The Iraq war has been an amazing success
Mara Jade Skywalker
practically a holiday camp...
I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, both chilling and
burning, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing
Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks
nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I
ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks.
No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The
Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."
I am getting used to these moments � when gentle holiday geniality
bleeds into... what? I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty,
scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of
Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear
her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake
up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand
lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise
the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off
to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America
at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and
smiles. " Then things'll change."
I am travelling on a bright white cruise ship with two restaurants, five
bars, a casino � and 500 readers of the National Review. Here, the Iraq
war has been "an amazing success". Global warming is not happening. The
solitary black person claims, "If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal
rights, then God bless them." And I have nowhere to run.
>From time to time, National Review � the bible of American conservatism
� organises a cruise for its readers. I paid $1,200 to join them. The
rules I imposed on myself were simple: If any of the conservative
cruisers asked who I was, I answered honestly, telling them I was a
journalist. Mostly, I just tried to blend in � and find out what
American conservatives say when they think the rest of us aren't listening.
I. From sweet to suicide bomber
I arrive at the dockside in San Diego on Saturday afternoon and stare up
at the Oosterdam, our home for the next seven days. Filipino boat hands
are loading trunks into the hull and wealthy white folk are gliding onto
its polished boards with pale sun parasols dangling off their arms.
The Reviewers have been told to gather for a cocktail reception on the
Lido, near the very top of the ship. I arrive to find a tableau from
Gone With the Wind, washed in a thousand shades of grey. Southern belles
� aged and pinched � are flirting with old conservative warriors. The
etiquette here is different from anything I have ever seen. It takes me
15 minutes to realise what is wrong with this scene. There are no big
hugs, no warm kisses. This is a place of starchy handshakes. Men
approach each other with stiffened spines, puffed-out chests and
crunching handshakes. Women are greeted with a single kiss on the cheek.
Anything more would be French.
I adjust and stiffly greet the first man I see. He is a judge, with the
craggy self-important charm that slowly consumes any judge. He is from
Canada, he declares (a little more apologetically), and is the founding
president of "Canadians Against Suicide Bombing". Would there be many
members of "Canadians for Suicide Bombing?" I ask. Dismayed, he suggests
that yes, there would.
A bell rings somewhere, and we are all beckoned to dinner. We have been
assigned random seats, which will change each night. We will, the
publicity pack promises, each dine with at least one National Review
speaker during our trip.
To my left, I find a middle-aged Floridian with a neat beard. To my
right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era
Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue,
they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN
building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the
entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They
should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently. How
did that happen? How do you go from sweet to suicide-bomb in six seconds?
The conversation ebbs back to friendly chit-chat. So, you're a European,
one of the Park Avenue ladies says, before offering witty commentaries
on the cities she's visited. Her companion adds, "I went to Paris, and
it was so lovely." Her face darkens: "But then you think � it's
surrounded by Muslims." The first lady nods: "They're out there, and
they're coming." Emboldened, the bearded Floridian wags a finger and
says, "Down the line, we're not going to bail out the French again." He
mimes picking up a phone and shouts into it, "I can't hear you, Jacques!
What's that? The Muslims are doing what to you? I can't hear you!"
Now that this barrier has been broken � everyone agrees the Muslims are
devouring the French, and everyone agrees it's funny � the usual
suspects are quickly rounded up. Jimmy Carter is "almost a traitor".
John McCain is "crazy" because of "all that torture". One of the Park
Avenue ladies declares that she gets on her knees every day to "thank
God for Fox News". As the wine reaches the Floridian, he announces,
"This cruise is the best money I ever spent."
They rush through the Rush-list of liberals who hate America, who want
her to fail, and I ask them � why are liberals like this? What's their
motivation? They stutter to a halt and there is a long, puzzled silence.
"It's a good question," one of them, Martha, says finally. I have asked
them to peer into the minds of cartoons and they are suddenly,
reluctantly confronted with the hollowness of their creation. "There
have always been intellectuals who want to tell people how to live,"
Martha adds, to an almost visible sense of relief. That's it � the
intellectuals! They are not like us. Dave changes the subject, to wash
away this moment of cognitive dissonance. "The liberals don't believe in
the constitution. They don't believe in what the founders wanted � a
strong executive," he announces, to nods. A Filipino waiter offers him a
top-up of his wine, and he mock-whispers to me, "They all look the same!
