Ninth Circle of Hell

Perhaps it’s because I am in the throes of catching a cold that I feel miserable and nasty this morning. So I won’t apply the semi-gloss of civility to my utter disgust for all things neocon this morning.

Yesterday, as many of us are aware, William Kristol sat in a FOX television studio and admitted to the world that the War on Iraq is a goner. Lost. It was a noble idea, but the war hasn’t been fought seriously. It’s not the fault of the neocon ideology. Oooh, no. It’s everyone else’s fault. Everyone else took the perfect opportunity to tear Iraq apart so that the democracy Phoenix might rise from the ashes—and they blew it. Kristol’s pea brain only has one groove—blow the shit out of everything and everyone in the Middle East until there isn’t a living soul left to complain about it. If we kill enough Islamofascists, we’ll emerge victorious. (And, incidentally, the term Islamofascist was first coined by another pea-brained neo-con, Frank Gaffney.) Michael Ledeen voiced the same odious theory in the early days of the assault. If a billion Muslims died in the process, eh, so much the better for us. Seriously.

During the early days of the war, you couldn’t turn the television on without finding a neo-con flapping his jaws about the glory and the higher calling of their delusions, dearly held since at least the middle part of the 1980s. They salivated and cackled during Shock and Awe. They were first in line to cast the word treason at the feet of anyone who questioned their vision or the proceedings in the new Great War. This war was the best, the greatest, the shining American moment. We who thought they were nuts were just traitors to the country and to our brave troops. They spread division amongst us, with the able help of their dim puppet-in-chief.

When events in Iraq began to head south, they vanished from the airwaves. They crawled back under their rocks to watch and wait. Can’t you envision their midnight confabs, working out the new strategy of loss? How to save face. How to blame their flawed ideology on everyone else. Anyone else. Their grand vision has been betrayed by a bunch of incompetents.

I don’t disagree with the incompetence part, although they were the original incompetents. Those who hide in ivory towers and push soldiers around on paper, have little exposure to reality. They, who encouraged Rummy’s new vision of a slimmed-down mobile army and blasted General Shinseki for his traitorous pronouncement that we weren’t going to win anything with less than a few hundred thousand troops on the ground, now have the glaring audacity to blame the ones whose paeans they sang and crammed down our throats at every stinking opportunity.

It was in May of 2002 that Richard Perle, one of the neo-con architects of the war (then Head of the Defense Policy Board) and also known as the Prince of Darkness, was interviewed by David Corn. During that interview this exchange took place:

I noted there were widespread media reports saying an attack would require up to 250,000 troops. These soldiers could not all be air-dropped into Iraq. They would have to come from somewhere, such as Saudi Arabia. And a military action of this size would need extensive logistical support nearby.

Forget the 250,000 figure, Perle said: “The Army guys don’t know anything. They said we needed 500,000 troops in 1991 [for the Gulf War]. Did we need that many to win? No."

What’s the Perle Plan? I asked.

"Forty thousand troops.” he said.

To take Baghdad? Nah, he replied. To take control of the north and the south, particularly the north, where the oil fields are. Cut off Saddam’s oil, make him a pauper, that should do the trick.

"We don’t need anyone else,” he said, in a distinctly imperial fashion.

Screw the Army guys who don’t know anything.

Now that the thing is lost, they feel absolutely no twinges of regret for casting blame far and wide. The war hasn’t been fought seriously, lo these past three years. It’s not their fault. We still could have done it with 40,000 troops and enough bombs to turn Iraq into glass, no? And what about cakewalks and roses?

“We have not had a serious three year effort to fight a war in Iraq, as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out,” Kristol stated, without batting an eyelash.

Tell it to the soldiers who died, believing they were saving your ass, traitor.

You see, a plan of disengagement, which all military personnel worth their salt understand is part and parcel of warmaking, is for appeasers. This war wasn’t supposed to end. It was supposed to go on and on and on. It was supposed to engulf Syria and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Egypt, if possible. It was the grandest vision of Pax Americana that anyone has ever conceived.

And they feel aggrieved and petulant over seeing the shards of their dreams scattered from here to Baghdad. Nevermind that they got exactly what they wanted and it didn’t work. Being a neo-con means never having to say you’re sorry.

Every last one of them belongs in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Every last one of the nasty miserable bastards. Incomparable Sniveling Cowards.