From: Sgt Mom
To: Assorted International Intellectuals of Note
Re: Choosing Your Sympathies and Your Allies

Item: “World Tribunal On Iraq Condemns US & Britian, Recognizes Right of Iraqis to Resist Occupation”

Item: “Eurolefties Fund Iraq Insurgency”

1. Well, watching the usual progressive, politically advanced, oh-so-enlightened international intellectual set embrace, intellectually and apparently financially, a coalition of neo-fascist, bitter-end Baathists, nostalgic for the mass-graves and torture of yore, and a set of nihilistic, head-chopping jihadi fanatics bent on joyless forced devotion to a deity that precisely dictates every jot and tittle of personal conduct – let’s just say I haven’t read of such a naked and cynically calculated coupling of ostensibly extreme political opposites since the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939.

2. I cannot imagine what would inspire people and groups who have made a great display, over years and decades, of being against any kind of political and social oppression, of being against the abuse of the individual by the state and organized religion, of wanting to explore the boundaries of intellectual and artistic thought, who have reveled in sexual and political freedom, untrammeled by the constraints of former conventions. Apparently this is too good for the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. According to high-minded, international intellectual set, they out to be well-content with what they had before: brute political oppression, religiously-enforced ignorance, isolation from the rest of the world, the burka, the mass-graves, the lash, and poisoned gas rained down on Kurdish villages.

3. One lot is making an attempt to fund the insurgents in Iraq— to aid and assist them in their brave work of assassinating legitimately elected politicians, government employees, and blowing up policemen, grade school children and incidental passers-by — and the other merely confines itself to the intellectual embrace of those who would otherwise merit their pious condemnation, were they performing such sterling service elsewhere in the world. But of course, it is against the Americans, which makes any sort of outrage completely legitimate.

4. It surely must excite the professional envy of many an old retired tart from the Reeperbahn, or Rainbow Corner (whiling away a blameless retirement in a condo in Torremolinos, perhaps) at the professional speed with which a certain set of academics, activists and personalities went from administering intellectual fellatio on Uncle Joe Stalin and his heirs and switched over to neo-fascists and Islamic fundamentalists— without even swapping out the kneepads and taking a spritz of metaphorical Binaca.

5. I often wonder if such are not darkly attracted to it all: violence, the tremendous pull of authority exercised willfully and absolutely, the subtle glamour of the cult of personality: the dangerous hero in fatigues and kaffiyeh, or other “of the people” glamour, the super-man who is permitted and excused for every kind of abuse, corruption, atrocity and stupidity. The holy anointed, like a Stalin, an Arafat, a Castro, a Mao, get a free pass; everyone else puts up with smelly anarchists waving incomprehensible signs, and the occasional threat of summons to an international court.

6. I also wonder, if deep, deep down, the usual set are afraid, afraid of the vast irrational powers loose in the world, ancient powers long thought tamed by conventional civilized mores, powers that they sense cannot be controlled by any of the old means. I wonder if this is an attempt to control those powers by placating them; “I am being nice to you, I am not like them, I am giving you what you want— be nice to me!” And I wonder if— in their nice, morally-equivalent, post-modern way— they have ever heard of the axiom that the Devil cannot enter unless he is invited.

7. Finally; who you ally yourself with — unless you make an ostentatious display of holding your nose, and making it obvious that it is a short-term and expedient alliance, says a lot— perhaps more than Ms. Roy, et al, have bargained for.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom