From Bill Kristol this morning, a little something shockingly bad. Even from Bill Kristol.
From its stilted writing to its neocon sentimentality to its nakedly subjective critique of the Obama administration disguised as intellectual analysis to its clumsy attempt to ratify military interventionism as a uniformly noble principle -- it is, all of it, just awful.
I'm almost sorry to do this to you, but I quote: "It is of course possible, and probably likely, that the Arab Spring of 2011 will fail.... There would still be a case, for reasons of honor and duty, for the United States to try to help, to do the right thing, to stand with the opponents of tyranny, even if one thought them likely, even nearly certain, to fail."
So it is "possible" and "probably likely," "even nearly certain," that currently successful revolutions will "fail" -- "But we don't know they'll fail," writes the epistemologically crackerjack Kristol. (Is he still writing Rumsfeld's material?) He simultaneously conflates doing "the right thing" with doing Bill Kristol's thing, thus not only does the premise support the conclusion, the conclusion supports the premise -- hell, the conclusion is the premise.
And what are the associated, logical factors? Well, they've vanished; I should say, rather, they were never there. No doubt while his headphones blasted Wagner, Bill had one of his infamous Nietzschean inspirations. It would be, you see, "terrible" if the United States were to merely stand by, twiddling its thoughtful thumbs, when instead it could take "aggressive efforts, covert and overt, direct and indirect"; and that "means considering the use of force when force is used to kill innocent civilians" and it "means a full-scale engagement of the U.S. government, an across-the-board effort with allies and international organizations, a real focus on the challenge these times present."
A full-scale engagement. Guns blazing. Bombs dropping. The Great Satan having his Western way in the Middle East just as its indigenous, quasi-democratic revolutions are succeeding.
Having some doubts? Wondering, are you, about such a terrifyingly, reflexively militaristic approach? Bill explains ...
... and his explanation literally sent chills up my spine, as it would anyone's, whose eyes also had read the philosophical foundations of 1920s and '30s fascist movements:
[I]t would be terrible for the United States to have stood by, encumbered by uncertainty, weakened by sophistication, paralyzed by self-doubt, as we did little more than watch the uprisings across the Middle East and fret as a possibly historic moment slips away.
Action. Eradication of thought. Certainty. Emotions. Doubtless movement. Crushing force. Brutal determination. Historic moments. Action for action's sake.
Not only because that moment could vindicate American principles and mean a gain for American interests but because we claim those American principles to be universal principles....
We claim, therefore they are. Simple as that. And to validate our principled argument, we'll bomb the bejesus out of any foreign land that resists these universally American principles.
Here, one senses less the ideology of Kristol's father's neoconservatism than his father's old Trotskyite days. Even though what was once called the Third World was capitalistically unprepared for the staged introduction of comprehensive socialism, why not blunder ahead and force the ill-timed movement anyway?
But back to Junior, who also observes within the span of two uninterrupted paragraphs: "What exactly to do in each case is complicated; it depends on difficult judgments of facts on the ground," although (next paragraph) "at such moments we can't depend on analysts and commentators."
Oh well. He lost me at the near certainty of failure among the apparent successes.
But, naturally, most of Bill's gibberish was but a predetermined construction so as to write: "This is a time when one looks, necessarily, to the president. So far, one looks in vain."
Like I said: just awful. It's worthy of the intellectually pornographic likes of the Weekly Standard, but somehow Bill keeps popping up in what's now called the mainstream press, once called the respectable press.
Any wonder why the descriptive shift?