A Further Step Toward Square Circles

Once a byword for torture and disgrace, the American-run detention system in Iraq has improved, even its critics say, as the military has incorporated it into a larger counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to avoid mistreatment that could create new enemies. But these gains may soon be at risk. Thousands of detainees are to be turned over to the Iraqi government, some perhaps as early as the end of the year, a further step toward Iraqi sovereignty. Yet however tarnished America’s reputation may be for its treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the reputation of many Iraqi prisons is worse.

Our prole flagwavers, and our jihád careerists and, above all, the gentlethuggish Weekly Standardisers -- who are not exactly OURS, them bein’ more like a subsidiary to Baron Rupert and Count von Herzl -- exist in a permanent fit of petulance against the New York Times Company. Whenever Aunt Nitsy decides to countenance their wingnuttiness a little, they either do not notice or else they regurgitate Leninist barf about "Even our enemies are compelled to admit that XYZ." There is naturally no question of anybody Bushevik compelling Party neocomradess A. Rubin to emit this morning’s particular XYZ. Not even the abstract exigencies of Finanzkapital demand that such a dubyapologetic piece appear. Her corporation’s newspaper may be bleeding to death economically, but that is not because of anybody’s views on how AEI and GOP and DOD have been conductin’ themselves out in the colonial boondocks. [1] Printing a few kind plugs for the Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ product cannot matter much. Even supplementing Kristol Minor’s economic subsidies from Planet Murdoch (and his sentiment subsidies from Tel Aviv) is not going to sink or save the NYTC.

Indeed, Mr. Bones, the lady’s corporation has more liberty than ever to publish whatever it likes about Peaceful Freedumbia, because nowadays fewer and fewer customers care. Thee and I are tempted, sir, to fall into a pale facsimile of the factious goofiness of Dr. Cartoonoclastes and become angry at the New York Times when it does not stand up for what we wish it would. More exactly, we risk ending up like Prof. Richard Falk of Princeton, who scribbled a whole book against Aunt Nitsy for having the shameless audacity to ‘betray’ a banner, that of International Law, that Nitsy had never actually enlisted to serve under in the first place.

A. Rubin has it in for International Law, obviously. To reconcile the Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ product with so-called "traditional international law" is flatly impossible, merest circle-squarin’, and even to convince oneself that Responsible Nonwithdrawal™ is compossible with some version of neoteric UN-centric international law calls for challenging mental gymnastics. The journalistic neocomradess does not even try to go through the required calisthenics, and that laziness may well be what ticks off poor Prof. Falk the most about A. Rubin’s employer’s customary contra- or supralegal stance. If the New York Times Company would come out of the bushes for once and actually argue against Rulalaw in war and diplomacy, we who disagree materially could at least respect that business corporation’s seriousness and integrity and so forth and so on. Aunt Nitsy and her idiot niece Alissa do not come much closer to vulgar argumentation than to murmur "Kindly allow me to know best" and bat their figurative eyes a little. [2] [3]

The idiot niece accordingly scribbles "a further step toward Iraqi sovereignty" without fear and without research and without rememberin’ that the International Zone neorégime (all hail!) has now become one hundred percent sovereign on half a dozen different occasions. It has turned out that four quarters and 600% sovereignty can be readily exchanged for a one-dollar bill any time, but what Big Management Party neocomrade or neocomradess will rush into print to make that point?

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Rulalaw never gets argued against, and, logically enough, rule of the Ersatz that Alicia and Nitsy prefer never gets argued FOR. It is present here, but one must pay attention to detect it, or rather, to deduce it and name it and classify it from "these gains may soon be at risk. Thousands of detainees are to be turned over to the Iraqi government... However tarnished America’s reputation may be for its treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the reputation of many Iraqi prisons is worse."

