enough already

Let's begin by stipulating a few things.

The actions of those few soldiers (and possibly civilians) at Abu Ghraib were moronic, sadistic, and wrong.

All implicated should, and will, be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

Even if the total number implicated eventually climbs into the dozens (which is doubtful), that would still represent a vanishingly small percentage of the total number of US servicemen and women serving honorably in Iraq.

So far, not so controversial. But if I have any readers of liberal persuasion, this is perhaps where we will begin to differ.

First: The larger scandal—as distinct from the crimes perpetrated against some of the prisoners—is the complete breakdown of military discipline within the units in question. The root causes of this breakdown must be fully exposed, even (or especially) if it was due in part to gender integration. I am not casting aspersions on the majority of military personnel, who do not engage in proscribed sexual activity with their fellow soldiers. Nonetheless: like so many liberal notions, the idea that men and women can serve in close quarters, under stressful conditions, without an unacceptable level of hanky-panky is yet another triumph of ill-founded hope over basic human experience.

Case in point.

Second: Our heroic press needs to buy a goddamn clue.

It’s all Iraq troubles, all the time, in the Sunday Washington Post’s non-national-news sections.

On H3 in the Arts section, a debate about monster movies features a picture of the naked pyramid, with the caption, “An image from Abu Ghraib. Hollywood’s attempts at horror pale in comparison.” (Below it, Godzilla.) On C8, in the Metro section in an article about the Blue Angels performing at Andrews Air Force base, the crowd reaction includes, “Like many in the crowd yesterday, the Reeds said they strongly disapproved of the prisoner abuses shown in the photographs from Abu Ghraib.” Discussion of the prison abuse continues for six paragraphs.

Let's take roll: The brutal Afghan winter and the spectre of mass starvation; a quagmire to be found in a regrouping pause on the way to Baghdad; mass looting of Iraqi national treasures that wasn't; Dowdifying of presidential quotes in a vain attempt to buoy Joe Wilson's accusations against the Administration; the brutal Baghdad summer; a massive Shi'a uprising that wasn't; &tc.

And now an abuse scandal of massive proportions complete with cover-up that goes all! the way! up! the chain of command! that has thoroughly discredited both the Bush presidency. Except, of course, that it's not massive, there's not any evidence of cover-up, and it has not discredited the Administration any more than the lunatic fringe of Democratic Underground can be considered a blemish on all Americans. But it is nonetheless a scandal—indeed, the first genuine one that the press has been able to seize upon. No wonder it becomes incorporated into stories about Godzilla.

Memo to our fourth estate: Enough already—if not for the sake of your own shredded integrity, then because you may well precipitate severe blowback upon your precious Boston Brahmin.

Yet the press is not alone in going to extremes over Abu Ghraib.

Colin Powell, US secretary of state, sought to placate Arab fury over the Abu Ghraib prisoners scandal yesterday but his apology and promises of justice appeared to leave business and political leaders gathered in Jordan unconvinced.

The intensifying diplomatic activity came after US state department officials privately acknowledged a failure to sufficiently work with foreign countries to win support for its war in Iraq last year.

Thus far, we have had the President's unprecedented acknowledgement of the abuses on Arab television; SecDef Rumsfeld's apology during his trip to Baghdad last week; and most recently, Powell's apology in Jordan over the weekend.

It is beginning to get unseemly. Not just because "Arab fury" is pathologically hypocritical: but also because the Administration appears to be fumbling towards the mirage of pan-Arabism.

We have stumbled in Abu Ghraib. But the logic of Abu Ghraib isn't the logic of the Iraq war. We should be able to know the Arab world as it is. We should see through the motives of those in Cairo and Amman and Ramallah and Jeddah, now outraged by Abu Ghraib, who looked away from the terrors of Iraq under the Baathists. Our account is with the Iraqi people: It is their country we liberated, and it is their trust that a few depraved men and women, on the margins of a noble military expedition, have violated. We ought to give the Iraqis the best thing we can do now, reeling as we are under the impact of Abu Ghraib -- give them the example of our courts and the transparency of our public life. What we should not be doing is to seek absolution in other Arab lands.

