p m carpenter's commentary

The Learning Curve of the Magnificently Obsessed

In an interview with Spiegel Online, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh was asked how much the U.S. actually knows, with any reasonable degree of specificity, about Iran's nuclear program. He began his answer in a curious, perhaps even misspoken, way, and in the passive voice:

A lot. And it's been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what [the agency] and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they've been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

Given a do-over, I'm confident the incisive Mr. Hersh would set aside his reference to a disembodied "underestimation," and say flatly that the Bush administration has variously manipulated, distorted and ignored "how much the IAEA knows."

As for there not being "enough evidence to justify a bombing raid," that depends on what kind and what level of evidence one is searching for. If the thesis drives the research, rather than the research driving the thesis, than little to no evidence is needed. Throw into the mix a bit of manipulation, distortion and willful ignorance, and the evidence required for an effective propaganda campaign becomes blurred beyond any distinction from the evidence required for military intervention.

But we already know that, of course, because we just lived through a propaganda-cum-intervention campaign, merely one more piled upon interventionist concoctions from the Mexican War to Vietnam.

Regarding the latter, Mr. Hersh was also asked if the Iraq debacle, to put it charitably, will "leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did."

Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though, we'll rationalize it away. Don't worry about that.... There's no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We'll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.

No learning curve? Again, that depends on how one wishes to define things. If, by learning, Mr. Hersh means the American public's historical tendency to forget hard lessons taught in the wasted human and fiscal resources of "stupid wars," then he's exactly right. If, on the other hand, he's referring to the boys at the top -- the decision makers -- then I'd have to say they rank somewhere on the learning curve's genius level.

It took us nearly 30 years to justify another stupid war after Vietnam. Now the boys in charge are accomplishing a justification redux not 30 years after Iraq or 20, not 10 years or five, but simultaneously.

And they're doing it chiefly through well-placed, money-loaded surrogates, just as they accomplished their domestic political victories since 2000.

The latest is Freedom's Watch, which is looking to raise $200 million in propaganda booty by November, which "will be easy," said one founder. It "denie[s]," however, "the accusation that [it's] a White House front group." Its president, a former deputy assistant to POTUS, has been quite clear about this, saying, yes, "he speaks with [the White House], but ... they are careful not to discuss the activities of Freedom’s Watch."

The organization has already executed a Blitzkrieg television campaign, with "several of the group’s spots suggest[ing] that Iraq, rather than Al Qaeda, was behind the Sept. 11 attacks." It also successfully countered MoveOn.org''s "Betray Us" print ad as "an unexpected gift," literally and figuratively.

Now, Freedom's Watch has moved on itself -- to phase two -- buying space to label Iran's president "a terrorist." And it's busier still. "Next month, Freedom’s Watch will sponsor a private forum of 20 experts on radical Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States."

Boo, boo ... and boo!

No learning curve? Pshaw.

Proof of God's Existence, coming -- we pray -- Oct. 21

As I write this, we have only ascendant signs of an activist god in heaven, as reflected in Newt's pondering of a presidential run. But if, by Oct. 21, he has raised $30 million in pledges, then he will in fact run, says he, and we'll finally have that long-sought confirmation of a Divine presence and His direct intervention in human affairs.

Oh Lord, if You're there and listening, I beseech Thee: Please, God, let the phone banks crank and the cash whirl. Please, God, instruct Newt's minions to say, simply, "Yes, I shall give." Please, God, in the name of Your Heaven and our secular hell, see that Newt runs.

If You've been following the current crop of presidential weeds, Lord, You know why I ask. Things here are bleak. If we suffer one more "debate," one more 90-minute collection of focus-grouped non-answers and carefully threaded evasions, we're sure to go mad. And yet, we've another year of this bland, factory-line crappola.

Newt could change all that, in a blessed Georgia minute. In no time at all he would "fundamentally transform" this "grotesque" system of presidential dating, and go right on fundamentally transforming other national grotesqueries, one grotesquery fundamentally transformed after another. We'd never have to wonder where Newt stood. He's for transforming the grotesque, fundamentally. Just listen to him. He'll tell you.

The official "maybe" for Newt's official entry is scheduled for this Monday; zero hour, fifteen-hundred thirty. That's when J. Randolph Evans, "a longtime advisor," "will hold a press briefing ... in Atlanta to describe plans for what Gingrich aides are calling a 'feasibility assessment.'" Others might call such a thing, "calculating the odds." But that would be grotesque -- fundamentally grotesque, and in need of transformation; fundamental transformation.