I’m not sure that that brain disease has ever been adequately diagnosed and discriminated, although it is common enough. The application of the principle is that paleface invasionites can run the former Iraq better than swarthy indigs can be expected to run it and therefore that the former should run it, Q.E.D. An old song indeed, in colonialisin’ and imperialisin’ circles, but not a song that has ever acquired a single title universally recognized. It is, of course, one consequence of Mr. Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism, but there are so many other unrelated consequences of that nifty system that one can scarcely apply the unadorned U-word. Back during Secretary Albright’s War, certain neo-Euros who approved of that aggression invented the term "Military Humanism" to apply to this sort of thing. That coinage has not caught on. In any case ‘humanism’ is not the ideal word inasmuch as it suggests that the aggression fans are thinkin’ far more of how good their aggression makes them look spiritually than of any material benefit to patients or victims. For that matter, ‘military’ is not entirely suitable either, since surely at least some opportunistic benefactions to the Lesser Breeds Without will not involve physical force.

To speak of "Opportunistic Benefactionism" would put Aunt Nitsy and Neocomradess A. Rubin in exactly the right pigeon-hole, but such a monnicker is stylistically impossible. If we assume that the brain disease matters more than its name, though, we may notice that ‘benefaction’ gets in the kindness of "Kindly allow me to know best!" on one front, and also, more importantly, ‘opportunism’ indicates why this product is radically incompatible with Rulalaw, why this scribble provokes me to mention round squares. There can, of course, be no rules or laws or canons or criteria or guidelines laid down in advance about exactly what is to count as an Opportunity. Everybody knows that. [4]


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[1] I should guess that the decline of the Times to be mainly due to the state of department stores &c. on Manhattan island, although a whole degeneration and more of wombscholarship and Niederdümmung since the days of Barry Goldwater -- or, if you like, since the annus horribilis of 1968 -- has certainly at least a little something to do with it.


[2] The ascent of Commanderissimo McCain may interact with this eye-batting shtyk at the NYTC in an interesting way. Can two opposing teams both rely on "Kindly allow me to know best"? J. Sidney has prevailed over the rest of the Stupid Party, as it seems to me, not because he is one iotum brighter or better than Dr. Limbaugh or Neocomradess Coulter, but because he almost always sounds reasonable, no matter what tripe and baloney he talks in substance. Prof. Chomsky deploys the same shtyk for his team and Prof. Falk’s -- which team, however, is far too weak numerically to signify in the politics of the holy Homeland.

But no, I am only being silly, Mr. Bones. It must be the Senatorino from Illinois, not the New York Times Company, who sets the tone on the anti-McCain side. There is a great gulf fixed between ""Kindly allow me to know best" and "YES WE CAN!!!"


[3] Neocomradess A. Rubin’s core paraphrase of "Kindly allow me to know best!" (in conjunction with the matter at hand) goes like this:

Still, a reporter’s visits to Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca, the two main American detention facilities; interviews with American military officers in charge of the facilities; and conversations with former detainees and human rights advocates make clear that the system has been changed in several important ways,

,

where the stuff bein’ swept under the rug with that ‘Still’ was

Outsiders are forbidden to interview detainees. The International Committee of the Red Cross has regular access to the facilities, but the United Nations and human rights groups say they have not been permitted to enter.

A cartoon version would be more to the point. If "Classics Illustrated" were still around and improbably decided to exalt A. Rubin to the pantheon, her whole dubyapologetic shebang could be boiled down to "Doug Stone is a good guy. I like him and trust him, even though some of his patients do not seem to. YOU should like and trust him as well!"


[4] "Opportunistic benefactionism" is not possible, but if it were, it would have the small incidental merit of conveying the de haut en bas ethos involved. The Lesser Breeds Without may be no worse off for lacking Rulalaw, but unless they lack somethin’, the whole racket as conceived by Nitsy and Nitsy’s Rubin is unintelligible.

This observation does not apply to most of Mme. Rubin’s Big Party neocomrades, however. The general AEI-GOP-DOD notion of an Opportunity is very narrowly about what is good for oneself. Sinn féin go bragh! That Lesser Breeds should also get a little somethin’ out of an Opportunity is unobjectionable to mainstream aggression fans, usually, but it is by no means a necessary condition for their aggressin’.

Both the New York Times Company and neo-Euro military humanists do make common benefit a necessary condition. Whether Mme. Alicia Rubin does so for herself individually is not quite clear to me, but few things in the world matter less.