In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
Heading out for the weekend, so just one last note: kudos to John Podhoretz for taking the contrarian view on Tenet's resignation. I have absolutely no idea if he's right and, frankly, I don't care. I've never really understood the depth of the animus directed at Tenet from some folks. I hope the Pod's guessed right.
posted by Noah Millman at 1:27 PM

 
When you don't have time to write new things, recycle the old. This is a piece I wrote (first draft, anyhow) about 10 years ago. I'd really love to figure out what to do with it, whether there's any way I could spruce it up for publication, and where. I'm open to suggestions from my ever-patient readers. (Don't worry, the blog isn't going to become a clearinghouse for this sort of thing.)

Scene: Terezienstadt Prison, June 28, 1944. Gavrilo Princip lies on a small wooden bench with a metal dinner plate on his lap. He is lacking a right arm. Sigmund Freud is seated some distance away, in a plush armchair, a small pad in one hand, a pencil in the other. Periodically, over the course of Princip's monologue, Freud will make notes on the pad. He may also cough, or shift position. He does not speak.

“Illusory world, thou beautiful flower!
To me also wert thou beautiful
Yet fleeting, too fleeting!”

I have been discussing certain matters with my brother, Jovo. I felt, earlier this morning, that the time had come once more for action, and that is a song I have always heeded. Jovo, however, sought to dissuade me. It is the same as always: when I first joined him in Sarajevo, you know, I spoke of action. He threatened to enroll me in the military school. I could not believe that my brother would have trained me to kill our countrymen, our brothers in blood and tongue!

“Oh” – here he goes – “you philosopher, you scrawny bones, you talk. Didn’t the old man carry a gun for the Sultan years ago? Look, I make my living bringing mail to the villages and wine to the city. That’s the same as father did, the same as Grand-Uncle Todor you’re so fond of hearing stories about. Only I do a better day’s trade than they ever did. Would I insult them and say that I am a better merchant? No: there are fewer bandits now, and better roads. And that is thanks to our Emperor, Franz Josef. His gun you’ll carry – that’s to protect my horse, my house, and your dinner table where you eat what I put before you.”

Done, my brother? So answer me this: what mesmerist swung his watch before your eyes and turned you into a merchant? I remember the day he left us, Herr Doctor. He wore the red cap of the mountaineer, new boots and a white shirt; mounted on our good horse I saw him with our mother’s eyes. That day, Jovo, I would have thrown myself from the heights into the gorge on your command. Can you imagine what I felt that first visit to Sarajevo, seeing you pace that little flat, a caged wolf in high boots?

After the war, my war, when he found his safety in his countrymen’s arms for the first time in his life, did he thank me for my gift of freedom to his children? No. Then, when the Czechs ran this place, and I could correspond again with the larger world, I sent to him with the warmest introductions – my dear and good Jovo, your skinny, degenerate terrorist younger brother aches to see you even if only through these bars – but no reply. My father I knew to have died when the Austrians destroyed the old village, but Jovo, well, the cleft between brothers is deeper than that cut by Crni Potoci, the Black Brook, between the stones.

So that shall be the sign for you, my brother: Crni Potoci – now let me write it, before it slips my mind. Yes, yes, you, too are a part of my work; could you think otherwise? I scratch you in among the wooden sheds, shrouded in mist and mistletoe, clinging like moss to the floor at the height of the gorge. The bald peaks stand lonely guard around your sleep, for the men are gone away to hunt for Turks and game; and from their heights, such a vision: from here to the horizon, the mountains of free Bosnia!

“Krajina is a blood-soaked rag;
Blood is our fare at noon, blood still at evening.
On every lip is the taste of blood,
With never a peaceful day or any rest.”

Another song I hear. This one from 1875. Tell me, Jovo, your grandfather whose name you carry, for whom did he carry his gun on that day? Have you forgotten? It was Vidovdan: The Day on Which We Shall See. Do you remember what you saw?

These songs we heard together in the mountains. We learned them from Radoje, an old shepherd and lame, who played an ancient gusl when we were only boys. Do you remember? As a young man, one afternoon the shepherd boy proposed to love the daughter of a captain of the frontier guards, a girl who refused to wear shoes, I remember they said; she longed to be a shepherdess and lay among the flowers. Radoje’s own mother delivered him that night for his lashing at the captain’s hands, as punishment for his effrontery. She handed him over with the evening star and retrieved him at dawn – it was late June; his sentence was short. When she came in the morning, she apologized to the soldier for the loss of his night’s rest. The beating left the boy lamed, but he was never heard to cry out, and for this the village forgave him his crime, that he put them all under threat of the captain’s wrath. He grew into a slow and measured man, who longed for nothing more than to lay on his back in the field and stare down at his toes, and with them crush the distant houses, oak trees, mountains, blot out the red sun and the horizon before he fell asleep.

* * *

Herr Doctor, my friend, you are too late. The dark day was yesterday, was it not? Well, better day-old bread than dreams for breakfast, as they say, ha? I hear no laughter; you are no longer amused by my colorful folk expressions? Ah, you were always the quiet one. I remember your first visit: you sat cross-legged on a footstool by the door, hunched over yourself so, like a troll. I don’t believe you glanced up from your note pad during the entire session, nor breathed a sigh, much less a word. Once, you coughed, a girlish little exhalation which you smothered in your notes. So many notes – and you never published me! The most famous assassin since Brutus; I surely would have made a creditable monograph. I fault you still for that.

Has it been so many years since that interview? Another Vidovdan, it was, twenty-five years yesterday. My first Vidovdan in the light. Then I was hopeful for an early release, my sentence cut to a fifth. Now my sentence is increased by a fifth – and not yet over. I ask you, did the Germans invade in ‘38 only to spite me? The Czechs would have honored the end of my time; they did all but release me already. Why, after Versailles, there was no need even to write. We were under a free regime! We could meet publicly, in the prison square, and rejoin voices and faces to the words we read in secret. We could promenade along the canal, the warm summer rain on our hair; we could meet in the garden and sip tea like old gentlemen friends at a cafe. Oh, how bitter is the aftertaste on my tongue now! How many years I spent sipping tea, waiting for my release, dreaming of my undiscovered kingdom, my Serbia, now free, now united! Sitting in cafes of our own minds’ design, did my pontifications enlighten my countrymen to the danger they faced, so near at hand? Why did I wait for twenty-five years – my entire original sentence! – to begin my work?

It is for this that I have called you back, Herr Doctor. This is my greatest regret, that I never showed you my work. Well, back then it was not so extensive – but today you shall see. Here: there is room enough in this cell for me to hold the dinner plate and show you. I apologize for making you sit on the floor while I take the sleeping palate; these are not the manners to which I was raised. But since the gangrene took my arm I must balance the plate between my knees, and this is difficult to do from the floor, or standing. There. Flat, scuffed, gray, discolored yellow to one side of the center: a dinner plate, the standard prison issue of the Empire – or of the Reich; they know no better, and far worse. Now: see when I show its other face! Don’t strain; the writing is far too tiny for you to read, and you have not the key to understand it. But this would be the envy of any Egyptian chiseler, no?

Five years I hold here. Not the whole of it; there are other utensils scattered about this place; every circulating surface is nearly covered by now. Radoje’s story is somewhere, but it has not visited this cell in weeks; I would relate the tale completely were it here. But I must read you some portion of my handiwork. Ah, this is a good beginning. If know you at all, you were always fond of a jest, Herr Doctor. I wonder if you will recognize this one:

* * *

It was related to me by a priest of some familiarity to my brother. When I was fourteen and dear, traitorous Jovo first brought me to Sarajevo, he introduced me to his partner, a Croat, whose son, Franjo, studied in a Jesuit school. I tutored the boy in arithmetic, and often accompanied him on his way to school. One day his teacher engaged me in a dialogue.

“Your eyes reveal a depth to your soul,” said the priest. Tell me, young man with the deep eyes: how do you fill them?”

“I fill them with study,” said I.

“Study,” the Jesuit echoed with mock sagacity – I understood it to be mocking for he then went on: “Much study is good for the mind, but very bad for the eyes. Tell me: when you study, do you study catechism, the lives of the saints, and the works of the holy fathers of the church?”

The question put so boldly, I could not turn it aside. “I am an atheist, a believer in the scientific principles which govern the universe and man’s history. After doing my part for my brother’s family, I spend what time I have for myself in study which will advance progress and lift my people up to their rightful place at the table of nations. I hope I have not offended you by such a forthright declaration, but if I have, I beg your pardon.”

The priest waved his had in dismissal. “I should beg it of you, for my prying question. Yet, would you grant your foolish elder one further indulgence? I would like to relate to you a story which even a well-educated young man such as yourself might not have heard.”

As I made no objection, the priest went on to tell the following tale:

“You must know that the Jews, wretched and scattered though they are today, were once the favored of God – and while still favored, were entrusted with great knowledge, which they have hidden in the books which they call sacred. But you may not know that it was a shepherd from Dubrovnik who ended their monopoly.

“Saint Peter himself sent the shepherd to Jerusalem, to preach to the sinful Jews. Now, when the shepherd arrived, he was brought before their council of rabbis. The Jews laughed that a man who could neither read nor write would presume to preach to the most learned doctors of their faith. Seeing the shepherd agitated by their mirth, their chief proposed a debate. ‘If you vanquish me,’ he said, ‘we shall convert and reveal all the ancient science of our holy books. But if you are defeated, you must convert, and announce to all the world that your Jesus was no Christ, but a magician, and that there is no true power in his church.’ To this the shepherd agreed.

“Now the shepherd knew only his native Slavic tongue, and could not converse with these doctors in their own language. It was therefore agreed that the debate should be conducted silently, with gestures. The chief rabbi began, pointing at the door behind the shepherd. The shepherd responded, pointing at the floor. Then the rabbi, frowning, pointed at the shepherd with his finger. The shepherd responded by pointing three fingers at the rabbi. At this the rabbi, incensed, raised his hand to the ceiling, and the shepherd, responding, waved his hand right and left, thus and so.

“The rabbi turned to his fellows and, with a look of ashen wonder on his face, informed them that he had lost. The others immediately began their wailing, and tore at their beards in grief. ‘How is it possible’ they asked, ‘that our wisest and most knowledgeable should be defeated by an illiterate shepherd?’ Their own rabbi explained his defeat. He had opened with the declaration, ‘The Messiah is yet to come;’ the shepherd had answered, ‘He has already been here, in Jerusalem.’ The rabbi retorted, ‘But God is One;’ the shepherd’s quick rejoinder: ‘I show you one hand, but three fingers.’ Finally, the rabbi concluded, ‘The decision lies with God, who rules in heaven;’ but the shepherd replied, ‘His church rules for Him here on earth.’ With a sigh, the rabbi told his followers that if they were honorable men, they would have to convert. But not all were honorable.

“The Christians of Jerusalem rejoiced to hear the news of the rabbis’ defeat, and they flocked to the shepherd from Dubrovnik, all eager to know how the contest had been won. The man explained that it was very simple. ‘He told me to get out, and I said that I wasn’t budging an inch until we settled this. He threatened to poke me in the eye, and I said, I can give as good as I get, three times: I’ll poke out both your eyes and knock out your teeth with my thumb for good measure. So he raised his hand to strike me, and I warned him that if he tried, I’d slap him silly. Then he gave up.’”

