Fresh from his "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Civil War" column, Charles Krauthammer points his wrath at Francis Fukuyama in his latest column. Krauthammer is mad as hell and he isn’t going to take it anymore. Apparently, Fukuyama used an anecdote that prominently featured Mr. Krauthammer, but he changed the actual events to protect the guilty. Or something along those lines. It is all very confusing, you see, and I really don’t feel comfortable commenting on the he said-he said. Seems like a private matter between two adults to me.
I am sure Krauthammer, when he calms down, will rethink this column and rewrite it about something entirely different. Until then, I will amuse myself by rereading this very mean-spirited column. I’m guessing that the news from Iraq has got Krauthammer seeing red. He is fighting the enemy (Fukuyama) here so that he doesn’t have to fight the enemy there.
There is one interesting nugget in an otherwise personal letter from Krauthammer to Fukuyama. Defending himself, Krauthammer points out that he believed the Iraq war was necessary but perhaps not winnable. Lest I get accused of misrepresenting him, here are his exact words from the column:
My argument then, as now, was the necessity of this undertaking, never its ensured success. And it was necessary because, as I said, there is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of Sept. 11: "The cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world — oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism."
Krauthammer takes a leap of faith even Kierkegaard would be proud of here. I am not sure attacking the most secular country in the Arab world was the best way to fight the root causes of the Islamic radicalism that led to the attacks of September 11. In fact, to borrow his phrase, I don’t think that even a remotely plausible argument can be made for the attack on Iraq and its connection to September 11. That is why, the WMD argument was trotted out, and that is why the much-touted phantom link between Saddam Hussein and September 11 was dangled in front of us.
This column from Charles Krauthammer, if it has any larger meaning, may be a shot across the bow of all wavering neo-cons and chicken hawks. Abandon ship at your own peril. Your former shipmates will be pointing the ship’s cannons at you before your feet even hit the water below.
Quoting Krauthammer once more :
[quote]
” My argument then, as now, was the necessity of this undertaking, never its ensured success. And it was necessary because, as I said, there is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of Sept. 11: “The cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world — oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism.”
[/quote]
Let’s examine this logic for a moment, shall we?
By his lights, the war was “necessary”. What exactly that means, “necessary”, is left unstated. Necessary for whom–or what? The people of Iraq ? the people of the United States? the people of the Bush administration ?
Ah! Here’s why: “because, as I said, there is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of Sept. 11….”
Or, to bring the unstated and disjointed reasoning to its connected form, the war’s is directly contingent upon one’s also accepting this assertion as well :
(a)
” there is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of Sept. 11″.
If, for some reason, there were even one remotely plausible alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of ‘ Sept. 11 ‘, then Mr Krauthammer’s reasoning collapses immediately.
Od course, there is yet another inherent yet also unstated assumption in his argument that we must expose and consider, namely the assumption that
(b)
we must be about the business of “…attacking the root causes of Sept. 11…”
If, again, there is any manner in which that assumption’s validity can be impeached, then that, too, would bring the collapse of his reasoning.
But there are yet a host of still unrevealed assumptions in his assertion. Let’s list them:
(c)
That we correctly recognize the root causes of “Sept. 11”,
That, even if we do correctly recognize them, that the above-mentioned assumption (a) is still valid.
It could just be, for example, that we haven’t recognized the root causes, or, that having recognized them, this current war does not adequately, or does not at all, address these root causes.
In any case, at least we now know what Mr Krauthammer believes we’re fighting for in Iraq. It’s in order to combat these ills:
“…cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world…”
That’s what we’re in Iraq for.
Now, to go back to what may have been easily forgotten in the process of getting here, these just mentioned aims, ends–these are, then what
consitute the unarguable necessity of this war for Mr K.
If one doesn’t accept these and agree that they’re worth the costs we’re bearing, then again his argument falls.
So, we had to oppose these and we had to do it in the manner chosen by President Bush.
Could there be any disagreement about that?
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Lick my balls, turd.