Can you tell them apart?" I stare out to sea. How long would it take me
to drown?
II. "We're doing an excellent job killing them."
The Vista Lounge is a Vegas-style showroom, with glistening gold edges
and the desperate optimism of an ageing Cha-Cha girl. Today, the scenery
has been cleared away � "I always sit at the front in these shows to see
if the girls are really pretty and on this ship they are ug-lee," I hear
a Reviewer mutter � and our performers are the assorted purveyors of
conservative show tunes, from Podhoretz to Steyn. The first of the
trip's seminars is a discussion intended to exhume the conservative
corpse and discover its cause of death on the black, black night of 7
November, 2006, when the treacherous Democrats took control of the US
Congress.
There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few
moments to realise exactly what it is. All the tropes that conservatives
usually deny in public � that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is
fighting a class war on behalf of the rich � are embraced on this
shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are
fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed
liberals lose it. "It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but
who's 'we'?" the writer Dinesh D'Souza asks angrily. "The left won by
demanding America's humiliation." On this ship, there are no Viet Cong,
no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza
says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican
politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners,
Democrats are the party of losers."
The panel nods, but it doesn't want to stray from Iraq. Robert Bork,
Ronald Reagan's one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbles from
beneath low-hanging jowls: "The coverage of this war is unbelievable.
Even Fox News is unbelievable. You'd think we're the only ones dying.
Enemy casualties aren't covered. We're doing an excellent job killing them."
Then, with a judder, the panel runs momentarily aground. Rich Lowry, the
preppy, handsome 38-year-old editor of National Review, says, "The
American public isn't concluding we're losing in Iraq for any irrational
reason. They're looking at the cold, hard facts." The Vista Lounge is,
as one, perplexed. Lowry continues, "I wish it was true that, because
we're a superpower, we can't lose. But it's not."
No one argues with him. They just look away, in the same manner that
people avoid glancing at a crazy person yelling at a bus stop. Then they
return to hyperbole and accusations of treachery against people like
their editor. The ageing historian Bernard Lewis � who was deputed to
stiffen Dick Cheney's spine in the run-up to the war � declares, "The
election in the US is being seen by [the bin Ladenists] as a victory on
a par with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We should be prepared for
whatever comes next." This is why the guests paid up to $6,000. This is
what they came for. They give him a wheezing, stooping ovation and break
for coffee.
A fracture-line in the lumbering certainty of American conservatism is
opening right before my eyes. Following the break, Norman Podhoretz and
William Buckley � two of the grand old men of the Grand Old Party �
begin to feud. Podhoretz will not stop speaking � "I have lots of
ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends
on the right, too," he rants �and Buckley says to the chair, " Just take
the mike, there's no other way." He says it with a smile, but with heavy
eyes.
Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11
American conservatism, and they stare at wholly different Iraqs.
Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who travelled
through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in
America's power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a
bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has
been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims: "There were
WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in
total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It
couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is
"certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and "thank God" for that.
Buckley is an urbane old reactionary, drunk on doubts. He founded the
National Review in 1955 � when conservatism was viewed in polite society
as a mental affliction � and he has always been sceptical of appeals to
"the people," preferring the eternal top-down certainties of
Catholicism. He united with Podhoretz in mutual hatred of Godless
Communism, but, slouching into his eighties, he possesses a world view
that is ill-suited for the fight to bring democracy to the Muslim world.
He was a ghostly presence on the cruise at first, appearing only briefly
to shake a few hands. But now he has emerged, and he is fighting.
"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" Buckley snaps
at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war
reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD
primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies. "As I say, they were
shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was
hidden in the deserts in Iran." He says he is "heartbroken" by this
"rise of defeatism on the right." He adds, apropos of nothing, "There
was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only
contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're
winning." The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill
Buckley leave them confused. Doesn't he sound like the liberal media?
Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley "a coward".
His wife nods and says, "Buckley's an old man," tapping her head with
her finger to suggest dementia.
