Well, yes, it is quite true that Herr Prof. Dr. F. von ‘Ajamí of the Johns Hopkins University does put one in the mood for doing a homebrew Phillipic: Quousque tandem abutere, Fuâde, patientia nostra? Quamdiu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet?
Maybe it is not such a good idea to pick on the GOP neocomrade in the high extinct language of Western Sieve, however, since tricklin’ through our mesh to subvert is part of the ‘Ajamiyyan Agenda. JC notices as much, sort of, speaking of "his adopted country, the United States," but nothing much comes of that, not even with Citizen Paine, a felllow adopter, and General Arnold (a ‘disadopter’ of US, as it were) putting in an appearance before the show is over. The specimen could be shelved nicely between those two bookends.
The details of Herr von ‘Ajamí’s parochial background in South Lebanon, on the other hand, have little to do with the ‘Ajamiyyan Agenda, which would, I think, be 99% the same if its eponym were an Orthodox Mussulman from, say, Aleppo. Von ‘Ajamí’s dissenter background was of a certain importance back when he was praisin’ his Boy and his Party and his Ideology for the mission civilisatrice that they have so splendidly accomplished in the former al-‘Iráq. He is one of the few scribblers on that topic who does not find it vaguely unnatural that the former al-‘Iráq should be ruled by heretics and hillbillies instead of by the traditional Herrenvolk. My own boilerplate sarcasm about the formerness of internationalzonal and now postinternationalzonal "Iraq" would be simply thrown away on Herr von ‘Ajamí, a fact which is to his credit as far as it goes, but does not go far. If he ever tried to influence his empowered ideobuddies on that point, I missed it.
Doubtless on the subjective side the Big Party neocomrade’s unwillingness to take for granted the (Ottoman and British and Mecca-Monarchy and Free-Officer and Ba‘thí and) Bint-Yeorian dhimmitudo of IQ Twelvers is a large part of why Prof. Dr. von ‘Ajamí fancies himself a loyal friend and patroniser of Lady Democracy. As with most of her ladyship's fans, present company not altoether excluded, there is some question about purity of heart in such an instance, arithmetical majoritarianism being not quite so self-evident when it tends to put people one has always disliked and distrusted in the saddle, and not really so very self-evident at all when it looks as if the wrong folks may be undislodgeable once empowered. Still, Prof. Dr. von ‘Ajamí deserves at least a little credit on this score, especially against Professor Cole, who can't seem to find even a single encouraging word to say about the defendant. (My own supply has, I think, just been exhausted also, but maybe something else nice to say will come to me as I scribble?)
Less subjectively, I think JC and Herr von ‘Ajamí do not mean the same thing when they say ‘democracy’. Since JC and I both adhere to America’s party, I am happy to accept and endorse his demonstration that George XLIII did nothing worth mentioning to make Libya more democratic. At the same time, I would not expect any neocomrade from, or fellow traveler with, the Party of Grant and Hoover to go along with us automatically. The woods are full of militant extremist Republicans like Herr von ‘Ajamí whose notions of democracy, perfectly sincerely held, pretty well omit such minor details as majority rule and popular sovereignty. By their lights, Col. Qadhdháfí has really and truly become a great deal more democratic than he used to be insofar as he has made Libya more Grant- and Hoover-friendly, more open to ‘globalism’ and "creative destruction" and all that Finanzkapital jazz. (It is worth remembering that this specimen of ‘Ajamiyyan agitprop appeared in the Wall Street Jingo, where a consensus on questions of ideology is not only presumed but rigidly enforced. [1]) I daresay the neocomrades would not actually object to more human rights and more plebescites &c. &c. for the huddled masses of Libya -- as long as jihád fiends and zionbashers do not take advantage, of course, a crucial proviso -- but these things do not by any means come at the top of the neocomrades’ list of essentials of good government.
Under pressure from the unwashed mob of donkeys, as I presume, our GOP geniuses have come to use ‘democracy’ as a mere verbal synonym for "the way every régime ought to be." This neo-usage has led to a lot of confusion, most of which it would be electorally disadvantageous for the Party of Grant to clear up. Nevertheless, they do really mean (almost) every word they emit. But God knows best.
Thus Herr von ‘Ajamí’s notions about Col. Qadhdháfí and la démocratie en Libye are defensible enough after one establishes what his notions truly are. Decent political adults do not disagree with Big Management Party neocomrades about the facts on the ground at Tripoli or Algiers or Occupied Gaza, only about political philosophy everywhere. Only that and nothing more.
That’s more than enough from Mr. Nice Guy. In some ways JC lets Prof. Dr. von ‘Ajamí off the hook far too lightly. How about the flabbergastin’ neocomradely chûtzpah of evaluatin’ the Big Party Boy on the basis of six years arbitrarily selected from eight, whilst poor B. Husáyn XLIV is damned on the basis of a single journalistic performance? Even flabbergastin’er is the brazen attempt to grab credit in advance in case somethin’ the neocomrades happen to like happens under BHO:
| "True, Mr. Bush's diplomacy of freedom fizzled out in the last two years of his presidency, and the autocracies in the Greater Middle East came to a conviction that the storm had passed them by and that they had been spared. But we are still too close to this history to see how the demonstration effect works its way through Arab political culture. |
I hope I managed to annoy a couple of ’em when I posted one of their e-walls with the suggestion that by that swell new criterion, Democrats can attribute whatever we like to a pipeline originally laid down by Jimmy Carter or Woodrow Wilson. Or indeed, why not let Tom Paine and Gen. Arnold be the history that we are now finally far enough removed from to see clearly, following humbly in the path of Chou En-lai on the French Revolution?
