The Dish

How did Michael Moore and Eric Alterman mark victory in Iraq? Moore’s latest posting is as follows:

My Oscar “Backlash”: “Stupid White Men” Back At #1, “Bowling” Breaks New Records… Dear friends, It appears that the Bush administration will have succeeded in colonizing Iraq sometime in the next few days. This is a blunder of such magnitude – and we will pay for it for years to come. It was not worth the life of one single American kid in uniform, let alone the thousands of Iraqis who have died, and my condolences and prayers go out to all of them … Can I share with you what it’s been like for me since I used my time on the Oscar stage two weeks ago to speak out against Bush and this war? I hope that, in reading what I’m about to tell you, you’ll feel a bit more emboldened to make your voice heard in whatever way or forum that is open to you. When “Bowling for Columbine” was announced as the Oscar winner for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, the audience rose to its feet. It was a great moment, one that I will always cherish. They were standing and cheering for a film that says we Americans are a uniquely violent people, using our massive stash of guns to kill each other and to use them against many countries around the world.

Yep, it’s all about Michael Moore. All the time. And here’s Eric Alterman, spending liberation day writing about Lou Reed. Hmmm. What kept him quiet for a change? Mercifully, in the New York Observer, we find Alterman reflecting on why he has been so opposed to the military liberation of Iraqis:

Mr. Alterman told me he was “enormously gratified” by the reception to his book (good review in The Times), but added that he was also disappointed because the book had “been crowded out by the war,” and thus it had been hard to get “traction.” “I had a lot of reasons to be anti-war, and the book was a small one,” he said.

Did your jaw just break your coffee mug?

Several of you have emailed to complain about my use of the word “mutilation” to describe circumcision. I’m just trying to be clear. The dictionary meaning for “mutilation” is “1.tTo deprive of a limb or an essential part; cripple. 2.tTo disfigure by damaging irreparably: mutilate a statue. See Synonyms at battery. 3.tTo make imperfect by excising or altering parts.” If cutting off the foreskin isn’t excising or altering a part, permanently, without the person’s consent, then what on earth is it?

“We would like to express our sympathy that France has with the British people. I would like to reiterate our support for many of the things that Tony Blair has been saying. We have also indicated our hope that the war in Iraq will be finished as soon as possible. Also, we would like to stress the urgency when it comes to the humanitarian effort in the Gulf that we all work together and that the international community plays an important role.” – Dominique de Villepin, today.

The quibblers, the carpers, the second-guessers, the cynics, and the isolationists on right and left now have to read paragraphs like this:

In Firdos Square in central Baghdad, a group of Iraqi men climbed up the pedestal of a 20-foot statue of Mr. Hussein and smacked it with a sledgehammer. Then they put a chain around the neck of the statue and tied it to an armored American military vehicle. The crowd then cheered and clapped as the vehicle pulled away, toppling the statue. Several Iraqis danced and jumped on the fallen statue. Elsewhere in Baghdad, the American military emptied jails overnight, releasing their prisoners. In the neighborhood called Saddam City, a densely populated Shiite area, crowds of men shouted and waved their arms in jubilation. Some carried makeshift flags. One middle-aged man held up a huge portrait of Mr. Hussein, and in the middle of the street used his shoe to beat the face of the Iraqi leader, a particular insult. “This man has killed two million of us,” he yelled as bystanders milled around approvingly.

This is an amazing victory, a victory over a monster who gassed civilians, jailed children, sent millions into fruitless wars, harbored poisonous weapons to threaten free peoples, tortured thousands, and made alliances with every two-bit opportunist on the planet. It’s a victory over those who marched in the millions to stop this liberation, over the endless media cynics, over the hate-America crowd, and the armchair generals. It’s a victory for the two countries in the world that have always made freedom possible and who have now brought it to another corner of the world made dark by terror. It’s a victory for the extraordinary servicemen and women who performed this task with such skill, cool, courage and restraint. It’s a victory for optimism over pessimism, the righting of past wrongs, the assertion of universal truths against postmodern excuses, and of political leadership over appeasement. Celebrate it. Don’t let the whiners take this away from you or from the people of Iraq.

