I think we should just declare a fatwa and get it over with. ;)
Posted on 06/02/2004 1:02:25 AM PDT by kattracks
After a couple of weeks away, I return to spend a lonely evening talking to myself at the eerily deserted Armchair Warmongers Club (Fleet Street Branch). Where'd everybody go?
A year ago, Anatole Kaletsky was buoyant and sunny: "The vast majority of Iraqis will soon find themselves incomparably freer and better off than at any time in the past 50 years." Now he's sunk in his own columnar quagmire: "Iraq will indeed now replace Vietnam as the byword for America's military humiliation, its strategic incompetence, its wayward moral compass," etc, etc.
His Times colleague Mary Ann Sieghart has flounced off, too: "That's it! I've had enough. I'm fed up with justifying the war in Iraq to sceptical friends, family and acquaintances." The standard rap against us armchair warriors is that we can't stand the heat of real war, but poor Mary Ann can't stand the heat of real armchairs. The chap on the sofa at that dinner party was just too beastly and sceptical.
Tony Parsons, hitherto the token non-anti-American at the Daily Mirror, feels cheap and used. "Tony Blair fooled me," he says bitterly. "I see now it was all a pack of lies."
With moulting hawks all around squawking their forlorn chorus of "I'm No Longer Such An Ugly Duckling", it's tempting to join the mass ecdysis. But this is one leopard who won't be changing his spots. Fourteen months ago, there were respectable cases to be made for and against the war. None of the big stories of the past few weeks alters either argument.
The bleats of "Include me out!" from the fairweather warriors isn't a sign of their belated moral integrity but of their fundamental unseriousness. Anyone who votes for the troops to go in should be grown-up enough to know that, when they do, a few of them will kill civilians, bomb schools, abuse prisoners. It happens in every war. These aren't stunning surprises, they're inevitable: it might be a bombed mosque or a hospital, a shattered restaurant or a slaughtered wedding party, but it will certainly be something.
Okay, a freaky West Virginia tramp leading a naked Iraqi round on a dog leash with a pair of Victoria's Secret panties on his head and a banana up his butt, maybe that wasn't so inevitable. But, that innovation aside, the aberrations of war have nothing to do with the only question that matters: despite what will happen along the way, is it worth doing?
I say yes. It is already worth it for Iraq. There are more than 8,000 towns and villages in the country. If the much predicted civil war had erupted in any of 'em, you'd see it. Not from the Western press corps holed up with its Ba'ath Party translators at the Palestine Hotel, but from Arab television networks eager to show the country going to hell. They cannot show it you because it isn't happening. The Sunni Triangle is a little under-policed, but even that's not aflame. Moqtada al-Sadr, the Khomeini-Of-The-Week in mid-April, is al-Sadr al-Wiser these days, down to his last two 12-year-old insurgents and unable even to get to the mosque on Friday to deliver his weekly widely-ignored call to arms.
Meanwhile, more and more towns are holding elections and voting in "secular independents and representatives of non-religious parties". I have been trying to persuade my Washington pals to look on Iraq as an exercise in British-style asymmetrical federalism: the Kurdish areas are Scotland, the Shia south is Wales, the Sunni Triangle is Northern Ireland. No need to let the stragglers in one area slow down progress elsewhere. Iraq won't be perfect, but it will be okay - and in much better shape than most of its neighbours.
So I've moved on. I am already looking for new regimes to topple. And here's where the events of recent weeks may have done some damage. In my corner of northern New England, as in Highgate and Holland Park, it is also stressful being a Bush apologist. Most of the guys I hang out with demand to know why he's being such a wimp, why's he kissing up to King Abdullah about a few stray bananas in some jailhouse, why's he being such a pantywaist about not letting our boys fire on mosques, why hasn't he levelled Fallujah. In other words, don't make the mistake of assuming that Bush's poll numbers on Iraq have fallen because people want him to be more multilateralist and accommodating. On my anecdotal evidence, they want him to be more robust and incendiary.
And evidently John Kerry's internal polling is telling him the same thing. Hence, his speech in Seattle on Friday: "This country is united in its determination to destroy you," he told the terrorists. "As commander in chief, I will bring the full force of our nation's power to bear on finding and crushing your networks. We will use every available resource to destroy you." Winning the Presidency isn't like winning the Palme d'Or, and Kerry, the ne plus ultra of weathervane politicians, seems to have figured there aren't enough votes in sounding like Michael Moore, Howard Dean or even Al Gore. With an eye to her own political viability, Hillary Clinton the other day demanded an expansion of the army.
Does Kerry mean it? Probably not. The tough talk's a cover for what would be a return to the ineffectual reactive national-security policy of the 1990s - "I have here a piece of paper from Kim Jong-Il," etc. If the media manage to drag the Senator, a very weak candidate, over the finishing line, it will be seen as a humiliating verdict on Bush's war. There will be no stomach for further neo-con adventuring. The House of Saud can relax and resume its buying off of al-Qaeda. Pakistan's ISI can get rid of General Musharraf. The IAEA can go back to sleep and let Iran get on with its nuclear programme. And, after months and months of experts telling them that they didn't have enough troops in Iraq, Washington will realise all the extra troops they needed are sitting around twiddling their thumbs in Europe, guarding against enemies who no longer exist on behalf of allies who are no longer allies.
Such a world would be a more dangerous place, but not necessarily for Americans. It is Europe that's closer and more vulnerable to terrorists, dysfunctional states and other enemies. That is why I'm a relatively relaxed hawk. The US may be forced to suffer the perception of defeat, but it is Europe that will live with the consequences. Be careful what you wish for.
Mark Steyn is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc.
And Iraq and the rest of the world are much better off with Saddam gone. Sooner or later, if they haven't already, the Iraqi people will look around their world and see the same thing.
I suppose it's too much to ask of the media, but if they chose to look beyond the prison abuse garbage, they might notice the same thing. Can't have that, can we?
Men, enjoy the article.
Unexcerpted Steyn for your perusing pleasure.
Muchas gracias por la ping.
I'm working on posting Lileks first now...
Thanks,
Unexcerpted Gratitude.
Unfortunately, St. Q posted this one a few days ago, off a different source. But I enjoyed re-reading the unexcerpted version.
I think we should just declare a fatwa and get it over with. ;)
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