On to the "Post-Bush Awakening"!

Let's pick on some really conventional conventional wisdom for a change!

Dabbling in the narcissism of our petty differences with Mr. Badger and the JCIA and St. Helena of Cobban and the (hopefully) one-and-only Dr. Reidar Visser is good enough for most days, Mr. Bones, but let us face it, sir, compared to E. J. Dionne, none of our gang even begins to exist! So, then, here's an Opponent of Stature, for all that he can't make the bushogenic quagmirization of both America and of neo-Iraq stop either.

So, then, ad rem!

To understand how much the Iraq war has transformed the way most Americans think about foreign policy, consider what passed for shrewd analysis four years ago. The words on the "in" list included "unilateral," "bold," "robust," "transformative" and "sole remaining superpower." T he words on the "out" list included "multilateral," "nuance," "patience," "diplomacy," "allies," "history" and "prudence." Today, the "in" and "out" lists would be almost exactly reversed. The new "out" list includes such additions as "reckless," "arrogant" and "incompetent." With so many establishmentarians now running away from the war, many would prefer to forget the political mood at 10:15 p.m. on March 19, 2003, when President Bush announced that "at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." Politics did not stop at the water's edge. The edition of The [Washington] Post in which Bush's speech was reported also included this headline: "GOP to Hammer Democratic War Critics." The report began: "Congressional Republicans are implicitly challenging the patriotism of some Democrats who have criticized President Bush's war plans, a sign that the divisive politics marking the 108th Congress are unlikely to cease during wartime." Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, then chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, predicted that Democrats would "pay a political price" for feeding the perception that they opposed disarming and deposing Saddam Hussein. Those who bemoan our politically polarized foreign policy debate should remember how it started.

Rather a disappointing incipit, innit, Mr. Bones? Although to be sure it is rather easier for us to take that line when we have not changed our own views about Boy-'n'-Party invasionism significantly since Day One. And that no matter whether the days be counted from 11 September 2001 or from 19 March 2003. But stay, let's have another chunk of it before we leap to conclusions, shall we?

When the argument over invading Iraq was publicly joined in summer 2002, many mainstream Republicans were queasy. That September, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) told me his constituents were "concerned about a go-it-alone strategy," and Rep. Thomas Petri (R-Wis.) said voters in his district expressed "concern about whether we know what we're doing or how we're going to do it." The concerns of those good citizens were never answered because the administration was so successful in creating a lock-step mood, trumping doubters with extravagant claims about perils emanating from mushroom clouds and aluminum tubes. The process of twisting the facts continued for four years. Every setback in Iraq was first ignored, then denied and then explained away as temporary. Some new strategy was always hyped as the beginning of a successful end. It's no wonder the war's remaining supporters get so little traction when they claim that the surge is working and that Bush should be given one more chance to get the war right. Patriotic skeptics have heard it before. Foreign policy hawks fear an "Iraq Syndrome" involving a pathological wariness about the use of American force and an unhealthy mistrust of every word coming out of the White House.

Of course there mst be another shoe left to drop after that last bit, some inevitable "whereas" . . . .

Comrade Dionne would, I suppose, claim that he personally was never bamboozled by the militant hormone-based Busheviki either. At Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh they would presumably agree with that self-estimate: this l*b*r*l gentlefiend has always despised the One Indispensible Lone Ranger and rooted for all the miscellaneous and assorted Tontos of the world, has he not? Was there ever really a time when Citizen E. J. Dionne, Jr., did not exhibit "an unhealthy mistrust of every word coming out of [any Republican-infested] White House"? When he would not have applauded each and every lemming in the ranks of Grant's Old Party who marches out of step with theitr own Big Management as "good citizens" whose "concerns" somehow fail to get properly "addressed"? Perhaps his bad attitude dates back no rather than Watergate, or to the Gulf of Tonkin as expounded with Pentagon Papaers glosses from Mr. Daniel Ellsberg, or perhaps to President Sorensens's Profiles in Courage. It may even go back to the mythological infancy of the race, when She talked Him into taking a bite of the apple too, thus ensuring that the Fall of Man should be a multilateral event at the time, and peccatum originale a thoroughly bipartisan concerm ever since. Whenever EJDj's bad attitude dates from, exactly, it must have been long before 11 September 2001 or 19 March 2003.

I do not profess to "mind" that Comrade Dionne should take a jaundiced view of big-managerial gland-basers out of Rancho Crawford. Our own donkey solidarity would not last long without it. Parteinost' may not be quite as wonderful as the señoritos, the little "conservative" "intellectual" friends of Eddie Burke sometimes rate it, but it is rather a good idea all the same, and I'm decidedly for it. Naturally it has to work both ways, with those silly geese keeping an ever-unenchanted eye upon us more rational ganders as well as vice versa. And naturally when a good idea is really a good idea, the goodness of it does not somehow mystically stop "at the water's edge" either. Never did. Does not now. Never shall.