Between the BBC’s commentary and Mohammed Said Sahaf’s? Three days.

POWELL’S POSTURE: “This comment is in reference to Colin Powell’s interview on German television. One of the things that’s obvious from Colin Powell’s measured yet passionate response to the hostile German interlocutor is how much more mature and serious Powell is than so many of the others in the pro-war camp. No rhetoric about “Old Europe,” no frog-baiting “Freedom Toast” in Air Force One, no swaggering gun-toting. Powell just explains the administration’s position in a way that is inclusive rather than divisive, that tries to extend the coalition of the willing rather than extending ultimatums from Saddam’s disgusting regime to our longest-serving allies.” – more contrarian reader comment on the Letters Page.

NO CREDIT DUE: You have to ask yourselves what it would take to get Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd to say anything, anything, positive about this administration and the military force they have just wielded so expertly. Dowd, who simply cannot understand the gravity of the situation we have been in these past couple of years, writes with astonishing glibness: “We were always going to win the war with Iraq.” Oh, really? I don’t remember her saying such a thing before. In fact, all I remember is her constant carping about and lambasting anyone in this administration prepared to take responsibility for the threats to this country’s security. Now, in a Johnny-Apple instant, she’s on to the next carp. Friedman, in his turn, makes good points as usual about the need to restore order as soon as possible, but then he says something like this: “America broke Iraq; now America owns Iraq, and it owns the primary responsibility for normalizing it.” No, Tom, America did not break Iraq. Saddam did that. We liberated it with astonishing precision and with an amazing lack of damage to critical infrastructure. The fact that there’s chaos in the interlude between Saddam’s thuggery and a new government is a simple fact of human life. Tom’s absolutely right about the need to invest time, money and care in rebuilding Iraq. But part of the impetus in America for such a task must come from genuine pride in what we have achieved; and a deeper understanding of its moral significance. Let’s take a moment to absorb that before we launch into yet another spasm of self-criticism.

I wasn’t the first blogger to make the uncanny resemblance between Monsieur Mohammed Said Sahaf (why do I think of these Iraqi nutjobs as somehow French?) and Monty Python’s Black Knight. Sorry, Josh, Josh, Jonah et al. that I was so unaware. To make amends, here’s a link to the sketch. Money script (after the Black Knight has lost both arms):

ARTHUR: Look, I’ll have your leg. [kick] Right! [whop] [ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT’s right leg off]
BLACK KNIGHT: Right. I’ll do you for that!
ARTHUR: You’ll what?
BLACK KNIGHT: Come here!
ARTHUR: What are you going to do, bleed on me?
BLACK KNIGHT: I’m invincible!
ARTHUR: You’re a looney.
BLACK KNIGHT: The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then. [whop] [ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT’s last leg off]
BLACK KNIGHT: Oh? All right, we’ll call it a draw.
ARTHUR: Come, Patsy.
BLACK KNIGHT: Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what’s coming to you. I’ll bite your legs off!

BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION: From an Israeli blogger’s reported conversation with an Iraqi relative:

“He also told me that although he seldom speaks Arabic these days (though I heard him conversing with family members), he listens to the Arabic service of the BBC. Without my prompting him, he said that he also couldn’t understand how the British could be broadcasting such lies against their own forces. The BBC service is dominated by Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists, he told me. Can’t they find any moderate Arabic-speaking broadcasters who could present fair coverage? He wanted to write to the British government, but, well, he just didn’t know how. But how could this be? How could this be?”

The BBC, in other words, was actually producing pro-Saddam propaganda to the Iraqi people at the same time as British forces lives were at risk. Someone needs to investigate the Arabic Language Service. Daniel Pipes, can’t you get someone on the case?

