Of Krauts and Kings. And of Kurds
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
and cabbages—and kings—. . .”
I won’t parrot the ecstatic gushes of the “conservative” media and declare King Abdullah “twice the man Obama is.” No, not because His Hashemite Majesty is not a real man, but because I know from mathematics that multiplying by the additive identity is a useless operation: applied to the real world, it doesn’t say much. Which is the same reason I won’t say that, as a Speaker, Pelosi is twice the man Boehner is.
Those gushes, though, remind me of one of the best scenes of what was otherwise quite a boring movie (to me personally):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=381Di8Cw0-I
Imagine our modern conservatives as those commissars on the edge of defeat, wondering how they can raise the spirit of their dispirited troops. Ah, yes, of course, we need “magnificent stories” of heroes, so that we can give hope to our people.
The problem is, conservatives don’t have those heroes in the Republican Party. They destroyed them, politically. And they are left with cabbages. Seriously, look who the “conservative” leaders in both Congress and the Senate are. And look who’s raising their heads again to run for President.
Thankfully, the truckload of cabbages called the Republican Party and their neocon media got a hand from a king. Here’s your real man: He gets mad and he goes bombing ragheads. Not like our president who goes golfing. If we had elected Republicans to decide, they’d go like the king . . . no, they’d send other people to do it. Kings are kings, cabbages are cabbages.
The king must be careful, though. As much as he has become the new hero of our American conservative cabbages, he shouldn’t go too far in defeating ISIS. After all, ISIS also serves a purpose; how else would American neocons justify their constant war drums banging? I mean, why did John McCain work so hard in the Middle East, if not to save the neocon foreign policy agenda from Ron Paul’s merciless assaults? If now the king of some desert nation smaller than the state of Virginia defeats the mighty ISIS, what will stop American libertarians from saying, “Yeah, we knew it all along, these nations didn’t need American troops to deal with their own problems. So why are we still there?”
King Abdullah must not forget: the $670 million foreign aid he has requested from the US for this year will be voted on by those same neocons who need both a stick against Democrats and supporting propaganda for their warmongering.
So King Abdullah must be careful and moderate in his war effort. Be a man enough to appear on FOX News as a reproach against Obama, but not enough to make it look like he doesn’t need American aid or military presence. Everything in moderation. The conservative way. Bomb ISIS, but don’t obliterate them. Fight them heroically but don’t defeat them.
Not like those Kurds who don’t know better. When is the last time the Kurds had a major military victory? Let’s see. It was when the Kurd Saladin defeated Richard the Lionheart in the Third Crusade. After that, the Kurds never had their own nation, their own government. Even today, they do not collect taxes between themselves; their troops are all equipped and paid by voluntary contributions, a sort of proto-libertarian community defending its liberty. And yet, they scored several victories against the dreaded ISIS, in Iraq and in Syria. Turns out, local peoples can win against ISIS, after all, without help.
Bad example, these Kurds gave. And King Abdullah is dangerously heading towards giving the same bad example, leaving neocons without propaganda ammo at home. For this reason Charles Krauthammer advises caution: Take it easy, Your Majesty, don’t be misled by the victories of the Kurds, you can’t win this war, only the US can win it. Wink, wink, my friend, we have more taxes to take from the American taxpayers, and we have more young American lives to send to die in a senseless war. If you resolve it too quick, what are we neocons going to do?
It’s about time for us Americans to talk of many things. Especially of cabbages (Kraut, in German), and kings. And of Kurds. But let’s finish our little rhyme:
“And why the sea is boiling hot—
and whether pigs have wings.”