Those folks

I notice that Bush is now calling himself 'the decision maker' and no longer 'the decider'. For a naive nominalist I suppose that amounts to an intellectual maturing, a step forward at least. Although, decidedly, 'the decider' had more of a colloquial ring to it and the man does seem to put much faith in the jargon of names he's wont to anoint things with. For a moment I wonder if maybe improved grammar is not a step forward but rather a sign of diminishing confidence - but then you hear Gates refer to the terrorists as 'those folks', a favourite epithet of Bush's, and you realise that if Bush can get a highly educated man like Gates to refer to incarnate evil as 'those folks', well, I guess his universe is still unfolding as he imagines it should.

And on the subject of Gates, in the same 'those folks' presser he confirmed what everyone had always believed and what Bush had frequently denied, that being that officers in Iraq did not feel free to ask for more troops if they felt more were needed. The press ignored this for some reason but I thought it significant as regards imputation of mistakes made towards Casey and Abizaid - note McCain's remarks re Casey as Army chief of staff - and yet the feeling of inhibition amongst the general staff once again points to faults being rooted in the Pentagon. McCain I assume must realise this - so I'd call it a telling sign that he chooses to go after Casey the way he has.

And yet furthermore on Gates: he claimed originally that the surge would proceed cautiously allowing time to see if the Iraqis are to be trusted. This claim was contradicted by Petraeus, who intends on moving quickly whether the Iraqis are ready or not, passing the 'secured' areas off to them with the assumption it seems that things will work out. Gates then contradicted himself and seemed to sign off on that approach.

It all sounds extremely tenuous, with the whole deal riding on a slippery slope of contingencies and assumptions - leaving one to again ask: what the hell's going on here? Is the surge a legitimate military effort or is its main purpose political? Hard not to conclude it's the latter.

sense and sensibility

Can the new or emerging strategy of intimidating or limiting Iran in Iraq - diplomatic, monetary, military proscriptions, prohibitions and proclamations - possibly make any sense without entering into direct negotiations with the Iranians? If the goal is inevitable confrontation, then yes; if the goal is to force compromises, to find a middle ground going forward, then the answer would seem to be no. As said before, the Bush administration's precipitous rejection of the ISG's recommendations, especially those regarding talks with Iran and Syria, tipped their hand concerning how they thought things should play out - once they rejected talks the surge, as it came to be known, was an inevitability.

Four questions then: are Saudis on board [which, if the case, would be cause for worry it seems as regards regional conflict]? Do Bush henchmen really want confrontation with Iran or just the real perception of the possibility of such? If they actually do want confrontation, how far and to what end? Would Iran see actual but limited confrontation as possibly being in their interest and therefore something they might want to encourage?

Possible overriding question: does it not increasingly seem that the US is caught in no win situation? If it confronts Iran it very likely stokes sectarian concerns; if it ignores Iran it very likely leads to a stoking of sectarian concerns. If such is the case what does that say about Bush's decision to apparently confront Iran?

Clausewitz over dinner

"Well, no one really knows, do they? Fog of war and all..." he said, trailing off to watch the waitress measure out a portion of wine for his approval, which was given with a curt and faintly lurid smile. "Chance cannot be factored out, try as we might, and so we shouldn't expect it. It just strikes me as improper to lose faith over a little... friction."

He sipped on his wine, eyes falling on the slender backside of the waitress as she subtly moved away.

"Possibly," I said, suddenly feeling less than interested in things. "Certainly your argument has the virtue of forgiving its own flaws. But... scatter enough leaves and eventually you'll see a pattern and from that pattern you may divine a sign and it's not impossible that sign may seem to point to an actual event - but only a fool would then choose to put his trust in the scattering of leaves."

mount of olives, pitted

"... so many hours in front of a TV and I can only say one thing with certainty: if survival of the republic comes down to depending on the ability of our male population to produce proximate erections on demand without intercession of drugs, devices or other third party solutions... well, my friend, we will then quite truly be up a creek without a paddle."

China wants to dance

"... it's not so much that the bloody Chinese decided to make instantly obsolete an aging satellite, although it is of course that as well, but also you see the way they went about it that causes one such discomfort: either it's an intended provocation, possibly aimed at a domestic audience, or they suffer under the demands of an ill advised ambition. Claims that it was a reasonable call to peace are absurd. America's one sure advantage in an increasingly treacherous world is its technology and to think it is just going to surrender that advantage to appease its competitors is either naive or disingenuous. It'd be like asking the prettiest girl at the dance to deliberately scar herself so the more dour looking creatures have fair chance to be rewarded in a way they don't in fact deserve. Only a fool would trust the professed good intentions of the disgruntled, the envious, the disenfranchised."