“Friendly fire deaths lower than in previous war” – Knight Ridder.
“As Tactics Change and Battle Lines Blur, Risk of Being Killed by Own Side Increases” – New York Times.

GILLIGAN’S ISLAND: This is one of the best eviscerations of the BBC I’ve yet read. Money quote:

Saturday, April 5, will be the day most people will remember as the day when the journalistic standards of the World Service committed suicide. The BBC’s bad day in Baghdad started early: A column of US soldiers had entered southwestern Baghdad just after daybreak. The soldiers – in tanks and armored personnel carriers – drove through the city for several kilometers encountering only sporadic resistance. Near the university, the column turned left, drove out of the capital and parked at the international airport, which was already securely in American hands… Cut to: Andrew Gilligan, the BBC’s man in downtown Baghdad. “I’m in the center of Baghdad,” said a very dubious Gilligan, “and I don’t see anything… But then the Americans have a history of making these premature announcements.” Gilligan was referring to a military communiqué from Qatar the day before saying the Americans had taken control of most of Baghdad’s airport. When that happened, Gilligan had told World Service listeners that he was there, at the airport – but the Americans weren’t. Gilligan inferred that the Americans were lying. An hour or two later, a different BBC correspondent pointed out that Gilligan wasn’t at the airport, actually. He was nearby – but apparently far enough away that the other correspondent felt it necessary to mention that he didn’t really know if Gilligan was around, but that no matter what Gilligan had seen or not seen, the airport was firmly and obviously in American hands. It was important to the BBC that Gilligan not be wrong twice in two days. Whatever the truth was, the BBC, like Walter Duranty’s New York Times, must never say, “I was wrong.” So, despite the fact that the appearance of American troops in Baghdad was surely one of the war’s big moments, and one the BBC had obviously missed, American veracity became the story of the day. Gilligan, joined by his colleagues in Baghdad, Paul Wood and Rageh Omaar, kept insisting that not only had the Americans not gone to the “center” – which they reckoned to be where they were – they hadn’t really been in the capital at all. Both Omaar and Wood told listeners that they had been on hour-long Iraqi Ministry of Information bus rides – “and,” said Wood, “we were free to go anywhere” – yet they had seen nothing of an American presence in the city. From Qatar, a BBC correspondent helpfully explained that US briefings, such as that announcing the Baghdad incursion, were meaningless exercises, “more PR than anything else.” Maybe, implied the World Service, the Americans had made it all up: all day long, Wood repeatedly reported that there was no evidence to support the American claim.

No I haven’t been making this up. Privatize them now.

The British Medical Association has just put out a new guideline on the practice of mutilating the penises of infant boys. It suggests that common sense and medical practice may soon turn against this procedure. Some details:

“…it is now widely accepted, including by the BMA, that this surgical procedure has medical and psychological risks…the harm of denying a person the opportunity to choose not to be circumcised must also be taken into account, together with the damage that can be done to the individual’s relationship with his parents and the medical profession if he feels harmed by the procedure. … The BMA does not believe that parental preference alone constitutes sufficient grounds for performing a surgical procedure on a child unable to express his own view… Doctors should ensure that any parents seeking circumcision for their son in the belief that it confers health benefits are fully informed of the lack of consensus amongst the profession over such benefits, and how great any potential benefits and harms are. The BMA considers that the evidence concerning health benefit from non-therapeutic circumcision is insufficient for this alone to be a justification for doing it.”

Maybe in time, the permanent mutilation of boys’ bodies without their consent will be seen as the anachronism it surely is.

Yes, I know I’m a Python freak. Got ’em all on DVD. But I suddenly realized who Mohammed Said Sahaf reminds me of, declaring victory as allied troops police the streets around him, explaining that the Baghdad Airport is still held by Iraqis, etc. etc. He’s that wounded knight in the “Holy Grail,” with every limb cut off, daring his opponent to have another whack at him. If he weren’t a monster, he’d be quite funny.

BBC UPDATE: A new low. The World Service just described this goon as “the public face of Iraqi resistance.”