Aides have gussied it up -- this "calculating the odds" thing -- most likely because they've spent so much time around Newt. But the gussying betrays Newt's famous observation that he's "not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much." For heaven's sake, Newt, you already have them talking like you. What other proof of natural leadership do you --we -- need?

If all goes well -- that is, should 30 million in pledges drop like manna from heaven -- the invasion is set for Oct. 21. The challenge then is what Newt has portrayed in epic, even biblical proportions. "He thinks Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) will be the Democratic nominee, and he said the Republican nominee has only about a 20 percent chance of winning." Grotesque odds, you say? Did David quiver before Goliath? Nay, he laughed at the godless giant's seismic blows.

With a slingshot. And that, as far as I can tell, is all that Newt has up his sleeve -- mere slingshots.

Newt, I took a look at your Web site, American Solutions for Winning the Future. And I have to tell you, David, you've got to come up with something better than this. Your "solutions" so far are a curious mixture ranging from simplistic gobbledygook to political impossibilities to downright yawners. There's the stale Forbesian claptrap: "The Flat Tax: What It Will Do for You, Your Country, and Your Pocketbook" (thanks, we already know). There's the Bush-tried, got-zapped, propagandistic stunner that the "Social Security system is simply outdated." And there are others, written in mind-numbing bureaucratese -- all we need is some "implementation" here and "implementation" there -- that could effectively substitute for narcotic sleeping aids.

The most hopeful, however, is your traveling workshop: "Rediscovering God in America." For that is precisely what we'd do if your candidacy gets off the ground. Because we know you can do better and would. And finally, at long last, we'd have some proof positive that there is indeed a god in heaven, looking down, orchestrating the absurd and laughing at the circus clowns.

***

News Flash, 11:53PM CST: "Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) decided Saturday morning not to run for president just as his staff was preparing to launch a website to seek $30 million in pledges, his spokesman told Politico."

So it seems there is no God. Damn.

Attack of the Right-Winging Befuddled

It's not often I hear directly from the Dark Side. Its agents, I gather, tend to glue their ears mostly to talk radio, and their eyes to Bill O'Reilly, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page and the occasional right-wing blog. So it was with no small amount of surprise and delight when, upon opening an email early yesterday morning, I found this missive -- in response to my earlier praise of David Shuster's on-air destruction of Rep. Marsha Blackburn -- which I feel obliged to share with you:

[4:27AM] Have you read that your boy, David Schuster, was WRONG about the soldier that was killed in Congresswoman Blackburn's district. Turns out he wasn't from her district and his sickening game of using a soldier's death to play gotcha made him look like the next Dan Rather. You can read all about here:

[A link to "Newsbusters: Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias," was provided, which availed a blank page.]

Keep up the great work, Douschebag!

Jen

My, my, such virulence, and misspelled virulence at that. Hence, right off the bat, the lady writer offered Confirmations #1 and #2 of the Dark Side's natural tendencies: the ad hominem attack, and the failure to capture its correct presentation.

Buried within Jen's foaming outburst was also Confirmation #3. This furious right-wing rep, the poor dear, had failed to grasp the point. I was presented a dilemma. Should I note in my response that the actual name of the fallen soldier was irrelevant to Shuster's principal point, which was that Blackburn was clearly out of touch with the fallen humanity of this senseless war, but had spent a great deal of time learning the history of the New York Times' ad rates? Or should I cut my correspondent loose and let her figure it out for herself?

Being that I was presently engaged in writing another column for that day, and presuming, playfully, that my own lack of handing her a tidy explanation of the larger point would send her sputtering into further obtuseness, I opted for the latter:

Thank you, Jen, for your complete lack of comprehension regarding the point Shuster made. I love it. Keep up the great work!

PM

I demurred from returning any "douchebag" fire. Nevertheless my thoughtful omission prompted this immediate and even more unpleasant befuddlement:

[4:52AM] And what lack of comprehension is that? A repugnant ploy by Schuster to use a soldier killed in battle to score points with people like you? This woman was blindsided and the interviewer clearly had an agenda, like he always does. How do you think the soldier's family feels right now? And if I have the wrong perspective on this, why did Schuster apologize on the air last night?

I guess to expect you to post Schuster's embarassing error on your site would be too much to ask. You simply don't have the balls to do it. [At least Jen finally got my gender-needs correct.] Means to an end, right?

Needless to say, I won't be attending Schuster's class anymore. If NBC had any journalistic values, they would put him in detention.

J

I'd be more than happy, with balls still happily intact as well, to "post Schuster's [sic] embarassing [sic] error" on this site, except such a posting, of course, would be irrelevant to the issue at hand. And that, of course, is what the right seeks: irrelevancies -- the ways and means to change the topic.

