David Brooks Again
“If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”
- Richard Perle
See… the problem here is Hollywood.
The Messianic figures rise to the task at hand and defeat the Bad Guys…
The story-arc follows the standard narrative device… think back to your high school Literature class:
Exposition. Conflict. Rising Action. Climax. Falling Action. Denoument.
In the neo-con version of reality (as per the David Brooks editorial from my last post): a plot twist was thrown our way…
… a plot twist that anyone paying any real attention could see from a mile away, but a plot twist nontheless…
And so we get the brilliant line, the moment of revelation: “For America to succeed in Iraq, America has to lose.” *
The crew of the Starship Enterprise stand around, stunned at Wesley Crushley’s creative bit of imagination. Data has trouble computing this concept. Picard opins “That’s crazy enough that it just might work!” Wesley Crusher saves the day, as he does in every other episode ofthe first season.**
See… when things “look bleakest”… that’s when you look around and “look inside yourself” to overcome that obstacle in your path toward glory.
See a newer editorial from David Brooks:
Hope begets disappointment, and we are now in a moment of disappointment when it comes to Iraq. During these shakeout moments, the naysayers get to gloat while the rest of us despair, lacerate ourselves, second-guess those in charge and look at things anew. But this very process of self-criticism is the precondition for the second wind, the grubbier, less illusioned effort that often enough leads to some acceptable outcome.
Today in Iraq, local commanders seem to be allowed to try anything. We are allowing former Baathists to man a Fallujah Brigade to police their own city. We are pounding Muqtada al-Sadr while negotiating with him. There is talk of moving up elections so when an Iraqi official is assassinated, he is not seen as a person working with the United States, but as an elected representative of the Iraqi people.
Some of these policies seem incoherent, but they may work. And back home a new mood has taken over part of the political class. The emerging responsible faction has no time now for the witless applause lines the jeering jackdaws on left and right repeat to themselves to their own perpetual self-admiration and delight. Even in a political year, most politicians do not want this country to fail.
*Note: oddly enough, I’d agree with that editorial… months and months ago… with the distinctive change: “For America to succeed in Iraq, America has to become irrelevant”. But… we all know better that that wasn’t in the cards.
**Note: “Wesley saves the day”… This is the kind of thing that one learns when their brother grew up watching a little too much Star Trek…