And Senator Specter is a hack as well

On a seemingly unrelated but more related than you'd imagine point, if one is willing to imagine unrelated things as being more related than you'd imagine - Senator Specter, cheered on by Democrats and apparently having surrendered up his soul to the blue rabble, has summoned the gall to ridicule in public AG Gonzales's suggestion before the senate judiciary committee that maybe the universal right of all Americans to habeas is an 'activist' fiction which possibly has allowed a lot of 'our enemies' a free ride for far too long a time now, no doubt imperiling the very freedoms we should be striving so courageously to deny.

Do liberals care nothing at all about ideas? about thinking outside the box? about original and dynamic intellectualism? No wonder all the smartest people are Republican [excluding Senator Specter, of course].

Dakota Fanning's director is a hack

That's right - and no not because of the whole rape scene controversy: if a 12 year old girl cannot pretend to make adult decisions about pretend adult situations under the pretense of an aesthetic whose ostensible purpose is to transcend the perverse pathology of an imagined adult context and while doing so manage to earn millions of dollars for her stage parents - well, then our culture just means nothing, is pointless, and you might as well put an end to it.

No, dear Dakota's director is a hack because of this:

"I am hoping that this film is going to touch a lot of people," she said. "When you go to a theater and you see the truth, you feel less alone in the world."

Unless that sentiment is a complete lie and is meant to mean the exact opposite of what it means to say, in which case I'd probably have to upgrade her from hack to genius, then I must assume the woman just does not know what she's doing and risks undermining everything Dakota has worked so hard to pretend to do for the greater misunderstanding of all: nothing is more damaging than a truth actually believed in, nothing more precarious than a world where one does not feel increasingly alone.

But maybe she's lying - which would be a great relief.

Casey striking out?

Now I swear that I am willing to accept that possibly I am a wretched fool deserving no consideration who imagines himself capable of talking things military because... well... because war just has a way of making a man feel good about the world --

but when General Casey announces that if in six months or so things seem ok in a born again Baghdad then American troops will be able to start going home - isn't he in effect telling the 'bad guys' that if they just play nice for a few months all their wishes will come true? I mean, one of the possible tactics to be employed by the insurgents will be to wait out the putative surge - so why are we telling them to do just that? Is there a cunning at work here that passes understanding?
Is it all just a big lie but some are better at telling it than others? Or has the idiocy afflicting Bush metastasized and overwhelmed erstwhile healthy organs in the body politik?

The Barack Obama conversation

- So there I was, standing in the express line at the Big Barn waiting to pay for my bag of chopped suet.
- Chopped beef suet?
- Yes, of course. We're not animals here.
- But we do eat 'em.
[a troubled pause]
- I don't see your point.
- Ah... yes. Analogical reasoning and the rudiments of primitivism. Sympathetic magic and the suppression of doubt. [pause] All that stuff.
[troubled pause]
- Anyway, I'm waiting with suet in hand and sure as the caves of Lascaux are dark the weedy, unwashed wench in front me feels the need to open up on this Obama character and the glorious cause and the slow, determined march of history and the infernal bleating of the bloody chimes of freedom and isn't it oh Lord a new day a comin' and praise our unworthy souls the deliverance thereof.
- They do tend to comport themselves with an over weaned ethos, if you will.
- And so of course I had no choice but to retort impostor! puerile impostor who can't say a harsh word but he wrap it in the gauze of some insufferable sensitivity. Don't be reachin' out to me, ya sweet tongued charlatan. I don't need your heartfelt touch.
- We'll be touching ourselves, thank you very much.

Two more wrongs, then take a right

I read Boot's column in the LA Times, the gist of which says that the President's plan, flawed as it is, is the best on the table and therefore it behooves us to give it a chance, and I thought 'well, this is a clever way to support nothing while looking like you're supporting something'. What I mean is that Boot and his ilk are saying in so many words that the Bush plan may be a doomed piece of nonsense but that the only thing worse than the nonsensical doomedness of it would be to admit that such is the case: what they're saying is that shallow theatrics is the only thing of substance to be hoped for now and that there is nothing more substantial, within that superficial context, than the good ol' American can do gumption based theatre of gosh darn it not giving up without a fight.

