Puzzling Statements by Puzzling Conservatives

Having read George Will's column, 'Ignoring History in Iraq', I found myself more intrigued by the lacunae in his arguments than in the arguments themselves. Will recounted various American adventures overseas as part of his discussion of John Judis' new book, "The Folly of Empire." Regarding democracy, Will stated:

"A government that is all sail and no anchor might produce popular choices that lead through anarchy to civil war (American democracy led there), or national fragmentation, or fragmentation forestalled by Bonapartism, Francoism or some other variant of authoritarianism."

The parenthetical statement in bold was in the column as printed in the Sacramento Bee today, August 18th (not yet on the Web), but not in the Washington Post's Web version. The parenthetical statement is strange, because even though America went through the War Between the States, usually called the Civil War (a misnomer, actually, since the war was mostly sectional in nature), America never went through an anarchic stage beforehand. Was the parenthetical statement Will's own, or an editor's? I suppose what Will had in mind were efforts by "all-sail" Stephen Douglas, among others, to compromise between North and South on the issue of slavery and thus avoid bloodshed: God forbid that Iyad Allawi should try to compromise with Muqtada Al-Sadr to avoid bloodshed, even if a compromise is possible. I suppose it's easy to advise "no compromise," sitting here in the Western Hemisphere, but really, it's rather arrogant to counsel Allawi on such a path when Allawi might fail.

In addition, the totalitarian impulse is still a possibility in Iraq: our intervention hasn't closed the door on a new and better Saddam. A new dictator may emerge, or, growing tired of the mess, we might always kiss and make up with Saddam Hussein and unleash him on new Iraqi adventures. Stranger things have happened in world history. There is no magic division between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes: just different places on the same spectrum.

George Will pointed out the sham nature of the new Iraqi sovereignty, given the large number of American troops in the country. Then, apropos of little, Will ventured on a striking prediction: "Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by "Baathists" is, according to one administration official, akin to saying "Nazis" when you mean "the SS" -- the most fearsome of the Nazis. Such an offensive could make Sadr's insurgency seem a minor irritant. And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did."

So, are there super-Baathists out there? Scary to contemplate! Will is almost surely wrong, however, since most credible observers believe the majority of combatants (see 'Beyond Fallujah' in Harper's print version) in Iraq are cells of young salafists working under loose religious direction. The closest equivalent in American terms might be young, gun-nut volunteer warriors, who like to tend to their families on weekdays and blow up convoys on weekends. There are some noisy Al Qaeda wannabes (Zarqawi) and quite a few veteran Baathists, of course, but they likely aren't the majority. Large arms stockpiles went unguarded after the U.S. victory in 2003, allowing just about anyone who wants weapons to have them, so any special access to the tools of war provided by Baathist Party or Al Qaeda membership was considerably devalued. It's a come-as-you-are resistance movement!

Has there ever been such a large war where one of the combatants (the U.S.) can't even get a fix on who their opponents are, or who leads them (for example, various imams, practicing unafraid in plain sight)? President Bush and others have repeatedly referred to their enemies as Baathist dead-enders and Al Qaeda terrorists, leaving out numerous volunteerist semi-militias. George Will just compounded this error. Wishful thinking may explain why we have such a problem dealing with the violence in Iraq.

Another strange, yet revealing, comment was made by William Buckley in a brief interview in the New York Times magazine on July 11th. Referring to the neoconservatives, the interviewer, Deborah Solomon, goaded Buckley: "Yes, their ambition in Iraq seems to be leading to their self-destruction," to which Buckley replied: "Neocons would suffer a great blow, conceivably mortal, if Bush were defeated because of Iraq."

The statement seemed odd: Buckley, and probably other conservatives as well (Pat Buchanan comes to mind since he never joined the Iraqi parade), are now trying to distance themselves from the Iraqi debacle. Blame rests with those foolish, wooly-headed neo-conservatives, and not with righteous conservatives in general. Failure dies an orphan, as we all know, but neocons alone aren't to blame: support for the Iraq adventure was used as a cudgel in the 2002 off-year elections by all national Republican candidates. Still, it's interesting to think of American foreign policy being screwed up by some carpetbagging, think-tank, neocon scalawags who no real conservative ever respected anyway, and no one else had anything to do with it.