A. Probably not, but let us give him the Murdoch treatment, shall we? Just in case.
| I think if would be useful to compare [Z0] Israeli military-political strategy in the current war, with [S0] Al-Qaeda military-political strategy as reflected in its failure in Iraq and the internal debates surrounding those developments (...) the desire for breadth of support from co-religionists--and even more broadly public-opinion in general-- has been in both cases confronted with another trend, namely what you could call military absolutism. |
As usual, Cartoono rapidly forfeits about 97.4% of the sympathy potentially available to him chez les Muses et nous, this time by pretending that we have already agreed to the Mu’ámara Junction theory of Operation Tin Soldier, "Israëli military-political strategy in the current war."
I do not know about thee, Mr. Bones, but I personally [1] have thus far arrived at no firm conclusions about what the Heroes of Hyperzion were hopin’ to accomplish on their Gaza outin’. It has seemed reasonably safe to conjecture that they have been conductin’ war-by-committee, wherein a number of knavish tricks with a clear connection between ends and means are merged or morphed so as to produce a Master Trick that seems to involve no coherent knavery whatever. I believe we may count on the learnèd Dr. Cartoonoclastes taking no interest in that sort of consideration, should he ever hear of it, and not merely because it means that his own firm’s claim to have definitively unmasked "Israëli military-political strategy in the current war" -- let us abbreviate that parcel of rogueries as IMPS/CW for fun, shall we? -- is going to be denied.
No, "war by committee" is bound to be a stench in the nostrils of Cartoono the Magnificent on purely philosophical grounds. He reacts to the faintest whiff of Aristotle like Count Dracula presented with a garlic frappe. We and The Master start, as ever, by concerning ourselves with the Form of the IMPS thingee, whereas Cartoono platonises and parmenidates about the matter of it. From the standpoint of the conspiratorialisin’ gentry, "war by committee" is no use at all, at once too WYSIWYG for their inner Parmenides and too formal and procedural for their essential Platôn.
More practically, there is the minor difficulty that I, at least, do not happen to be familiar with the latest in MJ conspiratorialisin’ and will have to learn the Lynx-Badger-Cartoonoclastes theory of IMPS on the fly. It appears that the bad guys [Z1a] "desire breadth of support from co-religionists" and [Z1b] desire "even more broadly [support from] public-opinion in general" and [Z2] dabble in "military absolutism."
What to say of that? Only [Z1b] stands out, to some extent, as differentiating this aggression from all the other aggressions. The Joseph Goebbels School of Terrorisation and Public Diplomacy has undoubtedly been workin’ overtime in the path of Hyperzion, at least for the U.S. market, although it is too early to assess the damage. [Z1a] is just silly: all the coreligionists of the Tel Avîv statelet that are ever goin’ to jump on the bandwagon did so long since. And [Z2] is unevaluatable, only words in the absence of previous knowledge of the MJ IMPS/CW theory.
Well, perhaps something will turn up if we just wade on through the swamp:
| In recent years, Israel had been making slow but noticeable progress in relationships with Arab and Islamic regimes in the neighborhood, with a public handshake here and establishment of a trade office and/or diplomatic recognition there, and then in the last three weeks it has blown that all away in the interests of "teaching a lesson" to the Hamas regime and the people of Gaza, via a military campaign whose rules of engagement seem to have been quite lax in the question of shelling of schools and refugee centers, hospitals, residential areas, and so on. Any real distinction between military defense against military provocations was blown away in a campaign against civilians in which the underlying--perhaps unspoken--justification was the really the biblical-fundamentalist claim to all of Palestine. And all or most of the recent progress in neighborhood relationships went out the window. |
Well, well, there it is! And who’d ’a’ thunk it?
Planet Badger is no mere uninteresting copy of Terra, thee will notice: in that parallel universe, there exist Islamic régimes in the neighborhood of post-Gentile Palestine that the Heroes of Hyperzion were, for a while, makin’ inroads upon. Closer to home, there is only the Islamic Republic of Iran in all the world, and the total amount of "progress in relationships" was/is simply zero.
How does this latest twistification work, then? Without the crackerjack box containing our Leo-Strauss-Brand® Magic Decoder Ring, it can be no more than guesswork on my part to suggest that Sa‘údiyya and some of the Gulfie minnows must count as Islamic régimes with the huntin’ and shootin’ and conspiratorialisin’ folks. "Islamic" is certainly a pejorative when it comes from those keyboards, and, as if to prove that nobody human can be perfect even in error, Cartoono does not care for les altesses royales du Ryad much more than thee and I do, even though Their Cardboard Highnesses are impeccably nonsectarian Sunninternis. So probably we can add two plus two here with reasonable confidence.
So then, let us tentatively decode as follows: the Tel Avîv statelet was makin’ progress with the quislingization of Egypt and Jordan and Sa‘udiyya and the Gulfies until last month, when M. d’Olmert et Cie. suddenly went nuts and blew it. Though not obviously correct, at least that is an intelligible view that a rational creature might hold this side of Planet Badger.
