It's too easy -- nay, inhumane -- to give William Kristol of neocon celebrity what he wants and expects: ridicule. Because what he needs is help. The poor man has enjoyed a rest from reality for some time now, but whoever still loves him should seek court-ordered observation. For his sad condition is peaking, with the acute now mercilessly peppering the chronic.
Kristol's latest and most bizarre op-ed yet, "Why Bush Will Be a Winner," which the Washington Post rather cruelly circulated yesterday, is bookended by these pitiable hyperventilations: "I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one"; and, "If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president. I like the odds."
Kristol's seemingly simpleminded prognostications are, in fact, but a clinical study in the Napoleonic complex. Bush and Iraq are his yet-executed and alternative Waterloo; his final and stunning victory against all odds, against all reason, all rationality. But first he must be ridiculed. His coming and decisive victory would be hollow without it; he would have no ridicule to return with mad, head-flung and staccato laughs.
You'll need to read his scribbling for yourself to get a fully informed sense of his textbook denial of reality, but noting just a few highlights here should quickly lay bare his most serious and urgent condition.
The economy? It's humming right along, thank you -- all due to Mr. Bush's bold insight into the saving graces of death-defying tax cuts. "His opponents predicted dire consequences," writes Kristol, who joyfully ignores the massive consequences in the making; dire consequences indeed, and widely forecast with a confidence level approaching certainty.
"What about terrorism?" he asks. Well, "there has been less of it, here and abroad, than many experts predicted on Sept. 12, 2001," he answers.
How did he arrive at that overall "less" part? Be fair, he clarifies: One must exclude Iraq, you see, from the terrorism-accounting, since there's so much terrorism taking place there. And if we start counting terrorist attacks where terrorism reigns ... well, that sort of thing just throws out of kilter our whole happy world of hoax and hallucination.
If we do count terrorist incidents where they largely occur, the year 2006, according to the State Department, saw attacks up by 25 percent worldwide from the preceding year, including "a surge [of 65 percent] in Africa." But for God's sake don't confront Bill with those statistics. Such disabuse could render him violent. Humor him, till the wagon arrives.
Naturally he saved his best disorientation -- Iraq's sunny future -- for last. And what a whopper it is.
"Despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless 'benchmark' report last week," he writes, "we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome." The surge is working and "political progress is beginning to follow." (As does the thought, "psychiatric emergency.")
And no matter how bumpy the occupational ride has been -- which Kristol shrewdly concedes as a tip of the aluminum hat to the sober -- had we not gone into Iraq, he says, Saddam Hussein and "his connections with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups would be intact or revived and even strengthened." No emphasis is really needed, nonetheless I enhance his explicit derangement for the purpose of precise worrisomeness.
It was that bit of complete disconnect that made me realize Bill Kristol's train has forever left Sanity Depot. He has surpassed the "Go" of mere spin and entered that strange and self-destructive realm of utter fantasy. He's mad, I tell you -- quite mad.
Ridicule, Mr. Kristol? I think not. Perhaps a large vial of Thorazine.