Take this scene from last week, which smacks of the confusion -- and panic -- of our policies in the aftermath of a cruel April: 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. We are still held captive by Pan-Arab politics. We struck into Iraq to free that country from the curse of the Arabism that played havoc with its politics from its very inception as a nation-state. We had thought, or implied, or let Iraqis think, that a new political order would emerge, that the Pan-Arab vocation that had been Iraq's poison would be no more. [...]

We can't have this peculiar mix of imperial reach, coupled with such obtuseness. It is odd, and defective in the extreme, that President Bush chose the official daily of the Egyptian regime, Al-Ahram, for yet another interview, another expression of contrition over Abu Ghraib. In the anti-Americanism of Egypt (of Al-Ahram itself), the protestations of our virtue are of no value. In our uncertainty, we now walk into the selective rage of the Egyptians, a popular hostility tethered to the policies of a regime eager to see us fail in Iraq -- a regime afraid that the Iraqis may yet steal a march on Egypt into modernity. Cairo has no standing in Iraq. Why not take representatives of a budding Iraqi publication into the sanctuary of the Oval Office and offer a statement of contrition by our leader?

We have a moral obligation to make amends to those who were wronged at our hands.

But enough already of the public self-flagellation.

UPDATE: Guess I could have spared myself the writing of this, and merely pointed to Mark Steyn.

malice, part III; or the banality of evil

The news of late has me in a funk, though if one knows where to look it is far from all bad. But the narrative filtered through our mainline press is nothing if not consistent: the deceivers and fools of the present Administration have led us to disaster; as in Vietnam a generation ago, our young soldiers are dying for a cause ill-defined at best; and as Abu Ghraib demonstrates, the pretense of bringing democracy to Iraq was never more than a sham.

I strongly contest each of those claims. But at times like tonight, it is difficult to escape the sense of swimming upstream against a torrent generated by those who see in George W. Bush a foe more lethal than any shadowy Islamist network, and who will do anything within their considerable power to prevent his reelection.

The other day, while taking a break by the Al-Hamra Hotel pool, fringed with the usual cast of tattooed defence contractors, I was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials.

She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now — there was no choice about this — going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I’ll spare you most of the details because you know the script — no WMD, no ‘imminent threat’ (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera.

But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.

She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry’s poll numbers. ‘Well, that’s different — that would be Americans,’ she said, haltingly. ‘I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.’ That’s one way of putting it.

[Link via InstaPundit; registration required.]

Of such stuff our mainline press is made. And there is but one word to describe the mindset that sees the death of innocents as desirable for a political end:

Evil.

Yet this evil does not wear the same face as that displayed in the slaughter of a hostage while the camera rolls, or in the burning and dismemberment of civilians whose final sin was in taking a wrong turn. Rather, it is an evil practiced by those who no longer believe in evil, except perhaps as manifested by reactionaries who dare impede the march of Progress. It is an evil that flourishes in postmodernist groupthink, that is prosperous and self-satisfied, that pursues soft power in its lust for social control. It is, in Hannah Arendt's memorable formulation, an evil utterly banal.

Not that such banality renders it any less vile.

lost in translation

The latest cinematic version of the Iliad opens this Friday. Based on the cast—which includes Peter O'Toole, Brad Pitt, and Sean Bean, among other luminaries—and the price tag (some $200 million), Troy should be one astonishing spectacle.

The operative word, of course, being should. Unfortunately, some of the advance word at geekdom central has been less than stellar.

Guess we will find out this weekend. But in the meantime, there is always the original—if not Homer's text as written, then at least Robert Fitzgerald's acclaimed 1974 translation.

But now the son of Peleus turned on Agamemnon
and lashed out at him, letting his anger ride in execration:

"Sack of wine, you with your cur's eyes and your antelope heart!
You've never had the kidney to buckle on armor among the troops,
or make a sortie with picked men—oh no, that way death might lie.
Safer, by god, in the middle of the army—is it not?—to
commandeer the prize of any man who stands up to you!
Leech! Commander of trash!"

You know, these days we just don't insult with the same style as they used to.

The cause of Achilles' anger was the demand by Agamemnon that he give up his war prize, the fair Briseis (whose husband, incidentally, Achilles had killed in battle). This episode takes up much of the early books of the Iliad. Achilles' insubordination in time spread, as this charge from Thersites (described as "a blabbing soldier") demonstrates:

"Agamemnon! What have you to groan about? What more
can you gape after? Bronze fills all your huts,
bronze and the hottest girls—we hand them over
to you, you first, when any stronghold falls..."