You like the joke, Herr Doctor? Well, so did the teller. The Jesuit laughed so heartily at his own jest that his beard flapped as if in a strong breeze. Noticing my own silence, he pointed at me with his finger.

“Next time you come, tell me what you thought of my joke.” He then passed in to the school, with such a slow, solemn step that you would never have thought him such a jester as he was.

The following week I brought little Franjo to school, and I saw the father standing by the doorway, examining a dogwood tree. He poked a branch very nearly into his nose; his nostrils flared, his brow furrowed, and for an instant he became a falcon in my sight. The priest was very pleasant when he spoke, however, and asked after the health of my brother, and of his wife, and of his partner before coming around to the matter.

“I know that I am no jester by trade,” the Jesuit began, modestly, “but one is judged according to one’s enterprises. I am sure that you have formed an opinion of my humor. I hope it is not too harsh.”

“Not harsh at all,” I replied. “Your jest was clever in playing on my antipathy to gain my sympathy. The shepherd is a man of the people. Knowing that I live in solidarity with our peasants and mountaineers, you used this to gain my sympathy, knowing that the shepherd would serve as your tool later on.

“The simpleton vanquishes the wise, and is therefore the wiser man. Your purpose is to put me off from studying the great thinkers of this age. I should live as my father’s father did, close to the ground and to the flocks, and in this way, and not by stirring up trouble, achieve salvation at the hands of the Saints.

“But I have seen how shepherds live, as you have not, so I am not moved by your tale. And if salvation is at hand, it shall come not from the martyrs of old, but from those now yet alive. And our shepherds stand with our martyrs of the soil before those of your church, or even of theirs.”

I was finished, and had regained in some degree my pride, and the dignity of my ancestry. But the priest still had the nerve to whistle at me through the openings of his great nose!

“My son, I have visited a village or two myself over the years, and have had to dissuade your simple shepherds from sacrificing their babes’ daily bread that the Infant might have a new crown. But about my jest – answer me this: without their having wisdom, would ever the Jews convert? Let the shepherd be; I know you are no shepherd. We still seek the conversion of the Jews. Even now, after all their treacheries. What say your modern martyrs to this question? Consult them, and when you know, return and tell me.”

Herr Doctor, so I did. It amazes me still, for as you know I have never had any use for the priests of my own people; on fast days I would go with like-minded friends to the steps of the church and gorge on cakes and sausage. And yet, though it encouraged my brother and led me to fear my own comrades – the annexation had come only months before, and all the students were afire to go against the Emperor and his ally, the Pope – I set out to live this double life, visiting with the priest whenever I accompanied my young pupil. Even Franjo lost his fear of that great falcon face.

We would discuss my thinkers: Bakunin and Marx, Chernishevsky and Mazzini, Njegos, Gacinovic and Popovic. In every case, my priest would find passages of the gospels or of the church fathers that refuted them and yet embraced them, in a fuller, greater shape. But most feelingly we would dispute Kossovo, the Field of Blackbirds. If Saint Peter devours Bakunin and Mazzini, then surely Saint Peter is himself devoured by the martyrs of Kossovo, by Milos and Tsar Lazar – Milos especially. He was my favorite, Herr Doctor. Accused a traitor by Tsar Lazar at supper on Kossovo field – the night before Vidovdan, the great battle with the Sultan’s forces – did he abandon his Tsar in his pride and indignation? No. He played at traitor, but only to gain entrance the Sultan’s tent before the day dawned on the morning of battle, to step bowingly up to his blue-cushioned throne, to whisper in a jeweled ear the secret of the Tsar’s positions – and, at the moment of revelation, to strike through the Sultan’s belly with his straight knife. Milos was martyred by the Sultan’s guards, but the Sultan died of his wound, and never saw the sun over Kossovopolje. Of course he could not turn the fated tide of battle; yet Milos was the hero to all our youth.

The priest argued that this noble tale was merely a refraction of the gospels: the final supper, the treason of one, the choice of holy death above the kingdom of this world. Yet it seems more true by far that the gospels were but a shadowing of Kossovo. What apostle could have struck so quick and sure as Milos? What choice did Jesus make to rival Lazar’s, who chose death not for himself alone but for the generations? And so our debates continued. I attended the societies all through this time, but my Jesuit behaved as if the walls of our classroom held out the world entirely, and we existed only when together. Thus we persisted until the martyrdom of our sainted Zerajic.

Our leader’s death shocked us all, and moved us to action, the only commemoration of which he could have approved. The Thursday after he died, I received my first sensitive assignment from one of my friends in a society. I was to carry a package from the apothecary’s shop to my brother’s home, where I would carefully pour the contents of each bottle into the bottoms of old milk bottles. The police, if they followed me, would see that I had returned to the home of a citizen above reproach – and if they followed the one who came to retrieve the bottles, there would be nothing suspicious in nearly empty bottles for milk. This I was to do on Tuesday. That Sunday I approached the schoolhouse with trepidation. My sister-in-law’s imminent wrath at discovering four missing milk bottles had been much on my mind, and I feared my plans would show through the skin of my forehead, and render me helpless. I feared as much for the foolishness of my choice of fear – my sister-in-law over the police – as I did for the consequences of my actions.

As was usual in our encounters, I brought the priest a question.

“Tell me, Father, if Jesus made his first mission today, what would he say of the Emperor?”

The priest smiled. “He would say, ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.’”

“And what,” I asked, “would he say of the Pope?”

“He would say, ‘On this rock I build my Church.’”

“And what,” I concluded, “would they say of Him?”

The priest laughed his nostrilled laugh. “Aha, you have been reading Dostoevski again.” At this he pointed his finger. “Tell me, since you speak his speeches, what is Ivan’s fate?”

I struggled to recall the story of the middle Karamazov – I wished he would ask me of Raskolnikov instead, who was more dear to all our generation’s hearts. “He confesses. He confesses at the prodding of a petty-noble Devil and he is not believed by the jury.”

“No. That is not his fate; that is stage-business. Before. No? He is afflicted with a fever of the brain in punishment for the abuse of that organ,” the priest replied, more pointedly than a jest demanded. “The Devil does not need to tempt Ivan; he has damned himself first in rejecting God and again in parricide. But he cannot ask for absolution because of his pride. He demands the Church produce the Kingdom at once, on Earth – the foundations cannot satisfy him, because he has already rejected the Church in his heart. Where then can he see the Kingdom? He deludes himself: he sees it in his own designs, in his own mind alone, which has the power from God to discern and understand. And so that is where he is struck.”

I was struck myself. I held on to the frame of the school and said, “Father, this is no answer. Who but the saints have eyes to see such things? Give me your eyes only, and I will make such vows as you demand – but I see only lame shepherds and sick lambs.”

The priest snorted. “And what sort of medicine do you prescribe for them – old milk from old milk bottles?”

As he did not look at me, I made the priest no answer.

“One can spend only so much of one’s life in converse with a wall. I thought you deserved one warning as a final kindness. It is not right that you should bring this on your brother and his family.”

“I at least have not taken up arms against my own people. Even among the Croats the common folk thirst for freedom. Yet how many good Catholic Slavs serve in Franz Josef’s legions? Are they the godly of this earth?”

“I do not judge their godliness; they do their duty only. God will judge if it is right; He will judge Franz Josef.”

“As He will me. I do not fear death.”

The Jesuit tapped at the corner of his table. Sitting thus below me, he lost the aspect of a falcon. He had curled into a heavy, squat bird, and his enormous beak bespoke no longer a terrible bite but an obscenity of growth without function. He was a dodo.

“That, my son, is the great pity,” he said, and then looked up. “But tell me before you leave: you never gave me a final account of my jest. I am curious. What did you take it to mean, after all our conversation?”

I considered long before I spoke. “Father, the Emperor shall not be defeated with fairy tales. I suppose I have not changed at all.”

The Jesuit shrugged. “You have grown taller, a bit. But I am saddened that you are still looking for the Emperor in my little story when he is nowhere to be found. Shall I tell you what it truly means?”

I made no reply, and so he continued.

“Know that I am the rabbi of the tale. And the rabbi was honorable. You are another Jew of Jerusalem, though you choose to forget it; and the chosen are defeated.”

* * *

That was the last I heard from my Jesuit, the first who tried to stop me in earnest. Have you ever met such a jester of a Roman priest? His interpretation I did not understand myself at the time. Now, with martyred Serbia ploughed under yet again, and myself still in chains, I laugh more knowingly.

But are you not amazed that so much can fit on the back of a plate? Well, I have had years to develop my technique, don’t forget. If you want to see what my work used to look like, here, I’ll show you. Along the rim of the inner circle, on the plate’s underside: that is one of my earliest messages. You can barely make out the largest words, they are so encrusted by now; shall I read them for you?

“Bricked up is she within these holy walls,
A victim of her husband’s witless love.
But hold! The mason leaves a hole unwalled:
One breast may taste the air that breathes above;
One child may reach and suck – may reach, and bawl.
Her milk yet flows within the dungeon halls.”

How wasteful I was! If the words were reduced to a tenth their size, it would not atone for the waste of the words themselves. Look how large I wrote it, as if it were a banner headline. Well, I suppose it was – did not Serbia yet live, on Corfu? But did the news require six lines to tell it? What ten-year-old does not know the story of the raising of Skadar, how the eldest brother tricked the youngest into sacrificing his wife to propitiate the witch? And who has not heard of the miracle that followed, that her milk flowed through the monastery walls – and does so still? It would have been enough merely to write “Skadar”; all would be understood.

Ah, but who cared for conservation then? In those days, when my war still raged and the guards were Austrian, I could spin out a few such lines in an afternoon, and still have time to exercise my arms by lifting and lowering my chain. I had no real mastery of the tools. The fork would shoot across the base of the plate whenever I applied pressure, and I would have to spend as much time again in buffing the plate against the edge of my sleeping palate. Then carefully I would trace over my letters to reinforce the lines that were true, and not in error. I could not get very far with a technique like that now. And I was born right-handed! But the lines I cut then, so deep and jagged, they look now like riverbeds, with tiny letters growing along each side like towns along the banks. And they huddle close together, leaving clear spaces for farms, for forests. These other areas were mapped out long since in even squares. Now each one is filled with words in its turn, and still so many lines to lay down.

Do you know how my work was begun? During the war, we had a newspaper of sorts. Any one of us could write, on the bottoms of mugs and of plates, and even along the underside of spoons. Oh, that was a challenge, working with a fork upon a spoon! We kept each other informed of important events out in the other world. When the government moved to Corfu, and Serbia was overrun, we heard it first from the guards; information which might wound us they did not hesitate to reveal. But when the tide turned, we would never have known were it not for our communications with the newest entering prisoners. And we kept each other appraised of theoretical developments as well. Why, Popovich designed his immortal system for Federalized National Syndicalism in the pages of our own journal! The discussion on his points was so intense that, in time, his original theory was completely obscured beneath the scratched and chiseled commentary. But he was released; the world knows his genius well.