I decide to track down Buckley and Podhoretz separately and ask them for
interviews. Buckley is sitting forlornly in his cabin, scribbling in a
notebook. In 2005, at an event celebrating National Review's 50th
birthday, President Bush described today's American conservatives as
"Bill's children". I ask him if he feels like a parent whose kids grew
up to be serial killers. He smiles slightly, and his blue eyes appear to
twinkle. Then he sighs, "The answer is no. Because what animated the
conservative core for 40 years was the Soviet menace, plus the rise of
dogmatic socialism. That's pretty well gone."
This does not feel like an optimistic defence of his brood, but it's a
theme he returns to repeatedly: the great battles of his life are
already won. Still, he ruminates over what his old friend Ronald Reagan
would have made of Iraq. "I think the prudent Reagan would have figured
here, and the prudent Reagan would have shunned a commitment of the kind
that we are now engaged in... I think he would have attempted to find
some sort of assurance that any exposure by the United States would be
exposure to a challenge the dimensions of which we could predict." Lest
liberals be too eager to adopt the Gipper as one of their own, Buckley
agrees approvingly that Reagan's approach would have been to "find a
local strongman" to rule Iraq.
A few floors away, Podhoretz tells me he is losing his voice, "which
will make some people very happy". Then he croaks out the standard-issue
Wolfowitz line about how, after September 11, the United States had to
introduce democracy to the Middle East in order to change the political
culture that produced the mass murderers. For somebody who declares
democracy to be his goal, he is remarkably blas� about the fact that 80
per cent of Iraqis want US troops to leave their country, according to
the latest polls. "I don't much care," he says, batting the question
away. He goes on to insist that "nobody was tortured in Abu Ghraib or
Guantanamo" and that Bush is "a hero". He is, like most people on this
cruise, certain the administration will attack Iran.
Podhoretz excitedly talks himself into a beautiful web of words,
vindicating his every position. He fumes at Buckley, George Will and the
other apostate conservatives who refuse to see sense. He announces
victory. And for a moment, here in the Mexican breeze, it is as though a
thousand miles away Baghdad is not bleeding. He starts hacking and
coughing painfully. I offer to go to the ship infirmary and get him some
throat sweets, and � locked in eternal fighter-mode � he looks thrown,
as though this is an especially cunning punch. Is this random act of
kindness designed to imbalance him? "I'm fine," he says, glancing
contemptuously at the Bill Buckley book I am carrying. "I'll keep on
shouting through the soreness."
III. The Ghosts of Conservatism Past
The ghosts of Conservatism past are wandering this ship. From the pool,
I see John O'Sullivan, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher. And one
morning on the deck I discover Kenneth Starr, looking like he has
stepped out of a long-forgotten 1990s news bulletin waving Monica's
stained blue dress. His face is round and unlined, like an immense,
contented baby. As I stare at him, all my repressed bewilderment rises,
and I ask � Mr Starr, do you feel ashamed that, as Osama bin Laden
plotted to murder American citizens, you brought the American government
to a stand-still over a few consensual blow jobs? Do you ever lie awake
at night wondering if a few more memos on national security would have
reached the President's desk if he wasn't spending half his time dealing
with your sexual McCarthyism?
He smiles through his teeth and � in his soft somnambulant voice � says
in perfect legalese, "I am entirely at rest with the process. The House
of Representatives worked its will, the Senate worked its will, the
Chief Justice of the United States presided. The constitutional process
worked admirably."
It's an oddly meek defence, and the more I challenge him, the more
legalistic he becomes. Every answer is a variant on "it's not my fault".
First, he says Clinton should have settled early on in Jones vs Clinton.
Then he blames Jimmy Carter. "This critique really should be addressed
to the now-departed, moribund independent counsel provisions. The Ethics
and Government [provisions] ushered in during President Carter's
administration has an extraordinarily low threshold for launching a
special prosecutor..."
Enough � I see another, more intriguing ghost. Ward Connerly is the only
black person in the National Review posse, a 67-year-old Louisiana-born
businessman, best known for leading conservative campaigns against
affirmative action for black people. Earlier, I heard him saying the
Republican Party has been "too preoccupied with... not ticking off the
blacks", and a cooing white couple wandered away smiling, "If he can say
it, we can say it." What must it be like to be a black man shilling for
a magazine that declared at the height of the civil rights movement that
black people "tend to revert to savagery", and should be given the vote
only "when they stop eating each other"?