And here I thought hottie was of recent vintage.

O Canada

Last year during the lead-up the to Second Gulf War, our northern neighbor's Liberal government seldom missed an opportunity to cast aspersions on the Bush Administration in particular, and US policy in general. Much of this animus can perhaps be ascribed to then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who—to borrow Mark Steyn's memorable synopsis—had turned Canada into "not so much a one-party state as a one-man state." Even so, when Chretien finally stepped down as PM late last fall, there seemed little reason to predict that a new tone would sound from Ottawa. Old habits do after all die hard.

So color me surprised indeed.

Prime Minister Paul Martin says he believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and they've fallen into terrorists' hands. Martin said the threat of terrorism is even greater now than it was following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because terrorists have acquired nuclear, chemical and biological weapons from the toppled Iraqi leader.

"The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don't know where they are," Martin told a crowd of about 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal. "That means terrorists have access to all of that."

[Update: Note that—contrary to the reporter's claim—Martin did not claim that terrorists procured nuclear weapons from Saddam, only that there has been nuclear proliferation. It seems that sloppy paraphrasing is not the exclusive province of Maureen Dowd.]

The PM's comments run counter to opinions expressed by leaders in such countries as France and Germany who have accused the U.S. and Britain of fudging evidence of WMDs to justify the war against Iraq.

When asked to assess the threat level since Saddam was captured by U.S. troops, Martin said he believes it has increased.

"I believe that terrorism will be, for our generation, what the Cold War was to generations that preceded us," he said. "I don't think we're out of it yet."

Martin disagreed with former prime minister Jean Chretien, who publicly blamed poverty for terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks. "The cause of terrorism is not poverty, it is hatred."

Did I say that I was surprised? Make that gobsmacked: A Canadian head of state appears to understand root causes better than—oh, let's see: Bill Clinton, perhaps?

What's more, Martin's speech this week does not appear to have been a fluke. Consider this analysis of another speech by the prime minister, this time before the Woodrow Wilson Center on April 30:

With yesterday's landmark speech, Paul Martin tacitly acknowledged what Canada's foreign policy establishment has refused to accept for decades: that the United Nations is a failure, for which there is no solution.

The Prime Minister's proposed alternative is a new international body, the G-20 summit of world leaders, representative of North and South, developed and developing, rich and poor: a working group unfettered by the UN's bureaucracy and its anachronistic Security Council. [...]

After decades of working closely with our major allies to confront the global threats of fascism and communism, Canada began to drift away, increasingly investing diplomatic capital in the United Nations, even as we undermined our traditional commitments by slashing the defence budget.

As a result, by the 1990s Canada was committed to a policy of multilateralism, addressing the world's conundrums primarily through the United Nations, although other forums such as NATO could be used in a pinch.

The problem with UN-based multilateralism is that it distances Canada from its natural allies, leaving us hostage to an institution over which we have little influence.

Memo to Kofi Annan: If you've lost Canada, then you are truly, utterly screwed.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

moving on up

Blogger in arms Ace of the Ace of Spades HQ has shiny new digs that may be found here. The new url is rather catchy: Ace dot myoo dot nyoo.

In truth they look a lot like the old digs, just no longer hosted at Blog*Spot. But do go check them out, especially if you've never experienced Ace's uniquely trippy mindscape.

Have a good weekend. I'll be up and running again by Tuesday night.

oops

Posting will, once again, be light this week.

I thought that I would be able to eschew scratching about for a job this summer, after taking on extra teaching duties during the past academic year. Turns out not.

So must deal with that unpleasantness this week, and then turn to happier pursuits as Sam goes through her PhD commencement on Sunday.

Well, at least one of us has a real job.

something is afoot

The pseudonymous Wretchard of the Belmont Club has been without doubt the single best source for analysis of the continuing Marine operations in Fallujah. Today, he dispels some of the confusion regarding the "pullout" of US forces from the front lines. Something called the Fallujah Protection Army is arriving to relieve the leathernecks, a development that some view with trepidation.