All were released, led out either by the Czechs or by Charon; only I remain. Even Mehmet – can you believe it Doctor – Mehmet Mehmetbasic, the Turk they released. Tell me, Doctor, is this justice, that Mehmet, who did nothing, should be free, while I, the true assassin, remain in prison? Mehmet, are you still in this room with me, or have you moved on? Ah, look, Herr Doctor, here he is: sneaking around the bottom edge of the plate. To think that of all people we let you convince us that Cabrinovic was suspect. Who were you? You came to meetings. To meetings! Twice we sent you against Potoriek. Shall we tell the good doctor what happened? The first time, before you even arrived in town you dropped your poisoned blade down the toilet in a moment of panic. Now is that the behavior of a professional?

We forgave you that time, because you were young and you felt it reasonable to show a bit of caution with the police on board the train. Then you went to Sarajevo. You stalked about the city for over a week, testing stances, views, timing walks and noting traffic patterns. You told the curious you worked for the American cinema. We gave you a revolver, and you hid it within the old fountain and practiced jumping in and grasping it, and aiming at the bats and pigeons at two in the morning – that one with the white circle around his eye, he makes a good target: call him Potoriek. Then another, a screeching bat: the imam. Then finally yourself. But by the time the day had come the birds had grown so used to you by the fountain that they settled themselves on your arms, and in the bowl around your weapon, and would not scatter at your touch. In the time it would have taken to clear them away, you said, the target would have moved and you would have been shot by the police. Bird droppings clogged the gun’s mechanism, you said; you were not certain it would fire. Six members of a society were arrested that week, but the mosque was dedicated without incident. The press said, “an unexpected attack of calm.” You said, “give me another assignment.” But by then it was too late. The Archduke was coming to Sarajevo.

Had we listened to you then, we might never have fired a shot. Oh, you landlords’ sons are the very soul of cunning. Do you remember how we discovered he was coming? It was the first spring after the war with Turkey, and all we patriotic boys had traveled to Belgrade– for exams we said, and we were not lying, for we were all due for a graduation, and grenades the diplomas we would receive. Too poor to buy our own coffee, we would sit at the cafe tables and sing martial songs, hoping a patron or two would take pity on us, thinking us newly minted veterans. Ah, the pain that lanced me for counterfeiting so! Every coin was laid up in store against my future deeds. But late in the season a letter came for our friend Nedeljko Cabrinovic. None of us saw it, but he told us its contents; only one thing mattered. There were men in the societies who had traveled all around Europe to end this man’s life, and now he was coming to us!

Your slanders, Mehmet, began the day of our plotting. Oh, you had rich soil for planting your suspicions, I cannot deny it; Cabrinovic behaved as no hero. He went about in a blind frenzy, dazzled by his own future glory. We would pass in the street, and right away he would begin his chatter: he has been practicing with stones so he will know how to throw a bomb; he has a friend at the university who looks just like him, so he can travel under false papers; and on and on like this. And in broad daylight as well! I asked him, do you think there are no gendarmes in Serbia? But this would shut him up only for a moment, and then he would begin anew. I found him once in a cafe, writing a postcard to his sister. He quoted an old song I knew well:

“When death overtaketh a man
He taketh naught with him,
Nothing but his white, crossed hands
And his righteous deeds.”

I removed it from his hands – “No time for poems,” I said – and tore it up before his face.

But I did not grow truly cautious until the week we were to return to Sarajevo. We would have died to linger longer, our toes grasping the free soil of Serbia, but our deaths were wanted elsewhere. We knew the Archduke would arrive in June; more than that, nothing; and so we made ready to depart. We made our last visit to Apis’ agents, and with grenades hidden in our trousers we made our serpentine way back to our scattered barracks in the basements and closets of friends’ homes. On our way through the park, Mehmet, when you saw none were watching, you grabbed my elbow. Do you remember what you said to me then?

“How long have you been with our party?” you asked.

“For six years, I should think,” I replied, “or less, depending on how you choose to count.”

“No longer? And whose party were you with before that?”

“Before that I was a child.”

“You are a child still. Whose party were you with?”

I swallowed the insult silently, and paused before replying. You were older; perhaps you thought you could take such liberties. But there was something to your manner, aside from the impudence, made me wish to hear you out, and exact retribution later. “With none. I am from Krajina. I was for Serbia and freedom before I could breathe my own breaths.”

You nodded then, as though I had passed an examination only you could administer. “I know. That is where you and our friend differ. You don’t know whom I mean? So think; how does Nedeljko obtain such a letter? Who permits it?”

“Oh, go, you; it is in every paper now.”

“Now, yes; now there is no time to prepare. And do the papers inform us of the date? Let me tell you something else: our friend’s father is a well-known police informant.” And then you held me in your slit-eyed serpent’s gaze, until I had sounded the depths of this well of treachery. But one last barb you slipped in before parting.

“It is your duty to know before I tell you.”

I was left then among the flowering trees to contemplate my stillborn mission. Even if the son were true, a loose jaw like that could not be trusted with such a father around to hear. But this was not the worst. Perhaps all our planning was to lay snares for our own heels to catch? How could I know? I could only wait, and see; I said nothing to our other companions of my conversation, lest they reveal our suspicions by accident. And so we traveled; and as we did Cabrinovic acted his usual turn of ill-considered gesture, but now with an aspect of treason. In his very protestations of friendship he revealed his enmity. In one village, he declaimed against the Emperor, intimating darkly that something terrible would surely happen as retribution for the annexation. In another, he wrote another of his postcards, this one about Kossovo. It was Milos’ martyrdom he wrote of – the lines that circumcised my heart – and this buffoon did not even quote the verses correctly! A turncoat assassin and illiterate as well, I thought. But this was all what we had seen before from him.

Finally, we could stand his prattling no longer. We had to enter Sarajevo by rail, in a legitimate manner; Cabrinovic we exiled to an empty compartment, taking for ourselves the one across. How foolish a decision I saw almost at once, when, just as we left the station, a tall, mustachioed man in uniform entered our friend’s compartment and sat down beside him. They began to chat familiarly. I could not hear, but I could see them smiling and felt my eyes grow hot while my hands grew cold. When Cabrinovic pointed my way, I leaned back so that my face would not be visible.

When we left the train in Sarajevo, Nedeljko ran up to us, bursting to speak.

“On Vidovdan. That’s when he’s coming, Ivan told me.”

“Ivan?” I enquired.

“The detective who sat down with me – you saw.”

“Indeed I did,” I said. “You know him?”

Cabrinovic rolled his eyes in that way he did. “An old acquaintance of my father’s; hardly a friend, really. But say, did you hear what I’m telling you? The Archduke is coming on Vidovdan. Can you believe it?”

I nodded and mumbled something about the coincidence, hoping my reticence would quash his enthusiasm. A detective had told him the date! I could feel the heat from your gloat behind me, Mehmet, even as we stood; why did I not think then: how odd, that you should be pleased with your cleverness when all it exposed was our doom? We knew for certain now: the Emperor knew of our plans. Perhaps our doomed attempt on his son would be his excuse to invade Serbia? For long I had felt his boot upon my back, but now I felt for the first time the chill of his aged wrist upon my shoulder.

That night I removed Cabrinovic’s grenades and his revolver, and left him sleeping with our companions. In their place, I left a note:

“Until the day on which we shall see to whom the Empire will belong.”

I heard from you yourself, Mehmet that he woke in an offended rage; you brought this news as a teacher’s pet might inform on a less-favored pupil. Well, the world knows the injustice of your accusations; if their force is laid on my head, it is a weight I can bear, having the spine that you lack. And yet, Mehmet twice-flinching, I would still not think so ill of you were it not for your behavior on that Vidovdan. We all took our positions early on, well before the start of the parade. The crowd grew around us until it was thick enough for you to enter and perform your duty without notice. And so you emerged. You looked both ways suspiciously before stepping out of the apothecary shop – right under the nose of an officer – and fingered some bundle you held under your coat. Naturally, the officer followed you, and by your nervousness it could be seen that you knew he was doing so. So what did you do? Did you throw your grenade in the canal and run, as you did before on the train? Did you walk away from the entire scene, and beg for another assignment, as you did before at the mosque. No; this time you were brave. This time you stayed on the quay, and as the parade approached, you wandered from your spot, looking behind you with an epileptic twitch. You managed to pass by all of your fellow assassins but one, trailing the police behind you like a tail – in each case foiling any plan our brothers might have had for carrying out their duties successfully! Only Cabrinovic – I saw his face, glowing with the promise of redemption – was quick enough to launch his bomb, but he threw too soon, as he saw you and your entourage approaching, and missed, and the Archduke survived.

I was as surprised as anyone when I heard you had been arrested in Montenegro for your part in the assassination. You certainly didn’t volunteer to stand trial with the rest of us in an Austrian court! And to think, our Montenegrin brothers released you secretly from custody (I have no intention to believe that you “escaped”) because you were a hero of Sarajevo! Well, I should not be surprised. What happened to Mrnjavcevic, after all? That family lived rich under the barbarian Turks; they were well paid for their treason at Kossovo. Who knows, Mehmet; perhaps they are your true ancestors? You think that because you are from an unlanded family that you are different from the rest of your kind, the landlords who ground us mercilessly underfoot for centuries? Your people were always crying for some emperor or other to protect the rents you had not force enough on your own to wrest from the common folk. Any emperor, but not your own Slavic king, yes? You knew where justice could be found, and have fled rapidly the other way.

You I am finished with. I finished with you years ago. You are captured here, in the plates, in the book; and may I tell you something, Mehmet? You do not fill six lines.

* * *

Nedeljko’s bomb was not even a part of our plans, you know, Herr Doctor. He got the bomb from Ilic. Amusing, isn’t it, since Ilic tried to take mine away from me, with his articles and his philosophy. I had had enough. It was time for action then, and Cabrinovic truly knew it. I have had thirty years since to study my philosophy.

There, now: I saw that strangled little smile; you do not think it is philosophy I have achieved? Answer me this then: how was I to know whether Cabrinovic was faithful or false? I look back now and say, Kossovo. He was Milos. If I had not suspected him, how could he be? With that little note I took Tsar Lazar’s words for my own; did I not know what that would mean for our endeavor? His words, my words, are here before me; I need only to read of Kossovopolje to tell you all my life. These plates and spoons make circuits of this prison, but at their every return I return, to the same questions, the same clouds on my vision. I need to borrow other eyes, and so put on the spectacles of your Jewish science. For the work is too important to enter the world without an advance reading in some private realm. And if not to complete the work, Herr Doctor, I wonder – and the wonder has plagued me these last years of darkness – why am I still alive? For you know, it was only when the darkness descended that I began my work in earnest.

* * *

It has occurred to me that my continued life is punishment for the Duchess. The deed that was to be done merited no punishment. This much is certain. Of course, I expected to die. That was part of my mission, and I accepted the responsibility willingly. But the murder of a tyrant is a sacred charge, an ennobling charge; it is a deed by which kings are made, not disposed of. That deed merited no punishment. It was simply to happen. Why, the very engines that drove them to their deaths obeyed the laws of history before those of combustion. Why did the carriage stop? Stop just as I approached the window, just as I had raised my gun, just long enough for me to spit the words, “Young Bosnia is Free!” into their faces, that they should know the meaning of their deaths?

