| Friday, February 7, 2003 |
18:44 - So is anybody doing anything right?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/02/07/paglia/index.html
|
(top)  |
Salon has this article (forwarded by Judson) which consists of a recent interview with Camille Paglia, self-styled "libertarian Democrat". I wasn't sure what to expect; and having read it, I'm not sure I know what I've just witnessed.
I almost stopped reading it halfway through, as a matter of fact. The article starts out reading like your typical anti-war, anti-Bush, ratty-old-car-covered-with-bumper-stickers diatribe:
But how are we going to counter that threat? Are we going to bomb laboratories and facilities storing dangerous chemicals and release them in the air near population centers? Are we going to poison Baghdad? This is as barbarous as what we're opposing in Saddam. We need to be going in the opposite direction -- to lower global tensions. This constant uncertainty is bad for everyone. It's bad for the economy, it's bad for people's psychic health, and it's going to endanger Americans around the world. How are we ever going to do business around the world and function in a global market, when any American traveling abroad is subject to assassination?
But Paglia then goes on to express disdain for Clinton, support for Israel (especially since the last couple of years), rejection of the Democratic party as a "bunch of weasels", a trepidation toward radical Islam as an analog to early Christianity and its own improbable rise to prominence (she's a scholar of ancient history), scorn for entertainment pinheads like Sean Penn, and disgust with today's anti-war movement and its "Bush is a poop-throwing monkey" sloganeering-based incoherence. She wants no part of Sontag or Chomsky and their reflexive anti-Americanism. She would like to see Condi Rice as Bush's 2004 running mate, apparently so as to stick it to Hillary.
Paglia doesn't like the idea of war, and she's very nervous about how our occupying Iraq is just as likely to inflame further Islamic radicals (as did our military presence in Saudi Arabia) as it is to put the fear of God into would-be terrorists. She understands the power of the latter approach-- she's an unabashed fan of bolts-from-heaven like the Predator that took out the jeep in Yemen-- but she doesn't like the idea of big old-fashioned war. And that's fine; I can understand that. Paglia's anti-war objections are something I'm fully willing to listen to because her overall political picture shows someone who's intellectually honest, unwilling to subscribe to shallow popular opinion or to paint things with the moral-equivalence brush, and equally critical of the moronic things she sees on both sides. She doesn't appear to be a big fan of Bush or Rumsfeld, but it seems she'd take them any day over Clinton.
But what I don't get is how she manages to very nearly undermine her whole argument and platform by starting out the interview with stuff like this:
As we speak, I have a terrible sense of foreboding, because last weekend a stunning omen occurred in this country. Anyone who thinks symbolically had to be shocked by the explosion of the Columbia shuttle, disintegrating in the air and strewing its parts and human remains over Texas -- the president's home state! So many times in antiquity, the emperors of Persia or other proud empires went to the oracles to ask for advice about going to war. Roman generals summoned soothsayers to read the entrails before a battle. If there was ever a sign for a president and his administration to rethink what they're doing, this was it. I mean, no sooner had Bush announced that the war was "weeks, not months" away and gone off for a peaceful weekend at Camp David than this catastrophe occurred in the skies over Texas.
From the point of view of the Muslim streets, surely it looks like the hand of Allah has intervened, as with the attack on the World Trade Center. No one in the Western world would have believed that those mighty towers could fall within an hour and a half -- two of the proudest constructions in American history. And neither would anyone have predicted this eerie coincidence -- that the president's own state would become the burial ground for the Columbia mission.
Including one small town where the debris fell called Palestine, Texas.
Yes, exactly! What weird irony with an Israeli astronaut onboard who had bombed Iraq 20 years ago. To me this dreadful accident is a graphic illustration of the limitations of modern technology -- of the smallest detail that can go wrong and end up thwarting the most fail-safe plan. So I think that history will look back on this as a key moment. Kings throughout history have been shaken by signals like this from beyond: Think twice about what you're doing. If a Roman general tripped on the threshold before a battle, he'd call it off.
And then she goes on to talk about how attacking Iraq will play havoc with people's "psychic health". Who is this person? Is she serious? What kind of time is this, to talk about "omens" when such self-parodying superstition is exactly what fuels our enemies? She makes such a strong case, but then spreads credibility-solvents on top with a mortar trowel.
What I come away with, ultimately, is an impression that she thinks nobody's doing the right thing-- not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not the Islamists, not the anti-war people, not the French, not Saddam, not anybody. We're all going about everything the wrong way. And it's not that she's just raving, either; many of her points are valid through completely understandable intellectual processes. It's just a very dismal picture she paints; it's hard to tell what she's asking anybody to do.
I think our prospects in Iraq have a better chance of success than Paglia thinks. I know she's an expert on Mesopotamia and all, but this is the modern world, and nodding knowingly about "tribal grudges" and "long memory" doesn't really get us anywhere. All it does is condemn us to the last millennium for the duration of the coming one, all because we're not willing to round up the stragglers and nudge them along.
Maybe it's idealistic to think it's possible to defuse the Middle East. Maybe taking out Saddam will make things worse. But this is still the beginning stages of the great cultural confrontation that will decide the course of the next thousand years; it's going to be painful sooner or later no matter what course we choose. I think it's likely to be resolved sooner and more cleanly if we plant our feet and roll up our sleeves than if we curl up into a ball and hope it goes away.
I don't much like the situation we've been put into either. There is no good way out; there are just bad ways and less bad ways.
|
|
