Rising Hegemon
Only in the cocoon of 43rd Street could such a writer, who gets everything wrong, contradicts himself from day to day, and writes in prose worthy of Anne Lamott could still get front-page play day after day.
THE COMING SPIN: You can see it now. Chaos. Looting. Disorder. Losing the peace. It's not that there won't be some truth to these stories; and real cause for concern. The pent-up fury, frustration and sheer anger of three decades is a powerful thing, probably impossible to stop immediately without too much force. And the last thing we want is fire-power directed toward the celebrating masses. The trouble is that they could become the narrative of the story, especially among the usual media suspects, and erode the impact and power of April 9. By Sunday, or sooner, you-know-who will probably have a front-page "news analysis" that will describe the joy of liberation being transformed into the nightmare of a Hobbesian quicksand of ever-looming cliches. Speaking of whom ...(April 10, 2003)
He fell in love with whatever intellectual farts came forth from the mouth of Dear Leader and mocked his critics as just short of traitors*. Only to sort-of repent.
Now comes John McCain and Sully the Silly proclaims,
"Oh, this time the love is for real baby!"
*Just look at virtually any post from April 2003
If you do, you'll see that Sully is the ultimate recipient of any one of his never ending series of "Awards". It's not just that he sticks his neck out and prognosticates, you can't post a lot on a blog and NOT do that -- no, it is just the incredible level of posing and finger-wagging to be found in that one month is just impressive in its sheer level of inaccuracy and vituperation.
April 4, 2003
SPIN AND SQUIRM: Mickey - "Don't Rush Me, Rush Rummy" - Kaus is backing his friend (and mine) Bob Wright for the following assertion (made only two days ago!) that
as the war drags on, any stifled sympathy for the American invasion will tend to evaporate. As more civilians die and more Iraqis see their "resistance" hailed across the Arab world as a watershed in the struggle against Western imperialism, the traditionally despised Saddam could gain appreciable support among his people. So, the Pentagon's failure to send enough troops to take Baghdad fairly quickly could complicate the postwar occupation, to say nothing of the war itself.
It's a valiant effort, even as Bob's piece seems to be moving inexorably toward a von Hoffman award (not yet, but it's not looking good for the earthling U.N.-lover). Here's a pitch-perfect rear-guard "spin and squirm" what-did-the-Romans-ever-do-for-us?" pirouette from Mickey:
It's true that the military picture has seemingly improved since Wright's piece was posted; his how-can-we-trust-the-hawks-who-muffed-the-war-
to-remake-the-Middle-East argument has less force than it did even 24 hours ago. But the hawks were surprised by initial resistance in the South (even if it was mainly resistance obtained at gunpoint), and Rumsfeld still did send too few troops, it seems -- even if the war overall is going well so far. So there's still room for doubting the hawks grander rosy scenarios.
The phrase "it seems -- even if the war overall is going well so far" is the qualification only a master blogger could pull off. So's the final sentence. If there's room for doubting the hawks' "grander" rosy scenarios, is there no room for doubting the less grand ones, like, er, that Rummy hasn't obviously screwed up so far? In fact, to the naked eye, he's kicking butt. Surely the best neoliberal criterion should still be Kenneth Pollack's (partly because it wasn't made with any of the current debate in mind):
Probably the most likely scenario would be about one third of Iraq's armed forces fighting hard, limited use of tactical WMD, and some extensive combat in a few cities. In this most likely case, the campaign would probably last four to eight weeks and result in roughly 500 to 1,000 American combat deaths.
To argue that the war has taken much longer than necessary seems to me at this point to be pushing credulity. At the current rate of progress, it looks as if we're going to come in at the lower end of Pollack's estimate. But I guess the anti-neo-cons have got to grasp at something. If things continue at this pace, it's going to be a cluster of von Hoffman awards.
