The sideshow of them sellin' their "war" rather than fightin' it qualified as genuinely silly. Was it not allegorically prefigured in a well-known pantomime routine involving "Charlie Brown", "Lucy", and an anonymous football? Or to roll our own, suppose the original Kiddie Krusaders, under the command of stout Sir Galahad de la Yale, to be wandering around in the traditional magic forest of Malloryshire, except that on this particular outing, the peerless juvenile knights discover a Holy Grail about every fifteen minutes. Every single one of them made -- nay, "crafted" -- of Styrofoam, naturally.
It's an old joke, but none the worse for that. In comic strips, and allegedly in conjunction with the House of Bourbon, the football joke can be stretched out forever. When it comes to the House of Kennebunkport-Crawford, however, it looks as if the end of the football joke came sometime last fall, probably a bit before rather than after what Boy and Party must consider one of their blacker Tuesdays, 7 November 2006. There was a brief period of transitional disarray that may be roughly dated as beginning with George XLIII's brief flirtation with the anti-Islamophalangitarian tripe and baloney of his own base and vile and ending with his petulant rejection of the Hambaker product, even though (or perhaps precisely because?) the ISG report was at least half the work of credentialled GOP geniuses. In between came not only the Congressional elections but also the autoleakage of Master Steven Hadley's amazin'ly fatuous "trip report" and of Rumsfeld's Last Memo. In between came also Rear-Col. F. Kagan's excogitation of the far-famed and ever immortal Surge of '07™. More recently, if it has not quite been "all Surge™ all the time" with the US aggression faction, it has come pretty close.
Whether or not the Boy-'n'-Party Surgin'™ has accomplished anything permanent, or anything much temporary either, out in the happy and neoliberated Land of Peace and Freedom is not an easy question. One part of the new silly season show is Freddy and the rest of the kaganiyya scribblin' half a dozen polemics a day in defense of their shiny new toy. This propaganda offensive provokes a certain amount of counterscribbling in the intellectually respectable press that is clearly predicated on the assumption that militant Republican Surgin'™ cannot possibly hope to accomplish anything. Since that assumption does not commend itself to me as self-evident in the first place, I fear that when the MSM fiends offer specious proofs of it garnished with body counts and opinion polls and other such paraphernalia to rebut the Bani Kagan's ditto, both alike must be pronounced silly-season phenomena.
The exact merits of militant extremist Surgin'™ are quite impossible to evaluate impartially at this juncture. The fact that the braniac schemes of the kaganiyya and of the PC boondocks team, Petraeus and Crocker, have only been partially implemented thus far is almost a trifle compared to the impossibility of making out what those schemes are. How is one to decide whether the occupationmongers are makin' any progress or not, when there is no clear sign what their destination is, which direction is "forward" for them? Suppose they actually achieve a Brave New Occupation, wherein would the bravery of it consist?
The general bad attitude of the respectable press may be partially forgiven insofar as it is perfectly plain that more blood and gore, and intensified sectarianism, and cabinet crises in the latest collaborationist neorégime, and so on and so forth are developments that distinctly do not look like progress is bein' made by GOP Surgists™, whereas discerning what does look like progress, or what would look like progress, should it ever take place, is a hundred times more difficult, Rear-Col. Freddy's verbal barrages of burblin' bullshit to the contrary notwithstanding.
All the same, it will not do for the MSM to fail to distinguish a conjecture ("Surgism™ will not work") from an axiom ("Surgism™ can not possibly work.")
So, then, one must say "It's too early for anybody to tell," even though that is exactly what the neocomrades of the aggression faction want to hear said, and even though the date on the calendar is far from the main reason why nobody can tell unless she's some kind of jerk, or ideologue, or blindly loyal Party lemmin'.
