War at Last!

Hurrah, hurrah, we're finishing the job!
Hurrah, hurrah, the Saddamites will sob!
So we sang the chorus from Umm Qasr to Tikrit,
While we were driving through Iraq!

As I write this, our men have finally resumed their long-interrupted drive to Baghdad; the son is making amends for the sins of his father. All the long months of diplomatic dithering are over, and we are righteously smiting our enemies once again. Best of all, despite all the guff about how we're doing it for "the world" and the Iraqi people, we're doing it in defiance of the United Nations. As the President said in his press conference on March 6: "when it comes to our security, if we need to act, we will act, and we really don't need United Nations approval to do so."

If actions speak louder than words -- and the explosions all over Iraq are pretty damned loud -- we may, for all the continued lip-service paid to "the world," finally be witnessing an end to internationalism. Allies are good to have, but "the world," as represented by the UN, is (at best) only a dead weight we have been carrying far too long.

I, for one, feel no animosity towards the Axis of Weasels. France and the rest are acting in their national self-interest, as they see it. Why were we asking their permission to act in our own national self-interest? Still, such animosity may serve a useful purpose if it advances our disentanglement from NATO -- a relic whose contemporary uselessness has been proven yet again.

My own ire is directed entirely towards domestic peaceniks, both Left and Right. But one shouldn't call them "peaceniks": even that epithet is too kind. They aren't for peace, they're against America; explicitly or implicitly, they're for Saddam Hussein and the terrorists. So let's call them what they are: Saddamites.

On this topic, it is interesting to note that the conservatives are wrangling among themselves again: National Review Online and OnDeadTree have officially anathematized the paleoconservatives. Although one might quibble over particulars of the anathema, this passage sums it up well: "They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country." This may be a slight exaggeration, but it certainly true that the paleos hate the neos with such near-psychotic intensity that it blinds them to everything else, even their own country's vital interests.

Of course, the Saddamites of the Right must respond to this; Thomas Fleming has done so, with a mishmash of trivialities and irrelevancies best exemplified by his claim that he and his ilk have been attacked for having "expressed any scruples about killing innocent civilians" -- an utterance whose sanctimonious asininity rivals that of the Saddamite Left, which he claims to disdain. He followed this up with a weird, weaselly rant that epitomizes the visceral nastiness and intellectual incoherence of his whole clique.

It must be said that the paleos will never do anything but what they've been doing all along: bitching and moaning to no end. They can safely be left to stew in their own bile. The same cannot be said of the Saddamite Left, which has produced another Black Muslim terrorist. The only remarkable thing about this incident is how stupendously unsurprising it is. Take someone so alienated from his own nation that he adopted an alien religion and an alien name; give him an assault rifle and grenades; expect him to use them in loyal service to his nation -- does this make sense?

Meanwhile, the Administration continues to reject the idea of partitioning Iraq. Although this website (for what little it's worth) still supports Kurdish independence in principle, it appears that the Kurds themselves are prudently postponing that goal to the indefinite future, because of threats from Turkey and Iran.

In conclusion, let us recall the President's resounding words from his war message of March 19: "Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome but victory." Now that's the way to wage a war!

© 2003 by Karl Jahn

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