What are you wearing to Bill's hanging?

Glenn Greewald picks up, like many, Bill Buckley's Cronkite-moment in the National Review Friday. Some choice quotes from the God and man himself:

National Review

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries....

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans...

A problem for American policymakers — for President Bush, ultimately — is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed.

One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.

The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.

This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure...

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

Well, blow me up or blow me down. I'm sure Gen Eric Shinseki will be pleased to hear Bill tell his acolytes that "You were wrong. At least 250k troops were needed to do the job right." Perhaps John Brady Kiesling feels vindicated in his pre-war assesments and Jan 2003 resignation in protest from State:

After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.

So, will the weight of empirical truth rule the day? Nah. I have no delusions. This never was about being "correct" or prescient. That was never a requirement for the Wolfowitzes or Ledeens, the Cheneys or Perles, for Strauss or Kristol. These are boys as men, weaned on Gunsmoke and Spartacus and Doris Day, frozen in their adolescent frustrations and Secret Club-Building. Hormones, not wisdom is the entry requirement. And William Golding made their M.O. and code of conduct required reading in most high schools.

Those who banged the drums of war and are now (privately) chastened have no use for retroactive humility or the repatriation of those who disagreed; those who were, beginning days after the invasion, quickly proven correct in rapid fire and explosive fashion. The most uninformed, those doing the loudest banging, such as like Andy Sullivan, Hitchens or Limbaugh said out loud--thundered--that cautious voices, peddling their wussy understanding and logic were not to be trusted. Traitorous fifth-columnists was the distillation. The thought now--and give Buckley credit that he doesn't resort to it--is essentially that the naysayers may be slightly correct but it's for all the wrong reasons. We got lucky. Or, even more satisfying, we caused the failure.

I wish I could say these people are in politics or punditry because Business wouldn't have 'em, but you know I'd be lying. George Bush may be a parody of a CEO, but Don Rumsfeld did a serviceable if opaque job of it at Searle.

Of course, using the CEO example presumes that the big bulls do the heavy lifting--that they deserve the credit, or the blame, depending on your point of view. Nope. By and large, they execute, by delegation, the "big ideas" brought to them percolated up from several layers below.

The gullible come from middle management, anxious to belong and to be noticed, ready and willing to spread shit and call it pate. Relative unknowns like Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom General Tommy Franks called "the stupidest f*cking man on the planet" tells the generals 100k troops is plenty--like it or lump it. Or Wolfowitz, who sashays between saying the war would pay for itself from oil proceeds to admitting that imaginary WMDs was the only "saleable" war rationale that Americans would go for. Pretty lies. For our own good, of course.

Now, usually, lying and getting caught at it or, at minimum, promising unicorns that never appear ought to impeach your credibility after a while. Ought to.

Just Wednesday, Chris Mathews had on one of the architects and boiler-stokers of this mess, Richard Perle, to ask--get this--what he thought the bombing of that Shiite mosque in Samarra meant for our chances of success in Iraq. Were they on the brink of civil war? Pause for a second. Relish the ridiculousness of that question and it's recipient's track record. Done? Perle said, essentially, "No war. No big deal--just one mosque." He visibly did not know of the hundreds of other mosques also bombed or attacked. He did not know, or didn't care to know, that the mosque in question is the Shiia equivalent of Mount Vernon or Monticello. And, of course, he didn't think it was Sunnis doing the bombing--It was al Qaeda.

Ahh, the big A.Q. I do wonder sometimes if al Qaeda is not the IBM of international terrorism but, instead, it's Pets.com. Here's why. Gitmo has yielded us nothing in the way of AQ treasure except a barrage of embarrassing leaked memos from squeamish FBI and Military Intelligence officers disillusioned with their task. We've quietly repatriated a third of the "dangerous" detainees to their home countries, and more soon to go, with a change of clothes and fifty bucks. No show trials. No triumphal "we told you so" moments from an administration that misses no media opportunity to buff the steely terror-fighter image. What we do get are Barney Fife moments galore. We get Tora-Bora and and incredulous British SAS, incensed that we sat on our thumbs--were directed to do so by Washington--as Bin Laden limps down the mountain, dialysis cart in tow. We get Abu Ghraib, which, by knowledeable accounts, is exactly what happens, what devolves demonically in frustration when there's no there there. And, of course, there's the seemingly schizophrenic Dubai Ports World/U.A.E. deal. The clanging tone-deafness of the Administration to America's now-blanket suspicion of all things Arab has the entire political spectrum wondering if it's April 1. A veto to push it through? Can he be serious? Strange. When the cameras are on, Terror is Job One. We support the troops. Just not with body armour or adequate HMMWVs. We care about port security, by inspecting fewer than 5 out of 100 containers entering those ports. And we say there is no money for more. Chemical facilities get a waiver.

In poker, they call these things tells. In the Talmud, I think the premise goes "the invisible is far more existent than the visible." In other words, look for patterns, read between the lines; examine actions not words. Do that, and there is a perceptible groove here that suggests we may be experiencing the equivalent of a penny stock pump and dump. Again, why?

Well, in the interest of brevity, one example. If I'm the admiral responsible for security in a Yemeni port that refuels and berths our Aegis Cruisiers and somebody blows a big fat hole in the USS Cole I have two choices. I can say I was derelict in training my people to be vigilant and some jihadi goofs in a zodiac got lucky because of it. Or, I can participate in conflating those goofs into one arm of a highly coordinated strike force actually capable of bringing the US of A to its knees and can I have some more budget appropriations please?

Now, I understand I'm attempting to use logic here--or maybe it's just systems thinking-- just as The Bush Administration is suddenly bafflingly doing in its genteel, long-view forebearance with U.A.E. I get the logic of not freaking over DPW and their noble offer to facilitate improved Arab-American relations through the olive branch of commerce. Problem is, I missed a pivot point somewhere when the Bush Administration took us all aside and explained that, as George did when debating Al Gore,

"I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say 'We do it this way, and so should you.'"

The list of mirages is long and discomfortingly consistent that A.Q., while still very dangerous, is more like North Korea, circa 1950. Worrisome in their own right, but made much more so by the fanning and legitimizing impetus of China. In this case, I wonder: Is Bush A.Q.'s accidental Mao?

That's not such a stupid question when Francis Fukuyama himself said earlier this week

the [Iraq War/Neocon] movements' advocates are Leninists who "believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States".

Accidental Mao. Half-assed Lenins. Same difference. Same scary astigmatic vision-quest.

The legend goes that the British played a march following the Surrender of Yorktown. It was called "The World Turned Upside Down." It certainly sounds fitting. The irony is nobody knows for sure if the tune was really played. But, as Donald Rumsfeld once said, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Gee. After all that digression, do you even remember the headline hook? Greenwald notes a conundrum in Bill Buckley's confessional:

A few months ago, when Howard Dean said that he thought we would be unable to fulfill the mission in Iraq as Bush has described it, he was denounced as a traitor and Ronald Reagan's son urged that he be hanged -- literally. And yet, now we have William Buckley saying that our mission failed and it's time for Bush to acknowledge defeat. Will they hang him, too? Once we hang all the tratiors and subversives who have abandoned Bush, there sure won't be many people left.

Indeed. B comes before F, but Fukuyama defected before Buckley. How are we going to efficently and fairly dispose of all these people duped by a liberal media?

Sounds like a job for the Queen of Hearts.