Which brings us to their Neocomrade T. Donnelly, writin' for their Weekly Standard, about their Senator Richard Lugar:
| The most notable defeat last week in Washington was the speech given by Richard Lugar, the senior statesman and senator from Indiana and voice of moderate Republicanism. On Monday, Lugar announced that he had concluded that the surge was irrelevant: "The prospects that the current surge strategy will succeed . . . are very limited within the period framed by our own domestic political debate." And while President Bush may want to hang tough, "the resulting contentiousness with Congress would make cooperation on national security issues nearly impossible." That is, Bush's commitment to victory is disrupting Lugar's desire to restore bipartisanship. |
("Defeat in Washington" is rhetorically a balance to "improving the battlefield situation in Baghdad and the surrounding towns" in the scribbler's preceding paragraph, the first of his article. No details whatsoever are provided about the alleged improvement, so let's just pass it over, shall we?)
Fortunately one does not have to pronounce the distinguished gentleman from Indiana either a jerk or an ideologue or a mere Party lemmin': he does not profess to know whether militant extremist GOP Surgism™ works or not. He speaks as if he had worked it out on a spreadsheet both ways, Surgism™ works perfectly and Surgism™ works not at all, and found both bottom lines unacceptable.
That was, of course, my own "as if." Neocomrade T. Donnelly thinks the Senator is a gland-baser like himself, even as I insinuate that he's a brain-baser who probably goes in for spreadsheets and the like: "Bush's commitment to victory is disrupting Lugar's desire to restore bipartisanship." Only a desire, you see, only a sentiment, a whim, inspired Lugar's treasonable speech, there was nothin' of any real importance behind it. "So let's just pass it over, shall we?"
And that is more or less what the neocomrade does. After a paragraph of unrebutted scraps of quotation from Mr. Lugar, all of a sudden we are face to face with the witch Hillary and a freshly gathered group of surrender monkies that calls itself The Center for a New American Security. There is no more transition beween the Republican Senator and the detestable apes of Clinton than "also sounds like," but perhaps we may draw the moral that this is is the bad company that even a regular Boy-'n'-Party kinda guy can fall into if he ever succumbs to mere "desire."
The CNAS exercise in paleface planmongering is of considerable interest, but it can be abused on some other occasion, so let's skip to Senator Lugar's curtain call chez Donnelley:
| The image of senatorial probity, Lugar ultimately sounds more like an investor rebalancing his portfolio, selling Iraq and buying Israel-Palestine, than a man thinking about strategy in war. Likewise, the CNAS report is written in the "risk-management" rhetoric of Pentagon planners. There's a complex flow chart that explains their "responsible way forward" transition plan; it includes a little box detailing the possibility of a "contested withdrawal"--that is, what might well happen if, as in the final withdrawal from Saigon, all hell breaks loose. But when you're sure that the "way out" is the only "responsible way forward," defeat is simply an "unfortunate contingency." |
It looks as if minds need not be particularly great to think alike, for here is T. Donnelley deployin' what amounts to Mr. McCloskey's spreadsheet figure! He is a bit inconsistent about his (former?) Neocomrade R. Lugar individually, perhaps, for one does not often think of "desire" luring the unwary into "rebalancing their portfolios" instead of, say, howling at the moon, or smashing windows, or invasionizing other peoples' countries because they're feelin' blue and terrorized. (Yet perhaps in the case of Republicans who happen to be economic OnePercenters such a thing may really happen?)
More importantly, though, T. Donnelley thinks of spreadsheets and portfolios and complex flowcharts exactly what a militant extremist glandbaser would be antecedently expected to think.
Conversely, I have the honor to think the this neocomrade makes precisely the sort of case for his own preferred immoderation that any brainbaser would have guessed that he might, namely no case at all. Either your mental knee happens to jerk when Dr. Tom from AEI taps it with little hammers marked "commitment to victory" or "defeat is simply an 'unfortunate contingency'" or it happens not to jerk.
It's not as if there could ever be anything to argue about here, for Pete's sake!
____
[1] Were these Potemkin triumphs of yore even worse than useless for extremist Republicanism?
Probably not, because the target audience, Televisionland and the electorate, forgot them very rapidly. Those of us who still remember shows like "The Brat on the Aircraft Carrier" or "The Inky- Fingered Revolution" shudder in esthetic revulsion, as well as political and legal and ethical condemnation, whenever they recur to mind. If everybody in the US were like us, there would be no silliness to Roveism whatsoever.
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