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.

American Buffalo, Chit

"Turn on your television set." -- My mother.

9/11 was both a real and surreal horror. Engaged in an unsuccessful fling with a married therapist with spina bifida at the time, he was free therapy who did not heal me, and he had a farm not many miles from the flight 93 crash. Our dialogue ceased because we were not going to have sex, but not in the immediate aftermath of the great event. I had also lived in NYC and been to the Twin Towers. Disconnected and in shockwaves of outrage at the same time, I wanted a response. Overkill. If it had been me in charge I would have wiped out the Saudi royal family, turned Afghanistan into the Fukushima wasteland. The Bush family had more vested interests, and granted, between the Bush wars and the establishment of the Obama administration, American prowess killed many Islamic radicals, but the people in power did a lousy job.

We've had the response, and thirteen years later, we are going to play war games in Damascus to curb Hezbollah's temptation to acquire chemical agents? Why not let Turkey's Erdogan echo the imperial Ottoman Empire and be our proxy? He would put boots on the ground in Syria; I am not a policy analyst, but I read them choc through my ear inflammation, and I really do not see that a missile strike against Bashar is going to do any good; he is a despot as much by default as anything. What is a missile strike going to achieve in a sectarian schism that is creating gimps and paralytics by the minute? The BBC had some surreal footage of the capital, and I saw a man limping, supporting himself on cuff crutches. Google has everything now, even our dead, the ghosts of our memories.

My mother and I did not have a healthy relationship; we set each other off, especially toward the end. My sister killed her by relying on her to support the grandchildren. I killed her because she made me miserable and I broke my engagement to the imbecile one floor below me who is a bedridden industry for the Pennsylvania threadbare social safety net. Never get involved with public housing tenants if you wind up going into public housing, never. Do not have sex, simulated sex, and don't get too friendly. Keep an appropriate distance, and work with me to eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development. We'll remain a superpower that much longer.