StephenKMackSD's Blog

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-05/how-obama-can-capitalize-on-the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden/

If there was any lingering doubt, in the minds of his readers, that he had access to ‘a key’ White House official, Opinionator Emeritus (OE) has laid them to rest, with the opening sentences from his latest essay:

“So, what do you think?” The brief email from a key White House official greeted me Monday morning , along with Osama bin Laden’s death notices. “It’s the best I’ve felt about my country since 9/11,” I responded. He shot back: “It’s a whole new world.”

In these opening words OE makes concrete, in the minds of his readers, that he is a well connected person of the American Foreign Policy Establishment, with a demonstrable connection to power: He establishes that rhetorically, not by presenting any empirical proof but simply by means of an aggrandizing self-report; an opening that resonates with his audience. But let us move from the frame to the pedestrian character of his encomium to a new National Mood of optimism that has been the watershed of the execution of Mr. bin Laden. The new stronger, not to challenged President, will be harder to defeat in 2012 as he has now established a Democrat, in the public mind, with a ‘strong’ policy regarding terrorism and terrorists. Match murder for murder? Vengeance for 9/11 is an easy sell to a populous whose self-regard and deeply held notion of their invincibility, was damaged, possibly beyond repair, by heathen troglodytes and their benighted leader. Our national bogey man has been slain, in a brilliantly executed military operation , that no other nation could claim, except, perhaps for Israel, our foremost and unmanageable client state. OE’s mood is near euphoric as he swipes at the right and the left, as representative of an easily dismissed policy nihilism, compared to his proclaimed political rationalism, as the mean between these two untenable, unrealistic extremes. Here is a quote that is illustrative of the paternalism that is the psychological mainspring of OE’s political meditation:

‘The end of bin Laden has given Obama a rare chance for a new beginning. A majority of Americans are just confused, and are not so nearly as ridiculous in their thinking as right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats. They just need to hear a president tell them what they already sense the truth to be, the hard truth, with all the common sense that used to mark America, with all the can-do spirit and skill of Sunday’s commando operation. They are waiting for the man in the White House to tell them these things.’

What we need is a new National Daddy to lead us into the Radiant Future: a political reminiscence, a nostalgia like Ronald Reagan’s ‘Morning in America.’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/evil-does-not-die-of-natural-causes/2011/05/05/AFhTKG2F_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

Here is The Good Doctor (TGD) in a bellicose mood, that is to say, in his guise as a Neo-Conservative Political Theologian, discoursing on the nature of evil. The title of his essay is ‘Evil does not die of natural causes’, and inherent in this rhetorical frame is the idea of himself as authority, indeed lawgiver and judge of the many others who likewise conceive of themselves as lawgivers, as judges of others, in a political/ethical context: his competitors in the business of opinion mongering. How can we know who is right? Faith? Hyperbole can sometimes clarify. TGD argues that the proper response to 9/11 was the great cleansing balm of war and its suspension of a now useless constitutionalism: the exception, in the parlance of Carl Schmitt. Is the execution of Osama bin Laden a vindication of the War on Terror and the whole sale breaking with our laws that it brought with it? Not to speak of a creeping institutional corruption. These questions in the mind of TGD have answered themselves. But, not to fear TGD’s mood devolves from warrior to petulant child, in his concluding paragraph: he has had his say and catharsis has saved his readers from more self-indulgent, indignant political posturing. Although TGD adds a piquant note as he, in passing, mentions the Laws of History and Nature.       

One is forcefully reminded by Mr. Glen Greewald’s eloquent and well argued essay of the deep psychic wound that 9/11 is and will remain: the destruction of the deeply held belief in American Exceptionalism, in American invincibility. This, perhaps, could be one of the reasons for the obscene celebration over the summary execution of The Great Satan, Osama bin Laden, engaged in by our fellow citizens.

In the quotation of Justice Robert Jackson, one is forcefully reminded of his greatness and of the great wrong committed not once but twice by William Rehnquist.    

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/al-qaeda-was-always-a-fringe-group-with-no-roots-in-the-arab-world?pageCount=0

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot-bin-laden-20110503,0,2161613.story

Here is Max Boot on Osama bin Laden. A Neo-Conservative Historical Fiction might be a more apt subtitle of his latest opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times of May 3, 2011. Erased from this historical sketch in service to an ideological ‘reading’ of history is the very pertinent information that the mujahedeen was armed and supported by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter, as one of the proxy conflicts, as a policy pursued in the name of Cold War necessity ,to check the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan. The mujahedeen were the precursors of Al Qaeda. That, of course, does not easily fit into Mr. Boot’s eventual narrative terminus. Mr. Boot like most of his intellectual allies posits the existence of bin Laden as a ‘small dreamy child’ turned ‘mad man’ and mass murderer. But the question might be asked by even the most casual observer: What exactly politicized this ‘small dreamy child’? except for the incurious Mr. Boot.  But a quote from this piece will show that Mr. Boot is simply engaging in backhanded apologetics for the War in Iraq.

‘Yet for all the havoc wreaked in Al Qaeda’s name — tens of thousands would die in Iraq alone — it is notable how little Bin Laden and his followers managed to achieve. They did not topple a single regime anywhere. Instead, by slaughtering so many Muslims, they turned Muslim opinion against them.’

Mr. Boot believes in the infinite malleability of History: the Noble Lie is the very stuff of Neo-Conservatism’s Platonic political nostalgia. But Mr. Boot is not a maladroit propagandist, he is careful enough to simply allude, suggest to  historical events that he presents as having  happened ,  and  then engages in comparisons with his other inventions ,  that did not happen, but are stated as ‘fact’ in the body of his text: he freely invents a self-reinforcing rhetoric of lies. He is more effective than his confreres, his fellow travelers; they have chosen the cudgel while Mr. Boot relies on rhetorical stealth. One need only recall the invasion of Iraq by American forces and the savage attack on Fallujah in which white phosphorous was used on a civilian population; followed by the celebrated ‘Surge’: a three billion dollar a week bribery program, reduced to its simplest terms. One finds the assertion ‘that tens of thousands would die in Iraq alone’, as being the responsibility of Al Qaeda, boggles the mind of any serious inquirer, yet Mr. Boot continues to rationalize the irrational, the unforgivable, the murderous.

Literary Hack

Mr. Brooks has the enviable talent to turn anything he writes into Cheese Whiz. It is completely ersatz, it comes sealed in a jar, with a shelf life of near eternity, and it almost resembles food. We, his readers, have the good fortune of having the opportunity to read Mr. Brooks' thoughts on the life and career of Osama bin Laden, the recent martyr to Jihad. Well, Mr. bin Laden is the shy, retiring, milk toast of a monster, who was too attached to his mother, but capable of monstrous acts against The American Empire. Here is an illustrative quotation from Mr. Brooks essay:

'We think of terrorism leaders as hard and intimidating. Bin Laden was gentle and soft, with a flaccid handshake. Yet his soldiers have told researchers such as Peter Bergen, the author of “The Longest War,” that meeting him was a deeply spiritual experience. They would tell stories of his ability to avoid giving offense and forgive transgressors.'

You know where this is going. All garnished with apt quotations from several books, all very impressive to whom? The Good Gray Times and their good gray  readers, who like to be spoon fed respectable middle of the road intellectual kitsch, framed in the high toned rhetoric that Mr. Brooks has completely mastered. It is of untold value that America can count on the steady guiding hand of  Mr. Brooks, the most prominent of America's Political Theologians.

Political Hack