| ... none of the journalists bothered to ask one simple question: if Sadr was so successful, why end the fighting? If Iraq's army was being beaten and Maliki politically weakened, why not press the fight and make the government collapse? As an American military officer serving in southern Iraq told us, "Claiming a 'victory' and then withdrawing from the battlefield is the tactic of someone that is losing." |
Big Party neocomrades W. Roggio and D. Gartenstein-Ross have a legitimate target here. The (intellectually respectable) aggression-language press found it too difficult or unpleasant to follow the new Alexander down to Basra and watch his show, so NYTC and WPC and LAT and USAT reported badly from the usual hotel lobbies of brave New Baghdád. Neocomrades R. Murdoch and S.-Y. Moon did not insist that the Wall Street Jingo and Brainwashing Town Times march in to fill the gap, oddly enough, but naturally nobody expects serious foreign reportin’ from papers owned by VRWC foreigners. So the field is open for these two honourable and gallant weekly standardisers to standardize pretty much as they please.
What they do with their opportunity to spin and twistify unchecked for Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology is disappointing. They extend fas est et ab hoste doceri to cover the journalistic equivalent of suicide bombing: "If __________ was so successful, why end the fighting?" works exactly the same for everybody, in a case where the fighting did actually terminate. The polemical enemy is annihilated, maybe, but so for sure are the tank-thinkin’ paladins of Wingnut City.
Bein’ about the best keyboard fodder that the Aggression Faction disposes of, WR and DG-R vaguely intuit a difficulty hereabouts. They'd like to pretend that poor M. al-Málikí -- quite unlike the Rev. Señorito as-Sadr -- continues to fight fiercely for dear old AEI and GOP and DOD:
| But the fact is that the Maliki government did not agree to the nine-point terms for a truce that Sadr issued, nor did it sue for peace or promise that operations would cease. Instead the Iraqi government called Sadr's order for his fighters to pull off the streets a "positive step," and insisted that operations would continue. "The armed groups who refuse al Sadr's announcement and the pardon we offered will be targets, especially those in possession of heavy weapons," [Hannibal of Da‘wa] said, referring to the ten-day amnesty period for militias to turn in heavy and medium weapons. "Security operations in Basra will continue to stop all the terrorist and criminal activities along with the organized gangs targeting people." |
Well, OK, then, stipulate that the scrap of paper in question is no contract and possesses zero (0.00) juridical force -- in short, that there isn't any "truce." (These points are indeed the case, should any subject of AEI-GOP-DOD in Peaceful Freedumbia be so legalistic, and sufficiently secure physically, as to concern herself with the more elegant refinements of public life.) That sword has two edges also, for there is no way the spinsters of Rupert can plausibly make out that Sadr III is bound by his own declamations any more than Hannibal II is bound by them, or either of them by the verbal engagements of the other. Either of them can be scolded for a naughty boy if he breaks his promises, but what the [exp. del.] is that worth nowadays? And in the eyes of superlegal invasion cowboys like Roggio and Gartenstein-Ross, for Pete's sake!
Discarding sentimentality and morals and law reduces us, I take it, to the correlation of farces at Basra considered in terms of Amazing Force pure and simple. So considered, the effective suspension of intramural kidnapping and killing either benefits the weaker pack of Twelvers, or it benefits both packs equally. I'm not sure which, admittedly, and perhaps there is no general rule.[1] Yet in any case, the neocomradely notion that poor M. al-Málikí -- with the AEI-GOP-DOD Godzilla behind him, not to mention the right to appoint an Ambassador to the United Nations -- decisively won last week's hand is not easy to take seriously. Hannibal II had his asymmetrical advantages before he provoked the Second Muqtadan War and he has them still. There was never any faintest question of his losing them, or of Master Muqtadae obtaining them. [2]
[B] ‘the dignity of the person’
| Nothing less than reclaiming the history of the West, in Weigel's view, will renew our confidence in our own principles. That history teaches that liberty and equality and the political institutions that support them are not the exclusive work of the modern Enlightenment but also draw on classical and religious sources. It demonstrates that the first of individual rights, religious freedom, is not merely a pragmatic accommodation with the diversity of human experience and judgment, but also a statement about the fundamental nature of the person. It strongly suggests that the Christian belief in the intelligibility of the world provided a powerful impetus to modern science, and fostered a curiosity about humanity that, coupled with the biblical belief in the dignity of the person, spurred Western civilization to study other civilizations to an extent unrivaled by other civilizations. And perhaps paradoxically, the history of freedom and reason in the West, precisely because it encourages an appreciation for religion by showing how our morals and politics have been nourished by biblical faith, can contribute to the construction of a common ground on which to pursue a mutually appreciative and tolerant conversation with Islam. |
(‘Reclaiming’ is good.)
