From the very beginning, the pitch has been:
there is no room in this war for oscillations.
No room for nuances. Things are black and white.
You are either with us or against us.
They in 'them' pose such serious existential threat
that the we in "us" have got to fight a very dirty,
bloody slug match to the finish.
No doubts, no questions, no hesitations, no pauses allowed.
So in order to channel this primitive impulse,
you've got to have a sense for who they are
that propose to lead this dirty fighting
and what they aim to accomplish.
Especially since you find the other side rather creepy
and have had your own mini bouts— ineffective mostly.
But, it has now simply become a question of joining forces.
Hence the question of trust!
What is the vision of those who propose to lead you
and promise to support you? What is their real beef?
What is this fight about for them?
What might they mean by victory?
But here is where things start to get messy.
So it has been the claim of their more outspoken ideologues:
"We" are hated for who we are and not what we do.
But this war has come about not because of who "we" are,
but what "we've" failed to do.
A failure to project invincibility led us to this mess.
They can still hate us as intensely as they have always,
and yet, we'll be safe to lead our merry lives
for as long as we have those terrible, fiery iron fists.
We don't have to alter anything.
We'll just send our boys and girls to flatten them.
End of the problem! And just to be on the safe side,
no pictures of those who've paid dearly for our calculations.
Herein we have the first doubts about trust:
The "enemy" however ill defined,
has never been as formidable as they've made it sound,
or they couldn't have thought them so easily controllable.
That's why they can counsel us to forget the "Arab streets."
Those streets are filled with" impotent" men,
and stink of hot air which can ultimately be quite easily managed.
After all, they have lost every major war they fought in,
and been brow beaten to submission by some very low octane rulers.
That's why we've been getting those constant comparisons.
"This hasn't been all that bad now really, has it?"
That is the constant chime.
It's a war but not really a war.
Just look at those casualties in percentiles --
negligible for what we've been doing.
As an afterthought, we have had one incidental feature
to the invincibility thesis: The Democracy creation project.
Even when it means, or perhaps because it actually means,
wars or bombing entire countries into smithereens.
As the argument goes, expansionism and ferocity
has always been in our nature:
We have a mission.
We are idealists.
We fight for the underdog.
A classic case of an ill defined project, if I ever saw one.
They want to be the scariest chelovak in town
while also pretending to look out for the weak.
Here is where things become even more confused and confusing.
It isn't as if these good folk who propose these policies
have been out of power for any considerable length of time.
Some of the meanest, most ferocious thugs and petty tyrants
in the region have been their best friends,
their paid agents or still to this day their closest chums.
You don't have to agree with any of their arguments
to see what conundrum they're faced with--
If you try to be everything to everyone,
you actually end up being nothing to no one.
Again, at issue is that quaint matter of trust.
If your aim is to be the biggest, meanest thug in town,
then the type of folk who would naturally be attracted
to those qualities are going to have second thoughts
about working with you, having seen you in action.
Look where some of their old buddies have ended up:
Dead, hiding or in prison. One of the most prominent,
one of their best friends of recent past,
who maimed, raped, butchered and gassed,
is sitting in a cell waiting to die.
Their other buddies must be feeling pretty insecure by now.
But that's the nature of politics for you,
and the inevitable future of all thugs no matter how big.
Alliances of convenience come and go.
But they are not content simply annoying the other thugs.
These very same people who have had awfully close encounters
with the ruffians we talked about, with pictures to show for it,
get terribly nasty and impugn your motives with anti-Americanism,
or treason, after your slightest reference to their history.
You can't make the memory of those encounters disappear.
You can't wish history away: Every time I see a close relative,
I am reminded again of who helped poison gas him.
It's basically the same story practically all over.
Even assuming that history started in 1979,
Mr. Boot and Co. should re-do their math
before sounding too self-righteous or indignant.
They always lecture, and yet refuse to own their deeds.
They have never been wrong.
They have never done wrong.
Doesn't help their credibility in the slightest
when they refuse to level.
From here on, it gets even messier!
