Can One Learn From The Señorito Element?

No, I beg your pardon, Mr. Bones, that's far too broad a formulation. Those seriously interested in Bildung can learn from inanimate objects or from the annals of alchemy, what I should have asked is whether one can learn from the señorito element any lessons that the element itself has consciously formulated and professes to want to inculcate. To learn how to squawk like a Weekly Standardizer by mere external imitation as a parrot "learns" cusswords we may set aside at once, as also learning about them the way Dr. Altzheimer learned about his eponymous disorder. It's great fun to diagnose 'em rather than attend to 'em, but today let's play a somewhat tonier game than that, shall we? Let's examine a thoroughly señoritoly scribble about the Big Party's aggression policy in the former Iraq and inquire whether there is any way at all in which we personally, or decent political adults generally, ought to stand corrected by it.

Signorino M. Continetti wants to start teachin' as early as his third sentence:

But Bush's supporters shouldn't get carried away. They are in danger of seriously underestimating the ability of those who believe the war is lost or was always unwinnable to ignore, deny, and attack all news of positive developments. They should not underestimate the popularity of what you might call the Iraq shuffle.

But as you see, it is not us decent political grown-ups that this little ideoladdie proposes to tutor, but rather his own Party's base and vile. For us to criticize the proposed lesson simply because we good guys happen to be the subject of it is slightly paradoxical and even a bit unseemly, rather as if a salmon were to talk back to an incompetent ichtyologist. [1]

Well, how about Paragraphs Two and Three?

Antiwar activity seemed to crescendo in July, when leaks to the New York Times and Washington Post suggested the Bush administration was planning a significant reduction in American forces or a major shift in strategic goals in Iraq in coming months. The leaks--combined with congressional demands for a progress report on political and security "benchmarks" in Iraq and public criticism from several GOP senators that the current war strategy isn't working--caught the administration off guard. It scrambled to complete the progress report, explain the lack of political progress in Baghdad, and fight off further Republican defections. It appears the administration was successful. In the House on July 12, only 4 Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the "Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act," fewer than the 10 Democrats who crossed party lines to vote against the bill. And in the Senate on July 18, only 4 Republicans voted with Democrats to invoke cloture on Levin-Reed, the most popular antiwar amendment mandating major troop reductions by next spring. When the vote failed, Senate majority leader Harry Reid pulled the Defense Authorization Bill from the floor rather than allow votes on Republican amendments that probably would have passed easily. Meanwhile, the USA Today Gallup poll showed a majority of Americans wanted to hear Gen. Petraeus's scheduled September report to Congress before supporting any drastic moves to end the war.

What's to learn from that? A good deal of it we knew already, and a quite a bit of it we still think ain't so even after hearing Signorino M. Continetti rehash the hash his way rather than ours. Presumably "It appears the administration was successful" is the core lesson that the ideoladdie would like to inculcate. At this point we ourselves will part company with most donkeys, classifying this lesson as something we already knew instead of as tripe and baloney. By noon on 8 November 2006 we (and Sen. Biden of Delaware) knew already about this sort of apparent success for the Administration.[2]

Would the little ideoladdie like us to learn that Senator Reid was wrong to pull the bill? Here we (perhaps) reach a serious confrontation with the señorito element as such. Señoritos are not nerds or wonks or experts or consultants, not any sort of lowly competence-based hired hand whatsoever. To learn technical lessons from them would be a dubious plan indeed, a risky investment that I should strongly advise against. Now parliamentary procedure is nothing if not technical, so accordingly I must decline to be instructed about it by any dilletante Signorino M. Continetti. I recommend to all salmons and donkeys and decent human political adults to decline as well, regardless of what they think they would have done if they was Harry Reid.

We good guys constitute America's other party, America's elder party, and thus by default, if not by merit, we, not the militant extremist GOP, the "Republican Party" dreamed of and schemed for by Harvard Victory School MBA's, have laid down the general rules about what it means to be a political party in the USA. Part of what "partydom" [3] means in America is a certain technical expertise that no doubt dates back to Mr. Van Buren of New York rather than to General Jackson of Tennessee. These technicalities are not a very large or onerous part of "partydom" and they can always be overridden with ease on exceptionally excited occasions by some William Jennings Bryan or Barry Goldwater, but after the rare typhoon subsides, the normal technicalities bob right back up to the surface again.

In short, if you think some Signorino M. Continetti of the Weekly Standard is to teach Senator Reid of Nevada his political A-B-C, heaven help you.

After that we hear about primaeval aggression-and-occupation fans Pollack and O'Hanlon by name and at some length, though only more or less descriptively, until finally señoritismo gets uncontainably impatient and hasty:

Antiwar Democrats immediately started dancing the Iraq shuffle, in which you ignore your opponent's arguments, shift the terms of the debate, and attack his motivation and character. Witness the left's reaction to a recent interview Petraeus gave to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Rather than rebutting Petraeus's findings, lefty bloggers accused the general of being a partisan political actor.

The little ideoladdy's "immediately" can in context only mean "right after Pollack and O'Hanlon in the NYT," but then mark how he, well, "shifts the terms of debate," and then we hear no more of Pollack and O'Hanlon, only of Petraeus and O'Hewitt and some obscure e-gutter interview I have not the honour to have noticed, nor any "left's reaction" to it either, although we really do try to keep up with Wingnut City notions as well as with respectably reported reality, do we not, Mr. Bones?

