LUDIC LOG

The greatest thing about Gulf War II (so far; it's soon to be surpassed by a big pile of corpses) has been the baying of conservative commentators, none of whom will have to fight the war or indeed factor into it whatsoever. Last time out, we had plenty of TV talking heads and newspaper pundits beating the drums, but there are two major factors that have made the current crisis particularly entertaining. One element was missing last time -- the internet, with its blogosphere full of paradigm-breaking attack dogs ready to rhetorically eviscerate anyone who dares cavil at the cries of battle. One element was there last time and is missing now: the World Trade Center and a few thousand people who worked in it.

It is the second element that has given the first their Holy Grail, their Ultimate Nullifier, their irreducible argument. It would be far too cynical even for me to suggest that even the remorseless neoconservative right considers the mass death of innocents a boon, a political windfall of unprecedented proportions; but it also would be far too naive to ignore the unseemly haste with which the terrorist acts have been exploited -- grafted onto every issue currently in dispute, from corporate bailouts to criminal justice to war with Iraq, as the unanswerable retort before which all opposition must falter. What argument, against so much horror?

The last of these issues is the one I want to address, this notion (absurd, I call it; vital, those whom I address call it) that action against Iraq is somehow tied to the deadly doings of Islamic terrorists, that inaction against Iraq will facilitate a holocaust, that to express reservations against war with Iraq is to be a useful dupe of Muslim fascism and to trod coldly on the graves of New York's dead. Who am I addressing? Not a quorum, a nation or a party, but a handful of people -- hundreds at most, dozens at best, but they claim to speak for millions. They'll never read this; they don't know me any more than I know them, but on a daily basis they claim to know me, and what I think, and what I believe, and why. Their hobby, their sport, their raison d'escre is to read the same news, watch the same shows, and hear the same reports that I do, and then tell me what a fool I am for interpreting them otherwise.

If any of them were to read this, their response would be predictable: they would call me a tool, a naysayer, an "idiotarian". They would dissect what I said with point-by-point mockery, a technique called "Fisking" in the neologism-happy world of blogging. If they thought me important or foolish enough, they might elevate me to the level of America-hating traitor along with such other national embarrassments as Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky or Edward Said, do-nothing cowards all who have neither the common sense nor the intellectual prowess of an Andrew Sullivan or a Little Green Footballs. I can only be thankful that I am so far beneath even the pitiful cultural radar screen of the blogosphere, that I will be spared such a sound critical thrashing.

But, for the record, here is my final position, on the day after my nation's government has overwhelmingly voted in favor of war against Iraq. Fisk away.

I do not condone this war. I do not support those who fight it or those who authored it. I think it is unnecessary and evil and will result in a large number of needless deaths. I believe that we are being systematically lied to by our own government in an attempt to provide a nonexistent rationale for the war. I believe that the vast majority of reasons we have been given for fighting it are nothing but fabrications, exaggerations and pretexts. I believe that the consequences of fighting it will be a marked degree worse than the consequences of not fighting it. As unjust as the first Gulf War was, I am of the opinion that this one is worse: our reasons for fighting it are less justifiable, our motivations are more suspect, and the bridges we burn in pursuing it will be far more difficult to rebuild. I think this is a terrible thing that we are doing, a terrible thing that does not need to be done. I think it is as wrong as anything America has done in my lifetime, and I want no part of it.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's kill us some ragheads!

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I'm not going to tell you people again about the first annual Ludic Log Reader Participation Event, wherein you e-mail me fictional journal entries by members of the Bush administration and I reproduce them here. Well, okay, I'm going to tell you three more times. Submit. Submit. Submit.