At Long Last, Have You - No, Didn’t Think So
Spencer Ackerman writes about David Ignatius’ insouciance on the prospect of civil war in Iraq. I’ve said it before: Ignatius once wrote a very good novel
One line in particular rankles:
But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s trip to Iraq this week carried the implicit message that America’s time, money and patience in Iraq are not endless.
The unmitigated gall. It stupefies.
As so often, we turn to the consolation of literature, and the same two or three passages from the canon that recur over and over in trying to apprehend the enormity of recent history. First, the Tom and Daisy Buchanan quote; Second, the passage everyone remembers from Thucydides. Thirdly, Auden’s “Fall of Rome.” How odd that the fourth line strikes me for the first time:
Outlaws fill the mountain caves
None of this really soothes, not least because Fitzgerald really shouldn’t have used “careless” and “vast carelessness” in the same paragraph.
Comment by Stalin —
July 30, 2005 @ 10:23 pm
“As flies to wanton boys are we to
the gods. They kill us for their sport.”
.
Daisy and Rumsfeld are as Gods, of course.
Comment by Gary Farber —
July 30, 2005 @ 11:51 pm
“Ignatius once wrote a very good novel….”
Indeed, Agents of Influence was. I don’t recall having mentioned here before, but I suspect that it’s just because I’m forgetting and I’ve done so three times, that I read it in manuscript back in the Eighties, for Avon Books when I worked for them, and tried hard to get us to buy the paperback rights, without success.
Comment by Walt Pohl —
July 31, 2005 @ 12:05 am
As usual, Henley, you are completely off-base. The only quote I know from Thucydides is “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” You’re right about the situation in Iraq, but you know what they say about stopped clocks and twice a day.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 31, 2005 @ 6:16 am
Walt, I hope you’ll forgive me if I take the opinion of a man who knows so little Thucydides lightly.
Comment by Andromeda —
July 31, 2005 @ 8:15 am
Funny, the part I always remembered from Thucydides was Pericles’ funeral oration. That and the burning cynicism, the failure of a century opened so brilliantly, passim. But then again I was always a Herodotus girl myself.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 31, 2005 @ 8:38 am
Herodotus is cool. You might, he said sheepishly, scan the archives for my Harpagus poem, which came straight out of my favoritest and most gruesome part of the Histories. Though I was always partial to the story of the Giant Ants of India too. (I sometimes wonder if foreigners competed to put whoppers over on H.)
.
As to Thucydides, you’ve got to admire a guy who starts his book with a mathematical explanation of why the Trojan War was no big deal. More Thucydides: a couple of years ago, Gene Callahan caught Victor David Doom Von Hansen quoting a fire-breathing speech of, I think, Alcibiades straight, as words of wisdom, when T’s whole point had been that it was, well, ruinous jingoism. I believe it might have been the speech that launched the Syracuse expedition. Subsequent American history cuts way too close to home in that light.
Comment by Evan McElravy —
July 31, 2005 @ 8:51 am
I’ve been thinking of the line from A.J.P. Taylor or one of the other classic historians of the Great War to the effect that the Austrians committed suicide out of fear of being killed. That has a certain resonance some days.
Comment by Ken MacLeod —
July 31, 2005 @ 11:37 am
I have to thank you, Jim, for pointing out the Auden poem some months ago. It took me a moment just now to twig to ‘Outlaws fill the mountain caves’. There’s something eerie about its prescience, all the way to the flu-infected cities and the herds of reindeer.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 1, 2005 @ 10:56 am
Ken, believe me when I say, it’s the least I can do. The flu-infected cities struck me too, this time, though I suppose we’re dealing with a horoscope phenomenon with things like that.
Trackback by Rational Grounds —
August 3, 2005 @ 8:31 am
Who’s Training Iraq’s Troops? Oh no, Bear’s Training Iraqi Troops!
Reading over the articles I missed this past weekend, I’m struck by a very disturbing trend: Slate.com - “This recent talk of withdrawal may have been sparked by the realization that almost no progress has been made in training Iraq’s…
Trackback by Brad DeLong's Website —
August 7, 2005 @ 8:20 pm
Why Oh Why Can’t We Have a Better Press Corps? (David Ignatius Edition)
The Washington Post does realize that it would be better off publishing white space instead of David Ignatius, doesn’t it? Spencer Ackerman and Jim Henley write about: Jim Henley: David Ignatius’s insouciance on the prospect of civil war in Iraq…. …