Federal Judiciary

A hard Iraqi to lose, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Well, this was an arresting opening, to an Associated Press report: ?He compared al-Qaida in Iraq to wolves, urging that the terrorist group be crushed since he believed its members would never reject violence. But the wolves got to the Iraqi counterterrorism officer first.?

That officer was Ahmed Subhi al-Fahal, killed in a suicide bombing in Tikrit (Saddam Hussein?s old bastion). Killed along with him were two bodyguards and two bystanders. Al-Fahal was in his early 30s and apparently lived to eliminate violent extremists from his country. He claimed on al-Arabiya, the TV network, that he had killed more than 250 of al-Qaeda?s finest: not a bad haul.

And, according to the AP, ?he was also thrown the most difficult missions. It was al-Fahal who was called in to track down 16 prisoners -- including several al-Qaida-linked inmates awaiting execution -- who escaped in a stunning September jailbreak . . .?

After al-Fahal?s death, an American colonel wrote, ?He was controversial, flamboyant, brave, and effective. He single-handedly disrupted numerous enemy plots during the last election . . .?

Sounds like a very useful man, and it is no wonder that al-Qaeda is rejoicing over his death. May Iraq, for the sake of its possibility of life, have many more like him.

When the world first started to take serious notice of radical Islam, David Pryce-Jones, among others, pointed out the similarities between it and Communism. P-J is an expert on both. And I thought of these similarities, once again, when reading this report, which began,

?As they gear up for a major anti-government protest Monday, Iranian students are besieged by a clampdown in the universities, with a wave of arrests and expulsions. At the same time, authorities are intensifying enforcement of Islamic morals on women?s dress and men?s hair length as a way to punish political dissent.?

The report continued,

?They say authorities have cracked down at campuses nationwide to prevent the demonstrations from becoming widespread and that students recruited by the pro-government Basij militiamen are on the watch, informing on classmates suspected of being pro-opposition ?troublemakers.??

That is the kind of story we?ve read from Communist countries, and about Communist countries, for years. And we see anew the awful kinship of totalitarian societies, whatever their particular -- or local or religious or ideological -- flavor.

I note that Scheherezade Faramarzi filed the above-cited report from Beirut, rather than Tehran -- further evidence that filing honest reports from Tehran is bad for your health.

Every once in a while, I am reminded why I like John McCain. He was not my first choice in the Republican primaries last year (was it really last year?), and he can be as exasperating as any politician on the scene. But, when that Tuesday came along, I arose early and voted for him with gusto. For her, too.

Anyway, McCain recently talked with Don Imus, who asked him whether he supported the Democrats? stimulus bill -- that massive package of spending from several months ago. McCain answered, ?Hell no.? Imus said, ?I don?t think you have to swear at me, senator, when I?m just asking a . . .? Said McCain,

?I?m not swearing at you. I?m swearing I?d have to have been smoking something pretty strong to vote for that outrageous use of taxpayers? dollars.? McCain further observed, ?There?s not a lot of happy people out there, so you see tea parties, and you see people who are madder than they?ve ever been in their life. And frankly, I?m madder than I?ve ever been.?

Which is saying something, as others have pointed out. I like it -- the spirit of righteous indignation. And righteous, remember, is not self-righteous -- which is different.

Charles Krauthammer is known as an expert on foreign policy, and that he is. But I find him refreshingly bright on the economy. Here he is commenting for Fox News: ?It is the conceit of liberals in power to imagine that the government not only should but can create jobs. Outside of world wars, it doesn?t. Generally it gets in the way.? He then said, ?There are things that you can do by clearing the brush.? You can block Obamacare, ?with all of the job-killing mandates and penalties.? You can block cap and trade, ?which will destroy what?s left of the industrial Midwest.? You can halt the stimulus package, ?and distribute the remaining billions either to individuals or to the Treasury.? You can advance free trade and ?lift the unbelievably absurd restrictions on drilling for gas and oil.?

I am taken with the phrase ?clearing the brush? -- yes, that?s what government can do. It is a positively Reaganesque phrase, not least because the guy so loved to clear brush, literally, on his ranch. In fact, the Secret Service would put more out there for him, when he had cleared all there was to clear.

In my view -- maybe yours, too -- there was a lot that was dispiriting in President Obama?s speech on the Afghan War. But I will single out one statement, which has picked up a little fame: ?. . . the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.? Are those not the words of a committed statist -- of someone who does not understand how America gets built (i.e., from the ground up, not the top down)? Or is that an overreaction to an innocuous piece of rhetoric?

Bill Ayers and others on the left are very cross at Obama for continuing the Afghan War. But Obama said, over and over during the presidential campaign, that Afghanistan was the good war, whereas Iraq was the bad one. Afghanistan was the war of necessity, whereas Iraq was a lousy war of choice. In Afghanistan, we had to commit ourselves entirely, so as to win: no ifs, ands, or buts.

Did the Left think Obama didn?t mean it? Did they think he was just faking that stance, for political and electoral purposes? Interesting.

In my piece ?Rise of an Epithet,? about the term ?teabagger,? I mentioned some words that started out as slurs and then became accepted by one and all -- including the original targets themselves. I listed ?Methodist,? ?Tory,? ?Impressionist? -- even ?Christian.? Some people speak of ?owning the insult,? which is to take an intended putdown and wear it as a badge of honor.

