[dennisw]

She has some insights but I don't agree w/ her.

[beckett]

An influential public intellectual, with a popular following among liberals and conservatives, comes out against the war. This is not good news for the Bush administration.

[Henk]

Look, you can't just rip off the content of a pay-for-access site and post it here. It ain't right and it will get Free Republic in trouble (again).

[Paul Lyons]

Lets see now...
Camille Pagila is a feminist, a college professor, a self-described 'child of the sixties' and TWICE voted for Bill Clinton.
And yet you "had no idea what to expect when we phoned her earlier this week for her opinions on the Bush administration's looming war with Iraq"...
lol...Does the word discernment mean ANYTHING to you?
Hate to break this to you dude...but your stupid.

[The Iguana]

"There's just no way that Saddam's threat is equal to that of Hitler leading up to World War II. Hitler had amassed an enormous military machine and was actively seeking world domination."

That was only true by 1939.

Had the French upheld the Versailles Treaty terms confronting the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 - when the Wehrmacht consisted of 200,000 mostly ill-trained and ill-equipped troops, with little air force to speak of - the history of the 20th century would have been far different, and far better.

When the cancer has metastasized, it's too late.

Which is exactly what we face in North Korea now.

[Bernard Marx]

I think of Paglia as the Patrick J. Moynihan of the intellectual set: she talks the talk but always winds up wanting things both ways. How can you really trust the judgment of anyone who voted for Clinton twice? A liberal opportunist, I'd say. She's all hat and no cattle.

[iconoclast]

Thanks for posting this we need loads more like it to counter balance the avalanche of jingoistic propoganda.

[happygrl]

This is a long posturing rant in which Paglia tries to innoculate herself against the arguments of the leftists while putting distance between herself and them.

But at the end of the day she still ends up in their camp, trying to appear as though she has had "deep" thoughts about this, far surpassing those of the left.

She still uses the stereotypical barbs of the left, dismissing Bush and his advisors as bumpkins who know little of the world, politically and culturally.

She is the one who is out of touch, admittedly so as far as understanding the passion of religion as a motivator for both Islamics and for Americans, belittling Bush's piety, though many Americans see it as his strength.

She is way out of her league in understanding how to deal with the neighborhood bully; how the Arab world reacts to a show of strength, how compassionate our military can be in making its plans to precisely target weapons, not civilians.

She claims that she agrees with Fallaci, that we are in a clash of civilizations, but thinks that this kind of clash can be talked through, apparently, by finding the silent majority of moderate Muslims and working with them.

That is precisely the problem; the radicals have silenced any moderates by threat. We are in a clash with the radicals and can only talk with the moderates after the radicals threatening US have been dispatched. The moderate Muslims, with few exceptions, have not shown a willingness to take on the radicals themselves. Not in the killing fields of Africa (two million Sudanese dead without a word from moderate Muslims, Algeria with several hundred thousand dead), Indonesia where Muslims have murdered thousands of Christians, Iran where the Mullahs have executed thousands in their twenty year religious rampage.

Even in this country where there is freedom, the Muslims are first and foremost concerned with perceived slights, instead of criticism of those who besmirch their religion by far more grevious actions than newspaper cartoons or portrayals in movies.

Paglia refers us to the epochs of ancient history, citing the Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. But she leaves out the martial and warrior aspects of their histories when they understood that they were under threat. We are under threat by a shadowy clique who take their allies where they can find them. Saddam Hussein is willing to be their ally and supply their terrorist weapons. Nothing in this essay convinces me that Paglia understands that threat and what is required of us in the times in which we live.

[LadyChurchill]

anyone who is truly interested in this subject should read Victor David Hanson's book Carnage and Culture and his articles in the National Review which are really based on a study of history rather than a study of omens...

[Radix]

Ping thing!

[Pietro]

It seems Camile is asking for a more nuanced approach, however, its pointless to be nuanced when someone has a gun to your head.

Clearly taking out Saddam will be a great blow against OBL. Eliminating his safe havens will flush him and the rest of his vermin. Step by step they will be left w/ no where to hide. Waiting for the Islamists to come to their senses is absurd.

W's tough talk is a very cagey strategy it's kept this country focused and given our allies time to get their own political houses in order.

Paglia wants desperatly to be Fallaci but she lacks the gravitas and the passion, she just can't shake her Ivory Tower pretensions--she voted for Nader?? She puts together some beautiful sentences but when you get to the end it just doesn't add up to a cogent point.

