Mr. John Wilkes Booth can reasonably be called an assassin even though he only murdered that one victim. Bein' a "military humanist" thug is not the same as becoming a certified assassin, exactly, but it certainly does not require cheerin' for every aggression that comes down the pike any more than one must shoot down every stranger one meets in order to get classified as a murderer.
Now as for the staff and management of the fifth French Republic :
| French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has offered to apologise to Iraq if he had meddled in its affairs. The statement comes a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Maliki demanded an official apology because Mr Kouchner had suggested he resign. (...) Last week Mr Kouchner said the Iraqi government was "not functioning" and was quoted saying he had told the US that there was strong support in Iraq for Mr Maliki to resign and he "has got to be replaced". In an interview with RTL radio on Monday, Mr Kouchner said: "I think that he [Mr Maliki] misunderstood, or that I was not clear enough that I was referring to comments I heard from Iraqis I talked to." "If the prime minister wants me to apologise for having interfered so directly in Iraqi affairs, I'll do it willingly," he said. Mr Kouchner visited Baghdad last week to promote France's role in efforts to solve the Iraq crisis and mend relations with Washington damaged by France's opposition to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. In an article in Monday's International Herald Tribune, Mr Kouchner said France was well-placed to "provide a fresh look" at Iraq. |
Insofar as thuggishness is a mindset rather than an overt act, Dr. Bernard Kouchner, former dictator to Secretary of War Allbright's spear-won province of Kosova, has impeccable credentials to present. The distinguished aggressionite statesperson has never pulled any triggers personally. And if he had, doubtless he'd be happy to apologize about that little misunderstandin' afterwards as well.
We are usefully reminded, Mr. Bones, that peccatum originale is not unknown either in France or on the Left.
A fluent burbler of Václavhavelian commonplaces like M. Kouchner would never dream of resortin' to the Eichmann Defense, one trusts, yet let us charitably consider the possibility that the poor tool may have been just followin' orders:
| Meanwhile President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for a clear timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq. He was making what was described as his first major foreign policy speech since becoming president in May. Mr Sarkozy said such a timetable would force the various Iraqi parties to accept responsibility for the country's future. |
M. le Président de la République is clearly not broadcastin' on quite the wavelength hoped for by the Freedom Fries™ Fan Club, although there are lots of donkeys (rather than elephants) in the holy Homeland whose conventional wisdom is Sarkozioid enough. The question of the moment, however, is whether imposin' a "clear timetable" on the natives was thought to require gettin' rid of poor M. al-Málikí first. If so, then one may acquit Dr. Kouchner à la Eichmannienne and concentrate one's Pascalian fire on M. de Sarkozy, who will have put Bernie up to it.
It is not an easy question. Almost everybody in the "Scare 'Em Straight!" school of aggression and occupation policy would like to ditch poor M. al-Málikí, yet there is no absolute or logical connection that I can discern. To begin with, the Málikí-ditchers of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh intend to hang around in their Party's semiconquered provinces forever no matter what the indigs think or want: "reconciliation" in Peaceful Freedumbia would be nice, but it is strictly optional, only icin' on their invasion-based cake. Any putative Málikí-ditchers at Paris must be presumed to mean what they say and say what they mean, and plainly that is not it. Was M. de Sarkozy possessed of Sole Remainin' Hyperpower, SRH, he would not be bluffin' when he warned his ungrateful neo-Iraqi subjects that unless the latter get themselves reconciled pronto, Big Brother will yank the trainin' wheels off their Bike of State and turn his back and walk away -- and then where will the restless natives find themselves?
The policy is clear, even though thoroughly Cloudcuckoolandish in that M. de Sarkozy neither possesses SRH nor would act like that if he did. He'd think above all of economics and the Gulf of Petroleum and come out for the Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ product just as the incumbent clowns are doin', though with slightly less sentimental attachment to Jewish Statism and the Tel Aviv régime than the extremists of Rancho Crawford cherish. Charity suggests that one assume M. de Sarkozy realizes as much himself and regards "Scare 'Em Straight!" as a good policy for France to recommend rather than a sensible policy for anybody to actually implement. The cheapjack pol is rather a showboat and may not in fact be bright enough to think such things out consciously, yet when we have no insider information at all, why not presume that the wannabe thugs are operatin' on the best case for their wannabe thuggery that can be made? [1]
So then the question of whether Dr. Kouchner is to be let off thanks to an Eichmann Defense boils down to whether M. de Sarkozy considers that proposin' to ditch poor M. al-Málikí (or even actually attemptin' to assist at the ditchin') makes France look good or not. In this connection, Bernie's "apology" "for having interfered so directly in Iraqi affairs" strikes me as rather beside the point. Naturally it will not do for France to be caught treatin' the "sovereignty" and "independence" and "constitutionality" and "democracy" that so happily now obtain in all the provinces of the former Iraq with contempt and shoulder shrugs, but who knows for sure that Bernie and M. de Sarkozy privately mind anything more than gettin' caught? [2]
The affair does rather bolster Marianne's traditional self-image in the sense that there is no idle Anglo-Saxon sentimentality and hypocrisy anywhere in sight. [3]
But God knows best, even about the French.
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[1] The best case available without going around the bend after the manner of the folks at Mu’ámara Junction, that is, the best case that does not witlessly assume that all the people one disapproves of politically are at least as clever as Mephistopheles and rather more malignant.
[2] On the other hand, if France were to assist at the ditchin' and then nobody ever heard of it, how would that make the wannabe thugs look good? One may conjecture that the wannabes intended to take a modest share of the credit only after the thing had become a fait accompli, mere spilt milk that most moralizers would not waste their tears on. "Offenses must come," no doubt, but it need not be all that woeful to bring them in secretly and the applaud oneself in public after a decent interval of time has elapsed.
And let's face it, Mr. Bones, you and I are among the few palefaces who would be perturbed to watch poor M. al-Málikí get ditched by his alien ideobuddies. Flat-out thugs and responsible nonwithdrawers and peaceniks unite to dump on him. Why, the New York Times even managed to dump on him in an unsigned editorial with "The Problem isn't Mr. Maliki" at the top of it! (I'm sorry to report that Aunt Nitsy didn't spot the real problem correctly either.)
Yet perhaps it would seem wiser to some or all of the above paleface parties to keep Núrí Jawád Kamál around to dump on and kick in the late Mr. Nixon's fashion, should they ever reflect deeper about aggression and occupation policy than they seem to? BGKB.
[3] The well known intellectual self-esteem of the French may have suffered some slight collateral damage, however, because Bernie "apologizes" after the manner of "I didn't break it on purpose and after all it was broken when you loaned it to me and furthermore I never borrowed it in the first place." The Pottery Barn Defense enlivens the silly season for the rest of us, but only at the price of making Dr. Kouchner look slightly silly himself.
Not only the cause of France but the universal cause of Military Humanism sternly demands a total unsilliness from all those who seek to advance it. Bernie could do worse than take M. Michael Ignatieff as a suitable rôle model in future. Now there's a gent who knows how to take himself seriously!
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