Among the brownshirt authoritiarian Rightists within the Administration powerbase, there is a yearning to surrender to the Blood Call just as intense as in their Neocon breatheren. It is a myth that the brownshirt anti-Iraq Right and the Neocons are diametrically opposed.

Just as in the 1920s and 1930s, the Left Neocons and the Rightist Authoritarians are both fundamentally romantic, irrational political movements appealing to emotion over reason. Today, like their predecessors, they diverge primarily on the question of internationalism. The anti-war Rightists are mostly nativists. They want their romantic agenda to unfold within the West and spurn the internationalist program and its 'cosmopolitan' proponents. (Portions of the Evangelical Right, of course, are internationalist on the Iraq issue because of the perceived Biblical imperative to support Israel and thereby usher in the End Times).



For some in the non-Neocon Right, their glee is palpable when predicting that an internal blood letting, a cleansing clash of civilizations within the West itself, on home ground is inevitable. Or the line is sophisticated resignation to an unavoidable outcome. National commentators invoke Sherman's swath of destruction through Georgia as a necessary future. Apparently, Europe will be forced to do this necessary violence to create a consensus for internal social cohesion, brotherhood and progress. This orgy of violence will be needed to 'unifty' the West and Western civilization and 'expunge' Islamic separatism within.

The Rightist Blood Call is usally tarted up with ill-digested historical references, ritual invocations of Huntington, shameless use of L'affaire Comics to sanction blood letting under the the First Amendment, etc. (link courtesy RoxPopuli). The Stiftung notes with bemusement that most of Rightists don't realize how much the West owes to Islam as an ascendant and more advanced culture at the time, particularly the recovery of the Western Grecian philosophical, scientific and mathematical heritage. But historical or empirical accuracy is not in the romantic oeuvre of either Rightist Authoritarians or Left Neocons at the moment.

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meet Marshall Wittmann, Revolutionary Hamlet.

“The Abandonment”

The Moose ponders the question of defeat.

Is it time to declare that we have lost in Iraq and announce our withdrawal? That is the essential question on the table. Oh, some want to dress the issue up as strategic redeployment or timed withdrawal. But, Mr. Zarqawi will know what is happening.

Laughable. Wittman wrings his hands at what has happened to the Noble Cause. And like with the Trotskyite Neocons, for Wittman 'The Great Idea' itself is beyond question. Rather, we were betrayed.


Why devote a post to one blogger in the Imperial City? Because, Dear Reader, Wittmann is a good barometer and predictor for what you will hear from McCain 2008 as the Silly Season starts anew. [UPDATE: 03/03/06 - Joe Conason on why McCain looks likely for '08]



Here's the chorus, March 2006 (Wittmann Remix):

This Administration failed to level with the American people about the cost of this war. It raised expectations from the very beginning with the despicable “Mission Accomplished” photo op. It failed to provide sufficient troop levels to restore order after the initial invasion. And it is a travesty that Donald Rumsfeld continues to occupy his position after the mistakes made on his watch.

Kristol et al. began the scapegoating back in 2004, calling for Rumsfeld's head. And so the Revisionism continues. It is an old song. 'If only we had not paused at Smolensk. If only Army Group Center showed more Will. The Italians and Romanians let down our left flank on the Don. It was Koch's policies in the Ukraine, etc.'

But they refuse to acknowledge the fundamental question itself: the flawed gambler's roll of the dice in the first place. No recognition of the risk. And no recognition that the Hamlet pose Wittmann strikes here is particularly galling because he and his Neocon bretheren deliberately and consciously burned our bridges behind us to foreclose any outcome other than this: forward or back, victory or defeat.


And never the fundamental question of asking the wisdom of igniting a civil war in the heart of an ecumenae featuring over 1 billion. Make no mistake. The Neocons and Wittman always wanted a civil war. Just on their terms — their delusional romance was that the civil war would be between their joyous, newly empowered liberated democrats, filled with fervor and Lockean empowerment (and solidarity with Israel — Chalabi promised!), and the existing regimes, belief systems and tribal loyalties.

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