Civil Wars

Interesting kerfuffle going on at Roy's over some hortatory boilerplate by Michael Totten which, thanks to the (oh dear!) incivility on both sides, has taken on a half-life of its own.

I can't say I buy into any literal interpretation that Totten should kill himself, for fuck's sake. That might be a bit much (the best I could muster was to refer to Totten as a "piece of crap" and compare him to a standard-issue Cops loser threatening to get all Ike Turner on his bitch, and even that might have been harshly polemic). Nor does it really move the debate forward; not only is Totten not going to kill himself, but people can simply point and plaint "WTF?" over and over again.

But to each their own; there certainly are still much stouter defenders of this damned war who must come to terms with their moral cretinism and selective memories, one way or another. As for Totten, his decision to accentuate the positive in Fallujah comes with its own baggage, much as he may wish to ignore it and stay in the now. This is a city of 350,000 people that was besieged, not once but twice in 2004, the second time propitiously scheduled right before the election. The city was doused in white phosphorus and shelled relentlessly, cleaned out, cordoned off to all but foot traffic, and each resident was issued an ID card and biometrically scanned. All of that was a direct consequence of the savage murders of four Blackwater contractors; feel free to contrast it with Totten's own averral, in discussing the inflated body counts of the Arab media, that "a mere" 52 civilians were killed when the IDF raided the Jenin refugee camp in 2002.

Three full years later, as Totten himself acknowledges and Roy acerbically points out, the citizens of Fallujah -- indeed, of most of Iraq -- still do not have access to clean drinking water, and unemployment is estimated to be at least 50%. It's great that violence has abated, seriously; however, with roughly 10% of Iraq's pre-war population killed, another 10% internally displaced, and another 5% lucky enough to escape something that -- it cannot be repeated enough times, people -- did not have to happen, the figures were bound to kick over at some point, and of course the triumphalists were itching to jump on those figures for their own purposes.

As the comments thread goes further at Roy's, Totten reappears periodically to disavow his "support" of this war, or any potential future ones. In fact, he essentially admits that the mistakes have been catastrophic. Yet it is curious, is it not, that the article of contention is in Commentary, of all things, the house organ of the hardcore neocons? Indeed, a brief perusal of their political page indicates many such folk, including one fella who seriously (and, it must be noted, tediously) argues (from the October issue, yet it is in the current t.o.c.) that neoclownservatism has not been repudiated by the failures of this war, but rather vindicated.

Is Totten directly or indirectly responsible for being in the same magazine as such piffle? Perhaps not, but it is also not unfair to surmise that Totten knows that Commentary is the virtual flagship of the "real men go to Tehran" claque, and thus his disavowals of the current clusterfuck ring pretty hollow as he's placed cheek to jowl with these intellectual hooligans. To put it mildly, they've never been known for their objectivity.

If Totten wishes not to be conflated or confused with the folks who quite seriously still would like to expand the operations, then it is up to him to dispositively make that disassociation clear. Because what happens -- what inevitably, tragically happens -- is that token efforts to "set the record straight" get utilized for other purposes, other agenda. "Violence has abated for the past few months" has already turned into "the surge is working", and heading straight for "see, we told you so", from the drunk assholes who ran the car into the fucking ditch in the first place. Great, you called a tow truck. Doesn't mean you should keep driving.

Finally, though it has been five long years, it has also been only five years; most of us who were against this during the buildup, whether or not we got rolled by Colon Powell at the last second, recall quite well the vicious epithets, the gleeful calumniations of motive, morals, and reasoning (generalizing here; I don't recall Totten specifically among that group, though the arguments of some of his commenters ring familiar).

Now they want to talk about civility, and improve the tone of honest, open debate. How sweet. We'll see just how well that holds the first time Preznit Hitlery does something that rocks their Cheeto bowls. Maybe we're just frustrated by the inability of the vaunted Dem leadership to find their spines, or maybe the '02 screamers are finally reaping their Rovian whirlwind.