The Cup Is Half Full of It
by John Liechty
Back in 2002 when just about every patriot under the sun was itching for a war with Iraq, Charles Krauthammer wrote a piece called “Enough with the Negotiating at the U.N.” He began: “The American people, in Congress assembled, have given President Bush the authority to use force to disarm Saddam Hussein.” That highfalutin phrase has been stuck in my craw ever since. Is that how it was? The Iraq War was the brainchild of the American people? And they enlisted their humble servant Congress to enlist their even humbler servant George W. Bush to wage it? Oh please, Charles. After writing what surely rates as one of the most fatuously, fawningly snake-bellied strings of prose in the build-up to the war, Krauthammer eventually got to his point: Screw the U.N., Hans Blix in particular. (“Why should the United States forfeit to [Blix] – and his proven record of failure – its freedom of action to defend itself against a supreme threat to its national security?”) Why indeed! Blix happened to know more than Krauthammer about the “supreme threat to national security,” but alas, as a Scandinavian wimp in pursuit of diplomacy, he was clearly a failure. Blix dismissed, Krauthammer moved on to rubbish the French. The glorious invasion had taken place but the Mesopotamian worm was already hinting at an inglorious turn when Mark Steyn wrote a piece for The Spectator that joined the ball of sour (sauer?) Krauthammer in my craw. ‘Iraq Has Never had it so Good’ it was called. “The glass is at least 5/8 full, and by any objective measure Iraq is immeasurably improved,” Steyn wrote. The more-than-half-full-glass chestnut was immeasurably desiccated – we’d been instructed to eat it more than 73,000 times already by the Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rummy/Condi/Bush league. But Steyn was not content with a lone chestnut – he produced others. There was the Saddam Is Gone chestnut and the Prewar Potable Water Supply Is Up chestnut. There was the Improved Healthcare and Child Immunization chestnut and the mandatory “School Attendance in Iraq is 10 Percent Higher Than a Year Ago” chestnut. (Oh blithesome young scholars in Halliburton-crafted classrooms affectionately painted by altruistic troops!) After the chestnut-fest, “Iraq Has Never Had it so Good” went on to assert that if you weren’t partial to chestnut, it was doubtlessly because you were an “armchair insurgent.” Any criticism of the war was unfounded and cowardly and obtuse. “In Iraq itself,” Steyn declared, “only 15 percent of the population want the immediate removal of coalition troops.” This comment is particularly intriguing set beside today’s information that more than 50% of coalition troops want the immediate removal of coalition troops. Steyn finds it unseemly that Syria should be run by the son of a former president, so his article arranged time to heap scorn on “Boy” (Bachir) Assad. This seems somewhat rich, whatever Boy Assad’s shortcomings, given the fact that Steyn has been shining the Princeling of Shortcomings’ shoes for the last six years, yet has never seen fit to address his master as “Boy” Bush. As young adults on the world stage go, few seem more Puckish than Dubya. Long ago it was said of Father Bush that he was born on third base and thought he’d hit a triple. Boy Bush, born in the corporate boxes behind home plate and positive he’d hit a grand slam, takes the cake. Or perhaps it would be more fitting to say that Princeling takes the “icing” on the cake, which is what Daniel Pipes has recently termed everything that’s befallen Iraq since the demise of the Hitler of the Middle East (Yet lo! A replacement Hitler riseth even as I write). “What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq War?” Pipes was asked, to which he responded: “The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them – to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny.” This gracious remark is from an interview printed in early April of this year, but brought back memories of Pipes complaining only a few weeks into the invasion that the ingrate Iraqis didn’t “deserve” democracy. Apart from their mutual partiality towards Israel and mutual insistence that they are conservative, not “neo”-conservative (a breed of rogue they insist is fictitious), and mutual faith in the rightness of American might, the most prominent feather these three birds hold in common is their capacity to sneer. Krauthammer’s disdain for the “Arab street” has given him years of op-ed joy. The latest Steyn article to challenge the craw referred glibly to “barbarous Islamist sewer states” and Islam’s “institutional contempt for others.” Steyn is a fine one to preach about contempt, institutional or otherwise – he’s an expert at it. But it is no use at all saying these things. Steyn may be 5/8 full of shoe-shine, but the balance is largely arrogance, chutzpah, and craftiness. No logic can check that infallible jaw – it brays rain or shine. (This said, Steyn is the best of the bunch – often witty, often articulate, and yes, often right. Nevertheless, he holds a special place in my spleen.) Krauthammer, Steyn, and Pipes, like the administrations they serve, always know better – still it is instructive to hear them beside alternate (God forbid!) fonts of wisdom. Job 12:5 says: “In the thought of one who is at ease, there is contempt for misfortune.” You can believe that, or you can believe that “Iraq has never had it so good”. Ecclesiastes 10:8 says: “He who digs a pit will fall into it; and a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall.” You can believe that, or you can believe that what’s happened in Iraq since the removal of Saddam is “icing.” Lao Tzu says: “When a nation falls to chaos then loyalty and patriotism are born.” You can believe that, or you can shed a red, white, and blue tear over inflated rhetoric like, “The American people, in Congress assembled, have given President Bush the authority to use force to disarm Saddam Hussein.” Leaning toward Lao Tzu, you might go on to speculate that the chaos in Iraq is a reflection or projection or complement of chaos in the United States. Such a thought is not unpatriotic – it’s common sense and it bears serious consideration. Perhaps the proof of its legitimacy is in the contempt it draws from the school of armchair patriotism. At any rate, it is now 2006, and the friends of Chaos are itching to announce that the American people (in Congress assembled) have decided to nuke Iran. April 13, 2006 John Liechty [send him mail] currently teaches in Muscat, Oman. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |