What part of dead don't you understand?

I rarely venture into the wilds of the right wing blogosphere. Trash television is enough of a fix. But, for whatever reason, I ventured out there today only to discover this unbelievable trash. Why or why would two thousand dead need to be put into scare quotes, as if it were not real, as if it were simply a fiction? Why does MM need to cast doubt on the Times story by calling it an 'opus,' as if there were a problem in an article that could be understood in terms of approximately twenty-three words per dead American?      

Michelle Malkin.

On Wednesday, the NYTimes published a 4,625-word opus on the "2,000 dead" milestone--a "grim mark," read the headline--on page A2.

Of course, given that MM is a propagandist, her 'story' is about one soldier who didn't regret going to Iraq to die. Ok. The Bush administration doesn't have any regrets about the lies it told to get that soldier over there either. And, MM doesn't seem to regret continue the feast of lies.

But two thousand dead is not a fiction. And, as long as it is treated as a fiction, Michelle Malkin and those who join her in supporting the Bush administration's unjust, unjustified, and unjustifiable war will continue to feed upon the dead.

Comments

[Rodkong]

Jodi

I'm surprised you haven't posted anything that focuses on the U.N. Oil for Food scandal and Paul Volcker's report. (what about the successful elections in Iraq?) Compared to the CIA leak, the outcome of Volker's report provides some devastating implications as to the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq. The purpose of exposing Rove, Libby, and Cheney was to prove to the American public, with solid evidence and not speculation, that the Bush Admin’s pretext for war (WMD's) was based on a lie. However, the Oil for Food scandal undermines this investigation because it proves that Saddam was a threat. How can this war be based on Bush’s lie if Saddam had the option to disclose his weapons arsenal? Saddam did not disclose his weapons arsenal because he believed that he would be protected by the oppositional members of the Security Council, who happen to be the key conspirators in the Oil for Food program. The "lie" was predicated by Saddam Hussein as means to protect his Baathists' regional interests and the interests of his foreign oil partners (France, China, Russia, and the United States). The Oil for Food program, which was designed to protect Iraqis from famine and starvation, exacerbated the inequities faced by the Shittes and Kurds. The Americans who sacrificed their lives, not only sacrificed their lives for America, but for Iraqis and the global community.

[Jodi]

There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no nuclear program. There were no munitions labs. Nothing has been found. There were no mobile trailers filled with weapons. There was no tie with 9/11. These were lies told by the administration to get the country to go to war.

[hugh]

Jodi--

Regrettably, many people use quotation marks to no purpose, or merely to provide a kind of emphasis. I think that's what's going on in Michelle Malkin's post.

I don't know where that trend originates. Do you think it fits into communicative capitalism? I'm thinking of a general trend according to which everything is already sampled, so there is no particular point to putting quotation marks around anything (and so, conversely, you can put them around anything).

Perhaps I will go on more about this later -- right now, I have a plane to catch.

[Zelda]

This is ridiculous. If it were as simple as Bush lying, he would be impeached and the troops would be home. Bush did not lie about WMD. Every intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam had them, or had the capabilities of getting them. But the U.N. preferred to leave a murdering dictator in power for their love of oil. No blood for oil? Start with the UN. They'd been feeding off of Saddam's tyranny and Clinton's restraint for far too long. And I find it amusing that you have a problem with removing Saddam Hussein just because you don't like GWB. One thing should have nothing to do with the other. Far more Shiites were slaughtered when they tried to remove Saddam and we did nothing. So don't think they are wailing about their dead this time.

Why can't you understand how imperitive it is that democracy be established in the Middle East? All of the progress we have achieved since the middle ages will be for nothing if the radical Muslim element gains control of governments and their oil supplies. There is no country that has ever EVER democratically voted for a Taliban style government. Our chance for peace in this world lies with supporting democracy, not dictators. It's a lesson that has sadly been a long time coming, but it must not be lost in phony sorrow for dead heros.

[Charles R]

Zelda, I don't think that Jodi should be read as someone who thinks that there should not be democracy in the Middle East—if by 'democracy' we mean something along the lines of a self-determining form of government in which the people are uncoerced to choose how they want to live. If by 'democracy' we mean something along the lines of a typical Western parliamentary system interested in preserving a market economy, perhaps Jodi would be against that for some principled reasons, but that's not to say by rejecting that she would therefore be in favor of a dictatorship by Saddam Hussein.

I think the problem is the very idea that it is possible for any nation *to establish* democracy for some other nation, and to do this establishment by the mechanism of warfare with the plan to recoup expenses through the sale of the liberated oil reserves, to do this is to further compound the problem in a much more troubling way. Saddam was evil. There is no question about this.

The question is: what are the just and proper ways to deal with evil? To question the judge her decision to give no mercy is not to think the guilty is innocent; nor is it to doubt that there is any justice at all in her court. It is to recognize that alongside justice there is grace, and alongside the sword there is the plow.

There is common ground in the concerns about what is going on in the world. Let's start from there, rather than just assume the moral worst of our interlocutors.

[marc]

"her 'story' is about one soldier who didn't regret going to Iraq to die."

Actually, her story is about the NYT deliberately mischaracterizing the nature of the letter that a fallen soldier had written in order to advance a viewpoint opposite of what the soldier held. Seems to be a legitimate beef with the Times to me...

[Rodkong]

...Hugh,
...when I write in a free associative form I tend to use an ellipse at the beginning and end of my thoughts...does my overuse or misuse of an ellipse fit into your communiative capitalist scheme? Since I can't use the underline command or italics on this message board, using quotations seems to be my only alternative when emphasizing a word such as "lie".

[Jodi]

Rodkong,

Hugh was gesturing to a term I use in my book, Publicity's Secret, 'communicative capitalism. (Thanks, Hugh! Have a good flight!)

Hugh, I think that the overuse of scare quotes is an aspect of the culture of irony that has changed and accelerated with communicative capitalism and constant sampling, absolutely. The quotes signal our distance from words, concepts, terms. They suggest our desires to create connections and communities among those who know what we know, who share the same references. These days, we remain perpetually confused, unsure, so we protect ourselves.

And, for something rather different: a couple of years ago, my son asked what does it mean when someone makes the scare quotes gesture (he did the thing with his fingers). I explained that one was signaling a distance from what was spoken, calling it into question, suggesting that one didn't necessarily accept the truth of the stated object (oh my god, my poor kids, but I digress...) Anyway, my son responds, doing the quote thing, saying, "oh, as in 'my sister'?"

And, I will never know if he was confused or if he was using them correctly in a joke.

[Jodi]

Thanks, Charles R.

Marc, that she has a legitimate beef with the Times (who doesn't?) in no way takes away from the larger propagandistic role of her article and how she wrote it. Presumably she would admit this: she took the opportunity to try to twist the story away from the facts of 2000 dead in an unjust war.

[Rodkong]

Charles,

I will agree that no nation reserves the right impose democracy on another nation. However, the circumstances that brought us to war with Iraq were not as simple as one nation imposing its values on another. I think Jodi’s oversimplification of the circumstances is what encouraged me and Zelda to respond. Using the Just War Theory and Michael Walzer as my guide, I would argue that United States had the right to invade Iraq given Saddam’s abuse of the 1991 peace declaration through Oil for Food program. I would also argue that through globalization and established international regimes; each nation is a citizen of the global community. As citizens we must find a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community. Under Saddam Iraq was a sovereign nation and a citizen. Saddam lost his rights as a soverign nation when he invaded Kuwait in 1991....i need to catch train

[Rodkong]

Jodi...i got his joke...when I used to go to church this particular priest would always use the "scare quotes" followed by the phrase "pretty powerful stuff"...I believe he's no in jail on pedaphilia charges...

Charles...

