Helmintholog

Melanie Phillips slips entirely the surly bonds of earth in her latest, which appears to call for a nuclear assault on Syria as well as Iran. How else is one to interpret her demand that the states that are driving this war on many fronts — principally Iran and its satellite, Syria (although the forked-tongued Saudis should not be forgotten either) — [must be] confronted and defeated."
America has not even got enough troops to hold down Baghdad, so any widening of the war would have to be from the air, and we all know by now that conventional bombing does not work. Which leaves the big one….

Normally, one would ignore this kind of ranting. Two things make it worth noticing. The first is that, though it is patently batshit crazy, patent batshit craziness has not so far disqualified any American policy in the war.

The second is that she starts out from a perfectly correct analysis of the recommendations of the ISG: they won’t work either, and they can’t possibly work. Take it away, Mel: "The report is also profoundly dishonest, refusing to acknowledge the inevitable consequences of its own reasoning. It sets up, for example, yet another straw aspiration: that the Iraqis have to be brought to be able to police themselves, disregarding the fact that this is precisely what the coalition has been attempting to do for the past four years — and then saying that even if they are not in such a position, the US should depart. In other words, cut and run but don’t admit it. And this even though the authors spell out in gory detail the dire consequences that chaos in Iraq would have for the US and for the world."

This is quite true. Unfortunately, Phillips thinks that victory is merely a matter of willpower. This leads to her glorious denunciations of the ISG: "Its authors are now revealed to be as intellectually deficient as they are morally malodorous … compromise is tantamount to abject surrender and complicity with terrorism, fascism and genocide … not merely appeasement but rank treachery. The ISG and their ilk want to surrender to Iran and Syria and offer up Israel as a propitiatory sacrifice. [they want] a world that is Jew-free; or at least, where the Jews play one role only — that of global fall-guy … The vile personal agenda by the ISG’s principal author, James Baker III, is … that he is pressing to abandon America’s ally to those who wish to exterminate it"

Phew!

But of course all this follows quite logically from her belief that the battle can be won by a triumph of the will. This makes it impossible for her to believe that the US has really been defeated in Iraq.

Now, children, can you think of anyone else who might think like that? Someone else who is "Not satisfied with the pace of success?" Well, if he does start WW3, you read his reasoning here first.

UPDATE: flicking through the NYRB, I found a review of Max Boot’s latest, which is Melanian hubris writ small. I have marked the crucial sentence in green ink. Boot writes:

In the early years of the twenty-first century the United States enjoys a preponderance of military power greater than any other nation in history…. Today America is rivaled in land, sea, and air power by…no one. Although the dominance of US forces can still be challenged when they come into close contact with the enemy on his home turf, they are undisputed masters of the "commons" (sea, air, space), which allows them to project power anywhere in the world at short notice….

In other words, the American army has reached a state of global dominance which allows it to go anywhere in the world, quicker than ever before — and there be defeated.

Most of the coverage I have seen of the Iraq Study Group’s report has concentrated on its recommendations. This is a waste of time. The whole point about the present disaster is that there is no solution. Defeat is now inevitable and — short of a meteorite taking out the White House — it will be nastier than anyone (not Iraqi) can presently imagine. What can still be learned from the report is something about the still scarcely credible arrogance and incompetence of the Pentagon. One passage picked up here gives an idea of this:

there are fewer than 10 analysts on the job at the Defense Intelligence Agency who have more than two years’ experience in analyzing the insurgency … In addition, there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases. A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.

well, duh.

I’m off into London tonight for my agent’s Christmas party. This time last year, I was talking there with a charming man from Aegis, the mercenary company, who was thoroughly optimistic about the war and the forthcoming elections, and Charles Glass, who pointed out that even in Vietnam, all the elections were held on schedule. Charles said that the only good thing to come out of the war might be a de facto independent and secure Kurdistan, but that we’d see the Americans leave as they did Saigon, with people clinging to the helicopters. On the other hand, he thought this would have no impact on American domestic politics: perhaps there he was being pessimistic. I hope that both men are there tonight.