outraged by any sick nostalgia for the years (and years and years) of Southern apartheid. Yet this is to make the point into one of "sensitivity." The Confederacy, under the leadership of Jefferson Davis, schemed to destroy the Union. It openly solicited the military support of foreign powers in order to do so. It attempted to assassinate a Republican president and may eventually have succeeded. It issued arrogant and disgusting orders for the execution of prisoners of war, without discrimination as to shade or color. It instated censorship, and it instated mandatory (if sectarian) religion. There isn't a "white" person in the country who should not spit upon its treasonous and hateful memory. There would be no such place as "America" if the bloody stars and bars had carried the day.
Josh Marshall noticed this on Hardball a couple of nights ago:
Oh man! There's a quote from Frank Luntz tonight on Hardball that's so choice it's almost beyond belief. We're going to be waiting with bated breath for the transcript to pop up on Nexis.
Basically, Luntz said that the "problems" Lott was talking about, which voting for Strom Thurmond would have avoided, were Bill Clinton's moral and sexual lapses. If ever there was a statement so ridiculous that the speaker deserved to be laughed out of three dimensional space, buddy, this is it.
I have no doubt that Trent Lott is as culpable as everyone says he is of failing to repudiate convincingly his past involvement in the theory and praxis of segregation; the post-gaffe investigation and feeding frenzy revealed mountains of evidence and further examples demonstrating this. His subsequent apologies and attempts to exculpate himself have convinced no one. He is one giant, shameful embarrassment. I agree that, in view of this, he is unfit for a national leadership position, damaging to his own party and no less damaging to the country. He is plainly also an extremely stupid man. Still, I can't believe he really meant the civil rights act, integration and anti-lynching laws when he said "all these problems." I can't imagine anyone, even someone of such staggeringly deficient morality and intellect to hold such a view, being stupid enough to articulate it publicly. Even Lott.
Unfortunately for him, and for everyone, the "way it sounded" turned out to be a more or less accurate reflection of his true state of mind. But that doesn't mean he intended it to. Saying that things would be better if a colleague hadn't been defeated is a fairly conventional formulation when it comes to political speechifying intended to honor a politician who has lost big in the past. I imagine Dan Quayle and Jimmy Carter have heard it once or twice in their post-defeat careers. But there's something inherently problematic when you have one man with a segregationist past honoring another man with a segregationist past. Everything, even conventional toast-master fodder, stands a pretty good chance of sounding "fishy." A smart speaker might have been able to navigate these treacherous waters, to avoid using a phrase that was so damagingly revealing. But Lott is no smart speaker.
Imagine if Mona Baker were to give a speech honoring David Irving. Because of the context, there is not a single word or phrase she could utter which wouldn't have sinister import, including "the" and "and," to adapt a phrase. That this is the case is in no way exculpatory with regard to Baker or Irving, and it is no more exculpatory with regard to Lott. It is true, though. I don't like Lott, practically everything about him rubs me the wrong way, and I find his remarks about Thurmond, whether the implications were intended or not, to be as offensive as everybody else does. But, for what it's worth, I don't think he meant it that way.
As for how he did mean it, I don't think it's all that far-fetched to imagine that he might have been talking about Clinton, to the extent that he had anything specific in his muddled mind. Most likely, he didn't know exactly what he was referring to, but rather was just mouthing a contentless platitude that was, because of the circumstances, unintentionally revealing of a dark reality. When a guest "from the right" on any of the Crossfire-type TV screamathons says the word "problems," they usually mean "Clinton." Why should Lott be any different? I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm just saying it's as likely as anything. Go ahead and laugh me out of three-dimensional space if you want...
I've noticed what seems to be a new fashion trend for female TV news talking heads (Greta, Paula, Ann, Connie, Judy, et al.): black turtleneck with large silver chain and pendant.
It makes them look like they're all in the same coven.
A theatre producer is to face a retrial after a jury today failed to decide whether he had a "lawful excuse" for decapitating a £150,000 statue of Baroness Thatcher.
These excuses don't sound particularly "lawful" to me. If I were to allow my own satirical humor free rein in such a manner, there would not be a statue, monument, government building, street sign, traffic light or community center left standing. I would vandalize all pieces of abstract public art by descending upon them and making them representational. Then I would decapitate the vandalized statues for good measure. I would save the heads and throw them at anyone who dared to look at me cross-eyed. I hate people who do that. They're the worst. Such is the awesome power of my sense of satirical humor.