Should I have hesitated then? When I saw them through the window of the carriage, I had only an instant to decide: now is the time. But once decided, the moment is everlasting. My arm is like a long weighty pendulum, swinging up; it moves with a terrible, unstoppable slowness. When it reaches apex, it fires, between the drawn curtains of the open window. Now I can see them. He is dressed in the finest attire of the Empire. They said – and though I did not believe it, I repeated it nonetheless – that he was sewn into his very clothes for the occasion. His pants were drawn up over his thin, white thighs, and strips of cloth were sliced with a razor from the sides, the whole molded to hug his empty calves. His shirt was laid upon him in two pieces, front and back, and his jacket in sections like a suit of armor: the pectoral plate joined at the shoulders, the arms in pairs of interlocking tubes. All this so that the anointed one’s form should not be marred by any crease in his attire.

At the first shot, the points of his mustache quiver like the tips of dueling foils, and spots of dandruff come fluttering down to his skin-snug epaulettes like insects struck by gassing from the trees. His wife reaches across to the far side of the car, to shield him or to be shielded from me, I do not know. She is pulling at the buttons of his jacket, to expose his wounds, but the buttons are all for show, twinkling golden miniatures of the Empire.

The second shot goes through his neck, stiffening him with paralysis. His eyes do not catch mine; they are fixed forward, and his mouth opens to let out a trickle of blood, and the words, “it is nothing. It is nothing.” I try to move the gun, to complete my assignment, but it is too heavy to rest firmly against my own temple, and then, all vanishes – and when the world returns the gun is gone, and I am brought down.

I shot her so, with the first bullet. This I discovered at the trial. They asked me, “Did you know she was a mother?” Did I know? I asked them, “What do you think I am, a beast?” But this is what they think, and shall they hear a beast’s denials as speech? I knew she was a mother. A mother of children who would be no heirs – they would not let a half-Slav creature inherit the Empire – a pure mother of people. But is a man’s existence to be reckoned valueless because he is a bad shot? I did not fire the shot; my arm did. So: the arm they have had of me – there, that is punishment. It has slowed my work; it is punishment enough.

I should have put the gun to my head, as I was commanded. There were others at stake beside myself, and anyhow, the deed was done! There was no undoing! And yet I live. To what purpose? The Empire would not execute a minor, so I live. Am I still a minor, Herr Doctor? It has been thirty years; will they not kill me now? Here, out there, I have repented nothing, do you hear out there! No recantation, no change: I am still standing, a day after The Day, so kill me for you will not make me kneel!

Twenty-five years passed over like water; they have left no imprint of their passing, only that I was smoothed and softened. Five years have I sat at the lip of the deep, but they will not push me in. They hang me over it every year, for one day, but they will not let me drop. I have done my life’s deed. Why could I not die?

Your silence rebukes me, Herr Doctor; you know that I know why. I confess. Perhaps my inaction was deliberate. But not selfish, no, not selfish! You must remember, I had only the day previously been to see the grave of Zerajic. Oh, Zerajic, our poor father Zerajic, poor as we all are and father to us all! Everything I did was in your name, everything to your glory, you who should have borne the crown before me. Well, I swore as much long before, the first time I visited you on this earth; the world knows, and there is no need to repeat the words.

I had heard of your torment from Grdjic, the editor. He told me of your meeting in the new church, only days after your failure against the Emperor. Kneeling in the back, seeming to mouth the rosary, you waited only to breathe the words, “He was so near me – I could almost have touched him.” But Franz Josef was an old man, who leaned on others’ arms; he seemed so little an Emperor. With a feather you could push him over into the grave; would you be so crass and use a bullet?

“I could almost have touched him” – you do not know the courage of such words, that you could say them! If you had known Mehmet Mehmetbasic the whole world could seem heroic! But no, you would not have compared yourself to him. You knew that there was only one comparison: Kossovo, the eternal Field of Blackbirds. Our nation dies there ever, and ever there is born, the proving ground of all our heroes.

You knew from the first who you were – if you were not Milos, who was? – and you had failed to grasp the mantle of heroism. Ah, it is a greater torture than I have ever faced; I am ashamed of my own fretting weakness in the face of such turmoil. And what were our editor’s words to you? “Such men are not to be found among us. They do not exist.” Oh, such comfort! To know your nation gives you company in your meanness. When Grdjic told me, I could have boxed his aged ears; many such ears needed boxing in those days. You repaired to a cafe, of all places, to hear your friend make speeches and watch the world and sorrow for your nation. To this a hero is reduced! To cafe society, the world of journals and the aged men! Where were these aged in their youth, in 1875? Where was the great city Sarajevo itself? I know where my people were, where Slavic blood does not dissipate: flowing through the cloven rocks of Crni Potoci in the Bosna mountains!

Bogdan Zerajic, whom all the world remembers with reverence, the greatest hero of our age! Who needs to hear my speeches less? In my youth, I listened to you in your absence; I did not speak to you, except in oaths. I was your most eager student. Oh, but dear Zerajic, our philosopher our king, could you forgive me this: that I learned the wrong lesson?

You knew too well, your soul would never be released from torment until your gun released its bullet. So you went against Governor Varesanin – no old man, he, and no gentleness in his face; your compassion would not betray you. It did not. One is no hero who strikes true with every blow; he is a magician, rather. Let us have our heroes mortal: five bullets miss, the sixth strikes true. You could not feel the Governor’s blows when he ran uninjured from his five-scarred carriage to kick your bleeding corpse.

“Our hope it was all buried long ago
In one great grave on Kossovo’s broad field.
Except by way of death was never resurrection. . .”

Five bullets miss, the sixth strikes true. I was no coward to leave for myself the spot of sixth assassin, the last shot; I knew it meant success. But what of the shot after the last? Oh, I could say I did not have the time, that the gun was struck from my hand before I put it to my head. But can I not be honest with you, dear Bogdan, as you were with Grdjic? Bogdan Zerajic, your sixth shot ignited a generation waiting to explode. The first five did not need to hit their target. But could you know that, hold that in close to you as you could not hold your life that spilled out onto the Emperor’s bridge?

I could not die not knowing. “It is nothing,” he said: he could speak, he lived. Would he survive the night? When the Austrians came for their vengeance on our people, would he ride at the head of the armies? I tell you with a clear faith, I had no wish to live. But could I die not knowing if I had failed? “Except by way of death was never resurrection.” So who is resurrected now? I am here on earth, so where must my martyred country be? Is this my punishment for living on, to see my Serbia choose the Kingdom of Heaven yet again? Is this my witness, only death?

* * *

Doctor, may I confess a terrible fear? Let me ask, first, if you have heard of a man called Potemkin, a lackey to the Tsarina, Catherine of Russia? It is said that when Catherine would tour the cities of Russia, her Court would not have her eyes affronted by the poverty of her country. And so, orders would go out from Potemkin for workmen to enter each town in advance of her carriage and, tracing the route which she was to follow, they would sweep the streets, place flowers in the windows of shops and houses and apply new paint to the lampposts up to the highest point visible from the carriage – but no higher. The remainder of the town was left untouched. In the country, Potemkin built entire villages of buildings with one wall only, facing the road that Catherine was to travel, that the land would appear more populous. In only a short time, the Tsarina knew not which villages were real and which Potemkin’s, and then was she at peace with her rule.

These Germans have learned something from Potemkin, I think. The other day, some months ago, perhaps, a group of us were led into a long room furnished in white tile; a row of sinks lined the longest wall, and a row of mirrors above them. We stood for nearly an hour before a hose was brought, and water was splashed in the basins; then we were returned to our cells. None of us touched water or basin. From our cells, we heard another group pass through the “washroom,” rumble their approval in German, and then pass on, unseen. It was the last we saw or heard of that place. At the time, I paid scant attention to these events; I spent the hour searching the thirty or forty faces nearest, and none was known to me. But when I looked in the mirror, an aged man stared back. So who can say if anyone was there; I would no longer know him, though he were my own brother, Jovo.

Herr Doctor, is it possible that they are playing Potemkin’s game with me? What was I to see in the water, in the basins? If I am in a simple prison, let me see it for the prison that it is, and not be lost to fantasy. Oh, I know, Herr Doctor, I know that these spirits within me are acting only for my own protection, telling me that I will live, that I must plot how to survive, but you see, they are interfering with my work. And that must not be. My work is the only clear thing, the only cipher for the memory that swirls around me. It is all that tells me what is to be done! I have always been a man of action, even in captivity.

I can hear the skepticism in your frown, my friend. You have diagnosed me completely. I am a paranoid. I have been driven mad by the darkness that creeps out of that day, The Day – my day – and around the walls of the standing cell, into my own chamber. It has made chains darker and heavier than the iron that binds my feet. I can hear the tapping of your pencil in the rain that strikes the edges of the canal. I am not mad; I remember what it was to walk by the canal, and I recall the feel and taste, the aluminum smell of rain, yet still I hear your pencil. I know what paranoia is, Herr Doctor; that is not the name for my disease. My I tell you one last story as my proof?

In June of 1939 – five years ago yesterday, before the fall of Poland – I attempted to restart my journal with a verse, of my own composition, on the subject of the darkness. This was my first Vidovdan in darkness since Versailles; the Germans remembered, and marched me to the standing cell, where I stood for twenty-four hours in a chamber two meters high and a quarter square. To be honest, I found it easier without the arm: less weight, and one less elbow to scrape against one wall or the other, and the dullness of the stump nerves made it easier to lean a portion of my weight. But I did not mention these details in the poem. I had hoped to re-ignite the old passions, the old arguments that once raged within our cups and saucers. But the only response was an astonishing essay signed with the name of Hohenberg. At first, I thought this was surely a pseudonym, and his essay some elaborate jest – news of the death of Bogicevic had just reached us, so you can imagine that a jest was not impossible – but my inquiries determined that in fact the name was genuine. The Archduke’s son was in here with us!

His essay was an extended argument to the effect that my comrades and I had received material assistance and intelligence from the government of the Kaiser in plotting our assassination of his father. The Archduke, he claimed, had a plan for a final solution to the South Slav problem: Federated Trialism. Three Parliaments, German, Hungarian and Slav, would meet over several local legislatures, all of whom would be united in the iron trinity of Emperor, Army and Roman Church. Protestant Junkers bent on the annexation of Austria wanted Franz Ferdinand and his utopian schemes out of the way. His death would mean war between Russia and Austria; knowing Austria to be unable to face Russia and her satellites alone, the Kaiser would, by aiding her, gain decisive influence over the Empire even as it crumbled, leading ultimately to annexation. Hohenberg was writing to inform us that he knew his father’s killer was in this prison, and that, much as he might desire vengeance, what he wanted more earnestly was confirmation. Would I admit that the Kaiser was involved?

I thought at great length about how to respond to the man. Clearly he was paranoid, a madman; clearly also, he was insulting me with the insinuation that I was a common mercenary assassin, and that my comrades and I would have acted out of anything but the purest national feeling. To say that Apis worked with Bogicevic, that is one thing. Did Bogicevic intrigue with the Germans for a separate peace? Undoubtedly – but do not forget, at that time our own ally, France, wanted Serbia to cede holy Macedonia to the Bulgarians, while half of Dalmatia was promised to Italy! Well, this is politics.