Here's the other shoe, and the rest of the scribble as well:

On the contrary, this botched war is far more likely to lead to what might properly be called the Post-Bush Awakening. It is an awakening to the danger of viewing critics as traitors, to the costs of making everything about politics and to the sad tendency of establishmentarians to seek refuge within the boundaries of prevailing opinion. It is also an awakening to the wise skepticism of everyday Americans toward ideologues who believe that optional wars of their design can miraculously change the world. Here's what Vice President Cheney said in late August 2002 about the transformative potential of a war with Iraq: "Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart, and our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced." The uneasy constituents whom Camp and Petri were meeting with around the time Cheney spoke were too realistic to accept this nonsense whole. Next time, they will insist that their questions are answered and their doubts allayed before their sons and daughters are sent off to war. None of this means that American opinion has become isolationist. The country's determination to defeat terrorism has not slackened. Most Americans still believe the war in Afghanistan was a proper response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and wonder why it was left unfinished so the ideologues could go off in pursuit of Utopia on the Euphrates. The men and women who wear the nation's uniform have never been so popular. But those who spent the past four years hyping threats, underestimating costs, ignoring rational warnings, painting unrealistic futures and savaging their opponents have been discredited. This awakening is the first step toward rebuilding our country's influence and power.

Comrade Dionne may have overestimated the level of his media corporation's customers when he stuck in that little stiletto thrust about "ideologues" with a "Utopia on the Euphrates." That jab is admirable in itself, to be sure, but how many readers will inderstand it properly? Perhaps even thou and I, Mr. Bones, do not ourselves understand it as well as we ideally might, not having yet perused one of his corporation colleague's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. Anyway, EJDj certainly should have said "Tigris" rather than "Euphrates," unless he mistakenly supposes "Euphrates" to alliterate impressively with "Utopia."

More substantively, he says he expects an "awakening" and we ourselves incline to expect only more fiasco. Worse fiasco, furthermore, because the next discouraging episodes, as we envision them, will pass for bipartisan. This time we're to have Vietnam backwards, it looks like: first the strictly Big Management Party hostilities, and only afterwards the CFR/ISG or nominally all-American hostilities. ’Astaghfirulláh, one begs pardon of Father Zeus!

Ah, but EJDj seems to have known in advance that he might run into shady people like thee and me, Mr. Bones, and he wanted firmly to rule us out of order preëmptively and unilaterally, almost Crawfordwise -- "None of this means that American opinion has become isolationist. The country's determination to defeat terrorism has not slackened."

'Tis an interesting bloviation, but whom is it supposed to impress? Out beyond all that salty water, I mean? Do China or Peru or anybody in between take the Dionnean view that "terrorism" has been seriously neglected whilst the gland-based extremists muck about buildin' or not buildin' irrelevant Utopias in their Boy-'n'-Party neo-Iraq? Has such a view as that one any resonance at all anywhere except here im Heimatlande Gottes? 'Twould be a fine thing. Mr. Bones, all this "rebuilding our country's influence and power" song-and-dance of Comrade Dionne's, but is an unslackened "determination to defeat terrorism" the way to go about it? Which foreigners are actually complaining that Uncle Sam's will slackens, that of late our Sam has become insufficiently terrorized of Terrorism Itself? Do not the vast majority of Lesser Breeds Without rather incline to think that our Sam has sadly failed to put the Global Terrorist Menace in any proper perspective, failed to consult with his actuaries and other neutral specialists about how menaced that poor innocent lamb of a Sam really is, as they have long since done themselves, concluding -- quite soundly in my judgment -- that it is a danger to buy a little extra insurance against rather than to launch Kiddie Krusades against.

That can't possibly be "isolationism" on my part, Mr. Bones, can it? After all, I am recommending that Sam should take lessons in measure and moderation from China, Peru & Co., that we should learn from them and adapt our tone to theirs, neither ruthlessly imposing some cheapjack GOP Boy-'n'-Party tone of hysteria instead, nor shutting ourselves from any influence of anybody wiser's tone either. Do I not stand in the EXACT middle of the road, then, Mr. Bones, along with the yellow stripe and all the roadkill armadillos? Do I propose to "appease" the Lesser Breeds Without when I propose to take my tone from them? I conscientiously consider theirs the proper tone to take, and so I take it -- or indeed, took it already before hearing from the LBW, or speculating about what tone would do best for "rebuilding our country's influence and power."

It can't do US any harm on the "influence and power" front not to look forever like invincible Boy-'n'-Party ignoramuses and neo-hormonized preëmptive retaliators, obviously. But EJDj obviously supposes that in the last analysis there really exists some separate Influence-and-Power Front for our Sam to fight on, even if defensively only, whereas I disagree and consider that notion all a chimaera. There must be some radical mistake here, really, if omphaloscopic worry about who's to be the Glorious Leader and who the rather less glory-endowed Followers -- the whole boilerplate Lone Ranger and Tonto scenario, in short -- is forever to trump simply doing what ought to be done only because it obviously ought to be done.

One might even think, Mr. Bones, that our l*b*r*l*sm has not advanced even half a centimetre between Woodrow Wilson and Mr. E. J. Dionne, Jr., that "we" are still too proud to fight as a mere "Ally" of anybody sensible in the world and must always insist upon being recognized as rather an "Associated Power" that comes pre-equipped with special and exceptional and inscrutable heimatlandisch motivations all our own that require to be especially reserved for by other parties, since mere Gentiles can never properly understand their predestined and indispenable betters.

Was this what Mr. Jefferson meant in his 1776 Congressional Manifesto by "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind," that Wunnerful US are forever to teach, and ignorant political Gentiles predestined to be but Our pupils and Our clients? That Sam must always "lead" and never, ever tamely just "agree"?

One can only say "Yuck!" as vociferously as possible and as often as possible.

So here's three hearty Yucks to our present Opponent of Stature, plus also to everybody else who toploftily disdains to agree with even her own opinion when somebody else might claim priority.

That's political spinach, Mr. Dionne, and it stinks to high Heaven!