They say, go on, my fight is now also your fight.
Join it. We know you have been disenfranchised,
and it's time for you to step in and take charge of your lives.
But their message of hate, venom and bloodlust is too loud.
Their publications are filled with them.
That's because, it is not even clear to them, anymore,
who they aspire to be, or even who they actually are.
Some of the ideologues and their fellow travelers say repeatedly:
"Look, we have those nukes. We have used them in the past twice,
and if the need arise, we're prepared to do it again."
Thugs aren't likable--even the biggest ones.
The prospect of a grotesque death has always been looming overhead:
By hanging, stoning, hacking, gassing, swords, bullets, bombs
or a terribly nasty chronic illness wreaking havoc.
Now just one more thing to worry about!
But you're half hoping that you're elsewhere
when the angel comes for you, or, at least, busy having fun
with a rather brilliant, old-fashioned, cantankerous Spartan
of a dominatrix to notice the painful end.
So life goes on as it has always.
Besides, being a thug is ultimately about control, isn't it?
Especially since this thug persona has to do
with the need to protect a life style.
A life style that even the most outspoken promoters
of sacrifice for others appear awfully inflexible about.
As delicious as it might be for the more psychopathic fellows
in those think tanks, extermination is not an option.
Perhaps twenty, thirty years down the road if this keeps up.
But not just yet! Remember, this is not the last century either.
Any delusion of life as usual, with endless shopping and meandering,
would come to an abrupt end after even limited nuclear strikes.
A premature end to those aspirations of claiming entire millennia.
One becomes not only terribly incredulous, but also hypersensitive.
Who are they and what do they really want?
What qualities matter to them most? What are their principles?
Are there any? One is now after tangible, easy to understand signs.
Remember, we are not supposed to do nuances.
The ideologues and their sycophants claim that you can't be trusted.
Your religion makes you pretend all is well when things are not.
Then they praise the British profusely for their "stiff upper lips."
They pretend they are the most principled fighters
of those nasty "isms" -- Anti-Semitism, racism and such.
Yet, their routine pitches and talking points reflect
the crudest historical building blocks of these ancient vulgarities.
They claim they are really concerned about the suffering.
Yet, they give us Abu Ghraib and those Club Gitmo shirts.
They want to see even more humiliation and flattened cities.
One, two, many Fallujahs is their war cry.
They expect you to start civil war,
and murder and mayhem in your neighborhood.
When a grieving mother lands in their own backyard,
they lose their temper at having lost their peace,
and one shoots a rifle and vandalizes setups
intended to commemorate the memory of the fallen.
The likes of Horowitz yell inanities on TV.
Drudge does what drudge does best,
and all other sort of people join in,
to do some nasty smears.
All the signs, even the "simpler" ones,
now give one a nasty feeling at the gut level.
How are you to trust their promise of a benign hegemony
when they can't even offer succor to a grieving mother?
So no matter how you cut it, the visceral doubts continue to grow:
There is no trust.
That primitive instinct doesn't want to be channeled their way,
even when you want it to.
Especially since you continue to have your own mini-bouts
with those creepy Islamist folk, and can use a bit of help and guidance.
What are they really after?
Who are they, really?
What's their vision?
Who do they want to be?
The biggest thug or a liberator?
Partner or a boss?
Savior or a cold blooded killer?
Bright eyed and principled or cunning and cynical?
Caring or callous?
Champion of the underdog or a mean bully?
Even if they are not explicitly clear about who they aspire to be,
signs point to the suspicion that we are dealing
with callous, mean bullies who expect steep sacrifices from everyone,
but want to be accountable to no one.
They go on to take credit for every good,
and yet are unwilling to even acknowledge the consequences
of their calculations gone badly, or those nasty policies of the past.
Self serving, obnoxious, mean-spirited bullies always go down.
It is just a matter of time, a question of how many of us
they manage to finally take down with them.
Meanwhile, the mini-battles will have to go on
until we get more trustworthy leaders with a clearer vision.
-- brooding persian aka H.
August 19, 2005
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