In fact, neo-Papism, having since the 1960’s successfully rewritten its own history to advance the latest and trendiest objectives, now kindly offers to supply a Western Sieve product for the broader market, a line of wares comparable to those available from other manufacturers at Wingnut City. Perhaps we old fogies should feel flattered that "the modern Enlightenment" is acknowledged to have anything at all to do with the unquestionable wunnerfulness of Wunnerful US.
The real intellectual history of Greater Europe is of interest to visionary projectors like Weigel, S. J., as a warehouse or quarry from which they can extract what suits their private judgment or their Party purposes for this or that particular modern occasion. To give a blow-by-blow account of everything is the province of Prof. Dryasdust, not of Weigel, S. J., who (at the moment) wants to prepare a handy-dandy little Encheiridion for Kiddie Krusaders, only yet another redaction of Western Civilisation for Dummies. A publication history of that curious work could be a major contribution; it is really odd that nobody seems to have undertaken to write it.
A specifically VC edition of the thing itself is far less exciting, though of course "It ís still a free country, innit?" -- a First Estater neocomrade has as much right to publish thrillers and potboilers as anybody else. I daresay thee and I and Uncle Sam and the human race could manage to scrape through without them, Mr. Bones, but perhaps dignitas humana could not, and it would be unreasonable and uncharitable of us to exact exceptional devotion and self-sacrifice from other folks’ pet notions (as opposed to from the folks themseves, that is). [3]
A collision between Weigel, S. J., and Bob Cardinal Spencer might be entertaining. Imagine the former cross-examined at length about why he should want "to pursue a mutually appreciative and tolerant conversation with Islam"! But maybe that bit is only the reviewer's?
And God knows best. Happy days.
____
[1] The question may have been treated theoretically in Machiavelli's Discorsi or some other work of the higher politics criticism.
[2] The twistifyin’ neocomrades themselves point out that the Khalílzád Konstitution "parliament" presented no obstacle to the ambitious projects of Hannibal of Da‘wa. Quite likely those projects were -- are -- in part technically unkonstitutional, but no matter, we've already established that few of the neoliberated indigs care much for Mr. Madison's old-fashioned parlor games.
Even the lounge-lizard Anglophone journalists of the International Zone were not so incompetent as to talk like that. The only folks who did seem to have been the Sunninterní zealots and maniacs of muqáwama that Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Iconoclastes fellow-travel with. If those weird conspiratorialism-prone gentry were the substantial opposition to the agitprop of W. Roggio and D. Gartenstein-Ross, then the above article might be regarded as a famous victory for Rancho Crawford and Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh instead of a desperate exercise in preëmptive misinterpretation. (And I myself should be Marie of Roumania. Or possibly Jeanne d'Arc.)
[3] One must note, though not necessarily in one's main text, that Weigelanity could be put to aggressive uses; all, or almost all, Western Sieve gizmos can. The essence of Wunnerful Western US having been identified and extracted, litmus tests for the WWU factor might be prepared and administered, with therapy (or whatever) for those who prove to be deficient in the crucial ingredient. Take the late Mr. David Hume of Edinburgh, for instance, as regards "an appreciation for religion" . . . . And so on, and so forth.
But to spoof the Bani Weigel is nearly as eye-glazing as to ballyhoo ’em.
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