I guess Thatcher is held in such low regard that it was impossible to gather twelve people who could find it within themselves to disapprove of such a decapitation. I imagine that several of them had a strong sense of satirical humor also. The British love their satirical humor, as we all know. And men dressing as ladies. They love that, too.
Steven Pollard has further detail:
I've just watched the BBC's London news programme and can barely believe my eyes. As the accused left the court, he was asked some inane 'how do you feel' type question. "I can't really say anything until the case is over" was his perfectly proper response. "But I need a job, so if anyone watching has one for me can they get in touch with me via the editor of the Guardian".
Now I have no idea whether or not Alan Rusbridger is acting as this hooligan's employment broker, but why did the BBC feel it appropriate to broadcast such an advert for a man on trial for criminal damage (the report was pre-recorded)?
And why - this is where it gets surreal - did Emily Maitlis, the anchor, then say immediately after the report: "If you know of a job for him, you know what to do".
The attempt to redefine "regime change" as "lack of regime change" is perhaps the most irritating of all the phony spinning and blustering that has come from this administration on the subject of Iraq. I had saved this article on Colin Powell's latest version of this brazen and embarrassing crime against language and policy coherence, intending to compose some suitably scathing comment; but Bill Quick already has the subject covered, and much more clearly and succinctly than I could manage, so I'm just going to quote him:
Here it is, in official language from the Secretary of State of the United States: "We surrender."
"Regime change" was a bluff all along. Its failure will do just as much damage as the elder Bush's admission that his Gulf War threat to use nukes was also a bluff.
And the most loathesome, indigestible chunk of this craven statement? Trying to blame GWB's spinelessness on Bill Clinton. The second most loathesome? This statement was made to "pacify" a pack of savage feudal tyrannies that hate us anyway. And the third? That maybe GWB was wagging the dog for the 2002 elections all along.
It's time to start shopping for George W. Bush's replacement.
Because of the technology and the heightened desperation of the world today, I think it's very possible that we are facing the first century that will complete itself without mankind--and that's not the future that I want for my children, or for their children.
Mona Baker, the British academic who couldn't tell the difference between "boycott" and "purge," has surfaced once again. Professor Baker, the Times reveals, is engaged in a lively email correspondence with celebrity holocaust denier David Irving. Very little of the contents of the correspondence has come to light, but from what I can gather, the two anti-Zionists have been brainstorming and bouncing ideas off each other, pooling their resources in search of innovative ways to extend her trail-blazing anti-Israel "boycott" to new and more fruitful territory. Here's the latest plan for keeping the dream alive, a letter from Irving quoted by the Times's Giles Coren:
“Dear Amazon, I have been shocked to get an e-mail from Prof. Mona Baker of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology which indicated that your company advertises itself in the Israeli press via a logo which reads: ‘Buy Amazon.Com and Support Israel’ and which displays an Israeli flag.”
I think, on balance, that anti-Zionists have a reasonable gripe with Amazon in this instance, and letters are a harmless way of expressing that. But why is Mona Baker sending e-mails to David Irving about it? Is the potty Holocaust denier the sort of chap she sees as a possible political collaborator? One is so often implored to remember that not all anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. But not all of them aren’t. And Irving is one who is. His aversion to Israel is based not on political but racial revulsion...
Now, Professor Baker, in choosing to boycott people on the ground of their nationality rather than their personal politics, treads a fine line herself between legitimate opposition to state brutality and fascistic denial of free speech on the ground of race. Anti-Zionists and Nazis do share a common cause, in a way, in so far as their enemy is Jewish, and sometimes the two end up doing each other’s dirty work — it is no coincidence that the French lawyer Jacques Verges represented both Klaus Barbie and Carlos the Jackal — but only the anti-Zionists can claim political validity for their occasional apparent racism.
It is not impossible that Mona Baker is a rational woman who thinks that her boycott is the best way to liberate the disfranchised Palestinians. And it is also not impossible that she is a misguided nutter. It is not for a miserable clown like me to judge. But if she does not want her attempts to legislate against a group of people who just happen to be Jewish to come up smelling of Hitler, then she should avoid soliciting the support of his most prominent modern disciple.
If you've read much of his weblog, you're probably aware that Brendan O'Neill feels he's too good for the anti-war movement.