Hence my final note:

Explaining the obvious to folks like you is like shooting ducks in the water, yet you're too stubbornly partisan to accept the explanations, so I won't waste my time. Figure it out yourself, if you can (and then ignore it, which you would).

So, for my part, this correspondence is at an end.

Ta-ta.

From which my correspondent concluded that my refusal to change the debate was my way to change the debate.

[5:22AM] You're one hell of a debater. Great points! Excellent retort. All clear and concise. Then again, I guess that's hard to do when you look like an assclown for telling your six readers that Schuster should be a teacher of journalism.

You'll ignore it by not posting an update on Schuster's apology on your site. That's what hacks do: Ignore, attack, only print news that fits their viewpoint, and change the debate.

Have fun living in your delusional world.

Jen 3
Phil 0

And there I had it, a touch of Confirmation #4 -- partial proof of my growing suspicion that some, most, perhaps the vast majority of right wingers are simply stupid. Their diminished capacity, I further suspect, is less a congenital defect than the result of far too many years of gluing themselves to simpleminded talk radio and assorted right-wing scribblings of overbearing oversimplification. And, naturally, attack, attack, attack.

If you, dear reader -- one of my six -- would care to elaborate on the essence of the Shuster-Blackburn episode for Ms. Jen's benefit, then be my guest and take a whack at it below. You would be graciously relieving me from speaking truth to the benighted. But I warn you ... well, just see Confirmation #s 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Of Johnny Rocco, Subprime Delights, and General Psychopathology

The Bush administration has chosen to characterize its extended buildup of troops and extravagant outlays of cash with a typically Orwellian choice of words: "this drawdown."

"It's very important that we handle this drawdown in a way that allows us to end up in a stronger position in Iraq," said Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Congress yesterday.

Not any coming drawdown, not any expected drawdown, not any inexorable drawdown because of troop-level unsustainability.

No, it's "this drawdown," just in case large segments of the Republic are too benumbed to notice that there is no drawdown -- but doesn't it sound nice? -- and even when "this drawdown" does come, it won't be a drawdown, but a resumption of the old.

The administration indeed loves liberty and freedom because they provide it the liberty to be free with language, domestic psyops and reality.

By the way, continued Mr. Gates: "I don't know what that timeline looks like," referring to the non-drawdown drawdown.

Did the digits 2-0-0-9 come to mind? Well, that's so tediously ... realistic. Better to leave that till late 2-0-0-8.

Bob did, however, have a pretty good idea of what "this timeline" -- note that it's "this drawdown," but "that timeline" -- looks like in the language and calculus of cash.

How much is enough for the Johnny Rocco administration, as told to the Senate Appropriations Committee?

[Chairman Bogart] "Tell us, Rocco. You want more. Don't you, Rocco?"

[DefSec Robinson] "That's it, more. That's right, I want more."

[Bogart] "Will you ever get enough? Will you, Rocco?"

[Robinson] "Well, I never have. No, I guess I won't."

We continue to ignore director John Huston's lessons offered in Key Largo, the brilliant and allegorical postwar film about those who sacrifice, and those who take.

The sacrifice is reported daily; the taking receives more of a kind of clip coverage in this neverending feature film.

"Gates asked Congress yesterday to approve an additional $42.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.... Yesterday's request ... came on top of the $141.7 billion requested in February and a request earlier this year for $5.3 billion for MRAP vehicles."

Furthermore, "Gates said the additional money is needed to pay for the continuation of the president's troop buildup in Iraq." That buildup would be this drawdown he mentioned.

So, the big picture (show)? The most recent "request" for 2008 alone brings us "to nearly $190 billion -- the largest single-year total for the wars so far," which "boost[s] war spending this year by nearly 15 percent and would bring the total cost of both conflicts to more than $800 billion since Sept. 11, 2001."

Counting long-term and admittedly negligible knickknacks like veterans' health care, one Nobel Prize-winning economist has "placed the total cost of the Iraq war at more than $2.2 trillion, not counting interest."

But it's OK. The administration hasn't had its credit card cancelled yet -- not by USA Credit Inc.'s 535 board of directors, or its 300 million shareholders who are going to get one helluva shock when these subprime inanities come due.

Professor of Journalism, David Shuster

MoveOn for a change of pace? No, MoveOver everyone, for on Monday, MSNBC's David Shuster, batting for the pathologically immature Tucker Carlson, showed broadcast journalists how the game should be played.