I will agree that no nation reserves the right impose democracy on another nation. However, the circumstances that brought us to war with Iraq were not as simple as one nation imposing its values on another. I think Jodi’s oversimplification of the circumstances is what encouraged me and Zelda to respond. Using the Just War Theory and Michael Walzer as my guide, I would argue that United States had the right to invade Iraq given Saddam’s abuse of the 1991 peace declaration through Oil for Food program. I would also argue that through globalization and established international regimes; each nation is a citizen of the global community. As citizens we must find a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community. Under Saddam Iraq was a sovereign nation and a citizen. Saddam lost his rights as a soverign nation when he invaded Kuwait in 1991....i need to catch train

[Rodkong]

Charles,

I will agree that no nation reserves the right impose democracy on another nation. However, the circumstances that brought us to war with Iraq were not as simple as one nation imposing its values on another. I think Jodi’s oversimplification of the circumstances is what encouraged me and Zelda to respond. Using the Just War Theory and Michael Walzer as my guide, I would argue that United States had the right to invade Iraq given Saddam’s abuse of the 1991 peace declaration through Oil for Food program. I would also argue that through globalization and established international regimes; each nation is a citizen of the global community. As citizens we must find a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community. Under Saddam Iraq was a sovereign nation and a citizen. Saddam lost his rights as a soverign nation when he invaded Kuwait in 1991....i need to catch train

[marc]

Jodi:

Actually, she took the opportunity to point out that the New York Times is engaged in a fundamentally dishonest practice that dishonors a man who fundamentally believed in what he was doing when he died doing it. Quoting (more fully than the Times bothered to) from the soldier's letter:

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."

Clearly, Malkin has her facts right on this one. I gather from your post that you're not a big fan of Malkin. But that's irrelevant to this discussion - she's clearly correct to call out the NYT for distorting this soldier's view of the war. So why the disgust with Malkin? Why no ire directed at the Times?

[pebird]

The NYT piece made it clear that Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr "believed strongly in the war", and that his father "said he remained convinced that invading Iraq was the right thing to do."

There was no implication that what the solider believed in was in any way not an honorable thing to do. The point about his predicting his death made this guy an individual, made you stop and think about that.

I fail to see what dishonor the Times committed.

Malkin saying that there's no one should mark the 2,000 death as a grim milestone I find dishonorable.

[Edie]

"But two thousand dead is not a fiction. And, as long as it is treated as a fiction, Michelle Malkin and those who join her in supporting the Bush administration's unjust, unjustified, and unjustifiable war will continue to feed upon the dead."

Very true. But take it a step further. These are war crimes.

[Jeff1999]

I saw your trackback and decided to stop by. Regarding the "Bush Lied", who else "lied"? Did Clinton. Check out the following:

Here's Clinton on July 22, 2003, on Larry KingLive: "When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for." And in October 2003, some six months after the war ended, Portuguese prime minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso discussed WMD with Clinton. Said Barroso: "When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime."

Details, details. In an interview last month with Wolf Blitzer, Clinton said of the Iraq war: "I never thought it had much to do with the war on terror." Come again? In a speech on February 17, 1998, Clinton warned of threats from an "unholy axis" of terrorists and rogue states, and declared: "There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

Later that spring came this passage from the Clinton administration's indictment of Osama bin Laden: "Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."

That summer, no fewer than six senior Clinton officials accused Iraq of providing chemical weapons expertise to al Qaeda in Sudan. It was this collaboration that administration officials cited to justify the destruction of the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, wrote in the Washington Times that the administration had "information linking bin Laden to the Sudanese regime and to the al Shifa plant."

Berger continued: "We had physical evidence indicating that al Shifa was the site of chemical weapons activity," allowing that al Shifa might have been a dual-use facility. "Other products were made at al Shifa. But we have seen such dual-use plants before--in Iraq. And, indeed, we have information that Iraq has assisted chemical weapons activity in Sudan."

It's from the Weekly Standard. Come check out more at our site.

Cheers,

Jeff at Musing Minds

[Alain]

Jeff1999

You make a strong case for why Clinton and his cabal is not to be trusted. It also makes the point that Bush & Co are a mere intensification of US elites predilection to lie and distort facts. I suspect the primary difference between Clinton Inc and Neocon Unlimited is that Clinton was a more cautious imperialist, one less likely to take extreme risks (unless of course they involved an intern).