I drag him into the bar, where he declines alcohol. He tells me plainly
about his childhood � his mother died when he was four, and he was
raised by his grandparents � but he never really becomes animated until
I ask him if it is true he once said, "If the KKK supports equal rights,
then God bless them." He leans forward, his palms open. There are, he
says, "those who condemn the Klan based on their past without seeing the
human side of it, because they don't want to be in the wrong,
politically correct camp, you know... Members of the Ku Klux Klan are
human beings, American citizens � they go to a place to eat, nobody asks
them 'Are you a Klansmember?', before we serve you here. They go to buy
groceries, nobody asks, 'Are you a Klansmember?' They go to vote for
Governor, nobody asks 'Do you know that that person is a Klansmember?'
Only in the context of race do they ask that. And I'm supposed to
instantly say, 'Oh my God, they are Klansmen? Geez, I don't want their
support.'"
This empathy for Klansmen first bubbled into the public domain this year
when Connerly was leading an anti-affirmative action campaign in
Michigan. The KKK came out in support of him � and he didn't decline it.
I ask if he really thinks it is possible the KKK made this move because
they have become converted to the cause of racial equality. "I think
that the reasoning that a Klan member goes through is � blacks are
getting benefits that I'm not getting. It's reverse discrimination. To
me it's all discrimination. But the Klansmen is going through the
reasoning that this is benefiting blacks, they are getting things that I
don't get... A white man doesn't have a chance in this country."
He becomes incredibly impassioned imagining how they feel,
ventriloquising them with a shaking fist � "The Mexicans are getting
these benefits, the coloureds or niggers, whatever they are saying, are
getting these benefits, and I as a white man am losing my country."
But when I ask him to empathise with the black victims of Hurricane
Katrina, he offers none of this vim. No, all Katrina showed was "the
dysfunctionality that is evident in many black neighbourhoods," he says
flatly, and that has to be "tackled by black people, not the government.
" Ward, do you ever worry you are siding with people who would have
denied you a vote � or would hang you by a rope from a tree?
"I don't gather strength from what others think � no at all," he says.
"Whether they are in favour or opposed. I can walk down these halls and,
say, a hundred people say, 'Oh we just adore you', and I'll be polite
and I'll say 'thank you', but it doesn't register or have any effect on
me." There is a gaggle of Reviewers waiting to tell him how refreshing
it is to "finally" hear a black person "speaking like this". I leave him
to their white, white garlands.
IV. "You're going to get fascists rising up, aren't you? Why hasn't that
happened already?"
The nautical counter-revolution has docked in the perfectly-yellow sands
of Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, and the Reviewers are clambering overboard
into the Latino world they want to wall off behind a thousand-mile
fence. They carry notebooks from the scribblings they made during the
seminar teaching them "How To Shop in Mexico". Over breakfast, I forgot
myself and said I was considering setting out to find a local street kid
who would show me round the barrios � the real Mexico. They gaped. "Do
you want to die?" one asked.
The Reviewers confine their Mexican jaunt to covered markets and
walled-off private fortresses like the private Nikki Beach. Here, as
ever, they want Mexico to be a dispenser of cheap consumer goods and
lush sands � not a place populated by (uck) Mexicans. Dinesh D'Souza
announced as we entered Mexican seas what he calls "D'Souza's law of
immigration": " The quality of an immigrant is inversely proportional to
the distance travelled to get to the United States."
In other words: Latinos suck.
I return for dinner with my special National Review guest: Kate
O'Beirne. She's an impossibly tall blonde with the voice of a 1930s
screwball star and the arguments of a 1890s Victorian patriarch. She
inveighs against feminism and "women who make the world worse" in quick
quips.
As I enter the onboard restaurant she is sitting among adoring Reviewers
with her husband Jim, who announces that he is Donald Rumsfeld's
personnel director. "People keep asking what I'm doing here, with him
being fired and all," he says. "But the cruise has been arranged for a
long time."
The familiar routine of the dinners � first the getting-to-know-you
chit-chat, then some light conversational fascism � is accelerating.
Tonight there is explicit praise for a fascist dictator before the
entree has arrived. I drop into the conversation the news that there are
moves in Germany to have Donald Rumsfeld extradited to face torture charges.
