"Meanwhile, corrupt Iraqi officials are pocketing the pay of thousands of 'ghost' policemen and soldiers who exist only on paper, a senior US officer claimed yesterday." -- from this news article
These phantom Iraqi warriors on the American payroll put one in mind of Gogol's "Dead Souls." The names of serfs, if still on the official rolls, even though those serfs might be dead, were worth something to Our Mr. Chichikov. Here I cannot remember what the benefit from the government was, but Gogol's premise required that there be one. And so he travelled around, picaresquely and picturesquely picking up, for a song or a swan song, those "dead souls" ("dushi”) who, though worthless, in Chichikov's calculated scheming turn out to be worth something.
In the case of Tarbaby Iraq, those non-existent army or police for which you and I, dear reader, are paying help give that large and growing population of corrupt Arabs more and more and more.
We are paying, as part of that $880 billion that has been spent or fully committed to the venture in Iraq. That is more than the cost of all the wars, save World War II, ever fought by the United States. And it is going to aid more corrupt officials, as our money has aided them in Egypt, with Mubarak's Family-and-Friends Plan; in Jordan, with the Son of Plucky Little King and his mediagenic wife and of course Good Queen Noor and her "act-of-faith" feelgood propaganda on behalf of Islam and the Arab cause; and as it has of course aided the "Palestinians" and their noble, self-abnegating representatives such as Arafat, and Suha Arafat, now of Paris and the stores of the Faubourg St.-Honore, and Mahmoud Abbas, and all the other Slow Jihadists who want that Infidel money to keep on coming.
And nowhere has the waste been greater, nowhere has the American money been thrown up in the air like confetti, than in Iraq. There it has been spent to buy the hearts and minds of so many Iraqis -- those "contractors" who never performed, or performed shoddily, but always decamped with incredible sums. Just ask the American soldiers who saw this happen, or who, because they were low down on the totem pole, were forced to endure the spectacle without protesting. It has been spent also on those supposedly true-blue, you-can-really-count-on-them gunga-dinnish "Iraqi" officials and officers, who have been happy to smile at the Americans, happy to give them intense, liquid-brown-eyed looks of intense sincerity, who made up names -- hell, how would the Americans ever be able to tell one Arab name from another, how would the Americans be able to tell anything about a place like Iraq, where "war is deception," and so, come to think of it, is peace?
Dead Souls. American taxpayers are in Iraq so many chichikovs, paying for those dead souls, and a whole lot more. But in the case of Gogol's book, Chichikov is the one who is doing the fooling. In the case of Iraq, it is we who are being fooled, by all sides in Iraq -- the Sunnis (three or four different factions), and the Shi'a (four or five different factions), and even by the Kurds (two factions).
Victory, or more exactly, a satisfactory return on the investment already made, can be achieved, but only if and when Americans decide to leave Iraq. Such a version of victory can be achieved, in a way that only seems paradoxical, if American forces leave Iraq. The American presence holds sectarian strife down, strife that need not be encouraged but should not be suppressed through American efforts. Instead of compromise and sweet reason, those raised up in Islam, in societies suffused with Islam, will naturally show a readiness to resort to violence, and an unwillingness to make real, as opposed to feigned, compromises. Mutual hostility and aggression naturally arises from those raised in societies, and a view of outcomes that is limited to victors and to vanquished. That is where another work of Russian literature comes in: “War and Peace.” For in “War and Peace,” wily General Kutuzov helps bring about the destruction of Napoleon’s Grande Armee during the late fall and early winter of 1812, not by engaging his troops in major combat, but by refusing to do so, by falling back, by even abandoning Moscow, and then setting fire to Moscow, so that the natural forces, the forces of “General Winter” that Napoleon could not possibly defeat, could help to rout the French troops and the Prussian troops. They were insufficiently prepared to survive a Russian winter and discovered that Moscow was not a refuge, but an empty, fire-ravaged place.
And it is exactly the same strategy -- exploiting the sectarian and ethnic hostilities that are as unavoidable, as “natural” as the severe Russian winter that helped defeat Napoleon, and of which our generals, and civilian leaders, ought to be taking full advantage. What the Americans are doing now in Iraq is exactly the opposite, for they are attempting to dampen all signs of sectarian and ethnic strife. They are behaving in a way that is akin to a counterfactual situation, in which General Kutuzov, back in 1812, instead of falling back from Moscow, had stayed to hand out fur coats and Russian caps to the invading soldiers of the Grande Armee.