I wanted to feature this delightful incident yesterday morning, but the transcript was not yet available. Maybe it's only because I'm a creature of the printed word, but I often find transcripts more revealing than videos. There's something about their clean and clinical quality that seems to roast sacrificial phonies more thoroughly. And the transcript below of Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn being basted by Mr. Shuster is no exception. She went into the interview as pretentiously stuffed as a Christmas goose, and came out every bit as cooked as one.

So I present for your amusement, and for journalists' edification, Monday's transcribed slaughter:

SHUSTER: The Republican outcry is beginning to die down over that MoveOn ad, the one running in the New York Times that posed the question -- General Petraeus or General Betray Us? But there‘s a bigger question left unanswered, a question of hypocrisy when it comes to political attack. Where was the outrage when Rush Limbaugh said this about Republican Senator Chuck Hagel over one of the senator‘s stances on Iraq? Limbaugh said, "By the way, we had a caller call, couldn‘t stay on the air, got a new name for Senator Hagel of Nebraska. We got General Petraeus and Senator Betray-Us, new name for Senator Hagel." Here to discuss all this is Marsha Blackburn, a Republican Congresswoman from Tennessee. Congresswoman, thanks for coming in.

BLACKBURN: Good to be with you.

SHUSTER: Do you want to take this opportunity to condemn what Rush Limbaugh said about Chuck Hagel?

BLACKBURN: What I want to do is talk about the New York Times. Probably, Rush Limbaugh could have gotten by without saying that.

SHUSTER: Could of gotten by? It was wrong, wasn‘t it?

BLACKBURN: He was referencing what a caller said.

SHUSTER: But it was wrong for a caller or for Rush Limbaugh to call Chuck Hagel Senator Betray Us, right?

BLACKBURN: But Rush Limbaugh did not go in and buy an ad and place it with the New York Times and get a special, preferred rate....

SHUSTER: So there‘s a difference between buying an ad in the New York Times and Rush Limbaugh hearing something that he likes to hear from one of his viewers and repeating it on the air. What‘s the distinction?

BLACKBURN: Rush Limbaugh should not have done that. But Rush Limbaugh did not go out and buy an ad and circumvent [sic] the New York Times. It takes two weeks for them to tell the truth on this and we find out that they did get a favored rate.

SHUSTER: They didn‘t know they got a favored rate. As soon as they found out they got a favored rate, they wrote a check.

BLACKBURN: I don‘t believe that. I think they did....

SHUSTER: I understand that this is an issue that ... You‘re very concerned, of course, about the MoveOn ad, is that right?

BLACKBURN: Everybody is concerned about the MoveOn ad. Everybody is concerned about what seems to be the violation of the public trust by the New York Times. Look, we all know that their circulation is down, that their stock is down, that they ... I think it was last year fired 500 people. Everyone is aware of that. My goodness, to find out now that they are fire-selling their ad space.

SHUSTER: Congressman, let‘s talk about the public trust. You represent, of course, a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last soldier from your district who was killed in Iraq?

BLACKBURN: The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq, from my district, I do not know.

SHUSTER: His name was Jeremy Bohannan (ph). He was killed August 9, 2007. How come you did not know the name?

BLACKBURN: I do not know why I did not know the name. We made contact with the families in our district. When you have a major military post, you are very sensitive to this and sensitive to working with those families, and that is something that my staff and I do daily. Our district director is a gentleman who has served in the U.S. Army and currently serves in the National Guard. And we do everything that we possibly can do to assist those families. We are very appreciative of the sacrifice.

SHUSTER: But you were not appreciative enough to know the name of this young man. He was 18 years old and killed. Yet you can say chapter and verse about what‘s going on with the New York Times and MoveOn.org.

BLACKBURN: You‘re exactly right. I can say chapter and verse what was going on with MoveOn.org.

SHUSTER: Don‘t you understand the problems that a lot of people would have, that you‘re so focused on an ad? When was the last time a New York Times ad ever killed somebody? Yet here we have a war that took the life of an 18-year-old kid, Jeremy Bohannan, from your district and you didn‘t know his name?

BLACKBURN: Well -- and -- we work very closely, as I said, with those families. We work very closely with every one of our military members. We work closely with Ft. Campbell, because most of Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, actually sits in Montgomery County, Tennessee. And that is a priority with us, how we work with them, how we reach out to those families, how we stay in touch with those that are being deployed, working with the leadership teams, making certain the community is involved with helping to care for those families.

SHUSTER: I know General Petraeus....

BLACKBURN: And our National Guard families as they are deployed, staying in close touch with those -- some of those that are not only from our district, but from Tennessee.

SHUSTER: I know that after General Petraeus testified, you said that there has been an opportunity created for progress at the local level, local political progress. Have you been to Iraq recently?

