I attempted to explain to conservative Australian writer, Rob Stove, why, after chronicling the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I’d fallen silent:
When my daughter was seven-years old, her school assigned her the task of describing her parents. On her father, daddy’s darling heaped unrealistic praise (the tables have since turned. Excellent!). For her affection-starved mother, the little lady reserved a matter-of-fact appraisal. “My mother,” she wrote in her girly cursive, “is a quiet woman who speaks mainly when she has something to say.” (Rob’s riposte: “if everyone rationed speech thus, the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.” Amen.)
Pinpointed by my perceptive chatterbox of a child, this economy explains the lack of gush on Barely a Blog. And it explains why I’ve not written much lately about “Mess-opotamia.” I’ve nothing new to say. Few have. This is not to say there’s no place for repetition. But it’s not my place. I’ve said what I have to say, starting in September 2002. And here .
Fine, I’ll elaborate on a fresh observation Lawrence Auster originated: Bush and his devotees showcase their underlying hate of America by continually comparing the carnage in Iraq to the constitutional cramps of early America. As The Wall Street Journal put it, “There were a few glitches 200 years ago in Philadelphia too.”
Yes, the hoots, hollers, and blasts emanating from members of Iraq’s tribal troika capture to a tee the tone of the debates in, what’s that document called? The Fedayeen Papers?
Jalal (Talabani), Muqtada (al-Sadr), and Muhammad (Bahr al-Ulum) are just like James (Madison), John (Jay), and Alexander (Hamilton). Why didn’t it occur to me? Only a fool would fail to trace the philosophical link between the feuding Mohammedans and the followers of John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu. Mr. Auster is right: what a hateful comparison.
The war is even more hateful. And everything that needs to be said about it has been said—to no avail. Words have failed to bring us closer to a moral reckoning. So watch Do You Ever Wonder What 2000 Looks Like—and weep (link courtesy of antiwar.com).