Richard Miniter’s “Made in Iran: A Traitor’s Tale” is the story of a sad, bitter and not very competent 21-year-old, who was still able to spread death & chaos. This small and empty man is used by powers larger but no less empty. His petty grudge is put to the service of evil. From the beginning, many of us here saw a pattern (and purpose), first in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Thinking globally does not come easily to me – but Miniter captures the drama of a place where the unconscious and heartless are sent out to kill and maim, used by those who understand how big the game is as they move these pawns on the great board of which Iraq & Afghanistan are but small parts. And if Henry Reid smugly believes this game is lost, I doubt he sees how big the game is and how much and how many that loss will affect. Of course, he should resign in shame, but he won’t; if he felt shame, he could not feel the smugness he so casually embodies. But that seems to be because his imagination can not conceive of the fierce battles and death that will follow loss.
Iraq
Quote of the Day
Robert Schwartz, a frequent commenter on this blog, left a great comment yesterday in response to a post by Ginny about the war:
A Reminder from Wretchard
Wretchard is not a man who, as did the panel on Charlie Rose last week, thinks America did the honorable thing in Vietnam and Cambodia as they described our current policies as insufficiently welcoming of Iraqi refugees. They may well be right that accepting that flow is the “right” thing, but their assurance that the humanitarian position first accepts defeat, pulls out, then accepts those who manage, somehow, to reach our shores hardly seems a humanitarian solution. Wretchard observes that patience is a practical virtue: the decade of overflights demonstrate that perseverance can work. Belmont Club gives us a context for those ads that thank us. Strangely, allusions to Germany and Japan and even South Korea show up in comments more often than do the Kurds. But they remind us why and how order does reign in parts of Irag, though it did not come easily nor quickly. Peace takes longer than war.
Some Dots We Hope Signal a New Pattern
Tigerhawk analyzes a London Times survey:
Iraqis, however, essentially believe the possibilities for the Petraeus plan — we provide temporary security with the objective of creating the space necessary for the government and army of Iraq to stand without assistance, after which we substantially withdraw.
How I Learned to be the Adult – And Why I Often Forget – 1 –
This afternoon, while I was grading, I looked up, hearing in the background the great speech at the end of The Caine Mutiny, addressing the Fred McMurray character. He’s a writer – one of those articulate intellectuals Shannon describes. I wouldn’t argue that Shannon doesn’t have a point, but I think that speech points to what lies beneath the weakness of such men’s arguments. The writer is an observer, a voyeur, in the world of the Navy. He posits theories, in this case condescending toward the Humphrey Bogart character, clearly of a lower class and with limited education, but a man who has been willing to act in the Navy when few did. Applying the fount of so much theory of a half century ago (Freud) to him, McMurray found him inadequate. But the writer wasn’t even willing to take responsibility for those words. On the stand, he hemmed and hawed – and lied. Neither the men who mutinied nor the captain escaped because they made decisions – some wrong-headed. They were accountable. He was not: except in one brief, drunken speech by the defendant’s lawyer, a man who is ashamed to have made the ship’s commander come apart on the stand, but who realizes that is his responsibility to get his client acquitted.
Words were once commitments – our integrity rode on our ability to live up to those words. This is no longer true – that movie of a half century ago followed in the path of those like Prufrock, who see their lives as revised and revised again. We are not committed by our vows, by our loyalties, by our words.