BLACKBURN: I have been -- not been to Iraq in the past 12 months. My last trip into Iraq....

SHUSTER: Just based on General Petraeus, that is how you can say that there was political progress being made in Iraq?

BLACKBURN: No, I stay in touch with those that are deployed. As a matter of fact, I e-mailed last night with a constituent of mine who is a chaplain in Iraq. And we have been working, getting some supplies, some items....

SHUSTER: What contact has the chaplain had with local Iraqi political leaders?

BLACKBURN: He is in touch with them on a regular basis. I e-mail with soldiers, different soldiers from my district who are deployed. I e-mail with their families and stay in close touch with them. I go and visit with their families and hear from them first hand what is going on. This is not just a once in a while, you go to Afghanistan or you go to Iraq or every once in a while you go to a military post to visit. What you do is stay in touch with them on a constant on-going basis.

SHUSTER: I agree, Congresswoman, you do stay in touch with these military families. But I again, I still think it‘s a little surprising that you did not know the name of the last soldier killed in Iraq, who is only 18 years old, and yet you know so much about the MoveOn.org ad and the tactics you don‘t like. But in any case, Congresswoman Blackburn, we appreciate you coming in today, Congresswoman from western Tennessee.

I can guarantee you that by evening there were right-wing Congressmen and -women everywhere frantically calling their aides, demanding the names of at least the last three soldiers from their districts killed. The jig was up, and they had no wish to be put down like the broken Ms. Blackburn.

More than that, Shuster singlehandedly showed how to effectively sideline manufactured hysteria. He did it not by returning name-calling for names called, but surgically, step by incised step. He led with the commonplace premise of hypocrisy, but only as bait for outing the deeper violation of the public trust -- her public's trust. Afterward, I doubt there was a rocky underside large enough to accommodate Blackburn's vast humiliation.

But even more than that, Shuster showed other broadcast journalists how their paychecks were meant to be earned -- that anything less is an unbefitting violation of their public's trust. Let's hope his superior strain of journalism is infectious.

A slice of hope

Congressional Democrats have found a rip-roaring distraction from their war-ending ineptitude, but at least it's a worthy one. The House will likely vote today, with the Senate following suit tomorrow, on the expansion of children's health insurance -- a federal entitlement to which children are entitled, and which, quite naturally, faces a certain presidential veto.

It's one of those nearly pure ideological showdowns that the two-party system is supposed to reflect. And after witnessing a compliant Democratic Congress cave to an imperial president on virtually everything else, what a pleasant showdown it is.

The health program's funding mechanism is atrocious -- sumptuary taxes rather than money from the till of a progressive income tax structure -- but politics is rarely unatrocious. In this case, however, its politics is at least proving predictable, with our fiscally rational, ever so conservatively prudent president warning that the Democratically designed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is a fiscal ballbuster and "incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American."

Boo.

But that's a bogeyman to which Democrats and even a sizeable number of Republicans, along with beleaguered governors and numerous health advocacy groups, are bucking -- even dismissing -- this time around. The right-wing bugaboo of "socialized medicine" seems to have lost its terror value for most Americans and their political ducklings following behind, given the terrifying reality of the private system in place. An "incremental step"? Good. Next, how 'bout a leap?

Nevertheless the administration is pulling out all the usual stops, since it is "concerned that the White House [is] being hurt by televised news reports that portrayed the fight as a struggle between Mr. Bush and poor children, rather than as a philosophical debate over the role of government in health care." And one of its more customary stops is, of course, to simply lie:

"Mr. Bush said last week that the compromise bill would cover children in four-person families with incomes exceeding $80,000 a year.... But Senator Charles E. Grassley ... said that under the compromise, a state could set its income limit at $80,000 only if the secretary of health and human services gave approval. New York is the only state that has proposed such a high limit, and the Bush administration denied its request on Sept. 7."

Which merely shows, once again, that any sentence containing at once "Mr. Bush" and "philosophical debate" is an oxymoronic proposition.

Any threatened Republican filibuster -- that nasty Democratic habit so vigorously denounced by up-or-down GOP purists in past Congresses -- would be pointless at this stage, since the Senate already passed a like bill last month by 68 to 31. Hence a veto override seems likely as well. But the House is an altogether different matter, with so many of its reactionary members entrenched, as they are, in their gerrymandered, reactionary districts.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas has taken up the Republican standard, decrying the shameful politics of it all: "The majority is passing a bill they know will be vetoed in hopes of making the president look as if he’s against health care for children." Let's see. The legislation at hand provides more money (check) for more health care (check) for more children (check). And the president opposes it (check, check, and check). Whatever could this sinister majority be implying?