Who would have thought that Russian literature would be of such help in elucidating the problems of Tarbaby Iraq? We began with the relevance of Gogol’s “Dead Souls” to the phantom soldiers being paid real salaries by the Americans, and ended with Kutuzov in the “war” chapters of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” Perhaps there is something else to be found, say, in Pushkin, to explain the failures of policy. Yes, I’ve thought of it just now, but it is not nearly as famous as either “Dead Souls” or “War and Peace.” It’s a little couplet, mocking some well-known officious highranking fool, a certain Prince Dunduk, who is described as being admitted to the “Akademiya Nauk” (Academy of Sciences). Unfortunately, the couplet loses a lot in translation. But you get Pushkin’s point and, I hope, mine.
Here, transliterated, is the begiining of the Pushkin poem (all I remember) about "Prince Dunduk" sitting in the "Academy of Sciences":
"V akademii nauk
Zasedaet knyaz' Dunduk."
It can be applied to any number of portentous sinecurists at Centers for Advanced International Thisandthat, Middle East Institutes, and every sort of thoughtless think-tank, staffed with nubile secretaries and a tireless staff of clever fund-raisers, making sure that the boys, no matter what kind of stuff they produce, can keep on being seen as "experts" producing really important and non-obvious stuff. You don't believe me? Well then, just look at those expanding resumes, just look at how many times so-and-so was quoted in the media, just look at that magnificicent series of Op/Ed articles and thirty-second or two-minute appearances by him on televisioin -- truly impressive scholarship!).
Prince Dunduks? Like the sea, they're all around us.
Afternoon Update: The full text of the poem has been kindly provided by "solus rex" at www.newenglishreview.org:
V Akademii Nauk,
Zasedaet' knyaz' Dunduk.
Govoryat, ne podobaet
Dunduku takaya chest' --
Otchego zh on zasedaet?
Ottogo chto zhopa est'."
Freely translated:
Prince Dunduk sits in the Academy of Sciences. It's said he doesn't deserve such an honor. So why then does he sit? Well, you see, he's got the bottom for it.
Very freely.
Those who've lived and done business in that part of the world cannot find words to convey the depths of Arab corruption - it starts at the spectacular and crosses over into the surreal.
In the end you have empty swimming pools in the desert for non-existent Iraqi police.trainees
Their attitude toward governments is strictly adversarial. Every man is expected to get away with as much as he can and trust extends to one's family and clan alone. When they come to the U.S. Muslim doctors start medicaid fraud mills and even those who run small groceries frequently launder money, deal in fake cigarette tax paper, etc etc. Parasites on an 'infidel' state. These aren't the 'bad apples'. These are the 'good Muslims'.
"Their attitude toward governments is strictly adversarial. Every man is expected to get away with as much as he can and trust extends to one's family and clan alone. When they come to the U.S. Muslim doctors start medicaid fraud mills and even those who run small groceries frequently launder money, deal in fake cigarette tax paper, etc etc. Parasites on an 'infidel' state. These aren't the 'bad apples'. These are the 'good Muslims'."
-- from a posting above
American soldiers in Iraq have noticed this absence of any national feeling, and a desire by individual "Iraqis" (better: Muslims in Iraq), for themselves, their families, their clans and tribes, but never for something larger, and certainly not for something called "Iraq" even if they may prate about how "wonderful" that "Iraq" once was (the Sunnis, especially, thinking of the Sunni despotism) or will be (the Shi'a, especially, thinking of their new, never-to-be-given-up power).
Not infrequently, American soldiers have told me, they noticed that this or that "Iraqi" or group of "Iraqis" would be furious of American aid was to be given to people different in some way -- outside the clan or sectarian or ethnnic group -- from themselves, and almost appeared to wish to block such aid if it had to be shared with their enemies. An extraordinary attitude.
As for the behavior of Muslims in the West, why should they not fiddle the system of the Infidels? After all, it is only just, only right, that they take whatever they can from the Infidels, and cheating the government of an Infidel nation-state is not cheating, from a Muslim point of view, at all - nor is cheating Christians, Jews, Hindus and others who, in effect, are liviing on borrowed time -- until that moment when Muslims become stronger, and more numerous, and can impose their will, as they have, in the Muslim view, not merely a right, but a divine right, to do so.
Not every single Muslim, obviously, feels this way. But opinion polls and information of all kinds that goes far beyond the merely anecdotal evidence (though that anecdotal evidence is not to be dismised), and simple commmon sense about what Islam teaches its Believers to believe, and which a great many of them clearly do believe, tells us that many of them -- a great many -- do indeed think this way, and act, when they can get away with it, upon it.
