K: Wars end when they are satisfactorily framed. Physical and monetary costs aside. When the damage to ideas can be repaired, the populace is ready for another war; this is the only sign of war's end. Conflict needs brackets.
Build the brackets by policing the jargon of teleology; this weekend's laughable coinage of the "Time Horizon," par exemple. I'm not sure the beast actually works, a little sci-fi, but selah. The vision of soldiers reaching a limit in space-time only to be sucked into some hyperspace vortex cannot be what the president intended. But nevermind: "benchmarks" defeated "fixed deadlines"; "horizon" beats "artificial timetable."
Thus, Peter Hoekstra howling like a wounded beaver in the Post. "Ten weeks" with "virtually no sectarian killings," sounds like a pretty squishy standard for peace, as does the handover of most of the provinces, the hope for provincial elections, the return of a Sunni bloc to the Cabinet, etc. So congratulations, Rep. Hoekstra. Iraq is no longer a failed petrostate : it is a crankily operable client regime of the U.S., still occupied by American soldiers.
Really, I hate to rain on folks' parade, but this isn't the first, nor will it be the last time Pete conjures some fantasy land for political points. What's interesting now is that he's conjuring a fantasy land of peace and buttercups.
The Hoekstra modus operandi is to invent a fictional world that is more vicious and Hobbesian than we believe. In an op-ed last summer calling for the revision of FISA, he argued that "lightning-fast" communication would lead to attacks on the homeland. Now, it's dumb to mimic Verizon talking points when lobbying for amnesty for such phone companies as violated Constitutional protections against unlawful search...but he got what he wanted. Mind you, nothing happened in the six-month period between the lapse of the PAA and the passage of the Surveillance Once, Surveillance Now, Surveillance Fo'evuh Act. Metaphor control works: the speed of the Interweb becomes the bolt of Jove, wielded by irritated Pakistanis...
This is the same man who two years ago crassly exaggerated the threat of the trans-Atlantic bombers in the NYPost, and who thus is directly accountable for my not being able to bring 8 ounces of Boursin from DiBruno's to my parents for Christmas last year. (Philly International's response: "Yuhs can eider eat it 'ere, or what." I want my cheese back, BTW.) Pete asked us to "imagine the horror." Trouble with that is, people did. Turns out it's laughably hard to do the chemistry on a plane:
Don't forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're going to need them.But again, the Die Hard: With a Vengeance script scared the pants off everyone, and confiscated my cheese.
Pete's finest hour, however, was his Wall Street Journal opinion piece of June 26, 2006. The one that wrote for the right-wing the shibboleth about "500 canisters of sarin" found in Iraq -- another metaphorical success where literal failure reigns. Hoekstra gets unhinged, all but alleging a grand conspiracy by SIGIR, the IAEA, David Kay, Charles Duelfer, the Pentagon...He lapses into Rumsfeldian philosophy:
Indeed, we do not even know what is known or unknown.A deranged tour de force. Easily mocked by the NYTimes.
Ahh, the first casualty of war is language...My only question is how long will it take for Hoekstra to run out the string?
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ds
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