But this new Iraqi fighting force is not cut from the same cloth as the police and military units which earlier this month balked in the face of challenges from Sunni and Shia insurgents. As Wretchard notes:

The obvious question of where the Fallujah Protection Army came from is only slightly less interesting than how [Iraqi Major General Jassem Mohamed] Saleh came to head it. This article from the Egyptian Al Ahram describes the ongoing formation of the new Iraqi Army, made up quite literally, of a Kurd here, a Sunni there, and a Shi'ite in between. Many of the units they are to command are being trained in Jordan. More are being trained there and equipped by Australia. [...]

One of the unresolved questions about the new Iraqi Army is not only its command structure, but its size, allowable weaponry and ethnic composition. Many have argued, quite plausibly, that a lightly armed 40,000 man army is far too small to secure a country as large and lawless as Iraq, which is surrounded by terrorist hotbeds on every side. However that may be, some Jordanian trained units have been fighting beside Americans in Fallujah for a while.

And fighting quite effectively, as this report makes clear.

This may well be a first look at the future of Iraq, or at least its new military: an integrated and meritocratic army which is not only better trained, but that also will be motivated to fight for the stability of the country. The way this struggle is won will be extremely important. US Marines killing or otherwise neutralizing insurgent thugs is good, but having it done by a strong and efficient Iraqi force could well prove invaluable in uniting the nation.

Watch Fallujah in the coming weeks. More is transpiring there than news reports might suggest.

the anti-Beeb

Now playing at National Review Online: It's DerbRadio!

John Derbyshire is one of my favorite NROniks—British expat (now naturalized US citizen), curmudgeon, mathematics writer, onetime Bruce Lee movie extra, and constant source of irritation for Andrew Sullivan.

And he's got a great radio voice, to boot: perhaps a little unpolished, but worth any dozen oh-so-wry socialist sympathizers from the BBC.

NRO has kindly provided the broadcast in four different formats. Do go give him a listen.

nasty trickses

I'm still playing catch-up with the news—last week of teaching and all that—but one would have to be distracted indeed to miss the signs of John Kerry's forthcoming implosion. Our occasional guest blogger Doug Heinz tells me that his Democratic acquaintances in California are already despondent.

Why? Well, this could be Exhibit A:

Matthews: "If there was an exaggeration of WMD, exaggeration of the danger, exaggeration implicitly of the connection to al Qaeda and 9/11, what's the motive for this, what's the 'why?' Why did Bush and Cheney and the ideologues around take us to war? Why do you think they did it?"

Kerry: "It appears, as they peel away the weapons of mass destruction issue, and --we may yet find them, Chris. Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, two months from now, you find some weapons. You may. But you certainly didn't find them where they said they were, and you certainly didn't find them in the quantities that they said they were. And they weren't found, and I have talked to some soldiers who have come back who trained against the potential of artillery delivery, because artillery was the way they had previously delivered and it was the only way they knew they could deliver. Now we found nothing that is evidence of that kind of delivery, so the fact is that as you peel it away I think it comes down to this larger ideological and neocon concept of fundamental change in the region and who knows whether there are other motives with respect to Saddam Hussein, but they did it because they thought they could, and because they misjudged exactly what the reaction would be and what they could get away with."

I dare you to read that answer again—all 189 words—and tell me just what the hell the Senator is trying to say.

Give up? Then click here.

In the meantime, let's move on to Exhibit B.

On the Friday before his MEET THE PRESS appearance, Dem presidential hopeful John Kerry flew his Washington, DC hairdresser to Pittsburgh for a touch-up, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Cristophe stylist Isabelle Goetz, who handles Kerry's hair issues, made the trek to Pittsburgh, campaign sources reveal.

"Her entire schedule had to be rearranged," a top source explains.

A Kerry campaign spokesman refuses to clarify if Goetz flew by private jet on April 16 or on the official Kerry For President campaign plane.

The total expense for the hair touch-up is estimated to be more than $1000, insiders tell DRUDGE.

Mark my words: before this summer is old, some disaffected Democrat somewhere will begin popularizing the slogan Vote for the Pr*ck: It's Important.

Finally, if you're puzzled about the title of this post: Go read Frank J.