I was reminded, just the other day, of an example from my hometown, Ann Arbor, Mich. Once upon a time, there was just one high school: Ann Arbor High. But it became necessary to build another one, and it was built near the Huron River. This was Huron High. Apparently, there were river rats on the construction site. And the Ann Arbor High people started to refer to the split-off people -- the Huron people -- as ?river rats.? There was a movement to adopt ?River Rat? as the school nickname and symbol. Huron?s principal fought this tooth and nail, thinking it absurdly undignified. But the movement won out: and Huron High has been the home of the River Rats ever since.

It has come to my attention that ?Rise of an Epithet? has caused some upset, has gotten under some skin. There has been unpleasant commentary about the piece in outlets of the Left, and there has been misunderstanding. My purpose in the piece was this: to explain how ?teabagger? entered the general vocabulary; to say a little about the history of slurs, and how they might be transformed; and to ask what conservatives in general should do about ?teabagger? -- fight it, adopt it, or what?

As far as I know, the two people who had the most raucous fun with ?teabagger,? early on, were Rachel Maddow and David Shuster of MSNBC. Last week, Maddow devoted a portion of her show to this issue, and my piece, and me, and National Review. That segment is posted on our Media Blog, here. Maddow?s guest was Shuster, and they talked to each other about how awful I was, NR was -- the expected. They said, ?Nordlinger said,? and ?Nordlinger thinks,? and ?Does Nordlinger think . . .?? etc. But there was no Nordlinger, or anyone else with a different point of view -- a view different from Maddow and Shuster?s. There were just two peas in a pod. Does that make for interesting or fruitful television? The watchers of MSNBC must think so. (And I am not one to knock opinion journalism.)

This was really off the wall: a piece in the Huffington Post calling me a closet case -- yeah, like that. The writer is Chris Kelly, who works for Bill Maher. Kelly cited as evidence of my closetedness my ?teabagger? piece; a knowingly hyperbolic statement I once made about Reagan; and my appreciation of Bill Buckley, upon his death. I don?t know whether Kelly is interested in me or what, but I?ve got news for him: If I were gaily (?gayly??) inclined, I would not be closeted -- I?m not the type. My disposition tends toward ?loud and proud.? Also, I would likely have a gym membership, better clothes, and a more tasteful home.

It is true that I loved Bill Buckley -- if you were his friend, you couldn?t help doing so. As for music (which Kelly makes a point of): It is actually possible not to be gay and to like music. There are a number of known cases throughout history. I could introduce Chris Kelly to some people, get him around a little.

Finally, let me mention a frothing item from Examiner.com, by Julie Farby. It begins, ?As President Obama deals with the war in Afghanistan, providing millions of Americans with adequate health care, a sluggish economy and widespread unemployment, conservatives are grappling with some weighty issues of their own: ?to ?teabag? or not to ?teabag.??? Believe it or not, I know: I know that this is not the most important issue in the world. That?s why I begin my piece, ?To ?teabag? or not to ?teabag?: That is not the most pressing question of these times, but it is a question to consider.? If we confined ourselves to the most important issue in the world, what would we write about? The relation of God to man, I suppose. Sometimes we go down byways, or take up the incidental.

Anyway, time to get off this subject (I was off it, but the critics drew me back in). I will fall back on that old writer?s statement: All I can hope is that people read my piece for themselves, if they?re interested, and come to their own conclusions. And look: I realize that those of us who write in public have to take our lumps, even withstand some indecency. But does it seem to you that the media world has gotten a little too weird for its own good?

Fun with a name? Well, a name, anyway. As we have all learned in recent weeks -- owing to the ?party-crash? scandal -- the White House social secretary is Desirée Rogers. And I think Desirée Rogers -- certainly Desirée -- is a fine, fitting name for the social secretary.

Fun with music? Well, not music, exactly -- I just have a little story to tell. You may ask yourself what a conductor does before a concert: Does he immerse himself in scores, does he meditate, does he contact the spirit of Toscanini? On Friday, I covered a New York Philharmonic concert (review forthcoming as part of my New Criterion chronicle). I got to the hall about ten minutes before the concert. The conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, was outside near the stage door, in his civvies, talking on his cellphone. He was on the podium in time to give the downbeat.

I have no great point -- just kind of interesting. (I said ?kind of.?)

Fun with language? On television recently there was a special on ?punkin? chunkin?? -- the art and science of devising a contraption that will throw a pumpkin as far as possible. A friend of mine complained, ?The phrase is really ?pumpkin chucking? -- they just changed ?chuckin?? to ?chunkin?? so as to have something to rhyme with ?punkin?.? A fair point. On this show, the chuckers, or chunkers, used the expression ?stoked? a lot, as in, ?I am stoked for this competition.? ?Stoked? means jazzed up, excited, rarin? to go. I understand it?s a serious surfer?s term. In any case, it?s a good one.

One more: What happens when you launch your pumpkin and, instead of launching, it disintegrates? You pie. ?I had a good chunk in the second round, but in the third round, when I was going for more distance, I pied.?

Finally, a note on ?Merry Christmas.? I mentioned in a column the other day that many Americans with the least problem saying ?Merry Christmas? are non-Christians. This might go double for newly arrived immigrants, not yet steeped in American PC. Well, the other night, a couple of us were getting out of a cab (New York), and the Muslim driver -- this was obvious from the name on the license -- said, ?Merry Christmas.? Which made me smile.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on December 07, 2009 (boomark / email).