Signorino M. Continetti reinforces his obscurum at some length with an even obscurius as follows:

Or consider the liberal, antiwar Center for American Progress's "Progress Report" of July 31, entitled "Bush's Enablers." The email newsletter is sent to left-wing political operatives, activists, and journalists throughout the country and is a reliable barometer of progressive opinion. [4]

Rather than rebut O'Hanlon and Pollack's evidence of progress in Anbar, the reduction in (still high) civilian fatality rates, and the growing capability, integration, and accountability of Iraqi army units, the Progress Report said the authors were "cherry-picking anecdotal signs of progress in order to justify continuing a war they supported from the beginning." Rather than acknowledge the extraordinary alliance between coalition forces and the tribal sheikhs who rule Anbar, the Progress Report redirected attention to the problems facing the Iraqi national government--problems O'Hanlon and Pollack acknowledge in their op-ed. And rather than assuming its opponents argue in good faith, the Progress Report accused O'Hanlon and Pollack of "providing political cover for the administration's misguided war policies."

Well, at least we're back on track with the P. & O'H. line and no more unerhört MacHewitts!

To work backwards through this bog: (1) 'Tis but a silly accusation, of course. P. & O'H. only said what they thought with neither fear of retaliation nor hope of favour, already uplifted to the lofty heights of Brookings and Carnegie. Should lesser critters find "political cover" under their tank-thought oracles (or launch factious attacks), why, what is that to P. & O'H.? Do they not soar sublime and impartial and bipartisan above all our paltry partisanships, Mr. Bones? Why of course they do! Why, what would become of the Western Civ. product itself, sir, if one couldn't always rely on a Brookings-Carnegie consensus?

(2) "[T]he extraordinary alliance between coalition forces and the tribal sheikhs who rule Anbar" is certainly extraordinary, and it remains so even after a mandatory preliminary deflation into "the militant GOP buyin' up every tribal sheykh in sight." Pettifoggers might object that there isn't any "coalition," only Republican Party extremists, and that tribal sheikhs don't "rule Anbar" any more than six dozen other smithereens of the former Sunni Ascendancy do, but all the same it's undoubtedly an "extraordinary alliance"!

Yet it's a very lovely soap bubble is it not? Attend to the scenario, please, and be charmed! Vigilante cowpoker scalawags from Rancho Crawford and noble camel-borne sons of the desert first clash furiously, then acknowledge one another as honourable opponents, and then at last perceive that that they are united by the Spirit of the [Wild] West and obviously ought to march on New Baghdád at once to put down poor M. al-Málikí and all his "sectarian" Fedguv crap.

A very extraordinary and fetching soap bubble indeed! Let nobody breathe lest it burst!


(3) "Cherry-picking anecdotal signs of progress in order to justify continuing a war they [P. & O'H.] supported from the beginning"? That's more like what I'd guess was really goin' on with the Brookings-Carnegie Coalition, except that all their best cherries really do seem to have been pre-picked for them by DOD and GOP.

After that, Signorino M. Continetti reverts to the period of history that he and Dame Chicken Little alike find most congenial and least like bunk, namely the future:

[I]f America were to withdraw precipitously from Iraq, up to a million Iraqis might die in the ensuing violence.

'Tis all very pretty, that elegant pseudohumanitarian tapdance, but in fact who really cares at Kennebunkport ME or Crawford TX about the deaths of neo-Iraqi subjects? If most of the native casualities of Big Management Party aggression and invasion and semiconquest and counterinsurgency were only "collateral damage," why not write off many more, even, God forbid! another million more, as only "collaterally damaged" by the Big Management Party's precipitate withdrawal from its somehow unaccomplished Peaceful Freedumbia?

Easy come, easy go! What's wrong with that plan, exactly?

(But God knows better.)

___
[1] So let's talk back about ourselves in the notes where possibly Signorino C. may overlook the impropriety. He appears to grossly overrate us salmons and donkeys when it comes to "ignore, deny and attack." Not that we do not behave like that more or less continually, exactly as the Big Management Party fans do, but that we certainly do not maintain a consistently high standard of quality. Consider the occasion of this very scribbles, as outlined in its first two sentences:

Last week, when the New York Times published an op-ed arguing that Gen. David Petraeus should be allowed more time to pursue his counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, supporters of President Bush's "surge" got excited. The political momentum seemed to shift in their direction.

Since he dwells in exalted señoritoly circles, MC overrates the excitement of his friendly base-and-vile as well as the craftiness of us fiends, but in any case it ought to be sufficiently obvious that by the very rigid standards of political commissarship upheld over at the Wall Street Jingo, the New York Times is utterly amateurish about "ignore, deny and attack." There wouldn't be anything to ignore or deny or attack, had Messrs. Pollock and O'Hanlon been given the WSJ bums' rush in the first place.


[2] Remembering the rudiments of what we agreed upon in the 1787 document (as subsequently amended) is again nothing so very wonderful as to exempt it from banishment from text to gloss.


[3] Perhaps only the Russians have a word just exactly for it, parteynost'?


[4] Golly, Mr. Bones, to think that they've never sent even so much as a sample copy to us!