December 09, 2006

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF INANITIES: THE BAKER-HAMILTON REPORT

"It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion."--William Inge

        Two weeks after the Iraq war began, Horsefeathers penned the following warning:

"...A form of Utopianism is on the loose, a neo-Wilsonian urge to make the world safe for democracy again.

Even now, after barely two weeks of war, the chimerical idea that the Iraqis are longing to breathe the free air of democracy is beginning to dissolve..."

        Now, almost 4 years later, the fool's errand has become the terrible problem we anticipated. An electoral consensus has formed that we must do something different. But what? For the answer our media elites look for guidance to the doddering Arabist Jew bashers, led by James ("Fuck the Jews") Baker and architects of previous foreign policy disasters. And what have they produced? The same old, same old.
        Horsefeathers takes this as confirmation of Kipling's "truth" about human nature:
"...the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,/
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.."
        Does anyone remember how the mainstream media hated James Baker for his role in the 2000 Presidential election? All is forgiven now. Listening to NPR the day following release of the ISG report you might have thought Mr. Baker had ascended the Lord's throne. Yet reading the ISG's farrago of jejune nonsense, far from being the product of wisdom and knowledge, it expresses a childish utopianism even more dangerous than the Wilsonian one that has bedeviled us in Iraq. Perhaps Baker and Hamilton need a resupply of Viagra, for their report reads like something written by 13 year old girls attending a model UN meeting. It assumes our enemies are motivated by sweet reason, rather than violent homicidal urges. It fits rather neatly in the Neville Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin castrati tradition, calling for appeasement and offering up Israel as Chamberlain once offered up Czechoslovakia. Additionally, it ladels into the appeasement stew large helpings of Jew hatred and masochism, the sort of cant that explains the unmistakable tone of orgasmic glee on NPR. It urges us to sit down and negotiate the future of Israel--absent Israel-- with the Hitler wannabe, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the rest of the Middle East's primitive tyrants. It deserves the reply Churchill gave to Chamberlain when he said:
"The Prime Minister has believed in addressing Herr Hitler through the language of sweet reasonableness. I have believed that he was more open to the language of the mailed fist..."
        The most laughable part of the whole enterprise is use of the word "realist" to describe the latest group of fantasists, but then again, in dreams, reality can be whatever the dreamer wishes. Lewis Carroll described our post-modern condition long before PoMo theorists decoupled words from meaning and it surely applies to the James Baker school of "realist" thinkers.

        "...When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less..."'
        The only "realists" we can discern are the Iranians, who immediately understood the ISG report as signifying weakness and retreat on the part of our governing and opinion elites. They have announced yet again that they are hellbent on producing the materials for nuclear weapons and will brook no interference.
        President Bush, if he has not been completely worn down by the incessant attacks, has another chance to show the kind of leadership he exemplified post 9-11. He should explain why the Baker-Hamilton solutions are unacceptable to a great nation. He ought to then indicate that all diplomatic efforts to dissuade the Iranians have failed, and announce that we are undertaking an air campaign to destroy their nuclear facilities. This would serve to instill fear and respect in our enemies who need to understand the power of the mailed fist. Taking out Iran's nuclear facilities would not, however, be enough. To drive our message of survival home, we should destroy Iran's oil refineries, thereby collapsing their economy. This would weaken the ruling mullahs enough, we suspect, to allow for a new regime to emerge. It would also drive up the price of oil--a good thing as it would speed up our shift away from dependence on Middle Eastern tyrants. Meanwhile in Iraq, we should (as we recommended in 2003)station American forces in the Kurdish north where we're welcome, let the Shias and Sunnis continue their 1400 year old mutual slaughter and use special forces and intelligence data to insure that al Qaeda and other foreign forces don't try to establish bases in non-Kurdish Iraq. Oh, and by the way, we should divert a few of the planes from Iran to Syria to leave our calling card for Mr. Assad. The President would tap the latent sentiment of Americans who want a clear path to victory in World War IV.