Rummy resorts to magic

The Witch of En-Dor (I Samuel 28)

Eric Rosenberg of Hearst Newspapers wrote the kind of article that now seems like a throwback to an earlier, bolder era of American journalism.  He points out that the current Party line that Rummy has declared for the Pentagon about civil war in Iraq is absolute bull-pucky.  It's called  Changing the standards of 'civil war' : Russian revolution, Bosnia and Lebanon conflicts wouldn't fit new definition San Francisco Chronicle 10/22/06.

The Cheney-Bush team have become so "postmodern" that they think they can solve problems in the real world by just redefining words:

By the standards put forward by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, numerous conflicts - including the U.S. Civil War, the civil war in Russia that followed the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and Lebanon's civil war - don't qualify. ...

Also by Rumsfeld's and Casey's logic, the U.S. Civil War is disqualified because the institutions of government functioned throughout the four-year conflict. Indeed, they worked well enough that the Union was able to conduct a presidential election during the war's height. And in large portions of the country, especially in those areas where few battles were fought, schools remained open and many people went about their daily lives without witnessing violence. New England factories produced weapons and war supplies unimpeded.

"If you are talking about conflicts confined to limited geographic areas, that would be the case in the U.S. Civil War and the case of the Russian civil war of 1917-1921," said David Laitin, a political scientist at Stanford University and an expert on civil conflicts. "It would be hard to find a civil war that doesn't have relatively specific arenas of high conflict."

Other conflicts that wouldn't be called civil wars under the Rumsfeld/Casey definition include Lebanon's civil war of 1975-1990 that was concentrated in and around the capital of Beirut, andthe Bosnian civil war of 1992-1995, much of which occurred in and around the capital of Sarajevo.

Gee, and they wonder why they have a credibility problem with the public on Iraq.

For a real-world discussion of what civil war in Iraq is about, see Is There a "Civil War" in Iraq? by Anthony  Cordesman 10/16/06.

One of the philosopher Herbert Marcuse's insights - though not unique to him - is his analysis of the way words can function in politics like ritual magic.  He normally did not write in a "popular" style, so his arguments often aren't easy to summarize in a sentence are two.  But I'll try a brief summary.

He made this argument in his 1958 book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis, with particular reference to the ritual use of Marxism as a state ideology.  The basic idea is that words in the official doctrine start to function as directives on what people should believe, even though they also know it's not true.  As he put it, an ideology used in this way "is not 'false consciousness,' but rather consciousness of falsehood".

But it's nevertheless a picture of reality that is supposed to be treated as though it described reality.  That's what reminded me of this about Rummy's defining the civil war in Iraq away.  Even the Party faithful know that civil war in Iraq changes the character of the American intervention from what they've claimed it is for the last three years.  But they're supposed to act as though it doesn't matter, because it doesn't really exist.  Even though it does.

Saul visits the ghost of the prophet Samuel in En-Dor

Here's how Marcuse put it, in his signature Hegelian style:

It is senseless to treat the propositions of the official ideology at the cognitive level: they are a matter of practical, not of theoretical reason.  If propositions lose their cognitive value to their capacity of bringing about a desired effect, that is to say, if they are to be understood as directives for aspecific behavior, then magical elements gain ascendancy over comprehending thought and action.  The difference between illusion and reality becomes just as obliterated as that between truth and falsehood if illusions guide a behavior that shapes and changes reality.  With respect to its actual effect on primitive socieites, magic has been described [by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski] as a "body of purely practical acts, performed as means to an end."  This description may well be applied to formally theoretical propositions.  The official language itself assumes magical character.

Unfortunately, Rummy and his generals in their actions in Iraq have turned out to be less master wizards than sorcerer's apprentices, unleashing forces that they cannot control.