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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Operation exterminate all the brutes

We’re shelling Fallujah, just as the Higher Father told us to do.  And CNN reports that we’ve killed 64 insurgents near Najaf.

So the end is near.  That old guy in the New Yorker cartoon-- him with the sign-- was right after all.  Who knew?  And damn it all to hell, I forgot to repent.

Though I suppose this locks up the Jay Severin vote in November.

UPDATE:  On a lighter note, blasts and gunfire in Damascus as Syrian forces square off with a “terrorist band.”

Posted by Michael on 04/27 at 08:44 AM
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Condi’s slip

As discussed by Laura Kipnis in Slate.  At once delightful and instructive, in the characteristic Kipnisian mode.  But interestingly, this latest item has nothing at all to do with sex-- or with Harold Bloom’s boneless hand and Naomi Wolf throwing up in the sink.  It’s actually about the heightened-- hysterical?-- expectations that now surround every verbal stumble by a public official.  And it’s got Oscar Wilde in there too, saying, “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” So go check it out already.

Posted by Michael on 04/27 at 07:42 AM
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Monday, April 26, 2004

And the sounds of silence would be?

From the recent Coalition Provisional Authority briefing with Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Director for Coalition Operations, and Dan Senor, Senior Adviser, CPA, Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 22, 2004.

The first question asked of Kimmitt and Senor was this:

(Through interpreter.) Ibrahim Hassan (sp), from an organization of Faily Kurds. A group of families have recommended me to give you a message that is in form of a question, so please be so honest in answering this question.

The helicopters who are flying a low profile in the areas where they are fully populated, in different times and different circumstances, so that also has just scared the children and the innocent people and the families, and also (consequently ?) so some of those members of the families have been inflicted and they just were scared, and there have been so many diseases-- psychological diseases, skin diseases also, due to these, I mean, illegal flying low profile helicopters in those areas. So they are just seeking for a solution. If it is possible, please find a solution to save the lives of those people who are—who were harmed and inflicted with harm because of these actions.

OK, no matter what your position on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, you can probably agree that we’re not actually spreading diseases from low-flying helicopters.  Surely this man is thinking of Saddam’s Anfal campaign against the Kurds, the single most notorious incident of which was the massacre in Halabja in 1988.  (Leo Casey recently wrote a terrific essay on Halabja denial here.) But what reply does this man get from the CPA?  Check this out:

GEN. KIMMITT: Yeah, number one, the low-profile helicopter flights have a purpose. It allows our helicopters to fly low and fast. It allows them to conduct their operations to provide security to the people of Iraq.  Having spent most of my adult life either on or near military posts, married to a woman who teaches in the schools, you often hear the sounds of tank firing.  You often hear the sounds of artillery rounds going off. And she seems to be quite capable of calming the children and letting them understand that those booms and those bangs that they hear are simply the sounds of freedom.

Well, that should help everyone sleep at night.

(Thanks to Chris Borthwick for the link.)

Posted by Michael on 04/26 at 02:06 PM
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Guest blogging, kind of

I said last week that I’d been getting some great feedback on my brief post on Paul Berman and prowar liberals.  Here’s one example, from Dan Borus, professor of history at the University of Rochester.  I’ll skip the opening paragraph-- in which Professor Borus generously thanks me for having the only blog that talks about Peggy Noonan, novelist Richard Powers, and the St. Louis Blues (whom, he says, he used to cover as a radio reporter back in the days when they had Derek Sanderson)-- and cut right to the substance of the letter.

Depending on how the week shakes out (it’s the final week of the semester, and I’m chin-deep in final papers), this may be “Guest Blogging, Kind Of” Week.  I don’t have comments on this site, for reasons that Professor Quirrel summed up eloquently in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when he cried, “Troll!  Troll in the dungeon!” But I do get plenty of letters from readers, and I do reply to every one of ‘em . . . even the ones that promise me that they can help me blog all night long.  So, without further ado, Professor Borus:

“I second your contention that Berman’s advocacy, whatever its merits in terms of heartfelt wish, has become unrealistic and counterproductive. The image of throwing a rock and watching the ripples (at least it wasn’t knocking down dominoes) is wishful thinking and more than a bit reckless. One objection to the Berman position rests on feasibility. American power is damaging in one vein (we have the weapons) and inspiring in another (we have a set of stated principles that often attract others) but nonetheless not omnipotent. There are far too many unintended consequences to such a mammoth project. This seems especially true in light of the demonstrated incompetence of our leaders and their lack of knowledge of the facts on the ground. That they believed the Shia were secular, and denied there were any holy places in Iraq, is breathtaking ignorance. I knew they were venal; I didn’t think of them as so incompetent as to so thoroughly alienate large segments of the Iraqi population. And academics are supposedly the ones who live in an ivory tower.

“The problem is, of course, deeper than incompetence. Your Tikkun analysis was, I always thought, quite on target. The quarrel is not with fighting Bin Laden; he is, as we used to say, an enemy of the people-- both the American people and the people of the Mideast. The ‘thinness’ of Berman’s view of democracy leaves him susceptible to certain difficulties and supporting untenable and, to my mind, unjustified actions. In not seeing democracy as a lived experience to be defended, Berman can end up coming fairly close to supporting actions that seem more than likely to never allow for the Iraqi people to begin to live democratically-- at least in the foreseeable future.

