" Ajami's Sleight of Hand: Bush made Emancipator and Obama Smeared"

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.

Dr. Cartoonoclastes on the Fate of See-Might Man

Q. Has Cartoono the Magnificent detected an Ursemitisch radical, an underlying likeness between his own clients-or-patrons and the zanies of Zion?

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]













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[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.