[HartAttack]

Camille was always one of my favorite liberals. She thoughtfully considers issues before writing about them and isn’t a slave to the liberal mantra. However, in this article Camille sounds more like she’s trying to make sense of a hormone imbalance than geopolitics and matters of life and death.

I don’t remember reading Camille opining about Bill Clinton killing thousands of Christian civilians in Serbia when he bombed that country to get Monica Lewinski off the front pages of the newspapers. I don’t remember Camille wringing her hands about the Clinton Administration threatening to attack Iraq in 1998. Why now? Instead of being in the Middle East, if Iraq was located on our northern border like Canada, would Camille still be wringing her hands about stopping this guy?

[syzygy]

Omen? Why take it as a negative?
Perhaps the omen should be interpreted that we are going too slowly with Iraq. Time is not on our side.
Or, perhaps, and more sanely, the Columbia tragedy is unrelated to Iraq, just as it is unrelated to the Pro Bowl.

[anniewarbucks]

I have strongly mixed feelings about this one. Paglia's the BEST, her books are epic and she's my educational inspiration and role model.

I'm relieved to see her back in the mix. We've definitely had a shortage of Paglia action in the discourse. Welcome back.

Precisely what makes her such an intellectual force is what really disturbed me about this interview, though. Her ability to detach from the subjectivity and relative historical myopia of the rest of us, and her capacity for "symbolic thinking:" Its a great way to read history and contemporary human activity. But, (finally i can disagree with my hero for something) treating the Columbia tragedy as a symbol comes across as simply sang-froid.

The ability to read the world like one reads a book is what i love about her, and she's always on the mark. Nevertheless, this interpretation does some disservice to the families of the late astronauts. They are searching for answers like the rest of us, and symbolism, i don't think, satisfies them or us.


In sum: great, cogent, fiery interview, it was like the comeback tour of a long absent rock star.

The severity of Paglia's objectivity toward Columbia's very recent explosion read like a litmus test on just how shockingly far-removed her mentality is from the rest of us. Which is of course why she's so great, but its hard to relate to her on a human level on this issue, which is why i'm somewhat freaked out.

Paglia's a sumo of intellect, but seems impervious to the fact that symbolism is only a theory and of little human consolation to the rest of us.

Paglia's astrology-alchemy approach, while it may have merits in its embracement of the mysterious and the Incomprehensible which the age of enlightenment did not allow for, the analysis seems counter-intuitive to us functioning in our science-driven age of technology.

Did any of this make sense?

Paglia's perspective, though i disagree with this facet of it, is indefatigably original and bristling with personality, and it was sorely missed on my part. Its fantastic that we're debating with Paglia ideas again!

[Huemann]

Outstanding interview. I too am a 'democratic libertarian' who voted for Nader. Paglia makes the most compelling case against attacking Iraq I have read or heard. The Bush approach is typical Republican; just tell people what they, by god, have to do and make them do it with a beefed up police force and military. It's all so simple. But the real problem is in the long term repercussions, not just to our economy, but a likely INCREASE in terrorism that will last for years, possibly decades. The Bush administration should call time out and think deeply about unintentional long-term consequences.

[A. Pole]

Kings throughout history have been shaken by signals like this from beyond: Think twice about what you're doing. If a Roman general tripped on the threshold before a battle, he'd call it off.

This is what Machiavelli says in his Discources:

Whence it arises I do not know, but from ancient and modern examples it is seen that no great event ever takes place in a City or a Province that has not been predicted either by fortune tellers, by revelations, by prodigies, or by other celestial signs. [...] (First Book, Chapter LVI)

[JoeC]

I generally appreciate Paglia's opinions, but not in giving Iraq more time, inspections, etc. They have had enough time. It is important to know when you're being jerked around. I think that now would be a good time for all those who would give Iraq more time, consideration, benefit of the doubt, etc, to start drafting their replies for when we go in and locate the WMD that Saddam claims not to have.

Joe C.

[537 Votes]

As we speak, I have a terrible sense of foreboding, because last weekend a stunning omen occurred in this country. Anyone who thinks symbolically had to be shocked by the explosion of the Columbia shuttle, disintegrating in the air and strewing its parts and human remains over Texas -- the president's home state! So many times in antiquity, the emperors of Persia or other proud empires went to the oracles to ask for advice about going to war. Roman generals summoned soothsayers to read the entrails before a battle. If there was ever a sign for a president and his administration to rethink what they're doing, this was it.

Here is a pro-abortion lesbian preaching to us on the meaning of religious omens. Does anyone else find this very strange?