| ... one truly original take offered by Mr. Woodward. This is his curious assertion that it's not the surge that has produced the great reduction in violence in Iraq. The reduced violence, he says, is the result of the increased lethality of covert operations against terrorist leaders and operatives. Which brings up two interesting points. First, we are led to find fault with a president allegedly obsessed with a "kill the bastards" approach to Iraq. But then we are asked to accept that the reason we're now seeing success in Iraq because we're . . . killing the bastards. Second, the surge was a shift in mission, not simply an addition of five brigades. Until the surge, we had pursued a political solution, hoping that the answer to Iraq was the rise of a democratic government that would persuade Iraqis to come together for their future. The surge, by contrast, finally recognized the obvious: [u]ntil Iraqis started feeling safe in their own homes and neighborhoods, there would be no compromise or rebuilding. Sophisticates have never liked Mr. Bush for his preference for words like "win" and "victory" to describe what America is trying to do in Iraq. And if Mr. Woodward's latest contribution is any clue, they'll never forgive him for doing something even worse: proving it can be done. |
Poor Mr. Woodward gets seriously twistified here, since he cited three gimmicks other than (1) the Ever-Victorious SurGe of ’07™ that are responsible for ‘our’ now ever-victory: not merely (2) JSOC murder whizbangs, but (3) the Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme and (4) the sidlinin’ of the Rev. Señorito Sadr as well. Presumably Neocomrade W. McGurn is not much interested in the last two items because they do not fit into his pigeon hole labeled "Kill the bastards!"
It goes without saying that a Jingo journalist would not be interested in discussin’ yet a fifth factor behind the famous ever-victory, namely (5) native-on-native delation. Mr. Woodword does not mention it very explicitly either, in the Washington Post extracts at least, but nothing that he does mention makes much sense without delation.
Neocomrade W. McGurn simply analyzes incorrectly: the true key to all ex-Iraqi mythologies is not "Kill the bastards!" at all, it is "Get the bastards to drop a dime on one another!"
Though a lousy military analyst and evidently incapable of summarizing anybody else's views correctly, the neocomrade is a noble specimen of AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP-EIB-WSJ (&c. &c.) triumphalism: he passionately longs to rehabilitate "Kill the bastards!" He is even willin’ to say out loud that rehabilitation had become necessary, which most of his pack are not:
| Every night for years, Americans tuning into the evening news were greeted by the same image from Iraq: a burning car or Humvee, accompanied by a fresh report about soldiers or Marines who'd been blown up by an improvised explosive device or suicide bomb. |
A better scholar in the school of Marshall MacLuhan than in that of Carl von Clausewitz, W. McGurn correctly points out the "imbalance of explosions," so to call it, that was formerly presented to Televisionland and the electorate. However, when he addresses the "What went right?" question, he becomes a child again, about media matters and about violence profession matters alike. It is not mentioned that the former Iraq is not mentioned much on TV lately, that is, that the imbalance of explosions has now been replaced by fairness and balance at the level of zero. Naturally that arrangement does not much help with forwardin’ "Kill the bastards!" by the direct route.
Bastard killin’ fans are reduced to claimin’ in the columns of Rupert that KTB! has worked wonders, without bein’ able to point to his wonders actually happenin’ on the tube. The customers of Baron Murdoch are few in number, and of the few, scarcely any are open at this point to new opinions about the aggression of March 2003. This neocomrade will not be makin’ many fresh converts to the Gospel of KTB no matter how bloody he scribbles for the Wall Street Jingo.
Meanwhile, out in the holy Homeland at large, where rarely is heard a discouragin’ word from ‘sophisticates’, I take it that the KTB! thesis has already attained market saturation. So Neocomrade W. McGurn would not have much impact there even if he found himself a more plausible delivery vehicle than the WSJ, Readers’ Digest or the like.
It is possible, though, that Team Aggression does not really care about enlargin’ their popular support. The vast majority of AEI-GOP-DOD marks and dupes are not going to read Mr. Woodward’s book, let alone be corrupted by such political pornography. The neocomrade pooh-poohs such a target in vain except insofar as he pooh-poohs it to sophisticates. I do not think W. McGurn is very good at pooh-poohin’, not even from a strict Boy-Dynasty-Party-Ideology standpoint. To pronounce Mr. Woodward no worse than ‘curious’ -- or "truly original"! -- for not agreeing that the Ever-Victorious SurGe™ has been solely responsible for all things grand and glorious out in the colonies is not exactly the polemical equivalent of mustard gas or nukes.
Twistification itself is a further mark of weakness. If jingoism and Murdoch Family Values were really in the saddle the way they ought to be, Neocomrade W. McGurn and his ilk could quote Mr. Woodward accurately and at length, givin’ him lots of rope to hang himself with. Instead of doin’ that, though, the agitprop artists for Team Aggression paraphrase tendentiously and pretend to be able to read their enemies’ minds. Feeble stuff. Makes one wonder why they bother at all.
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