The joy of witnessing Congressional progressives act like progressives, however -- accompanied by the joy of watching moderate Republicans be cowered into doing something decent for a change -- is counterbalanced by the strong and depressing suspicion that Mr. Philosophy's veto will, ultimately, win the day.

But perhaps the invigorating battle will inspire Democrats to take up their own standard in the heretofore bloodless congressional arena of the war. Perhaps this fight will infuse them with enough political testosterone to start fighting elsewhere.

Hell, the reactionaries haven't forced any bills against dreaming, yet -- have they?

Demonizing the inconsequential: The happy hysteria of Monster-Making 101

Now this is startling -- assuming you haven't picked up a paper in the last six years or so: "Political analysts [in Iran] say they are surprised at the degree to which the West focuses on their president, saying that it reflects a general misunderstanding of their system."

It's only natural that the Bush administration should misunderstand. It's what it does. And if no troubling misunderstanding exists, it creates one, just to keep the dogs of war and distraction hungry. But if you caught that embarrassing "60 Minutes" interview with Majmoud Ahmadinejad last night, in which Iran's faltering president was treated with all the gravity of a virtual dictator, then you know the Bush administration isn't alone in fomenting misunderstandings. It can always count on assorted elements of the equally unschooled media.

Ahmadinejad is good copy, as the expression goes, mostly by virtue of having a big mouth. He's also the perfect and easily digested foil to our mountainous misunderstandings in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. And what a perfect face for a U.S. poster boy of unctuous evil -- one that slyly grins as it surely plots its nefarious schemes of global disorder and regional domination. It's always nice to put a face on these things, unless, of course, we don't know where the face is and can't find it.

But we know precisely where Ahmadinejad is and precisely what he's doing; or, perhaps, we have that muddled. No matter. For it may even be that we know precisely what we're doing in misunderstanding what Ahmadinejad is doing and can do, because clarity is the enemy of misunderstandings and all the happy military-industrial complexities that come with them. Better to leave things murky, and dark. They seem so much more intriguingly nefarious that way.

We're doing a bang-up job. For as Iranian insiders say of what's happening on the inside: "In demonizing [their] president ... the West has served him well, elevating his status at home and in the region at a time when he is increasingly isolated politically because of his go-it-alone style and ineffective economic policies."

"He's not that consequential," says one Iranian political scientist, who just previous to that comment nevertheless outlined the origins of his president's expanding consequence: "The United States pays too much attention to Ahmadinejad."

Of course it does. How, after all, can we have an inconsequential clown as the face of so many troubles?

Yet as his power and influence in Iran decline; as his economy tanks; as his political allies flee him (one former supporter's depth of support was reflected in merely having "liked [his] slogans demanding justice"); as some of his ministers walk out; as his head of the central bank resigns in disgust; as his judiciary takes potshots at him; as Iran's powerfully "entrenched interests" grow more disgruntled with his domestic misrule -- in the face of all this, Ahmadinejad's importance grows largely because of the "international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up."

Such condemnation feeds Iran's real power -- Ayatollah Khamenei and his fellow reactionaries -- rooted in a paranoid ideology: "Mr. Ahmadinejad’s power stems not from his office per se, but from the refusal of his patron[s] ... to move beyond Iran’s revolutionary identity, which makes full relations with the West impossible."

On the other hand, if we were so foolish as to show an interest in fomenting full and productive relations, we'd then be stuck without an enemy. There's always China, I suppose, but it's busily engaged in manufacturing our lethal toys, so best leave it for another day. Ahmadinejad is perfect for now.

"A colossal swindle"

I know of no popular American writer more antidemocratic in philosophical mind and spirit than the bilious H.L. Mencken (1880-1956). For decades he railed regularly against the democratic species in what was this, the most democratic of nations. He playfully but earnestly denounced its shallow comprehensions, its inherent demagoguery, its herd mentality, its Babbittesque pretensions and, perhaps most of all, its sickly corruption by Christian evangelical provincialism.

Yet this profoundly vocal antidemocrat remained vastly popular among his democratic readers (at least, that is, till he began launching less humorous tirades against FDR's New Deal activism, when some -- any -- activism was most demanded by the populace). And I suspect his popularity remained intact for so long because his readers suspected -- despite their all their partisan fervor on Election Day and enthusiastic partaking in other democratic rituals -- that Mencken was on to something; that Mencken was, in short, right.

But I don't mean to paint Mencken in one color only. For he also, I think, retained a certain fondness for democracy, or at least its promise. What he despised about it, however, was its very real and fragile uncertainty -- that is, its ultimate cowardice. And the democratic cowardice he saw and detested in the first half of the twentieth century is every bit as pronounced in that of the twenty-first's beginnings.