He's written several versions of this column over the past year. Allow me to summarize: Brendan is opposed to imperialism, by which he means any country interfering in the affairs of any other country for any reason (hey-- a lost cause is better than no cause!); he opposes this war; he opposes War; but he thinks the contemporary "anti-war movement" is frivolous and ineffectual. If the frivolity and ineffectualness continue, Brendan wants the anti-war movement to count him out. He can't work under these conditions.
I can't argue with him on the point about the frivolity and solipsism embodied in the slogan "not in our name." What I can never figure out, though, is what he thinks the alternative is. Does he really imagine that any kind of anti-war movement, even one that he himself were allowed to design, organize and call all the shots for, would be any more effective at Stopping War than the one he's stuck with and finds so deficient? Could an anti-war movement, purged of tastelessness, pomposity, and silly slogans, so aesthetically unobjectionable that it could get the Brendan O'Neill seal of approval-- could such an anti-war movement ever have any real prospect of "stop[ping] America's and Europe's warmongers in their tracks," or to "get Bush and Blair quaking in their boots"?
Not likely. Another way of asking the question is: could any type of gesture or demonstration of opposition, even one flawlessly conceived or phrased, solve any of the problems that the prospective war is supposed to attempt to address, the problems that many believe make a war necessary and probably inevitable? I suppose Brendan thinks that there are no problems of this kind. That's the case that the Brendan O'Neill Anti-War Movement would have to make. I'm sure he believes he can make this case, and more power to him. Yet it seems to me that No Interference by Any Country in Any other Country's Affairs is no more realistic than No War, and it would be a lot harder to fit into the "hey hey ho ho" pattern. Or maybe NIBACINAOCA is even less realistic, since fostering or contriving the absence of war is itself a kind of interference. So is merely opting out of the conflict, leaving it for a future administration, for example. That, at least, happens sometimes. You can make an argument against this war without declaring that it is immoral and illegitimate for any state to have a foreign policy at all. It's a much more difficult standard. I can't see non-interference at all costs becoming a mass movement, at any rate. For one thing, how would you make a puppet of it?
Brendan O'Neill may have to get used to standing alone. Elegantly.
Here's the real original Blogs of War, coming to you pretty much live from a Carlsbad Motel 6.
We've always been a Motel 6 band. There are Super 8 bands. There are Red Roof Inn bands. There are La Quinta bands (they're the special ones with non-maxed-out credit cards or day jobs.) Who knows how these traditions get started? When you're on the road, predictability is more important than quality. That's one reason why McDonalds is so wildly successful. When you know in advance where you're going to stay, how you're going to get there, and what you're going to eat on the way, well, there are three big things you don't have to worry about anymore. Predictability is freedom.
The practical reason we stick to Motel 6 is because they're nationwide and their book is extremely well-organized with good directions. But the real reason is: we're a Motel 6 band, so that's what we do.
I've probably stayed in around 600 Motel 6 rooms in my Motel 6 career. You know the bedspreads? They're kind of blue-ish with red, purple and turquoise squares? I think they're trying to achieve a stained glass effect, but it's not the traditional stained glass of a cathedral. No lambs, halos, guys with beards. It's an abstract stained glass, like you find in a hippie church built in the 60s. You also see this kind of interior decorating at places like Denny's, for some reason. I blame Vatican II.
Anyway, about these bedspreads: they are just about the ugliest thing ever created. But, because of my extensive experience with them, I get a warm, safe, contented feeling when I look at one. I can't help it. It's not what it is, it's what it represents. It's the flag of the frazzled, wrecked, marginally-viable would-be entertainer who has, for one more day, managed to avoid disaster sufficiently to make it to 4 am. So it has a kind of hideous beauty.
When you see one in the wrong context it can really throw you for a loop. They often turn up in "amateur" porn videos, for obvious reasons. Or so I've heard. That adds an extra creepy feel (no pun intended) to the presentation, like it was taped in your house when you weren't there. Or so I've heard from other people in bands who stay in Motel 6s a lot and who know about such things. Who can fathom the mysteries of the human nesting impulse and the effects of extra-ordinary household objects on the human libido? Not me.
One time I saw one being sold in a thrift shop. It was 50 cents. I was going to get it, but even I realized that would be too weird. That way lies madness. It's good to try to keep your home life and your motel life as separate as possible.
The show was good. I had a massive right eye headache during the set. Maybe that lent some verisimilitude to the songs about suffering and human frailty, in that I probably winced rather convincingly at certain key lines.
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