Now, I'm not going to necessarily disagree with that idea; after all, the world constantly verges on the farcical, the ludicrous, and the above does not to me seem so remarkable in its divergence from reason to warrant concern - indeed, it may be quite a rational response given prevailing circumstances. But the opinion or posture does regardless beg one certain question which proponents of it refuse to answer: even an illusion, to be of practical use, needs basing on something one is willing or capable of believing is true, regardless of verity of said verity and accordingly the truth asking for forgiveness here is that doing something is at least if nothing else better than doing nothing - but...

Why should I believe that, even allowing for the provisional nature of the belief? Boot and his cohorts ascribe to it with a felicity that is almost contemptuous, as if they were being asked to explain why the sun comes up in the morning; and to their credit, if credit is due, I suppose the theatrics of a show of force casts them in this role and they are playing it, professional hacks that they are, with conviction - but none of that leaves me any closer to an answer. There is absolutely no reason to be believe that doing something in this case is better than doing nothing, even if one accepts their language and definitions, which I don't - it is after all very difficult to do nothing - ; in fact it is possible and reasonable to argue that their something is likely to do more harm, as in precipitating the general coming apart of things, opening precipitously the door to the fools that rush in, that their something may indeed do more harm than their nothing.

Maybe though that is what they want. The closer one examines the spectacle the closer one comes to embracing the cynicism of it all, be it theirs or your own. Hamlet was quite happy to drink the wine proffered to him by a woman, dupe though she was, who he knew he couldn't or shouldn't trust. Now, was that bad writing by Shakespeare - or the cynical affirmation of a truth?

The Ethiopian conversation

"...well he said that in backing the titular Christian entity of Ethiopia in its rampage into Somalia for the purposes of rooting out the Islamic Courts, well, he said, we're no better than the rogue states we declaim against, flouting shamelessly the very international restraints that might, you know, define the one in opposition to the other."

"What's that?" the nonplussed preacher asked, delicately balancing a pastry on a napkin.

"And I said, you know, your high thinkers talk of the post nation state world, the post post Westphalian context and all that. But what if the post Westphalian actually ends up being pre-Westphalian in nature? What about that? All your fine ideas won't count for much then."

"No, I suppose not," offered the preacher timidly, struggling with a wanton crumb that had attached itself to his soft lower lip.

God we, in trust

"... they clamoured for my opinion regarding Bush's plans to surge into Baghdad and steal victory from the jaws of defeat from the jaws of victory and I said, albeit a tad unsteadily, having helped myself generously to an array of social inducements luxuriating in the open and easy prey to a lurid hunter gatherer, such as I am - I said: it will surely succeed if it manages to fail, and it will manage to fail having so cleverly courted a success it neither wants nor can achieve; it is brilliantly ill-conceived, a marvel of well-honed incompetence, far reaching in its shortsightedness, a masterstroke of profound emptiness. They have come of age, our precious fools, come of age."

Mclean, Virginia

“... and the poor souls have absolutely no idea how rotten with corruption their ostensible benefactors are. None whatsoever. Few of your common rabble do. In fact it would not be inaccurate to say that normal is that state of being most easily associated with benign ignorance and a general proclivity to remain so. Our society, our great way of life, our American genius, as you would have it, does not rest on the shoulders of giants, has not been wrought from the earth by a noble race: such fine lineaments as you imagine for yourself are but a mere accident of accumulation, a felicitous distillation from an undifferentiated mash. Ignorance has brought us here, ignorance has carried us forward and ignorance remains our greatest hope and solace. We are nothing without the torpid stupidity governing the general will of our slumbering masses.”

He paused a moment to draw on his cigar and swirl with stolid meditation his glass of exquisite port, adding, as if in answer to his own thoughts: “We have risen above, it is true, and good for us I suppose; but probably best to remember, for what it’s worth, that there can be no above without those wretched things dutifully toiling below.”

hoc erat in votis [Horace on cheerleaders]

... they’re like strippers but without the depravity, without the debasement, as if Juno had said to Man: you are sick creatures, truly awful - but there’s no reason you should not be allowed to deny this truth by way of convenient illusions: the best pleasures are those least compromised by reality.