Hundreds of people have died in Iraq in the past week. And the response has been less than enthusiastic to the PR stunt that is the slightly revamped version of "Operation We Should Have Lunch Together. Alone. Without Each Other" -- unsurprising, as it didn't enjoy a hell of a lot of success last time...
So what's a flailing, failing administration to do? Easy: since they're always being called on their abject brainlessness, why not roll out the PhD Generals, led by none other than Ammianus "Petraeus" Marcellinus? They kill people and they write essays? I can already hear, via the magic of the Intertubes, the fapfapfap over Tacitus's keyboard... It's pretty sad. The only reason this is a huge news story is because for once we're putting people in charge who aren't terminally stupid.
Pardon me for not having a doctorate in warology, but it's clear that the "fortress mentality" lamented by Petraeus and his fellow warrior-scholars is only part of the problem, and possibly not the most fundamental. US soldiers and marines are not centurions or British East India Company soldiers or legionnaires, and the Iraqi soldiers are not our sepoys. The prevailing, apparently unalterable mindset of the military is, if America is in danger, to eliminate the danger -- kill the bad guys and come home. They are simply not suited to pacifying and occupying for the long term a colonial acquisition, which is obviously what many on the Right had hoped Iraq would become. The US military, as an institution, lacks the psychological infrastructure to support imperialist ventures.
The brainiacs will get their surge, and they may even enjoy some early successes. But they'll fail in the end. The only way we could succeed in Iraq the way the president and other wingnuts would have us succeed is by giving up on representative democracy stateside -- by accepting a sea-change in the very soul of America itself.
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Comments for Pin A Star On My Neocortex
In other words, the stupid cowards running the show are hiding behind the intelligent soldiers. Which pretty much sums up the conservative psyche, if you ask me.
Conservatives even have a psyche?
- Posted at 2:51 PM | By
Good point AG. What should we call that dark, twisted thing that drives their behavior? Perhaps Harvey?
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