In his capacity as Big Party sophist, Herr von ‘Ajamí is well past mockery by anybody other than himself.
The rest of the Boy / Party / Ideology pack are not, I suspect, very interested in Neocomrade F. von ‘Ajamí quâ sophist, or even quâ "professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies ... also an adjunct research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution," although Wingnut City could certainly do with more immigrants bearin’ credentials like his. Their interest in him is, I fear, exactly on a par with their interest in Mr. Justice C. Thomas and Neocomrade Dr. Sh. Steele and Neocomrade Prof. Th. Sowell and, at least a few years back, Neocomradess L. Chávez on the Southern Front. Herr Prof. Dr. Fu’ád von ‘Ajamí is the Party of Grant's "token Áy-rab" -- that is what it comes too, and to be a token for the PoG is no light undertakin’ nowadays, for it does not any longer suffice to be an "Uncle Tom," one must militantly and extremely denounce every member of the index group who declines to uncle-tom it along with oneself. The real rôle of Neocomrade F. von ‘Ajamí is to explain to the GOP geniuses and to their Party base-and-vile and to the customers of Baron Murdoch exactly what is wrong with the other 99.9% or so of the Áy-rabs, and of course to explain it as only an ex-insider can ever do: Escape from the Hell Palace of the Ay-rabs: One Man’s Witness would fit nicely at the top of the ‘Ajamiyyan Agenda, would it not?
Accordingly, mention of General Arnold would have been à propos if the defendant had been portrayed as betraying the prescriptive or presumptive ‘asabiyya of Arabs and Muslims. The way JC actually drags our great national ratfink in is like throwing away a good hand of cards. To be sure, JC has respectable professional reasons to be interested in Herr von ‘Ajamí starting from the Levantine end. Unfortunately his public importance lies almost entirely at the Rancho Crawford and Wall Street Jingo end. Unless this specimen is displayed side by side with the Party of Grant’s Sowells and Shelbys and Chávezes and its Mr. Justice Thomas, visitors to the Neocomradely Cabinet of Curiosities will get the wrong idea, or perhaps no idea at all, about what it is a specimen OF.
Prof. Cole’s exact classification of the specimen is none too clear, but seems to place it in the general vicinity of The Weekly Standard and Commentary magazine: Herr von ‘Ajamí is taken for -- mistaken for -- a run-of-the-mill neoconservative. That strikes me as a mistake because the neocomrade could scarcely be less interested than he is in Jewish Statism and Hyperzionism for their own sake. He may be a very useful idiot for the Bnê Podhóretz and the Baní Peretz along the familiar lines of "the enemy of my enemy," but that does not mean that he actually belongs to their tribe. He doesn’t. Like his African-American and Hispanic neocomradely counterparts mentioned, after apostasisin’ from his own folk, Herr von ‘Ajamí did not join any new club or communion narrower than the Party of Grant as a whole.
A close examination of his agitprop work for the Wall Street Jingo will bear me out, I believe. For obvious reasons the slaves of Murdoch only invite him to address Middle Eastern topics, yet what he scribbles for them often wanders off into dubyapologetics and AEIdeology all across the board. Though the aspiration is no doubt hopeless, I betcha Herr Prof. Dr. von ‘Ajamí privately wants to be "Mr. Republican" in more or less the same way that Robert II Taft used to be. Or possibly he wants to be General Lord George Will. Something of that sort, in any case, an all-round cracker-barrel sage on behalf of the Big Management Party.
If it were not for the tiny ghetto or frog pond of commentary on the neo-Levant, nobody outside tertiary educationism would have heard of this exotic amphibian at all, but now that he has croaked and been heard, the bullfrog yearns (as I conjecture) for a wider world elsewhere, which ‘neoconservatism’ is not. Forty years ago, in the immediate aftermath of 1968 and All That, brand-name neoconnery of the sort formerly available in The Public Interest might have been a suitable vehicle to advance the ‘Ajamiyyan Agenda. In 1430/2009, it is nothing of the sort. There can hardly ever have been a movement of intellectuals that declined faster and farther than Irvingite Kristolianity has declined. Just take a look at a certain former op-ed artist for the New York Times, or at Pipes Minor and Kramer Minor and Podhóretz Minor! Herr von ‘Ajamí leaves me very cold, but all the same, it would only be ridiculous or malicious to pretend that he is as shoddy as that crew of señoritos.
Even Party-of-Grant apostasy from presumptive ‘asabiyya is not all bad, for it is quite incompatible with clamorin’ to be thought important now because one’s Daddy really was important once upon a time. The neo-apostate does not have any Daddy, he is a tub that stands on its own bottom. A tub that has personally decided to stand on its own bottom! I find myself wondering what on Gore’s green earth the offspring of neo-apostates will do for an encore, but meantime there is at least a little something to be said in favor of the ‘Ajamiyyan shtyk. At least if one grades it on the curve and by comparison with.
Happy days.
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[1] Apart from Mr. Thomas Frank , who has functioned as in-house jester ever since Rupert Baron Murdoch bought the Jingo.
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