April 7, 2003:
BITTER, PARTY OF ONE: One of the things that people like me have long under-estimated is the legacy of Vietnam among the boomer generation. I wasn't even in this country; and others in my under-40 generation in America also don't get it. But for men like Howell Raines or Johnny Apple or others who command the heights of academia, Vietnam is still the prism through which they see everything. I'm not saying this isn't understandable; and a sense of history is vital to understanding a chaotic war like the one we have just witnessed. But the bitterness can also cloud judgement. Just look at Allan Gurganus' essay in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. The man is still in shock. The visceral hostility he feels to the U.S. government, the Pentagon, or, indeed, any American authority figure stems in part from the experience of that war. I don't think this is curable. In some ways, it's pointless to rail against it. It's just part of the psyche of a generation with enormous power - now, in part, the power to denigrate and undermine any real American military victory. Not all of this generation is hopeless, of course. Some are doing amazing work in this war even now. But for others, it will never recede. It's their point of reference, their precious. And they will nurture it even more passionately if the world now proves them wrong.
And there's more on that day:
VON HOFFMAN AWARD NOMINEE: "The main flaws are now plain. First, the strategy left very long supply lines exposed and vulnerable. Troops require water and tanks require gasoline. Without these, no force 250 miles from base will be useful for long. Second, Iraqi soldiers embedded in civilian populations - both those along supply lines and in Baghdad - can only be destroyed alongside those populations. Thus the Iraqis could force the transformation of the second strategy into the first. And, being military realists, they have done so. The dilemma is now acute. Retreat is unthinkable. George W. Bush's neoconservatives (standing safely in the back) will figuratively execute any who quail. The level of violence will therefore be raised. Meanwhile, the prime stocks of precision munitions have been drawn down, and speculation about the future use of cluster bombs and napalm and other vile weapons is being heard. And so the political battle - the battle for hearts and minds - will be lost. If history is a guide, you cannot subdue a large and hostile city except by destroying it completely. Short of massacre, we will not inherit a pacified Iraq. For this reason, the project of reconstruction is impossible. No one should imagine that the civilians sent in to do this work can be made secure. To support "the groundwork" for this effort is to support a holocaust, quite soon, against Iraqi civilians and also against the troops on both sides. That is what victory means. You can watch the beginnings (if you have satellite television) even now, as injured children fill up the hospitals of Baghdad. The moral strategy would be to avoid the holocaust. To achieve that from the present disastrous position, the United States would have to accept a cease-fire, which would lead to the withdrawal of coalition forces under safe conduct. There would be no military dishonor in such a step. It would, however, entail the humiliation of the entire Bush administration, indeed its well-deserved political collapse. Too bad the moral strategy is not a practical one." - James Galbraith, the American Prospect. How can a single person get so much so wrong?
And finally, for this already too long of a post (but it is after all pointing out Sullivan's errors, it can't be short) some of these now laughable mockeries on April 10, 2003:
V-H AWARD III: "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we cannot win. "We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable. "Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost." - Scott Ritter, South African TV...
...V-H AWARD IV: "Iraqis, very clearly, do not want to be 'liberated,' even many who had long opposed Saddam's brutal regime. To the contrary, the US-British invasion appears to have ignited genuine national resistance among 17 million Arab Iraqis, just as the 1941 German invasion of the USSR rallied Russians and Ukrainians behind Stalin's hated regime. ... The nasty, bloody urban warfare the Americans and Brits sought to avoid at all costs is now confronting them." - Eric Margolis, ForeignCorrespondent.com....
...V-H AWARD VI: "Meanwhile, a German government report due to appear in a newspaper on Monday says that up to two million people could die in a war on Iraq. The report released by the Environment Ministry says many civilians would be unable to get food or clean drinking water. The paper quotes the report as saying that a quarter of the population in southern Iraq already has no access to drinking water." - Deutsche Welle...
...V-H AWARD VIII: "Have you ever seen such amazing arrogance wedded to such awesome incompetence?" - Molly Ivins, March 16, 2003. No, Molly, I haven't. The liberal media have had a terrible, terrible war.
He really should have been ridden through the town square on a donkey, facing backwards and wearing a pointy hat proclaiming "JACKASS".
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