I composed an essay in my mind to respond. I used your methods, Herr Doctor, to demonstrate to Hohenberg how he was made a psychological prisoner by my having killed his father before he had a chance to do so himself – I fulfilled his Oedipal dream but, having done the deed for him, I took away his manhood. Now that Germany had finally swallowed his own Fatherland, I reasoned, he associated my usurpation with that of his current jailers. Therefore, he became convinced of the plot with Germany. But this was too long to put on a plate; by this time, even my one arm had begun to shiver, and writing more than a line or two per day was more struggle than I could bear. The solution came in an instant, and I transcribed two lines of a poem that had inspired me during the Czech years:

“The river is moving
The blackbird must be flying.”

The poet was an American, but surely of Serbian extraction; how else could he know the words of our secret soul? The blackbird, of course, refers to Kossovo, the Field of Blackbirds, and therefore to all of history. Hohenberg looks for diplomatic intrigue and double-cross; he should look for Kossovo, for all the world is there. There our people were offered a choice: to be part of history, and win the day in battle; or to be defeated, and for history to be a part of our people. Tsar Lazar was offered the choice: the Kingdom of the Earth or the Kingdom of Heaven. He did not hesitate. And so we lost our lives, our freedom, our king and our kingdom. And daily we lose them still. But there is a gain in all this loss, and that is the knowledge: we know that the key is Kossovo, and one day the world above will be reconciled with the world below. And until that day, every day is the day of battle, when all is lost.

Who is Lazar in our day? Not I. Oh, I fancied myself the heir to Milos, once, the suspected traitor who proves true, who kills the Sultan single-handed, in the Sultan’s own tent, and is then slaughtered by the guards. What a part to play! But I am still alive. I have seen too far beyond my own tale’s end. What is left me? Shall I make lists of murders: this one shot, this one starved? It is no mission for life to be the counting house of the dead. No, I am alive to see and understand; only I must be correct. I do not even know if Serbia is free! So: I must be the tale, I and I alone, for there is no other here with me that I might speak to. Not even you, Herr Doctor, for all my conjurations.

The work must not be frivolous, do you see? You may say, “Well, continue; there is no harm, and besides, what else is there to do?” What else? Why there is hanging to be done! Have I not twice seen the death of my country? Am I not allowed a reprieve for that? In the old days I would have tried to do it; I did, a pair of times, before I lost the arm. But now it is too difficult. And as I now know that I shall never be released, I know too that there must be a reason for my confinement, or all the world is a mockery. Other men, rather than rot, have spent their prison days in writing. Will you mock them, too? Did Cervantes merely pass the time? Did Oscar Wilde? Did Hitler? If so, then why do free men read their solitary ravings? Listen to the words of the song:

“From Jerusalem, the Holy City,
Lo! there flew a grey falcon bird,
and he bore a little swallow.
No! It was not a grey falcon bird;
‘Twas Elijah, ‘twas the holy prophet;
And he beareth not a little swallow,
But a book from God’s Holy Mother,
To the Emperor, from Kossovo field;
He dropped it on the Tsar’s knees,
The book itself began to speak to him.”

That is the bird I have drawn here. You see? And it is made of letters, too, and the letters are the names of men. Cabrinovic and Zerajic are riding on the wings; those talons, dark and light, are Apis and Grdjic; even Mehmet is a tail-feather; and Jovo, my brother, and my dear Jesuit are there, in the cleft of Crni Potoci where the wings meet. Do you see? Who else can be the prophet bird? Cabrinovic, true to the end, was our true and sainted Milos, as Zerajic was before him. Mehmet, who was once our ally, we now know was in the pay of ancient Mrnjavcevic, who cries treachery when he is treasonous himself. I am bound now in Skadar, built of treachery, but the book is written on plates of steel – if I am broken, it shall not be, and if I cannot fly myself, then it shall fly, for swallows too can fly, and into the hands of Lazar. Whoever he may be. I will not know the savior of my people.

* * *

Do you know that Hitler has been calling me a Jew? The man is an ignoramus. Oh, my enemy, it is the insults I shall remember longest, longer than the deaths. The world will know. I shall remember everything.
posted by Noah Millman at 8:38 AM

 
So, in the spirit of constructive criticism, lets take a look at a recent piece from NRO - "Kana's Iraq." Younadem Kana is a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, a leader of Iraq's Assyrian Democratic Movement. He's supportive of the U.S. and of democratization. Let's take a look at what he has to say.

Actually, before we do that, let's explain who the Assyrians are. The Assyrians are a Christian, non-Arab indigenous Iraqi people. Saddam ruthlessly suppressed the Assyrians. But he was far milder in his treatment of the Chaldeans - also Christians. Indeed, Tariq Aziz - Deputy Prime Minister under Saddam - was a Chaldean Christian. And the Chaldeans in America were less enthusiastic about ousting Saddam than were the Assyrians. Why the disparity?

Well, the Chaldeans and Assyrians are pretty much the same people, ethnically, and they are both Christian. But the Chaldeans are an Eastern Rite Catholic group and the Assyrians are, generally, Nestorian Christians. And the Chaldeans are scattered throughout Iraq while the Assyrians are concentrated in a pocket of the Kurdish north (and have complained about persecution not only by Arabs but by Kurds). These differences have had important political ramifications; the Assyrians, with a national church and geographic concentration, have a far stronger national identity, and so bore the brunt of Saddam's brutal program of Arabization to a considerably greater degree than the Chaldeans did. Saddam basically was following a "divide and rule" strategy: turn the Chaldeans and the Assyrians against each other.

In any event, the point of this digression is just to set the stage for where this guy is coming from. He is likely a very good guy, but that doesn't mean he's an objective source. The Assyrians, in particular, really need the whole federal but unified Iraq thing to work out: if Iraq were partitioned, they'd be alone against the Kurds in the north; if there's a Shiite theocracy, Christians are in trouble; and if there a new Sunni dictatorship, they are in even bigger trouble. So you would expect Kana to tell an audience of pro-war Americans exactly what they want to hear to keep them in Iraq.

(I can't stress one thing enough: I'm not saying he's not telling the truth, or that he's not worth listening to. I'm just saying we have to be a little more sophisticated than good-guy = tells-truth, bad-guy = tells-lies.)

Okay, that's out of the way. So what does he have to say?

For the first time in the history of Iraq — for the first time in 14 centuries — our neighbors, and the majority of people today, recognize us [Assyrian Christians], and acknowledge us. We are all together on the Governing Council, and the cabinet; our rights are guaranteed under the fundamental law" (referring to the provisional constitution signed on March 8).

So far as I can tell, the only fact here is that Kana is a member of the Governing Council. How we extrapolate from that to universal acceptance of Assyrian autonomy by the majority of the people, I'm not clear on.

"The media are very bad," Kana observes regretfully. "This is mostly because they are the tools of Islamist fanatics; because they are unhappy with the democratic freedom process." It's not just al-Jazeera: "Even the Western media are very bad. They are trying to sell their product, so they keep exaggerating the bad spots.

I am really tired of hearing this sort of thing, and very disappointed to discover that our Iraqi friends have learned their talking points so well.

Over the Abu Ghraib scandal, Kana is unruffled. "Yeah, we condemn that — but it's certainly not the official or normal policy of American troops in Iraq. . .If Iraqis are upset with the American troops, it's mostly because they are very nice — too nice — with these criminals, dealing with them as prisoners of war. But they are not prisoners of war, they are criminals; they are killers. But Geneva Convention rules put pressure on the Americans to be nice, and to take good care of them."

There are two distressing things about this little quote. First, here's an Iraqi ally, and he has - or wants to project - the kind of sneering contempt for humanitarian norms that was popular stateside in October of 2001, not now. What does that say about our real image over there? Second, this guy is supposed to be one of the authentic leaders of Iraq. We know that a large number of prisoners processed through Abu Ghraib were subsequently cleared and released - in other words, they were suspects, but turned out not to be criminals. Where's the hint of sympathy for them? From a fellow Iraqi? Or perhaps he also hasn't read the report. But third, and most important, here's an Iraqi democrat eager to talk about how you can't be "too nice" with prisoners. Somehow, that doesn't reassure me of his democratic credentials. And neither does this quote:

Kana explains, "we will be imposing Iraqi laws, and there will be no more Geneva Convention conditions. The death penalty will be back again; he who kills will be killed. And in my opinion, this will bring the violence down very much. So I call on public opinion to be more confident that, on July 1, things will change."

Yes, that's very encouraging. No Geneva Convention in the new, democratic Iraq.

(Before you object: yes, I know, the Geneva Convention is designed for war between armies, not for operations against terrorists and criminals, and you *could* interpret what he's saying to mean just that the Iraqis, dealing with a domestic insurgency, would have the lattitude to deal with the insurgency appropriately rather than have to debate whether the Conventions apply or not. But that's a lot of nuance to extrapolate from what sure sounds to me like swaggering with a nightstick.)

Finally, there's this:

Kana insists that once the Coalition moves out, foreign extremists will lose their strongest card. They will no longer "be able to move the emotions of simple people by saying they are fighting a holy war against the occupier," because, after June 30, there will be no occupier. He adds that the U.S. troops that do stay will be removed from danger, in safer camps. "When we need them, we will call on them, but they will no longer be easy targets in the streets."

Now, here's what I want to understand about this. First, what makes Kana think that he and his fellows won't be considered to be lackeys of the Americans after July 1? And if they are so considered, in what sense will the extremists have lost their strongest card? Second, if, after July 1, the Americans can retreat to distant bases, and the Iraqis can take over policing, why can't they do it now? What is going to happen in the next six weeks to radically change the situation on the ground? And third, why should Americans think it's a good thing that an Iraqi government can order our boys into combat against their domestic enemies, but a bad thing that an American occupation government can do so?

The best way to convince yourself that things are going badly in Iraq is to listen to those with an interest in propagating the view that things are going well.
posted by Noah Millman at 5:10 PM

 
I started this blog, like so many people did, as an emotional response to 9-11. I found myself obsessively reading the news in a way that I didn't before, and I needed an outlet for that obsession. The blog's continued to be useful for long past the waning of the obsession, because it's helped me figure out what I really think, and you know, that's a good thing in its own right.

Well, since things started to go pear-shaped in Iraq, the obsession has heated up, but blogging has tapered off. Why? Partly because things have gotten busier at work - and at home (Moses is now a toddler, and takes a lot more parental attention than he did as an infant). But partly because I have much less confidence than I once did - and not only in my own opinions. In the past, when I thought a problem was complex (for example: how to deal with postwar Iraq), I'd feel like simply turning the problem over, exposing the complexity and wrestling with the various options was a service. I figured smarter and better-informed people were wrestling with the same questions, and the answers would emerge from dialogue.

I don't feel that way anymore. I feel like the urgency to arrive at good (or at least best-of-bad) answers has increased dramatically, even as my own confidence in the basic quality of information has dropped, and my confidence in those smarter and better-informed folked has dropped precipitously.

So I've fallen back on, increasingly, critiquing the "information" that comes my way. It seems to me to be much more important to critique the material coming from the pro-war right because (a) that's the camp I've come from; (b) that's the camp with the main responsibility for the situation, and hence the principal obligation to figure out how to deal with the situation; (c) that's the camp with a certain problem of too much self-censorship and not enough self-criticism.