Cheers

[pebird]

Alain - don't allow blogwhores to change the subject in a thread. Don't go "check out more at our site".

[Jodi]

Edie--agreed. Your push to go further is completely warranted.

[Adam Kotsko]

Where the fuck did these people come from all of a sudden?

[Big Black Helicopter in your backyard]

Jodi,
People who salivate at the death of a soldier protecting your right to foam at the mouth about dark unproven conspiracies that only the "enlightened people" understand are truly morbid.
Only a jackal can really understand the glee you take in each death in Iraq.

[Alain]

Big Black Helicopter

There is no secret conspiracy. And as I can personally attest, you do not have to be all that bright to get it: everything was done out in the open, the distortions, the lies, and the determination to go to war in Iraq and "finish the job." If you think the cause is just, then I suppose the lies are irrelavent.

Cheers!

[hugh]

Jodi--

Undismayed by the potential ridiculousness, I am going to say that I think that your perspective on the quotation mark is fundamentally modernist, and that I think that it's important to consider the possibility of a postmodern reading of the quotation mark. Under the modernist regime, when I quote someone, I simultaneously establish distances between the quoted phrase, the origin text, and the text of mine in which I embed the quotation. The enforcement of all these distances break down under postmodernism. (One of the effects I am referring to is that we are much more aware than in the past of the way that citing someone, even if you cite them to disagree with them, functions as a kind of endorsement: an endorsement of their importance, also of their framing of the question.)

In this way, the quotation mark as guarantor of ironic distance has been undermined. I suspect that it is partly for this reason that we see the quotation mark being used in other modes which don't intend any particular suggestion of ironic distance, for example, as Rodkong suggests, for emphasis, or as in my reading of Malkin's post.

[Jodi]

Hugh--interesting. I'll plead guilty to modernism. But, I want to call you on your postmodernism. That is, I would say that even the 'modernist' is aware of the truth within the quotes, as it were, the way that the distance is in a certain sense false. And, I would say that the 'postmodern' dissolution is as yet incomplete and, perhaps, impossible. The dissolution would be complete when the quotes would be unnecessary, when the doubt about any utterance would be so great as to suspend the very possibility of suspension. (Honestly, this sounds more pretentious and icky than I would like; the problem is that I actually think this, I believe what I am writing, even in it unfortunate phrasing...)

[hugh]

Jodi--

There are two things that I might say in my defense. (Just to clarify, I don't mean to imply that I feel like I'm being attacked.)

One defense is that I'm not trying to articulate a fully coherent position, but rather to give a suggestive explanation of certain cultural practices. So, even though the postmodern dissolution is incomplete and probably impossible, I think it is nonetheless true that one can find more convincing explanations of certain things by proceeding as if that dissolution had taken place.

The second defense, perhaps the more interesting one, would be to say that the postmodern dissolution appears incomplete and impossible precisely insofar as one approaches it from a modernist perspective. I guess what I'm focussing on in your comment is the word "doubt" -- the modernist plays a complicated zero-sum game of doubt -- doubt of one text against doubt of another text -- and from that perspective, it seems that the post-modernist must have made an impossibly large accumulation of doubt, to be able to "doubt [...] any utterance", as you put it. But the post-modernist does not calculate doubt according to a zero-sum law.

One problem with this latter position is of the "what do you do for an encore?" variety -- it's not so clear how much more you can say after you've said that stuff.

(Returning to your comment, I'm not sure what you mean by "the truth within the quotes" -- could you clarify?)

[pebird]

Wasn't it Nabokov who said that "reality" is the only word which should always be surrounded by quotation marks?

[hugh]

pebird:

Could be -- it's certainly the impression I've gotten from the stuff of his I've read.

I guess I prefer:

"If you assert that things are real
you miss their true reality."

(from a Chinese Buddhist text)