Grendel's Ram in Contention

"The old ram stands down looking over rockslides, stupidly."-- John Gardner, Grendel, p2

What Jennifer argues in her latest Right Turn entry, whose headline was changed, I believe, from the more inflammatory "France goes to war," to the lower decibel of "fallout," since Hollande is a Socialist in the tradition of Mitterrand, and no doubt had the Foreign Secretary call the Grahams who remain on staff with a scold, is that the neocon response to bin Laden's "great blow" was the right tack, despite the fact that thirteen years in Kabul seems to have simply degraded the Taliban into more traditional narco terrorists with whom the CIA loves to waltz, which is not very hawkish. I do not necessarily disagree with Jennifer or The Post on Obama's retrenchment after Bush Administration debacles. My argument is that delicacy to Islamic sensitivity, and Western effeminate dress after centuries of civilizing the natives at the point of a bayonet, is not going to pacify hardliners who supersede Hammurabi, who purportedly was source text for Mosaic law. 

I am always against bad process, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 should have led to George W Bush's impeachment, regardless of how well or how badly the Pentagon handled the draw down under our sadly failed Harvard Law president. We cannot occupy multiple fronts indefinitely, even if we are the strongest nuclear power. Americans were once and briefly united after the 9/11 attacks, and if you want tradition, well, successful war presidents unite the country. Congress should have declared war on Al Qaeda. The UN Security Council should have made a deal with the major powers, dissolved Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia. set up zones of occupation, and if those with the tactical force had the guts to do that, whatever the price of going that route, we would not be watching North Africa and the Far East join the long standing enemies of Israel in an implosion. 

This all started in 79 with Khomeini and his Iranian revolution. The Ayatollah broadcast his Persian call to arms from Paris, and world leaders held their dicks in their hands, to channel old man Morgan, while the fanatical Imam toppled the Shah. Jimmy might have saved the fellow citizens he served some dignity by exporting Billy Carter as an American radical. The Saudis did the same thing prior to Osama's rise in prominence and bear some of the blame for contemporary tremors.

Jennifer cites John Yoo, attempting to rehabilitate a rationalizing legal hardliner, by having him universalize NATO's Article 5. I doubt this makes Hollande happy. I watched extensive press coverage of the neutralization of the Kouachi brothers and their associate, and then Hollande's entry and subsequent gathering of ministers in the Presidential Palace. The informality of the European bureaucrat anesthetizes sensibility, and briefly entertained the idea of sending Marine Le Pen my resume. Perhaps I should do it on a lark. Why didn't Turkish authorities detain Boumeddiene? The corruption of ionized interests will always be with us, but this too, smells of bad faith.

In essence, Jennifer's urgency for the Obama Administration to reignite Bush's battle lines is misguided, because war takes commitment, national unity. We lost that after Truman fired MacArthur.