The Great Barrier: Rieff [Nov 2, 2003]

With much anticipation and general breathlessness, you’ve patiently sat at your desks, oh loyal Beagles, yea these last five weeks while I was busy conducting an experiment in the human body’s ability to consume whiskey, ride in a van, eat at Stuckey’s, and still survive. I have so many people to thank for helping me consummate my rock-n-roll dreams and for making Never Mind The Pollacks the 9771st most popular book in America at this writing, despite the attempts of many jealous critics to bring down my surging literary career.

Specific thanks will arrive in days forthcoming. But for now, I’ll thank the substitutes who kept this space amusing and informative during some of the most spectacular news cycles in modern history: Donnie Bowman, Paul Fisher, Christopher Monks, Jesse Popp, and especially Matthew Tobey, who will someday be a famous screenwriter and will serve drinks to me at his Hollywood mansion long after I’ve become a withered, pathetic sexless parody of myself. And no, smart guys, the transformation hasn’t happened yet.

I must also announce that tomorrow’s previously proposed protest, Donald Luskin Is A Stalker Day, has been indefinitely delayed at the request of my good friend Atrios, the Internet’s latest potential free-speech lawsuit victim. Apparently, Atrios believes that reasonable discourse will solve his problems better than wise-assed agitation. We shall see, oh great liberal blogmaster. Tomorrow won’t Donald Luskin Is A Stalker Day after all. For now, hold your fire.

But I cannot hold my fire, or my ire, or my inflamed desire, in the face of David Rieff’s absurd slander of the Bush Administration’s Iraq rebuilding policy in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, or, as I like to call it, The Very Bad Publication Ignored By Anyone With Good Judgment Magazine. First of all, Rieff is Susan Sontag’s son, a hideous accident of birth that should disqualify him from writing anything but book reviews for the Nation. Second, he has no experience with war reporting, except for a few years in Bosnia, which, since we didn’t declare it, wasn’t technically a war.

Rieff’s central thesis is completely misguided. He claims that the “occupation,” though I prefer to call it the “Renaissance,” of Iraq was poorly planned and has been incompetently executed. How could he possibly gather that from, according to him, two extended visits to the country? I receive emails all the time from men who say they’re soldiers, and they claim that everything’s going just fine. According to my sources, dozens of people in Iraq are happy, healthy, working good jobs, and generally enjoying the fruits of a mild autumn. I’ve found that anonymous emails are often more telling than actual experience. And even if Rieff is, technically, “correct,” his research and opinions should be utterly ignored.

As Montaigne once said in his essay, “On Occupation,” one should never allow poor planning and incompetent execution interfere with a preset ideological commitment. To quote, “truly great leadership should be able to bend physical reality to fit lunatic intellectual abstraction.” The Times has spent far too much time and ink worrying about the small number of deaths of our soldiers in Iraq, and too few column inches celebrating the happy days spent by the thousands of Iraqi children who, through luck or street smarts, are still alive.

Euclid, in his Absurdities, wrote of the “flesh sacrifice” necessary to “make the world whole.” The parents of the American military departed shouldn’t think of their children as young people murdered in their prime during a meaningless, ill-defined war. Instead, consider their bones building blocks for a new world. We must honor the dead and then forget about them immediately, while ignoring the so-called strategic mistakes that led to their demise. Our great leaders have said all along that this is a war for the future of civilization. The terrorist minions, who multiply frighteningly every day, cannot be allowed to distract us from our holy mission.

Now if you’ll excuse me, a month of incessant rock touring has caused me to suffer numerous severe glandular dysfunctions, and I can only remain seated upright for a half-hour at a time, maximum. My doctor has prescribed several excellent drugs for me, none of which are addictive in the slightest. Roger is bringing my tray now. Why, hello, Roger! Look at all the pretty birdies!