“I suppose I’d frame the objection about thinness a bit differently that you have. Perhaps it is my own recent reading of Randolph Bourne, but I also find the Wilsonianism of Berman worrisome. As you imply, I think, but do not quite say, it rests on an uncritical association of democracy with America. It is then an easy step to associate democracy with the actions of the American state, a far different matter. Posing the problem as a grand narrative of transcendental evil versus transcendental good often moves people of good will such as Berman to treat American actions as ipso facto democratic and to substitute American government for democracy in the world, with the same kind of logic that prompted the Leninist party to substitute itself for the proletariat. In the process, the people for whom the acts are taken become ciphers, abstractions, rather than performing people. So little thought is given to the needs, desires, and institutions of the Iraqi people, except in the abstract. . . .

“Nowhere is slippage from support for democracy to support for the American government so clear in Berman’s Times piece as in the fourth paragraph you cite. There, he rather ludicrously sees the rather ineffective Baathist firing at American planes (I can’t recall any of them being hit) as a defiant transgression against American interests that has world historical implications.

“Somehow this defiance of the American state is linked with actual attacks on the American people and makes Saddam-- whose movement only rarely ever articulated, much less acted upon, the four tenets Berman outlines as the essence of the terrorist political movement-- a key enabler of a movement that despised Baathist secularism as a miniature version of the true Satan. I’m still mystified by the incorporation of Saddam and Bin Laden, which is a constantly meme of liberal war hawks. I worry that such logic underwrites military action against any action that could be construed as demonstrating American weakness.”

I should probably add that Professor Borus agrees with me on another key issue as well, namely, that U.S. policy in Afghanistan is not a question of “imperialism,” as some people on the antiwar left would have it, but rather an instance of criminal negligence-- which is another matter altogether.  But I have to confess that I had completely forgotten that Derek Sanderson had ever been a member of the St. Louis Blues.  I knew him only as a Boston Bruin and as a nemesis of my New York Rangers-- and, of course, as one of the very first NHL stars to adopt the porn star look of the 1970s (long hair, thick sideburns, Fu Manchu mustache).  And I think Borus is entirely right to link the “thinness” of Berman’s conception of democracy to the prowar-liberal willingness to try to remake Iraq by force.  Thanks, Dan.  Wish I’d thought of that. . . .

Posted by Michael on 04/26 at 11:34 AM
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Sunday, April 25, 2004

Sunday morning

It finally dawned on me just who Bush was talking about when he told Bob Woodward that his own father “is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.  There’s a higher father that I appeal to.” At first I assumed the obvious, namely, that George H. W. Bush was the “wrong father,” that is, not George Bush’s father at all (hence the paternity anxiety on the part of the elder Bush, an anxiety clearly marked by the decision to give him the Name of the Father).  But then I realized I shouldn’t be so literal-minded.  Obviously Bush was speaking metaphorically, and obviously he was talking about Vice President Cheney.

Our father, who art in Halliburton.  Now, just what do you think Dick the Stronger Higher Father is going to counsel Bush to do in Fallujah?  My guess is that Cheney will say something that involves some variant of the word “smite.”

And then what happens?  I can’t begin to imagine.  Maybe I should be reading those Left Behind books after all.

Posted by Michael on 04/25 at 06:59 AM
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Saturday, April 24, 2004

Amazing Jamie milestone

So the no-longer-little ignatz, now 12 years old, gets it into his head that this year he will ride the motorized go-carts at Tussey Mountain Park all by himself.  This decision apparently follows months of playing the Cruisin’ USA and Cruisin’ World arcade games at the Y, on which Jamie has logged many minutes of driving on the roads, sidewalks, ditches etc. of Las Vegas, London, New York and sundry underwater fantasy locations (I believe this is an option in the “Cruisin’ Exotica” version).  I explained to him the difference between driving video-game cars and real go-carts with motors (and-- more importantly-- brakes), and he assured me he was ready to go.  I had my doubts.

So today Janet graded papers all day while I took Jamie.  And at his request, I took him to the go-carts, where, to my utter astonishment and heart-in-throat pride, he took a cart all by himself and promptly careened around the track, through the hairpin turns and everything, at maximum speed all the way.  He came in early, after three laps, and crashed somewhat gently into the parked carts, whereupon he got a pair of lectures (from the track guy and from me) about coming in slowly with his foot on the brake.  On his second trip he got it right.  Meanwhile, my cart-- the original idea was for me to escort him around the track, guiding him and shouting encouragement-- stalled twice, leaving Jamie to his own devices.  Which was probably all the better, in the end.

Sorry I’m still not following up on the past week’s political posts, but right now, feh-- nothing else matters.  Jamie is a driver.  Un-effing-real.

Well, he had his WWF phase four or five years ago.  Is this the beginning of his CART phase?  Bring it on.

Posted by Michael on 04/24 at 12:20 PM
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