Take, for instance, his partial musings in "Notes on Democracy," dated 1926, just a few years after the foreign horrors and domestic oppressions of the Great War, and amidst the contemporary and frivolous distractions that would soon lead to the Great Depression:

"I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Nor is this process confined to times of alarm and terror; it is going on day in and day out. Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves" -- which was to say, freedom.

I, as well, hardly need point to today's similarities. Whether real, imagined, or fabricated, perceived menaces to democracy's national safety have availed little more than a despotic ferocity. The democratic spirit reveled in its suicide, and it put the knife to itself in the blink of an eye. Just protect us. Constitutional traditions are nice, and participatory democracy and far-ranging debate are theoretically swell -- but when our safety and security are threatened, just do ... whatever -- whatever it takes.

The despotically inclined did just that. But now, after democracy has seen the errors of its ways (after how many similarities?), it's still stuck with the despots, as well as all the democratically elected "dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds [and] cads" who inhabited Mencken's Congress and ours.

In fact, Congress' dunderheadedness and cowardice have become institutionalized, as this piece -- which prompted these Menckenian musings -- in this morning's Washington Post drearily recounts. One senator labels it "political dysfunction." Mencken was less euphemistic.

Still, he was entertained by it all, if not resigned. The workings and non-workings of democracy may have been "incomparably idiotic," but "the pain of seeing [the dunderheaded pols] go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down."

And, finally, as mentioned, one reads in Mencken that touch of uneasy fondness for the democratic system. "Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is an ineradicable necessity to human government, and even to civilization itself -- that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle."

And with that, I am persuaded, Mencken hit the proverbial nail on the head -- and there's no confirmation like today's Congressional confirmation, democratically enshrined.

My conservative epiphany

Kimberley Strassel, a Wall Street Journal editorial fiction writer, yesterday produced a fine piece of outrage that managed, in a mere 1000 words, to encapsulate modern conservatism's fundamentalist fiscal philosophy: "Trillions for defense, but not a sixpence for homefolks."

Ms. Strassel's precise target was, of course, the horrifying State Children's Health Insurance Program bill -- bipartisan legislation that recognizes that lower middle-class children without healthcare nevertheless shall remain healthcare-less despite their demographic status, unless something is done. Imagine that.

Her larger target, however, was the general idea that big spending on little people and other assorted domestic spending are signs of a civilized society. Sure, living, breathing people in pain might derive some temporary benefit from insured access to healthcare -- such as that possessed, no doubt, by Ms. Strassel herself -- but, for heaven and Hayek's sake, what about the cost? You know, to the people of means?

Ah, there's the rub. And no truly civilized society would burden its betters with such fiscal outlandishness. Nonetheless, observes the medically insured Strassel, "Congress will soon ship the White House a bill that throws huge amounts of new dollars at the government's health-insurance program for children.... What happens next will demonstrate whether the beleaguered Mr. Bush has any hope of getting his party to toe the fiscal line in upcoming spending battles, and by consequence whether Republicans have any hope of restoring their fiscal credibility with voters."

Yet Ms. Strassel fears the unconscionable that haunts conservatism's sensibilities -- that although Congress is "demanding at least $30 billion more than Mr. Bush's own generous $5 billion Schip increase..., more than a few [Republicans] are thinking about next year's elections, and how nice it would be to avoid claims that they helped throw impoverished kiddies to the health-care wolves."

Isn't that just like a bunch of nervous pols? If they had any real guts and genuine conservative instincts, they'd instead fight like wolves themselves to undo all those weepy child labor laws and put the little buggers to the additionally undone minimum-wage stake, where they could then work and not deduct healthcare tax credits on income they don't have and healthcare they can't afford.

But I speak of Ms. Strassel's perfect world, and since even dreamy and irresponsible liberals are in conservative agreement that we can never achieve social perfection, it is unfair, I suppose, to accuse Ms. Strassel of advocating the effort.

So let me be fair and stick to what she did write. But wait, I misspeak again, for once again it's what she didn't write that caused my amused befuddlement.

As I read Ms. Strassel's piece, something -- granted, just a little something -- in her 1000-word diatribe against big spending seemed to be missing. I read on, knowing -- knowing for sure -- that she'd eventually encounter the huge fiscal elephant. But alas, although the offensive "SChip" is cited nine times as evidence of possible Republican irresponsibility, not once did the words "Iraq war" and its accompanying big spending land in her commentary.