What this means is, I spend too much time writing critiques of stuff at NRO and the like. It's not what I most enjoy doing. I'd like to be rooting rah-rah for the side. I desperately want America to win this war. But it's what I can do, mostly, and I do think it's constructive. Anyhow, there you have it.
posted by Noah Millman at 11:27 AM

 
Hmm. I feel like Charles Krauthammer wrote his latest column with me specifically in mind. Remember how I divided war supporters into "still sane" and "deranged" camps? He's still sane.

Meanwhile: I wrote off Michael Ledeen a while ago as no longer worth listening to. But remember how he warned pre-war that attacking Iraq was extremely risky simply because it would give Iran an opportunity to attack us there, and possibly gain decisive influence over Iraq post-war? Prescient, no, given that Iran seems to have given material support to Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda-aping Sunni thugs along with al Sadr and his Mahdi army?

Finally: Bret Stephens tries to buck himself up by reminding himself - and us - of the alternatives to war with Saddam, and how questionable those alternatives were, strategically. But this doesn't buck me up; this is why I'm depressed. If Saddam was unacceptable, and post-Saddam Iraq is dangerously unstable, and our position with or without war was untenable, that's not a very pretty picture, is it? How is that supposed to buck me up?

Anyhow, going home. Hopefully I'll have more . . . hopeful thoughts next week.
posted by Noah Millman at 4:52 PM

 
I really do feel for Arab liberals like Fouad Ajami. They understand, correctly, that Iraq is their last stand. Even if America "succeeds" in Iraq by stabilizing the situation, bringing things to some kind of modus vivendi, avoiding outright civil war or a return of Saddam II, the prospects for radical, democratic change in the Arab world look bleak indeed. And, having just fought a war to bring said change, America's stomach for more of the same will be very limited.

But look: for all his poignant despair, for all that I want the same things for the Arab world that Ajami does, there's a hollowness at the heart of his complaint about the Bush Administration. To whit: he wants America to stand firm with the democrats of Iraq. But who are they? And where are they?

Look, Ajami is a lovely man by all report. He's also a Lebanese Shiite of a pro-Western and modernizing type. The reason he says all these things that we want to hear - and that he believes - is that he is utterly unrepresentative of the region. And he knows it.

Listen to him on Jordan: "President Bush apologizing to King Abdullah II of Jordan for the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Peculiar, that apology -- owed to Iraq's people, yet forwarded to Jordan. . .Jordan in particular had shown no great sensitivity toward Iraq's suffering. This was a dark spot in the record of a Hashemite dynasty otherwise known for its prudence and mercy. It was a concession that the Hashemite court gave to Jordan's "street," to the Palestinians in refugee camps and to the swanky districts of Amman alike."

Jordan is, as he knows, the closest thing the West has to a genuine ally in the Arab world. But the Hashemites know that their own people are far more hostile to the West than the ruling class is. It's not the regime who idolized Saddam; it's the people who did so.

He complains that the Jordanians showed no sympathy for Iraqi suffering. Partly, that's because of Pan-Arab anti-Western ideology. But it's also because the Palestinians of Jordan are Sunni Arabs pretty similar to the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. And guess what? These folks understood the Baathist ideology to be their ticket to the top. The Hashemites are a bunch of Bedouin foreigners from Arabia; no wonder the people are the ones who were enthusiastic for the strongman from Tikrit.

The absolute best-case scenario I can imagine at this point for Iraq is something akin to the old dispensation in Ajami's Lebanon: a delicately balanced power-sharing arrangement between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. I can just imagine - just - that we pull something like this off. Having handed Fallujah back to the Sunni strongmen who most want to drive us out of the country, we turn to the Shiite leadership, and say: look: we are eager to help you negotiate a power-sharing arrangement. But we are not going to hand you the keys to the country. You're going to have to compromise with the folks in Fallujah; we're not going to kill them all for you. Then to the Kurds: look: we want you to keep your high degree of autonomy that you've had for the past 10 years. But you're not getting an independent state. If you push us, we'll let you choose between fighting the Turks or the guys from Fallujah. Then to the Sunnis of the triangle: look: we're in no hurry to leave. 80% of the country would love us to massacre you all. Now is the time to make a deal. Right now, there's still a functioning central government, and we're assuring it a chunk of the oil revenue and we're assuring you effective veto power over changes to the power-sharing. This is the best deal you're going to get. Take it, before the offer is withdrawn. As the offers are taken, redeploy American troops: out of the major cities, to the borders, oil centers and ports. Make it clear that all we're interested in doing is protecting Iraq from foreign incursion while we train a multi-ethnic Iraqi army to handle that task. Let ethnic militias operate within their zones to keep the peace internally. Let the UN supervise elections.

Would that work? I doubt it. The Shiites are behaving very well lately, trying to talk down that hothead Sadr. Very good. They're probably spooked by Fallujah. But you don't know how long that'll last. Iraq doesn't have a real leadership. It's a free-for-all. If Afghanistan, we negotiated deals with a bunch of established warlords who'd been kicked out of their fiefs only a few years before by the Taliban, and had never stopped fighting them - and while that's worked out OK, it's also got its problems (like, we care a lot more about getting the al Qaeda guys than they do; all they really want is to keep the heroin flowing). The Kurds have an established leadership we can deal with, but the Shiites and Sunnis really don't. That's why we're propping up guys like Latif, hoping they'll fill that void.

Iraq has a history of instability going back millenia - to before Saddam, to before the Ottomans, to before Islam. It's partly a function of the geography of the place - a flat plain open to invasion from the mountainous regions to the east, north and west. And if the Arabs were inclined to take a good deal when offered, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have been settled long, long ago. I am too pessimistic to think that we can readily cobble together a power-sharing arrangement that all sides will see is in their enlightened self-interest. Enlightenment is in short supply in that neighborhood. What's needed is bravery in a difficult cause, and that's always in short supply under the best conditions.

And even if we got the deal on paper, how long would it last? People should remember what destroyed Lebanon, and what stabilized it again. It was destroyed by the combination of Yasser Arafat (foreign agitator) deliberately trying to create chaos, coupled with Christian over-reaching in their attempts to hold on to the reigns of power. The parallel to Iraq is easy to see; plug in al Qaeda for the PLO and any of Iraq's ethnic groups for the Christians. Then came the Israelis, who succeeded in kicking out Arafat but couldn't figure out how to get out of the country safely once he was gone. Again, the parallels are pretty clear. And finally, the Syrians took over the bulk of the country, which they substantially control to this day. The parallel to Iraq is Iran, which dominated Mesopotamia repeatedly over the milennia. Iraqi Shiites might prefer living under an American aegis today. But tomorrow, inviting in the Iranians might seem more promising.

I was pessimistic before the war about the prospects for Iraqi democracy because there is no Iraqi nation, and only nations can be democracies. But I never appreciated the depth of the downside potential to the war. Iraq is consuming our military, leaving us exposed on every other front and potential front. If we leave it in chaos, no one will ever trust us again, and our terrorist enemies will gain a huge victory. But how many of us can stay for how long?

James Webb asks in a recent speech: what are the conditions to exit? Not what's the "exit strategy" - that formulation suggests that exit is the objective, which begs the question of why you entered in the first place. What are the conditions to exit - what would justify exiting? And what is the strategy for achieving those conditions? Saying that "victory" is the condition for exit is saying nothing; what does "victory" look like?

At this point, victory means an established government, recognized by the international community and the Iraqi people generally, capable of defending Iraq's borders, and not engaged in the kind of internal genocide that Saddam specialized in. The absence of civil war or external war, and the absence of al Qaeda-affiliated elements in the country. That's defining victory well short of a democratic transformation of the Middle East. And I'm not sure it's achievable. We may be there a very long time.
posted by Noah Millman at 11:30 AM

 
So, if Rummy were to go, who'd be the right replacement?

Let's just take all the Bush "character issues" off the table for a moment, and ask ourselves: what does the U.S. need in a SecDef right now?

- Someone with a strong personality, capable of winning the respect of the brass, not someone who simply rolls over for them.

- Someone with a clear and compelling vision for how the American military should be structured, who has absorbed what was right about Rumsfeld's vision (the importance of speed and a light footprint) and what was drastically wrong (ignoring the political dimension of military conflict, disdain for peacekeeping and police work).

- Someone with credibility in the Senate, so he'll be confirmed.

- Someone untainted by the mistakes and failures of the Iraq war.

That's not a terribly extensive list of requirements, is it? So who does it rule out?

Well, it rules out Powell, who we can rule out anyhow because he has no interest in continuing to serve this President. Powell would absolutely roll over for whatever the Army wants. To a lesser extent it rules out Armitage, whom I still respect a lot more than Powell.

The third and fourth requirements rule out Wolfowitz, certainly, and also Cheney, not that either was especially likely.

Tom Ridge was never a very appealing candidate, and his performance at DHS inspires no particular confidence.

People talk about Senator McCain. Leave aside the fact that he'd never be offered the job. What do we really know about his views on the current war? I was very pleased with his performance during the Kossovo war; contrary to what most paleos think, there was a very good reason we embarked on that adventure (President George H.W. Bush had explicitly threatened military action in Kossovo if the Serbs tried to cleanse the province), and McCain was absolutely right in saying that ruling out ground troops from the get-go was a mistake. But do you know what he thinks we should be doing in Iraq? What we should be doing generally in the war on terror? Do you know what he thinks our military's force structure should be? I sure don't. His website lists almost nothing of relevance since the start of the Iraq war. Most of his defense-related activities amount to constituent service: getting better benefits for servicemen and vets, that sort of thing. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't exactly give you a picture of what he thinks we should be doing with our military. We know he thinks we should have more troops in Iraq, but not much more - nor do we know what he thinks the implications are for the overall size and shape of America's armed forces. The one thing you can definitely say: McCain would not roll over for the services from a procurement perspective. That's important. But is it the most important thing, right now? From a political perspective, McCain would be a great choice. From a policy perspective, maybe, but I just don't know. Anyhow, it doesn't matter because he won't get the job.

Who's that leave?

Well, Bush should probably pick a Senator or former Senator, to smooth confirmation. He should pick someone with independent ideas, who is neither going to be focused on covering his own rear, or sucking up to the President, or rolling over for the services. He should pick someone who is an internationalist and favors a forthright defense of American interests, but who has absorbed the lessons of the Iraq war, whether that person favored the war initially or not. Ideally, he should also pick someone who actually cares about terrorism and has some ideas on that front.

I can think of three plausible candidates, each with different strengths and weaknesses: Senator Dick Lugar, former Senator Dan Coats, and former Senator (and Democrat) Bob Kerrey.

Dick Lugar has a number of sterling qualifications for the job. He's got decades of experience in foreign affairs. He has focused on the threat of WMD terrorism in the past, and has been a leader in trying to control nuclear proliferation. He has been pointed (but polite) in his criticisms of the conduct of the war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He has enormous credibility abroad and he would sail through confirmation. A Lugar choice would unquestionably represent a change in policy, but not a retreat from the war effort. There is no question Lugar would keep us in Iraq until the situation is stabilized; he's not going to cut and run. But he has no prior commitments either to a course of action or to individuals that would complicate making strategy with a view to American interests. Lugar would represent not a turn towards the isolationist, Buchanan wing, but to a more traditional American internationalist realism - to Hamiltonian foreign policy rather than Wilsonian or Jacksonian. There's a good argument to be made for just such a turn. Of course, Bush will never pick Lugar; the guy has no swagger, isn't part of the team, probably reminds him of his father. Shame, really.

