Remora

Idiocy, open idiocy, in public, like nudity in public, has a certain low erotic charm.

So Limited Inc should have been pleased to read an article that, from beginning to end, is a tissue of error, misreading, illogic, and special pleading. Not since Clinton defended oral sex as a form of non-sex have we seen something like this. It is Jonathan Rauch, who seems to have the brains of a damaged green pea, writing in the Atlantic about why Bush one was right to stop his big bad war before we had taken out (if you'll remember) a man who was "another Hitler". Somehow, though, Limited Inc.'s joy in the piece was mitigated by its racism, its vile sense of American privilege, and our sense that it is depressingly representative of conservative foreign policy thinking.

Rauch gives various implausible and weasily reasons for Bush's great foreign policy failure. His big Ace, which he draws like everybody in the house is going to gasp, is that the fall of Saddam would have split Bushy's coalition. This is bogus. As Patrick Cockburn has reported, the Bush administration's decision that the possible split-up of Iraq would make the Sauds and Turks bolt was taken without consulting the Sauds and Turks; officials from both states have said, in the wake of Iraq's preservation, that they were prepared to pay the price for ridding themselves of Saddam. What the Bush people didn't seem to realize is that Saddam had a reputation all over that was bad enough, scary enough, that the allies could be brought to the sticking point.

But Rauch isn't simply an ace man. He wants to play other cards as well. For instance, here he is as a stone bitch realpolitiker: "The goal of the Gulf War, for Bush and the Arab allies alike, was not to impose a new order on the region but to restabilize the old one. Strategically speaking, that meant caging the overweening Saddam, not toppling him."

Why gee, boys and girls, that does that sound a bit different from what Mr. Bush said to the good old American people, don't it? But given Rauch's contempt for the idea of democracy in the Middle East, it isn't surprising that he has a pretty high level of contempt for it in America, too. Why announce your real war aims to the country, after all -- I mean, they merely elected you, the scumbags.

And of course there is the little matter of what started the intifada in Iraq in the first place -- Bush's famous announcement that he welcomed revolt against Saddam Hussein. SImply skipped over by the inestimable Rauch, who has a true brownnoser's instinct for what parts to leave out of a story. But if pressed he'd no doubt chuckle -- it was a sort of in-joke, I guess. See how many Iraqis believe it and watch em die! Those cut up clowns in the white house, man, they'll joy buzzer you every time!

Having gone blissfully forward in error and deception like a sinner in Pilgrim's Progress, Rauch picks up speed, now: "Tactically, too, destroying Saddam looked costly. The Republican Guard was melting as fast as it could into Basra. Rooting it out could have meant street combat, with significant American and civilian casualties. No one�not the allies, not Bush, and not the Pentagon�relished fighting that type of war, particularly when doing so was not clearly necessary."

Let's see if this is true. The Republican units were paniced. There were revolts breaking out in the Shiite South and the Kurdish north, and they were successful at taking cities. We had the military force on line, on site, to make those revolts successful. We had the power to overthrow a dictator who had initiated a terrible eight year war, which he'd won by using chemicals, and one moreover who had built his power upon the murder of tens of thousands of his own people. We had that power, but oh, we didn't "relish" this. Why? Because Bushypoo and his advisors are "realists." The don't believe Arabs deserve anything so uppity as democracy, or a say so in their own governance. That would have a "bad effect" on, say, the Saudi peninsula, that is ruled by a family of autocratic looters. Never do to upset them. Our intent, at this point, was to imprison a people. Our motives were consonant with our history -- or at least that part of it that exterminated the Indians.

Limited Inc read the article so far as merely another tedious apologetic for our former loser president's mistakes, and not a very bright one at that. But then we got to Rauch's crowning moment and we rather lost our joy in the piece --because it is the moment in which mere cretinism yields to a depth of morally malignity rather repulsive to contemplate:

"Moreover, until 1990 Saddam had been a savage bully, but one America had done business with. It was reasonable to expect that after the fighting he might settle down, play by the rules, and pocket billions in diverted development aid like any self-respecting kleptocrat."

A bully, at my school, was someone who hit other people. With his fist. One guy I remember once put a needle in the toe of his boot, and kicked with it. But at Mr. Rauch's school, apparently, a bully was a little more aggressive - he was the guy who put the Sarin in the air ducts in the bathroom, apparently. The guy who set up torture chambers in the janitor closets. The guy who supplied his buddies with automatic rifles the better to systematically shoot down unarmed civilians in order to put fear into his enemies. Other people call such things a 'crime against humanity', but the knowing Rauch would smile at such naivete. Of course, for the Rauchs, only one crime against humanity has ever happened in history -- on September 11, 2001.