This puzzled. For if a fiscal boogeyman lurks anywhere, it's probably in the half-million-dollar-a-minute expense of the war -- that would be nearly three-quarters of billion dollars a day -- which is what a recent "analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes" (the latter of whom has "placed the total cost of the Iraq war at more than $2.2 trillion, not counting interest") has availed for Ms. Strassel's fiscal edification.

Yet, not a word about this from the nice lady at the fiscally aghast Wall Street Journal.

Fortunately, however, he of foreign-policy as well as today's fiscal neoconservatism, the American Enterprise Institute's Frederick Kagan, has taken up the slack. I don't want to twist his words, so I'll let the delicate Mr. Kagan explain this puzzler himself: "Either you think the war in Iraq supports America's national security, or not. If you think national security won't be harmed by withdrawing from Iraq, of course you would want to see that money spent elsewhere. I myself think that belief, on a certain level, is absurd, so the question of focusing on how much money we are spending there is irrelevant."

And there you -- I -- have it. I was dwelling in a warped world's level of absurdity, one in which the fiscal irrelevancy of $21 billion a month spent on the president's ego and desperate legacy -- a.k.a. national security -- simply never occurred to me.

I'm humiliated and humbled, and I promise to never be so absurd again. Thank you, Mr. Kagan, for pointing out the obvious; and thank you, Ms. Strassel, for assuming it's so bloody obvious it need not even have been mentioned.

What MoveOn forgot: The barkers run the show

In his column last Sunday, Frank Rich smartly condemned the origins of the "Petraeus/Betray Us" controversy, a controversy that in the last few days has loomed larger than the war the ad was designed to attack:

"This left-wing brand of juvenile name-calling," he wrote, "is as witless as the 'Defeatocrats' and 'cut and run' McCarthyism from the right."

Why witless? Because, Rich continued, "it at once undermined the serious charges against the data in the Petraeus progress report (including those charges in the same MoveOn ad) and allowed the war's cheerleaders to hyperventilate about a sideshow."

It's true that not much is required from the left in terms of material for the right to hyperventilate about. It's also true that even in the absence of the left handing some sideshow material to the right, the latter is expert at creating this sort of stuff out of whole cloth. It's what they do. And they do it well. Nevertheless, the left doesn't need to make their job easier for them; and that's precisely what MoveOn.org did.

To their credit, MoveOn's management seems chastened: "In an e-mail to its members last night, the group acknowledged that the content of the ad might have angered its allies but argued that a larger issue is at stake. 'Maybe you liked our General Petraeus ad. Maybe you thought the language went too far,' they wrote. 'But make no mistake: this is much bigger than one ad.'"

Of course it is. On the other hand, of course it isn't. For when the theatrical reality of democracy's circus comes to town, it's the barkers in the driver's seat.

One would think MoveOn would have already known this, but if not, the organization learned it the hard way by yesterday, having "found itself under attack by not only President Bush, who said the ad was 'disgusting,' but also by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which passed a resolution 72 to 25 expressing its own outrage. Many Democrats blamed the group for giving moderate Republicans a ready excuse for staying with Bush and for giving Bush and his supporters a way to divert attention away from the war."

And there you have it. A three-ring circus, or at the very least, a sideshow within a sideshow. There was the president, finally able to reenergize his diminishing base by locating something "disgusting" outside his own actions; there were the congressional Republicans, doing, as mentioned, what they and their media allies do best -- expressing outrage; and, naturally, there were the spineless Democrats, who were handed a ready-made scapegoat they could call their own.

Has it been Democrats' antiwar mismanagement that has kept the door open for moderate Republicans to stay with Bush? Let's just say it's much easier to point the finger at MoveOn.org, and there's a good chance the gaping spectators will fall for it.

And let us not forget the traveling sideshows -- all those Republican presidential candidates and right-wing propaganda outfits that are now raking in the fundraising cash as a happy result of the Big Tent's glitzy distractions.

If MoveOn forgot any fundamental lesson about the circus of democratic politics, it is this: In a country mesmerized by the likes of O.J.'s witless activities and Britney Spears' witless choice of undergarments and a television network's witless selection of a witless successor to Rosie O'Donnell -- if that country can be mesmerized by those non-events in a time of eventful war -- then witless sideshows are indeed what it's all about.

They'll trump the real show every time, and MoveOn is just now learning how counterproductive opening the tent door can be. So do us a favor, MoveOn, and take Frank Rich's advice: Dump the ad hominems and stick to the facts, no matter how devotedly the democrats in this faltering Democracy choose to ignore them. If we in the right must suffer at the witless doings of those on the right, let's do it with some nobility.

And that, gentle reader, is my hypocrisy for the day, having committed MoveOn's sin many, many times myself.