Dan Coats would be a bit more of a continuity choice in that (a) he was Bush's original choice for Secretary of Defense, and (b) he is strongly identified with the same "transformation" plans that Rumsfeld has pushed at Defense. These plans are essential to the long-term future of the American armed forces, and it would be a good thing if the next Secretary made them a priority, as Rumsfeld has. Coats has been supportive of the Iraq war, but he's not someone who was involved with the planning, so his hands are basically clean. There's no way he'd advocate cutting and running, but he'd have the freedom to change course if necessary. Coats reputedly was nixed for the SecDef job in part because of his commitment to ending the Clinton-era "social experiments" in the military - i.e., efforts to expand the role of women and (to a far lesser extent) gays in the services. I always thought the gay issue was basically silly (there have always been gays in the military, so there's no need to go on a witch hunt, but the need for someone in uniform to be aggressively "out" is obscure to me as well), but in the wake of Abu Ghraib my own and others' concerns about the increasing presence of women in combat or near-combat roles should be heightened. If Coats' position on these matters were a stumbling block last time around, it should be an asset next time. Coats has been Ambassador to Germany for the past few years. It'd be interesting to know what he learned from that experience, and whether it would help him be more diplomatic than Rummy has been. It's not inconceivable that Bush would pick Coats. But there were reputedly some "chemistry" issues along with the women thing. And those "chemistry" issues reputedly revolved around Coats wanting assurance that he'd have the President's backing when he made tough decisions. Bush thought it showed insecurity for Coats to ask for that assurance. Maybe. Or maybe Bush thought Coats was being uppity, not loyal enough, suggesting that Bush might *not* back him up. There's that character thing again . . .

Bob Kerrey, though a Democrat, would also be a continuity choice from an Iraq perspective. He was very strongly supportive of the Iraq war, as a sponsor of the original Iraq Liberation Act and as one of Ahmad Chalabi's circle of Washington supporters. That doesn't necessarily disqualify him in my view; I didn't start to pay really close attention to Chalabi until 2002, before that simply assuming that, since he said the right things, he probably was a good guy. I don't blame folks too much for supporting him in 1998. In any event, Kerrey has an interest in terrorism that stretches back well before his performance on the 9-11 commission. Picking him would go an enormous way towards convincing the country that Bush is more focused on winning the war against al Qaeda than on winning political points. And Kerrey knows something about counter-insurgency as well - from personal experience. It might be useful to have a former Navy SEAL take a look at the structure of the U.S. military; Rumsfeld's an old fighter jock, which isn't the best vantage point to consider handling teenagers with RPGs. Would Kerrey take the job? Certainly not before the election. But after? Who knows? Frankly, I think his reputation for bi-partisanship is richly deserved. He did a great job skewering the Clinton foreign policy team, both back when they were in office and during the 9-11 Commission hearings. He'll never have a job in a Kerry Administration; McCain's a more likely choice than Kerrey is. Why not? Well, the main reason why not is that Bush won't put anyone on the team who isn't beholden to him, so they'll stay fanatically loyal. But I said we were going to put the Bush "character issues" aside, didn't I?
posted by Noah Millman at 8:56 AM

 
Follow up to the last post: on further reflection, Bush probably will tough it out for the sake of toughing it out, and Rummy won't resign. As I think about it, Bush approaches all of these sorts of things as a game of chicken, and I don't think he'll flinch here. And he may be right - politically speaking - to do so in this case. If Rummy goes, that'll look like weakness, first of all, and second, he'll have to get a new SecDef confirmed in the middle of the election campaign. That's not a palatable thought. Better to tough it out for the sake of toughing it out. Better to just say to the country: the system works. The military discovered the abuse, is investigating it, will prosecute the malefactors, and will make public all relevant information, as it has so far.

That's probably politically right, I say. It's not really right, because there are really two issues at issue with Abu Ghraib (apart from the propaganda disaster of the whole business, which isn't an "issue" in its own right). First, there were clearly a handful of people who are sadists who took advantage of the situation to perpetrate abuses that have truly outraged. But second, grossly inadequate training, staffing and supervision, combined with what appears to be a policy of applying psychological pressure through humiliation and terror - faked executions and the like - to detainees with suspected high intelligence value to create a culture where abuses of varying degree of seriousness were widespread. In other words: the few bad apples are part of the story, but they are not the whole story. To the extent that Rumsfeld stands by the policy, I'd like to hear the defense. To the extent that the deficienciess of manpower, training, etc. had a profound impact, I'd like to hear about that, too.

No one thinks Rumsfeld personally ordered people stripped naked and faced with snarling attack dogs, much less physically abused or even killed in custody. Nor should anyone question the seriousness of the response to the situation once it came to light within the military, which so far seems exemplary. The legitimate question is whether these events were easily forseeable and preventable within the context of fighting a guerilla war in Iraq, and whether the Secretary of Defense didn't do what should have been done to prevent what was forseeable.

Senator Lindsey Graham had it right: blaming this all on low level people just isn't right, and is a disservice to the ordinary GI. The sorts of people who should take a bullet for the cause - politically, I mean - are political appointees, not grunts.
posted by Noah Millman at 10:53 PM

 
And this, in turn, brings us back around to the question of Rumsfeld.

Let me dispose, first of all, of the most recent reason people are calling for Rummy's resignation: the prisoner abuse scandal. Rumsfeld's position has become untenable, and for this reason he ought to resign. Rumsfeld is far less culpable for the tortures at Abu Ghraib than Janet Reno was for the deaths at Waco - Reno, after all, actually gave the order to sic tanks on American citizens (or is it too black helicopter of me to bring this up?) - and yes, the military is and was doing the right thing by investigating before anything came out (indeed, the story broke because of the military's internal investigation). But Rumsfeld's at the top of the chain of command and the bulk of the abuses were quite clearly policy - that is to say, those on the receiving end were overwhelmingly detainees perceived to have real intelligence value, and the purpose of the humiliations, etc. was not wanton sadism but to extract information. That's policy, not wayward conduct by a handful of sadists, though it seems the latter took advantage of the former as well, as should have been expected. We shouldn't blow the incident out of proportion, but at this point a defense of Rumsfeld is a defense of the policy that led to Abu Ghraib, and I just don't see the Administration mounting that defense, nor do I see even Bush toughing this out simply for the sake of toughing it out, which would be, admittedly, his preference. I think Rummy will do the right thing and go quietly. But what do I know? I'm almost always wrong about everything.

In any event, there are three far more substantive raps against Rumsfeld. First, that he was the prime mover in advocating this war. I think this is just wrong. Powell was the prime opponent of the war; virtually everyone else in the Administration was an advocate: Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld and the President himself. Even blaming Bush for the fact that we are in Iraq must reckon with the fact that the pre-war situation was unstable and untenable long-term, and that Clinton went to the brink of war in 1998 that had as its objective pretty much the same outcome that Bush sought in 2003 (ending the WMD threat and regime change). Blaming Rumsfeld is just silly.

Second, that he's recklessly and needlessly pissed people off - the Army brass, foreign leaders, the State Department - with his high-handed arrogance and browbeating manner. Well, he's guilty of that; I don't have a defense for him. The fact is, lots of us indulged in a taste for Rumsfeldian condescension in the months after 9-11; it was wonderful to glory in a guy who was hard-charging, aggressive, unapologetic. Well, that thrill is gone. Frankly, I don't think it's the Secretary of Defense's job to be a diplomat; I think it's a measure of the failure of our diplomatic corps that we assume he needs to be. But he needn't take pleasure in making their job harder than it already is.

Third, and most significantly, he's damned for refusing to allocate sufficient troops to the war in Iraq, and for refusing to expand the size of the armed forces generally. This attack comes from all directions, right, left and center, and it's worth examining in detail.

Let me start by saying that I think our force structure is too small, simply because I think the burden of global security falls so disproportionately on the United States that we must maintain an outsized force structure to be prepared for multiple, simultaneous contingencies and deter the emergence of major rivals. It would be wonderful to have a robust alliance structure to magnify American power and I think we've done too little in the last 10 years to bolster that structure, most particularly in the western Pacific. But the fact is the largest allied military - Britain's - is a fraction of the size of America's armed forces, and always will be.

That said, there are a few problems with this critique of Rumsfeld. For one thing, there is a yawning gap between what the anti-war Rumsfeld critics think was necessary to secure Iraq, and what the pro-war critics think. Bill Kristol thinks we need 30,000 more troops. General Shinseki thought we needed 300,000 more troops than originally allocated - essentially, the entire force - and for an extended period of occupation. Shinseki's numbers aren't crazy; they are a reasonable extrapolation from the size of the army needed to keep the peace in places like Bosnia and Kossovo. If that's the kind of force you'd need for 2-3 years to nation-build in Iraq, then no politically conceivable American Administration could contemplate occupying Iraq. But if the Kristol's of the world are right, then Rumsfeld looks inexplicably stubborn in refusing to up the force structure at least later in the game; if 20,000 or 30,000 troops would turn things around, why on earth wouldn't he send them? Something doesn't compute.

The bottom line is that Rumsfeld does not believe in nation-building. That's not what he thinks the U.S. armed forces are for, and it's not clear he believes it can even be done. I'm not sure he's wrong. I'm mystified why he's identified as the epicenter of the clique of "hard-Wilsonians" or "Jacobins" or "right-wing Trotskyites" or whatever cuss-word is used these days for the folks who want to spread democracy at gunpoint. This is just not what the man believes, whatever his deputies might say.

If you are opposed to "American Empire" and want this country to defend its vital interests with a minimal footprint in foreign countries, with minimal risk of being held hostage to foreign powers, then you really want Rumsfeld to be right. He doesn't care whether we keep bases in Iraq; he wants to have such a mobile, expeditionary force that we don't need many in-theater bases at all. Almost the last thing Rumsfeld wants is to be bogged down in an endless counter-insurgency; the absolute last thing he wants is to have ten times as many troops bogged down in an endless peacekeeping effort. Is he so wrong?

Well, he looks like he was wrong on the facts. Whether he drank the Kool-aid or just played along, he backed the folks who backed the wrong horse. He read the local culture and power-structure totally wrong. He did not want to get us into a guerilla war. He got us into a guerilla war.

But the folks baying for his head need to seriously think about the alternatives to the Rumsfeld Doctrine of quick, light and mobile. The Powell Doctrine amounts to looking for your keys where the light is: don't fight based on whether our interests are at stake, but based on whether it's an easy war to win. (Remember, "we do deserts, not mountains"? And he didn't want to do deserts, either.) If the Rumsfeld Doctrine did not take the threat of insurgency seriously, and we're not simply going to refuse to fight wars that might involve counterinsurgency (are we going to acquiesce as Islamist groups take over the southern Philippines, for example? I hope not), then we need to build the force structure in part around such contingencies. But otherwise, it seems to me the things Rumsfeld got wrong were mostly things that shouldn't have been his job; Rice and Powell should have had at least as much to say about the political management of the postwar as Rumsfeld did, and if they didn't then they should be faulted at least as much as Rumsfeld is.

