The Dish

Money quote:

Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement. In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.

Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close.

Next week will be fascinating.

Here’s a fascinating piece of context for the decision of at least two Virginia Episcopalian congregations to seek inclusion in a much more conservative, Nigerian diocese. The shift was not driven so much by politics; and it wasn’t sudden. In some ways, it was the inevitable consequence of a thirty-year process whereby modern evangelicalism and pentecostalism came to dominate a previously more traditionally Episcopalian church. Money quote:

At least two-thirds of the worshipers [at Falls Church] are Methodists, Presbyterians or Baptists, and there is no pressure on them to be confirmed as Episcopalians, said the Rev. Rick Wright, associate rector.

Wright said the diverse membership of both congregations illustrates one of the great changes in American religion of the past half-century: The divisions between denominations are far less important today than the divisions within denominations.

"I tend to feel very comfortable rubbing shoulders with folks at McLean Bible or Columbia Baptist … that are real orthodox, evangelical, biblical churches," said Truro’s chief warden, or lay leader, Jim Oakes, referring to two Northern Virginia megachurches. "We share core beliefs. I think I would be more comfortable with them than with anyone I might run into at an Episcopal Diocesan Council meeting."

They key divide in faith today is between fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists. The divide exists within most churches, including the lay Catholic population. As fundamentalism advances, the clash between the two may become so severe in the U.S. that more and more American churches will tilt to the developing world for leadership and clout. The orthodox Catholic hierarchy would have no future without reinforcements from Africa and Asia. And charismatic pentecostalists, with socially conservative politics, are going to find their worldview far better represented in Nairobi than New York.

But you also see in this story a shift from a traditional, ritual-based, small-c conservative form of faith toward a radical, modern, individualistic brand of fundamentalism. This is the strain within Islam as well. The Wahhabists – with their contempt for tradition, custom, conventional authority, and ritual echo the modern mega-churches of evangelical Christianity. Both strains hark back to the ideal of an original, pure faith – and deploy modern technology to advance it. They also more crudely but effectively answer the sense of personal loss and fear of "moral entropy" that tends to occur in periods of rapid economic and social change. They have the momentum. Whether they have the answer is another question.

You ask:

"At the end of this cycle…?"

Orwell answers:

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Charles Krauthammer says what needs to be said about the current Maliki government in Iraq. It is "hopelessly sectarian" (my italics). This puts Charles at odds with the president who has publicly kept backing Sadr’s puppet. Then Dr K puts the real boot in:

The whole sorry affair illustrates not just incompetence but the ingrained intolerance and sectarianism of the Maliki government. It stands for Shiite unity and Shiite dominance above all else.

We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government. This governing coalition – Maliki’s Dawa, Hakim’s SCIRI, and Sadr’s Mahdi Army – seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs. Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this sectarian war, he can well have it without us.

My italics again. If you unpack that column, you see the inexorable logic of our current impasse. The only way we can succeed in normalizing Iraq is if there is a genuinely non-sectarian national government. Despite four years of trying, the first such national government is, in Charles’ words, hopelessly sectarian. The manner of Saddam’s execution proves that Bush cannot control Maliki and/or Maliki cannot control his own government. The death squads control Baghdad. The idea that a surge of 20,000 American troops can or will rectify this situation is unhinged. For whom would they be fighting? A government run by Shiite death squads?

If that is true, then the only logical option for us is to withdraw – either to Kurdistan or altogether. It’s encouraging to see a leading neoconservative acknowledge this profound, if depressing, reality. If Bush proposes a "surge" and Maliki is still prime minister, Charles will logically have to oppose the surge. And when Bush has lost Krauthammer, whom does he have left?

(Photo of Mahdi Army troops by Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty.)

Corvallis, Oregon, noon.

An ABC News poll finds something at once predictable and telling:

By ABC News’ count, if the senators knew then what they know now, only 43 – at most – would still vote to approve the use of force and the measure would be defeated. And at least 57 senators would vote against going to war, a number that combines those who already voted against the war resolution with those who told ABC News they would vote against going to war, or said that the pre-war intelligence has been proven so wrong the measure would lose or it would never even come to a vote.

Bob Wright emails:

Maybe Mickey is warming up to you! He found your Iraq mea culpa disarming. And he’s making a point of stressing his (qualified) support of gay marriage.

See for yourself here and here.

A classic from Dean Barnett at the Hewitt blog:

There is a deep undercurrent of savagery in the Iraqi culture that will not just inhibit the growth of a peaceful democracy there, but probably prohibit it. The only answer, as it always has been, is to stamp out that savagery ferociously and totally.

I’m struck by how many on the hard right believe that more violence, and more brutal violence, is what is needed in Iraq. According to their logic, we defeat savagery with savagery and torture with torture. At home, we defend the rule of law by suspending the rule of law and we protect freedom by suspending freedom. And at the end of this cycle of revenge and violence?

A reader response worth passing along:

That was a very powerful post on the Bennett film. But I think you underestimate your own distance from it. The scene at the end of the film, in which the audience discovers what happened to each of the boys, lets us know that the gay/Jewish/Sheffield boy, Posner, is unable not to end up a tragic figure like Hector – a teacher who struggles with his own attraction to his students.  Happy happy joy joy!  Worse, Bennett doesn’t seem to me to provide the audience with anything that would prevent them from coming to the conclusion that homosexuality is essentially tragic.

If I’d seen the film at the age of sixteen, I believe I may have contemplated suicide afterwards. I’m not sure if I would have been able to rationalize that ending in any way. After I saw the film, I thought it might be possible to conclude that Posner’s future unhappiness lies in the conflicted eros of being a teacher, and not in the conflicted eros of being gay. That’s a problematic conclusion in many ways, though.

The point is that the film easily leaves its audience with the impression that being gay is equivalent to being fucked. In this decade, that means that Bennett is closer to hackdom than you judge him to be.

Fair enough. Bennett, like many Englishmen of his generation, is almost addicted to his own misery. And generationally, I don’t think he’s able to grasp the liberation some of us have discovered, or perhaps he considers it too vulgar to celebrate it. But in England, the transformation in twenty years is even more pronounced than in the U.S. I think of Bennett as a brilliant old queen, unable to move on from his own tragedy. Gore Vidal is in the same category. There’s nothing to be done, alas, except avoid their fate. And read the often-mesmerizing products of it.

An Islamist guide.