Things are looking pretty dour for John Kerry right now, and everything he does seems to make it worse. First there is his attempt to hold two simultaneous but conflicting positions like being for and against the war, for and against funding the troops, etc. He won't even need Bush for the Presidential debates; he could just do them Gollum style, making a statement, and then rebutting vehemently right after.

"We must fund the troops in Iraq!"

Camera angle on Kerry changes. "No! I hateses funding the nasty troopses!"

(Link via InstaPundit.)

"the professoriate and the truth"

After a week of following the news much less closely than is my wont, I am a little slow on getting back into a daily posting rhythm. So tonight I'll start with an easy one.

Last week at the unfortunately named Tech Central Station, John Kekes offered the text of his March lecture before the North American Philosophy of Education Society meeting in Toronto. It's long, but worth the read.

Here is part of Keke's opening remarks:

I now ask you to consider the stifling of opinions on our campuses. When did you last hear of anyone defending fundamentalist Christianity or the superiority of Western civilization? Who has been allowed to express the opinion on our campuses that homosexuality is a perversion, that there exist racial differences in intelligence, that women's place is in the home, that the Holocaust is a fiction, or that America is a force for the good in a corrupt world?

You may say that such opinions are justly stifled because their expression harms others. But if you thought that, you would be well-advised to think again. For if by harm you mean, narrowly, serious injury, such as murder, torture, or battery, then neither the opinions nor their expression harms others. And if by harm you mean, broadly, injury to the interest of the people affected, then you would have to be opposed to all laws and regulations which prohibit people from doing what they want or place burden on them that they do not wish to bear. You would, then, be committed to the absurdity of having to oppose laws about taxation, social security, immigration, and health care, since they injure the interests of those who are forced to pay for them. The truth of the matter is that the opinions stifled on our campuses run counter to a prevailing orthodoxy that abuses its power and prevents the expression of opinions it opposes. [...]

What makes this coercive moralizing even worse is the hypocritical double-talk by which it is presented. For the stifling of opinions is said to be required by toleration. Its defenders advocate toleration of discrimination in favor of minorities and women (but not against them); of obscenity that offends religious believers and patriots (but not African-Americans and Jews); of unions' spending large sums in support of political causes (but not corporations' doing the same); of pot smoking (but not cigarette smoking); of abortion (but not capital punishment); of the public lies of Clinton (but not of Nixon); of hate speech against fundamentalists (but not homosexuals); of sex education in elementary schools (but not prayer); of jobs open only to union members (but not private clubs open only to males); of lies about American imperialism (but not the Holocaust); of sacrilegious of language (but not of language that uses "he" to refer to all human beings); of scientific research into just about anything (except racial differences in intelligence); and so on and on. We are awash in this ocean of hypocrisy, lies, and falsifications.

Strong stuff, though with the considerable virtue of being true. Kekes is to be commended for taking his message before his fellow educators. I imagine that it didn't go over altogether well.

Yet not all news is grim. In some places, the rot has not penetrated to the core, even on a campus as stultifyingly correct as that of Indiana University. Consider my department: History and Philosophy of Science. I'm better acquainted with the professors on the philosophy side, although some of the following applies to our historians as well.

Philosophy of science is arguably the closest of all disciplines within the humanities to science proper. (I'll address what exactly philosophy of science is in an essay this summer.) Indeed, it's not unheard of for our faculty to publish in science journals, or to work jointly on theoretical problems with researchers in (say) physics or biology. But being a natural scientist, or a professor in a field that falls close to the sciences, does not in itself guarantee immunity to the stifling groupthink that Kekes describes, even though the very nature of these disciplines can provide perspective often lacking in the core humanities.

Which is why I consider myself so fortunate. I've no doubt that most of my professors are politically liberal; that is, after all, the default orientation within academia. Yet several are at least vaguely aware of my religious and political inclinations, in particular those who I asked to provide recommendation letters in support of a fellowship application at a certain (conservative) think tank. But insofar as I can tell my personal beliefs have mattered not a whit.

Anecdotal evidence? Well, yeah. And as a good friend remarked over the weekend, things might have turned out differently had my thesis proposal been a robust defense of Intelligent Design. Nonetheless, in my little corner of the humanities it seems that research is still appraised on its merits, and not by adherence to some totalitarian academic code.