Howling at the Moon

As IOZ pointed out a few days ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Washington Post article about the real purpose of the war on terror – to keep the domestic population frightened and passive – is a pretty significant article in spite of some of the shortcomings of the author and the article itself. That kind of talk was only found at the margins a few short years ago.

I would guess that state planners are mostly aware of how the system works; appeal to fear or patriotism to get the bewildered herd behind whatever action the ruling elites have calculated is necessary to maintain stability and security for the current economic order. It’s a cynical game through and through.

That is not to say that some people are not wholly indoctrinated and may believe with all their hearts the insanity they advocate publicly. Enter Joshua Muravchik, neoconservative and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. When the robots takeover and enslave humanity, AEI will serve as a stable for thoroughbred robo-fascist apologists whose tracts exhorting the benefits of chains and shackles will be an integral part of keeping the human spirit at bay. Which is to say that many of us will view them very differently, but they won't have to change their views of the world much at all.

Recall Muravchik’s recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times, whose first line says it all, “WE MUST bomb Iran.” (Emphasis his) Muravchik points out that diplomacy has “led nowhere” – just as the U.S. has intended and actively ensured as I document elsewhere - and if Iran got a nuclear bomb it would pose an existential threat to Israel (who only has approximately 300 nuclear war heads to counter with.)

Quite obviously, if the U.S. took Muravchik’s advice and bombed Iran that might pose an existential threat to millions of U.S. citizens as well. As he puts it, “Finally, wouldn't such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn't Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism? Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse.” He means the royal “we”, of course. Those tasked with the noble yet daunting chore of mongering war via think tank papers and lectures know that actual war is for the poor. Theirs is not to do and die, but to endure bad buffet luncheons and suffer the inequities of ergonomically ignorant roundtable chairs.

Muravchik closed his plea to bomb Iran by pulling the Soviet empire and German Reich out of his hat. With these historical precedents in hand, he foretells a future of a unified Islamic New World Order led by nuclear armed Iran. I am reminded of the sagacious Jack Handy, who once mused that the most terrifying animal in the world is an elephant with a shark riding on its back, devouring and trampling everything in sight. Never mind that the existing Islamic World Order is not at all heterogeneously ordered and have always been prone to squabbling factions and politicking. Those descriptions of objective reality probably have little currency with someone who could publicly write, “Communism itself was to claim perhaps 100 million lives, and it also gave rise to fascism and Nazism, leading to World War II. Ahmadinejad wants to be the new Lenin.” I wonder how many lives have been taken and wars started because of capitalism and democracy using the same inescapable logic? (After all, adopting the same intellectual standards, it is accurate to say that capitalism beget communism, which beget Stalin, Nazism and fascism. There is a lot of 20th century blood on Adam Smith’s hands.) I'd also point out that Ahmadinejad is a domestic politician, meaning he has no control over Iran's armed forces or foreign policy, which are the domain of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has sharply and publicly rebuked Ahmadinejad for his belligerent posturing as has a majority of Iran's parliament. But to do so risks inviting for another shabby Hitler analogy, who didn’t have complete control of German's political and military system until after assuming office of Chancellor and Prime Minister in 1938. Ahmadinejad is the new Lenin, except when he is the new Hitler.

Muravchik is over at Commentary Magazine howling at the moon about Brzezinski’s article in the Post. He gets a good head of steam going, employing the standard personal attacks necessary for good polemic, but his effort sputters and stalls and bogs down in the mud before he actually approaches the argument. The mental image I am left with is of a flummoxed Muravchik, slipping in the mud and fuming incoherently at his impotent vehicle, “Why, no… Posh! That can’t be, but, baldersash! Poppycock! … but the what and the who the… the Iranians … no, wait, I mean… what if I, Bah!” Why he took so long to simply rejoin, “Zbigniew, you ignorant slut!” is beyond me.