Posted on 12/29/2003 3:35:54 PM PST by Pokey78
Usually in this spot each year I do an insufferable gloat-fest on the amazing accuracy of my columnar predictions from the last 12 months. But to be honest my heart's not in it this year. Although my confident assertion that Adrien Brody would win the Best Actor Oscar required a tiny modicum of prognosticatory skill, almost everything else I predicted was perfectly obvious - or, as I put it in The Spectator of March 29, "Let me go out on a limb here: the Anglo-Aussie-American forces will win." A week later, in an otherwise hilariously pessimistic issue of the Speccie, I reckoned Baghdad would fall within the next seven to 10 days. It took six.
But look, don't all stampede to shower me with Columnist Of The Year awards. That fall-of-Baghdad thing should have been as simple as predicting that at his next press conference Tony Blair will be wearing trousers. Might be navy, might be grey, but the trousered nature of the occasion should not be in doubt. Likewise, Baghdad. In my corner of New Hampshire in late March, if you could persuade 'em to take a five-minute break from chasing their sisters round the hayloft, guys with no teeth face down in the moonshine would tell you the Yanks would be marching down Glorious Saddam, Mighty Slayer Of The Infidel Boulevard by April 15, max. The more interesting question is why the smart fellows cranked out columns like "Baghdad Will Prove Impossible To Conquer". That would be Simon Jenkins in The Times, March 29.
It would be cruel to scoff at Mr Jenkins's column that day ("The coalition forces confront a city apparently determined on resistance. They should remember Napoleon in Moscow, Hitler in Stalingrad, the Russians at Grozny," etc), so let's move on to scoff at his column from four days later: "I Predict The Pundits Will Carry On Getting It Wrong", by which he meant the gung-ho neocon Zionist patsies with our predictions that Baghdad would fall within the week. Instead, Jenkins was still recommending that we "prepare for Beirut, the West Bank or Stalingrad". Our boys will be "trapped far from home and in hostile territory, like the Russians in Chechnya."
Oh, well. In Hollywood, purveyors of despised American culture to the world's cretins, they at least wait a decade before following Dumb And Dumber with Dumb And Dumberer. Jenkins held off barely a month before filing his own Dumb And Dumberer, in which he predicted that 2003 would go down in history as the year of "the destruction of the greatest treasure from the oldest age of Western civilisation, the greatest heritage catastrophe since the Second World War". This was a reference to the alleged destruction of the Iraqi National Museum, which yours truly said at the time was this year's "Jenin massacre" - that's to say, a complete fiction. And so it proved.
Seven months ago, there was so much hooey in the papers about Iraq that I decided to see for myself and had a grand time motoring round the Sunni Triangle. Lovely place, friendly people, property very reasonable. Why were my impressions so different from the doom-mongers at CNN or the New York Times? Well, it seems most media types holed up at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad are still using their old Ba'athist minders as translators when they venture out. That would, at the very minimum, tend to give one a somewhat skewed perspective of the new Iraq.
But it only works because the fellows on the receiving end - the naysayers in the media and elsewhere - are so anxious to fall for it. One Saddamite pen-pusher at the museum could only peddle his non-existent sack of Baghdad to the world because, thanks to chaps like Jenkins, it was a seller's market.
I don't mean to harp on old Jenkins. When I see him on TV, he seems a reasonable cove with a polished air of authority. But that's precisely why his derangement is so much more alarming than the autopilot frothing of Leftie vaudeville turns like Harold Pinter and George Galloway. Jenkins is one of the great and good, he sits on quangos with big-time baronesses. But I could as easily have cited Sir Malcolm Rifkind or Sir Max Hastings, both broadly conservative types driven bonkers by their cowboyphobia.
"It is hard not to hate George Bush," wrote Hastings the other day. "His ignorance and conceit, his professed special relationship with God, invite revulsion. A few weeks ago, I heard a British diplomat observe sagely: `We must not demonise Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.' Why not? The US defence secretary and his assistant have implemented coalition policy in Iraq in a fashion that makes Soviet behaviour in Afghanistan in the 1970s appear dextrous."