A red-faced man who looks like an egg with a moustache glued on
grumbles, "If the Germans think they can take responsibility for the
world, I don't care about German courts. Bomb them." I begin to witter
on about the Pinochet precedent, and Kate snaps, "Treating Don Rumsfeld
like Pinochet is disgusting." Egg Man pounds his fist on the table: "
Treating Pinochet like that is disgusting. Pinochet is a hero. He saved
Chile."
"Exactly," adds Jim. "And he privatised social security."
The table nods solemnly and then they march into the conversation � the
billion-strong swarm of swarthy Muslims who are poised to take over the
world. Jim leans forward and says, "When I see these football supporters
from England, I think � these guys aren't going to be told by PC elites
to be nice to Muslims. You're going to get fascists rising up, aren't
you? Why isn't that happening already?" Before I can answer, he is
conquering the Middle East from his table, from behind a cr�me br�l�e.
"The civilised countries should invade all the oil-owning places in the
Middle East and run them properly. We won't take the money ourselves,
but we'll manage it so the money isn't going to terrorists."
The idea that Europe is being "taken over" by Muslims is the unifying
theme of this cruise. Some people go on singles cruises. Some go on
ballroom dancing cruises. This is the "The Muslims Are Coming" cruise �
drinks included. Because everyone thinks it. Everyone knows it. Everyone
dreams it. And the man responsible is sitting only a few tables down:
Mark Steyn.
He is wearing sunglasses on top of his head and a bright, bright shirt
that fits the image of the disk jockey he once was. Sitting in this sea
of grey, it has an odd effect � he looks like a pimp inexplicably
hanging out with the apostles of colostomy conservatism.
Steyn's thesis in his new book, America Alone, is simple: The "European
races" i.e., white people � "are too self-absorbed to breed," but the
Muslims are multiplying quickly. The inevitable result will be "
large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015" as Europe is ceded to al
Qaeda and "Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia."
He offers a light smearing of dubious demographic figures � he needs to
turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 150 million in nine
years, which is a lot of humping.
But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise.
With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss "the Muslims" as a
homogenous, sharia-seeking block � already with near-total control of
Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times � I counted � when I am
fleeing Europe's encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the
United States of America.
At one of the seminars, a panelist says anti-Americanism comes from both
directions in a grasping pincer movement � "The Muslims condemn us for
being decadent; the Europeans condemn us for not being decadent enough."
Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz's wife, yells, "The Muslims are right,
the Europeans are wrong!" And, instantly, Jay Nordlinger, National
Review's managing editor and the panel's chair, says, "I'm afraid a lot
of the Europeans are Muslim, Midge."
The audience cheers. Somebody shouts, "You tell 'em, Jay!" He tells 'em.
Decter tells 'em. Steyn tells 'em.
On this cruise, everyone tells 'em � and, thanks to my European
passport, tells me.
V. From cruise to cruise missiles?
I am back in the docks of San Diego watching these tireless champions of
the overdog filter past and say their starchy, formal goodbyes. As
Bernard Lewis disappears onto the horizon, I wonder about the
connections between this cruise and the cruise missiles fired half a
world away.
I spot the old lady from the sea looking for her suitcase, and stop to
tell her I may have found a solution to her political worries about both
Muslims and stem-cells.
"Couldn't they just do experiments on Muslim stem-cells?" I ask. "Hey �
that's a great idea!" she laughs, and vanishes. Hillary-Ann stops to say
she is definitely going on the next National Review cruise, to Alaska.
"Perfect!" I yell, finally losing my mind.
"You can drill it as you go!" She puts her arms around me and says very
sweetly, "We need you on every cruise."
As I turn my back on the ship for the last time, the Judge I met on my
first night places his arm affectionately on my shoulder. "We have
written off Britain to the Muslims," he says. "Come to America."
--
Jacqueline "Jade" Devereaux - http://jacqueline-devereaux.blogspot.com/
antisp...@skynet.be [remplacez antispam.cool par jacquie.devereaux]
Victor: "Tsahal correctionne grave, disperse menu, et ventile loin!"
Broc_Ex_Co: "Ah ces Am�ricains, m�me quand ils s'excusent,
ils nous font la le�on!"