Rumsfeld should go. But whoever replaces him has got to build on what he was doing, not trash his work and go back to the fantasy that big, heavy armored divisions are what we most need to fight the wars of the future. That's what a Powell Doctrinaire will build, while a Shinseki would focus on a force designed to be subordinate to a UN peacekeeping mission. (And if Senator McCain wants to be Kerry's SecDef, I'd love to know what he thinks our force structure should be.)
posted by Noah Millman at 2:40 PM

 
So, with the last post in mind, I'm still primarily interested in how to win. I know why we have to win, and the why has gotten more urgent, not less. I also know that we are losing. I want to know how to win - not get out quickly and paper over our mistake, but win. Not because that's the only way to justify our investment so far (that's a sunk cost) but because the costs of failure in Iraq are huge.

Perforce, therefore, I turn to those who promoted this war, and try to separate the wheat from the chaff - those capable of thinking critically from those who are Administration flaks or, worse, have simply gone off their heads. But even those who still seem entirely sane among this war's supporters - Bob Kagan, say - who clearly see how bad things have gotten, can resort only to happy-talk scenarios as a way out. They can trim their optimistism with pessimistic hedges, but it still amounts to happy-talk.

"Democratize faster" is the new mantra. With elections, we're told, "those who continued to commit violence in Iraq would be understood to be attacking not only the United States, but also the elections process, and therefore democracy." Moreover, "American military actions could be seen not just as an effort to suppress rebellious Iraqi movements but as a vital support for the elections process, and for democracy."

I'm sorry, but this sounds to me like desperate fantasy. Look, get this: the guys who are advocating democracy in Iraq are not the guys shooting at us. The guys shooting at us are shooting at us because Iraq has $1 trillion in oil reserves and whoever takes control of the country controls that incredible store of wealth. So what the "democratize faster" strategy assumes at heart is that the advent of elections will cause the great mass of Iraqis spontaneously to rise up and fight the thugs who are trying to drive us out and take over the country.

Does that sound familiar? It should. It's not terribly different from the pre-war "plan" for the post-war period: don't worry, because ordinary Iraqis will be so pleased to be liberated that they'll shower us with garlands of flowers.

The fact is, lots of Iraqis still want us around - among the Shiites and particularly among the Kurds. But we're still fighting a guerilla war against Sadr's Mahdi Army because *he* doesn't want us around. And he's got friends. If there were a democratically-elected regional governor in Basra, would that mean that we wouldn't have to hunt down Sadr and his boys anymore? Or that thousands of Shiite volunteers would join militias to hunt him down for us? I don't think so. I think we'll still be fighting the same war. What does speedy elections get us?

The only way democratization could work is if there were an identifiable, legitimate Iraqi individual or group of individuals around whom the people of Iraq could rally. The neo-cons actually understood this, which is why they wanted so badly to believe that Ahmad Chalabi was that individual. But he isn't. I'm sorry, but he isn't.

And democratization on a piecemeal basis in the absence of a stable constitutional structure would raise some other thorny problems. Example: the new governor of Basra announces that the oil revenues from his region will now be used only for local purposes; nothing will be sent to the central government. What's our response? Remove him from office? Accept his coup and side openly with the Shiite south against the metropolitan center in Baghdad? This is the kind of thing we're going to have to deal with about six hours after the first democratic election in Iraq. Any proposal to democratize faster has to deal with it, but none of the pundits advocating this course have done so, to my knowledge. We're still making it up as we go along.

There are two other arguments for democratization in the piece: that it will help on the international front and that it will force us to deploy more troops. I think the former is wishful thinking. If Germany really wants to help us out in Iraq, they can do so now. I think that even if they wish to do so, they will not do so until after the American election because the political consequences of appearing to knuckle under to the Americans are too grave. After the American election, things might get better, regardless of who wins (if Kerry, because everyone can turn over a new leaf; if Bush, because with four more years the consequences of refusing to do business are far more serious than they are now, so the possibility of cooperation is greater). But you know, this assumes anyone wants to help out. I'm not convinced they do. I'm not convinced anyone on earth wants to stick their hand into the Iraqi thornbush to help us pull ours out, regardless of the diplomatic sweeteners we supply.

As to the second: what, precisely, is the argument here? The same government that would presumably be calling for new elections (i.e., the Bush Administration) is the one that refuses to send more troops. And the main reason we refuse to *send* more troops is that we don't *have* more troops - not in the numbers needed by most estimates. Saying "we should hold elections so that we have no choice but to send more troops" is just a sillier way of saying, "we should send more troops"; the former amount to forcing our own hand, as if we don't know what we ourselves are doing. (No, don't say it. Please.)
posted by Noah Millman at 1:00 PM

 
I'm getting very depressed.

My boss came up to me the other day and said, "Noah, you've soured on Bush a little, haven't you?" I admitted I had. "This Iraq business looks pretty bad, doesn't it?" I agreed it did. "You know," he said, "I don't know why we're getting all bent out of shape about these prison torture pictures. We shouldn't be upset about that; we should be upset that they're still killing us there. 'Cause it seems to me if this doesn't work, the only solution left is the nuclear one."

Oh, I asked? What's the target?

"Does it matter?"

This is why I'm getting depressed.

I remember a conversation I had in Brooklyn on 9-12; my friend and I were debating just how many and which places needed to be nuked to make sure 9-11 never happened again.

Now, we're just a couple of guys in Brooklyn, and we've certainly cooled down since then - did so within a few days, in fact, to the point that we were no longer openly talking about lobbing nukes hither and yon. But we're a couple of (basically) liberal guys, whatever party we vote for. We believe in freedom, in justice, in decency. We're cosmopolitan people. Yeah, there are people in Brooklyn whose reaction was to rally around the Muslims of Atlantic Avenue to protect them from reprisals (reprisals which, needless to say, never came). But there are a lot more people whose reaction was closer to our own. I think we were fairly typical.

This country's patience with the Middle East is wearing very thin. The Iraq war was launched with a lot of hubris and poor planning, but with a lot of idealism as well. The impetus was the desire to "stop swatting flies", to solve the Middle East's problems, or at least put them on a path to solution. If that looks impossible, people are going to stop looking for a solution. That doesn't mean they'll stop fighting to defend our country's interests. It means they won't care how many innocents on the other side die in the process.
posted by Noah Millman at 10:59 AM

 
Okay, Mr. Frum, let's take it item by item.

Frum: ITEM: Up until now we were supposed to believe that the INC produced no useful intelligence – that it dealt only in fantasies and lies. Now suddenly the INC is accused of being in possession of accurate and valuable sensitive information. How did Chalabi go from know-nothing to valuable intelligence asset overnight?

Me: Um, the old accusation is that Chalabi provided us with lousy or fabricated intelligence to advance his agenda. The new accusation is that Chalabi is feeding the Iranians intelligence about us. Provided to him by, well, us. So, he went from being a useless intelligence asset to us to being a valuable intelligence asset to our enemies because we gave him access to valuable intelligence. Is that so hard to follow?

Frum: ITEM: Chalabi has been caught talking on the phone to the Iranians. But wait – hasn’t the State Department been arguing for months that the US should talk to the Iranians about Iraq? In testimony to Congress in October 2003, State number 2 Richard Armitage explicitly disavowed regime change in Iran and called for discussions with Iran on “appropriate” issues. In January 2004, Secretary of State Powell openly called for “dialogue” – and the Bush administration offered to send Elizabeth Dole and a member of the president’s own family to deliver earthquake aid to Iran. (The British sent Prince Charles.) Since then, the hinting and suggesting have grown ever more explicit. What, pray, is the difference between the policy Chalabi is pursuing and that which his State Department critics want the US to pursue?

Me: Guess what: the State Department and other departments of the American Executive branch had discussions with the Soviet Union all through the Cold War. We had an embassy there and everything. Does that mean that any soldier of fortune claiming to be a friend of America wouldn't be under suspicion if he had regular contacts with the Kremlin? He would? But why? What's he doing that's different from what we're doing? Maybe - just maybe - the difference is that he isn't an officer of the U.S. government, charged with protecting and advancing American interests, and entitled to the presumption that he is acting in good faith until proven otherwise?

Frum: ITEM: Chalabi is now accused of playing a “double game” in Iraqi politics, an offense for which he must forfeit all rights to a role in Iraq’s future. This “no double game” rule is a new and impressive standard for judging our allies in the Arab Middle East. Question: Will that same standard apply to those former Republican Guard generals whom the State Department is now so assiduously promoting? Will it apply to the former Baathists that Lakhdar Brahimi wishes to include in the provisional Iraqi government? Will it apply to Lakhdar Brahimi himself? Will it apply to the Saudi royal family? Will it apply to the Iranians? Or is it only Ahmed Chalabi who must swear undeviating loyalty to the US policy-of-the-day in Iraq?

Me: Ahmad Chalabi is a 100% creation of the American taxpayer. He has no local support, no independent source of funds, and no power base other than the United States Armed Forces. He may or may not be a good guy at heart, but he's not an ally; he's a client. It is one thing for us to deal with countries in the region that have interests that differ from ours, and - guess what? - sometimes rank those other interests higher than keeping America happy. Even the Kurds can plausibly claim that they helped us get rid of Saddam, so they don't just owe us, we owe them. Chalabi has no right to independent interests.

Frum: ITEM: Salon magazine last night published a lengthy attack on Chalabi by John Dizard. In it, former Chalabi business partner Marc Zell calls Chalabi a “treacherous, spineless turncoat,” for failing to deliver on Chalabi’s alleged promises to open Iraq to trade with Israel. I don’t know that these promises were ever made – and if made, I wonder whether Chalabi ever suggested that they would rank first on a new Iraqi government’s list of priorities. But never mind that: Chalabi has not exercised executive power in Iraq for even a single day. How exactly was it ever possible that he would carry out any promise about anything to anyone?

Me: Hey, don't breeze by the fact that key Chalabi promoters picked their man because he promised to normalize relations between Iraq and Israel. A legitimate case can be made for that goal as a foreign policy priority, but it seems to me the neo-cons have been spilling a lot of ink denying that Israel had anything to do with the case for war against Iraq. But even letting that breeze by: is Frum claiming that Dizard made the line up? Or is he saying that Dizard was a fool for taking Chalabi's promises at face value? Or what, precisely, does he mean by "How exactly was it ever possible that he would carry out any promise about anything to anyone?" Is he seriously suggesting that the problem with our war effort so far is that we haven't installed Chalabi as dictator yet, so that he'd be able to fulfill his promises to guys like Zell?

Frum says that Chalabi is "one of the very few genuine liberal democrats to be found at the head of any substantial political organization anywhere in the Arab world" and "compared to just about every other political leader in the Arab world - the imperfect Ahmed Chalabi is nontheless a James bleeping Madison." Note what he doesn't say: that if Ahmad Chalabi - James bleeping Madison though he be - were on a ballot today in Iraq, he would not have a prayer of getting elected. I suppose Frum would say that the people of Iraq have not yet learned to appreciate the James bleeping Madison in their midst, but with time and tutelage they'll no doubt see the error of their ways.

This has gotten beyond embarrassing. It's become dangerous.
posted by Noah Millman at 12:30 PM

 
Tell it like it is, George.
posted by Noah Millman at 8:44 AM