Attempting to mitigate justice with charity, let me say that the honourable and learnèd Cartoono is at least looking in roughly the right direction. Chances are good that Operation Tin Soldier was not primarily about either the (direct) management of the natives on their reservations or the management of Hyperzion’s relations with Barák Husáyn XLIV Obáma but rather the care and feedin’ of M. le général du Mubárak. Other Arab and "Islamic" régimes are comparatively important, although needless to say the Heroes of Hyperzion will not complain if the God Party of Lebanon were to feel a bit intimidated.
On the other hand, Cartoono is looking the right way only with his left eye. The right eye of the conspiratorialiser is trained, à la Little Tommy Wobble, Mr. Friedman of the NYTC, on " 'teaching a lesson' to the Hamas regime and the people of Gaza," i. e., on day-to-day administration of the Occupyin’ Power’s native reservations. I have a feeling that Cartoono lays undue stress on that aspect of the adventure because it is so easy for an agitprop artist to crank up indignation against Neocomrade Th. L. Friedman’s notions of popular education. [2] (Picking on Th. L. Friedman makes fishing in a barrel with dynamite look difficult.)
It looks as if when Dr. Cartoonoclastes says "what you could call military absolutism" he refers to what one actually would call something like "Friedmanite political pædagogy." Thee can see, I trust, why that LSB Magic Decoder Ring is so helpful in coping with the Parmenidisers of Mu’ámara Junction. Though it be true that Ms. Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes avow as a basic factional principle that Truth is never apparent and appearances are never true, yet I cannot help thinking that they cheat more than a little when they manufacture the deceptive appearances themselves.
To linger a moment on the exact decoding, possibly it would be more useful to classify the Friedmanite-Cartoonoclastic theory of Operation Tin Soldier as PubDip, "public diplomacy," rather than as pædagogy? Knowledge will not have been instilled into the natives on their reservations, and the Street Arabs in their souqs, for the sweet sake of Knowledge herself, after all, but rather to achieve certain practical ends posited by the hack pols of Tel Avîv. If any increment of the number of data points available is to count as ‘education’, why, it might as well be any common blackmailer as Mark Hopkins who sits at the other end of the proverbial log! (But God knows best about Education.)
Onward!
| [W]hat happened in Israeli policy seems to mirror what happened in Al-Qaeda policy in Iraq, where the carefully laid-out rationale of Bin Laden--striking at those who strike at us--was blown away by a campaign that appears to have reverted to a fundamentalist attack on Shiites as Shiites, delving back into history (in this case stories of Shiite collaboration with the Mongol invasions in the 12th century) just as much as the current Israeli campaign in Gaza delves back into the biblical theme of special entitlement as against non-Jews. |
(Well, at least Neocomrade Th. L. Friedman will want to keep well clear of that pitch!)
But seriously, it is kind of Cartoono to encapsulate "what happened in Al-Qaeda policy in Iraq" so conveniently. Now that it is available for future reference, we may in future refer to it.
I think, however, that he has slightly shifted his twistatorial position, no doubt unconsciously, so as to seem to have less patience with the faith-crazies than he used to. He certainly has not much patience with M. bin Ládin at the moment, to present such a witless simplism as "striking at those who strike at us" as a carefully laid-out rationale. That jurisprudential fandango borrowed from Ibn Taymiyya about near enemies and far enemies was never in the brain surgery or rocket science class, to be sure, but at least it made the Satan of Khurasán look like a tolerable facsimile of an amateur ‘álim instead of a mere Neocomradess A. Coulter, a mouther of cheapjack slogans.
The Shaykh al-’Islám comes in rather handily here, if only to raise the question of whether Dr. Cartoonoclastes is aware that his attitude towards the Shí‘a would not be easy to disentangle from that of the late M. az-Zarqáwí. [3]
_____
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/3394545/Oxford-compiles-list-of-top-ten-irritating-phrases.html
[2] Little Tommy of the big moustache professed to be as uncertain as most people what the Heroes of Hyperzion were actually doin’,
| Israel’s military was not focused on the morning after the war in Lebanon — when Hezbollah declared victory and the Israeli press declared defeat. It was focused on the morning after the morning after, when all the real business happens in the Middle East. That’s when Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: “What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?” (...) That was the education of Hezbollah. Has Israel seen its last conflict with Hezbollah? I doubt it. But Hezbollah, which has done nothing for Hamas, will think three times next time. That is probably all Israel can achieve with a nonstate actor. In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population, |
but since it is the evil that little laddies scribble that lives after them, usually, so Tommy will, I expect, be pigeon-holed by the historians of Princess Posterity as a theorist of political educationism, yet another zealous alumnus of the Goebbels School.
[3]
| Imam Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya al-Harrani was a famous Hanbali scholar . . . his works in refutation of the Shi‘as . . . are second to none. |
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