Hey, it's hard to know if an Iraqi is actually a "ghost" or not .. when every other guy is named Muhammad.
Send checks to:
General Delivery
Bagdhad, Iraq 90210
Attn: Mohammed, Muhammed, Mohamet, Mo...
Gogol's "Dead Souls." The names of serfs, if still on the official rolls, even though those serfs might be dead, were worth something to Our Mr. Chichikov. Here I cannot remember what the benefit from the government was, but Gogol's premise required that there be one. And so he travelled around, picaresquely and picturesquely picking up, for a song or a swan song, those "dead souls" ("dushi”) who, though worthless, in Chichikov's calculated scheming turn out to be worth something.
The serfs -- "souls" -- were property, and the owner was taxed on them, and they were counted
in the census. So if any died, tax was still collected on them until the next census. So a "dead soul" was a liability to the owner. But if a serf was sold, then the sale was registered at the tax office, and the new owner was liable for the tax. Chichikov's plan was to buy large numbers of dead souls cheaply, and then use them as collateral for a large loan from a bank, and then flee dull, backward Russia for the good life in Paris and the West.
hugh,
ya zabuila moya russiya poema! govno...
Imagine that, corrupt Moslems. Whodathunk it.
Six hundred Iraqi policemen named al-Oblomov were also found not to exist.
Their pensions will immediately be halfed!
(And no retirement watches from George W. Bush, sadly.)
George Bush can't afford to be giving watches away, profitsbeard. Did you see those two photos where he was shaking hands with an 'adoring crowd' in Albania and in the first shot he has a watch on his left wrist and in the second photo a moment later it is GONE. I laughed so hard I fell out of my chair.
Greetings:
Think Tank Naming Contest Entry:
Mother of All Middle East Institutes
Hugh:
Kutuzov, altho he had only one eye, is presented by Tolstoy as the most clear sighted military commander in W & P. There is that astonishing earlier scene (one of hundreds of astonishing scenes in the book) from 1805 where Kutuzov "directs" the battle essentially by making the inevitable and necessary appear to the men as all part of what is intended. Thru his wisdom - - an understanding both of human nature and the limits to human action - - Kutuzov demonstrates his superior military ability.
Kutuzov is also notable for his true courage, personally standing up to the nonsense of the Tsar in a later scene.
But what might be most relevant to your point, is the scene where the generals of various nations are gathered to discuss military plans, and Tolstoy does a withering analysis of everyone's motives. He says, in effect, that only about 10 per cent of those present are there for anything other than wildly selfish or misguided motives. As a consequence of the smallness of the other 90%, the mishandling of the war has far greater tragic consequences than necessary.
The analogy, if there is one, is to the Credentialed, the Careered and the Crass in this country and throughout the West, who are incapable of peering around the corner of their own egos, to see what is going on. They do not care, and they do not want to care. They got theirs.
And BTW, OT but somewhat related. Folks have to read The Devils by Doestoyevsky to understand the nature of nihilists, including the essential nihilism of mohammed-worship.
I was wrong in a posting above to have described Pushkin as having written only a "couplet" about Prince Dunduk. It made no sense, but at the time I only remembered the first two lines, and for some reason imagined a Popean "I am his Highness's dog at Kew/Pray tell me sir, whose dog are you?," epigrammatic and brief. At another website (www.newenglishreview.org) a poster ("solus rex"--the name of a short story by Nabokov, with scacchic implications) put up the rest in what I took to be gentle but unmistakable reproof. I stand corrected, and re-proofed.
I will add the rest of the poem, which concentrates on Prince Dunduk's anatomy and why it makes him fit to sit...in the Academy of Sciences.
It's only money.
They can always get more.
We still have some self esteem and a wee bit more of America that can be sold.
All that needs be done is to allow those 12 million OR SO..... "illegal immigrants" to be legalized and they will contribute thier share.
Money is of no consequence,theres plenty to be found.
END SARCASAM!
It's only money.
They can always get more.
We still have some self esteem and a wee bit more of America that can be sold.
All that needs be done is to allow those 12 million OR SO..... "illegal immigrants" to be legalized and they will contribute thier share.
Money is of no consequence,theres plenty to be found.
END SARCASAM!
ebonystone,
To Bush & Co., we are all dead souls. And, by golly, they may be right!
[Why? Because they (and the Congress) go ahead and do what they and their contributors want,regardless of us. And when it comes to voting out the old and replacing it with the new, we won't have much choice. S.O.S.]