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WB: Limited Hangout
Billmon:
[T]he newfound feistiness of the Democratic minority, coupled with the revolt of the GOP moderates, offers at least a faint hope that future Phase II reports (whenever they appear) will amount to something more than just fresh coats of whitewash on the biggest political scandal (and foreign policy fiasco) since the Vietnam War.
Of course, now that the policy agenda has moved on to an even bigger prospective fiasco — war with Iran — that also may not mean much. Still, it’s at least some minor comfort (if only for history’s sake) to know the Cheney administration’s next plan to wage aggressive war might be investigated a bit more aggressively …
Limited Hangout
Clarity, clarity, anything for a moment of clarity!….
So I suggest the following: let’s stop talking about a “War on Terror,” which doesn’t describe much of anything, and talk instead about a “War on Islam,” which describes a whole lot of everything. If someone prefers to call it a “War on Islamofascism,” I’ll be happy to oblige, so long as we can agree that this isn’t a “War on Buddhofascism,” or “Hindufascism,” or whatever. And let’s acknowledge what’s obvious to everyone: this war only got started in earnest when the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War suffered the political equivalent of global warming (i.e. it melted down). America, ever in need of an enemy as immense and amorphous as its own military machine, fetched up “Islamofascism” just in time to keep the money flowing in the right (the military) direction….
But what’s the probable lifespan of this war? Is it good for another fifty years of military inflation? If I have any doubts about this, I’ll have to attribute them to that term “Islamofascism,” which is a little wobbly for the role assigned. It really can’t do the job of “Communism,” because, as we all recall, “Communism” was also “Godless,” “atheistical,” and “materialistic,” and that’s something we worshipful Americans could all agree to despise, to kill, and to rejoice in the death thereof. But “Islamofascism”? It’s a Godfearing thing, as mean and clean as anything we Puritans could hope for.
(Or have we become, shall we say, “Godless” in our own turn? Is this thinkable? Is it even possible? If so, it’s a turn of events that could only be called “historical”…. And so your “end of history,” my dear Francis Fukuyama, is really done for; your little theory is finished for good and all, thanks to those path-breaking Americans and their war against believers in a “one true God”–the very same Abrahamic and monotheistic God that we invoked while snuffing out “Godless Communism”….).
But I don’t believe it. I can’t believe we’ll sustain a fifty-years war against a religion, even if we can fool ourselves into calling it a “War on Terror”. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to find a new and more comforting target–one that we’re actually used to. A war against a race, for example, or a language, or a little bit of both: a war against Arabs, say, and against folks who happen to speak Arabic….
Ah yes, the very war that we already have! It’s not a “War on Terror,” or even a “War on Islamofascism”; it’s a “War on Arabia”–a war on “godless Arabia,” perhaps?–and it’s good for trillions of dollars. And if this “Arabia” doesn’t really exist–and in truth it doesn’t really exist–we can always count on the folks at Disney to invent it. Can’t you just see the promo crawl across the screen? “Arabia: the worlds biggest amusement park, where boys with toys can go on a real manhunt….for millions of ‘Osama bin Ladins'”….
That’s enough clarity for the moment. It’s past my bedtime
Posted by: alabama | Sep 11 2006 5:07 utc | 27
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