Does that sound like a Daily Telegraph editor? Former editor, I hasten to add, thank God. Wolfowitz is a demonic figure to the anti-war types for little reason other than that his name begins with a big scary animal and ends Jewishly. But, if you want to know what he's really like, ask Ann Clwyd: "He was a very charming man, an intellectual," the Welsh firebrand told the Observer. Just so. I've been in his presence on a couple of occasions - he's very soft-spoken, thoughtful, not in the least bit lupine. He can reel off the names of gazillions of Iraqis he's been in touch with for years - Kurds, Shias, Sunnis.
Hastings mocks these contacts as "Iraqi stooges". But better a stooge than a vast anonymous tide of native extras, which is how Sir Max, whose Rolodex doesn't appear to be brimming with Ramadi and Mosul phone numbers, sees them. Where's the real "ignorance and conceit" here? No one who knows any Iraqis, as Ms Clwyd does, would compare Wolfowitz with the Soviets.
The real story of this past year is not Saddam, but something deeper, symbolised by the bizarre persistence of the "anti-war" movement even after the war was over. For a significant chunk of the British establishment and for most of the governing class on the Continent, if it's a choice between an America-led West or no West at all they'll take the latter. That's the trend to watch in the year ahead.
The term appeared in Britain in the 1970s. Classic examples would be the Red Cross or the World Wildlife Fund -- an organization that is ostensibly non-profit, gets some funding from various governments, and is thought by many people to be a part of government. Agencies of the United Nations, such as the World Health Organization, are also often considered to be quangos. The acronym NGO is more common in the American and Canadian press. Employees of quangos have of course got their own culture and career path; in the USA this is referred to as the non-profit sector and would mean places like the foundations, NPR, the United Way, etc.
Put out as a throw-away line, but it deserves som emore thought. In particular, it relates to this:
the bizarre persistence of the "anti-war" movement even after the war was over
The anti-war movement was always more anti-Bush, and based on hate, despite their meaningless claim to desire peace.
Maybe if this poofter has so little respect for the natives of his adopted state, they should kick him back to Canada or Great Britain. I bet he doesn't hit the local gin mills all that much, probably over in Hanover with the intellectual crowd.
Sod off, Steyn.
Umm, you do know that Steyn writes most of his stuff very tongue-in-cheek (that means it shouldn't be taken too seriously), don't you?
True also for our own Bush+America-hating leftwingers.
However, he's an upper middle class guy who has had a choice of where in this wide world to plunk his @$$ and he chose New Hampshire, which last time I checked was not known for moonshine and toothless goobers.
And I do find it ironic that a Brit would mock somebody else's lack of dental care.
Perhaps that is because Dean isn't a dwarf, but merely a midget (of the mental variety)...
the infowarrior
Everything I know about British politics I learned from Yes, Minister:
'JOBS FOR THE BOYS': (Originally transmitted 7 April 1980) A £74 million building project seems to Jim a shining example of a successful collaboration between Government and private industry - until he discovers that the private firm involved has gone bust. A certain banker can help - in return for the cushy chairmanship of a QUANGO. And [as Sir Humphrey notes] it takes two to Quango...Sir Desmond: So it all boils down to the Industry Co-partnership Committee. Still, I find that quite acceptable.
Sir Humphrey: Well, it is within the gift of my Minister, and you would only put in appearances once or twice a month.
Sir Desmond: Are there lots of papers?
Sir Humphrey: Yes, but it wouldn't be awfully necessary to read them.
Sir Desmond: Then I wouldn't have anything to say at the monthly meetings.
Sir Humphrey: Splendid, I can see you're just the chap I'm looking for.
But look, don't all stampede to shower me with Columnist Of The Year awards.
I predict that Dean will implode sometime during the general election. Once he captures the nomination, his ego and arrogance will be more out of control than ever. Can you imagine how he will react once the scrutiny and questioning become much more intense and brutal as it will once the general campaign begins? He won't be able to take it and I can only imagine that he will be a lot meaner and nastier than what we see today. I would not be surprised if the 2002 Presidential campaign becomes one of the nastiest of all time.
This especially brought to you by way of the Mental Midget from Montpelier.
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