Absorbing the Iraqi letter to the U.N. is a surreal experience. It reads a little like those notes from the Washington snipers. No eighth grader would be proud of its syntax or even its spelling. Whatever else it is, it surely isn’t the product of a serious government with actual policies and actual members. It’s the note that might be wriiten by a psychopath – full of inane self-grandeur, stupid threats, excessive Unabomber-style rhetoric and any number of Nazi-like references to the “Zionist entity.” If you got a letter like this in the mail, you’d call the cops. My favorite piece of rhetorical weirdness: “We shall see when remorse will not do any good for those who bite on their fingers.” Ohhhhh-kay. I point this out because some people insist on arguing that we are dealing with an actual state, a legitimate government, or an erratic but familiar kind of leader. We’re not. We’re dealing with a psychopathic megalomaniac. Which is why we have to assume that everything he says is a lie; and yet we also have to assume that amid these pathological lies there might by a smidgen of truth. We need criminal psychologists, not diplomats.
THE BOTTOM LINE: I count three essential “buts” in the “letter.” Here’s the first:
But we will not forget, nor should others do, that safeguarding our people’s dignity, security, independence, and protecting our country, its sovereignty and sublime values, is as a sacred duty in our leadership’s and government’s agenda.
This is not encouraging. The U.N. is demanding any access any time anywhere in Iraq. Essentially, the resolution demands that Iraq give up its sovereignty and independence to the inspectors. The rant argues that Saddam shouldn’t and won’t do any of these things. Then there’s this big old but:
But if the whims of the American administration, the Zionist desires, their followers, intelligence services, threats, and foul temptation, were given the chance to play and tamper with the inspection teams or some of their members, the colors would be then confused and the resulting commotion will distort the facts and push the situation into dangerous directions which is something fair-minded people do not wish for, as well as the people who, including my government, want to bring forward the facts as they are.
Translation: don’t push it. Correct response: screw you. Likely scenario: war. (Notice by the way the continual obsession with the “Zionist entity” and “Zionist desires.” Goebbels anyone? Elsewhere in the deranged document, Saddam argues that the U.N. should also enforce a new resolution “to put an end to the Zionist occupation of Palestine.” I think that means the abolition of Israel. Don’t expect the media to play this one up. Virulently anti-Semitic documents like the one submitted to Kofi Annan are routinely downplayed.) The final but is at the end of the diatribe:
Therefore, we hope, that you will, Mr. Secretary General, advise the ignorants not to push things to the precipice, in the implementation, because the people of Iraq will not choose to live at the price of their dignity, country, freedom or sanctities, and they would rather make their lives the price if that was the only way before them to safeguard what they must safeguard.
What they must safeguard. Now what do you think he can mean by that?
WAR IS NOW MORE LIKELY: My inference from this letter is therefore a simple one: Saddam has no intention of alowing U.N. inspectors to find, detect or destroy any of his weapons of mass destruction. He has already declared in this letter that he has none, although we are now forced to wait 30 days while he formally decides to say the same thing. (Simple question: why can’t we now declare those 30 days over and move the schedule up? His declaration to the U.N. is surely a formal statement that he has no WMDs. And time now is of the essence.) Saddam has clearly decided that his main hope is in allowing the inspectors in and being ingenious enough to keep hidden from view any WMDs until such time as the spring comes. Then he has another year to play footsie and get his hands on the key materials for nuclear invulnerability. He will press his p.r. advantage any way he can, and his allies in the West, especially in the “anti-war” movement, can be relied on to spin Saddam’s line mercilessly. This means we need to give Blix more resources. We need to quadruple the number of inspectors and send them everywhere we can. Otherwise, we have as much chance of finding what Saddam “must safeguard” as DC cops did of finding Chandra Levy’s body. And it also means that “zero tolerance” of any Saddamite shenanigans must mean “zero tolerance.” At this point, I find myself oscillating between hoping for a peaceful outcome while knowing that any peaceful but phony outcome now will only make a future war bloodier and more terrifying. So I’m hoping – yes, hoping – for war soon. And I think we can see from this deranged letter why we have no essential choice.
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “And the reptilism trickles down further, to the weaker minds listening to talk radio or silly enough to spend too much time watching cable television news — people who buy the lies, who are simply suckered into forking over their own political best interests to the con artists who attempt to pick their pockets at the same moment they are pointing out others who, they say, are the real trouble makers. About 25 percent of our people are susceptible to this kind of con, and they then give us problems by standing against any reasonable reforms. They have been spiritually twisted by the cheap poison of a hundred Rush Limbaughs into the angry, unthinking agents of the superrich.” – Doris Haddock, Alternet. If you want to see what some leftists really believe about the American people, you can’t get a much better example than this article. On the other hand, I’m prepared to forgive someone called Doris Haddock almost anything.
EAGLES SOARING: Just a couple emails reflecting the tidal wave I got today from nascent “eagles”:
Thank you! This describes my political ideology perfectly, especially the fear of the Republican’s alignment with the Christian right and what that means for the future of gays and lesbians (especially with the new shift in the political paradigm). Democrats have dropped the ball, and Republicans are still very scary. I’m a fiscally conservative, socially liberal, Christian right fearing independent (former Democrat), and I don’t think I’m alone.
And this one:
I’m 34 and have voted in every election since I was 18. I’ve never voted Republican for a major political office, but found myself voting for Bill Simon out of utter contempt for Davis and the Democratic party.
I think we’re onto something here. One reader argued that eagles were simply libertarians. But most libertarians are strictly isolationist in foreign policy. Brink Lindsay is one who isn’t. Here’s an Eagle Manifesto of a sort. Geitner Simmons concurs. There you have it, eagles. You may be politically homeless, but on this site, you’re certainly not alone. And one reason the blogosphere is doing so well is that it’s also full of eagles’ nests.
The Dish 