verging on random

Scurrying for cover when the rock is overturned

Nothing has ever exposed the empty centre of contemporary conservatism like the recent events in Egypt. Commentators are tying themselves in knots trying  to come up with an even slightly coherent position that doesn’t contradict previous statements or have the potential to come back and haunt them later if things turn out much better (or worse) than they might predict. In short, the situation does not lend itself to opportunistic expediency, and that’s all these guys have to fall back on.

Potential Republican 2012 presidential candidates have been remarkably silent on the biggest foreign policy story of the year. John Bolton, a member of the Dick Cheney conservative school who is incapable of mentioning anything to do with Muslims except through gritted teeth, went into a lot of meaningless bluster with only one actual point: it was all Obama’s fault for being ‘weak’.  Since weak is something you are, not something you do, this is pretty much an all-purpose conservative response to any event and avoids having to explain anything concrete, like what the president ought to have done instead. He’s weak, so it doesn’t matter what he does, cos he’ll do it weakly.

Sarah Palin agreed that it was all Obama’s fault, but unlike Bolton she couldn’t manage to make even one coherent point. The gist seemed to be that Obama knew a lot more than an ordinary moose hunter from Alaska, and he should come clean and tell us. And she definitely wasn’t having any part of these Islamists having a role in the new government, whether that’s what the Egyptians wanted or not. “”We should not stand for that, or with that, or by that. Any radical Islamists. No, that is not who we should be supporting and standing by …” the 21st century Churchill declaimed.

In this she is at one with virtually all her conservative colleagues. Obama must stop Egypt becoming an Islamic state, while encouraging the fragile plant of democracy to grow under an enlightened interim (as in maybe 50 years?) arrangement that ensures the country remains a staunch US ally and protector of Israel. They remind me of students whose recommendation in a case study assignment is that the company must develop a strategy to return to profitability. Brilliantly insightful. Now who do they propose should do what exactly, how and by when? Oh look, there’s a pretty butterfly on the window!

In discussing the future of Egypt, a few conservatives come out openly and say these damn ragheads are just genetically incapable of understanding democracy and it’s a fool’s errand to try to teach it to them.   Most are more circumspect, muttering a lot about the need for a transition period and how people need to be ready for democracy. Like the Totally Awesome Founding Fathers, whose years of tending their slaves made them so ready for democracy in 1776 you could see it shining in their noble faces.

These are the same folk who stridently proclaimed that the invasion of Iraq was the precursor to a democratic revolution throughout the Arab world, but then consistency has never been their strong suit. Truth is the victory of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian elections seems to have been the first time it occurred to these people that democracy and blind loyalty to the USA were not synonymous (although John McCain was still bleating in 2008 about a new League of Democracies to replace the awful UN – run by the USA, natch. He didn’t say if Palestine would be invited to join).

Karma is now working its magic in the Middle East. The growing middle classes are demanding a share of political power, in the same way that middle classes have done throughout the world at various times in the last 220 years. Once they get that power, they will express their resentment at US interference in their countries and the presence of American troops in their region, and it will become obvious that terrorism is not the work of some deluded extremists but simply the violent expression of widespread regional sentiments. And then where will the US imperialists be? Blaming closet Muslim socialist Barack Obama for letting it happen, I expect.

Conservative intellectuals

Michael Ledeen writes for National Review Online. He’s a leading conservative intellectual, generating truckloads of publications extolling the virtues of permanent war on Islam. According to the portentously named ‘Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘, he has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin and  has written more than 20 books.

Ledeen yesterday wrote a post entitled ‘So Maybe it Was Global Freezing After All?’ He links to this hysterical piece which includes the following gems that purport to describe the SE Queensland floods in January:

[Australia] had already dealt with the disaster of historic superstorm flooding from rains that dropped as much as several feet in a matter of hours. Tens of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed. After the deluge tiger sharks were spotted swimming between houses in what was once a quiet suburban neighborhood.

Shocked authorities now numbly concede that much of the water may never dissipate and have wearily resigned themselves to the possibility that region will now contain a new inland sea.

So there you go. Tiger sharks nosing their way up the streets of Rocklea and a new inland sea where Ipswich used to be. No wonder Julia wants us to pay a levy.

Ledeen calls this piece of nonsense part of  ’a compelling roundup of the recent literature that suggests [the earth is heading for a new ice age]‘.

Michael Ledeen is a leading conservative intellectual.

PS As far as I can make out the shark story arose from a single unconfirmed report quoting a bloke who couldn’t be reached for comment. Possibly because he was embarrassed that a joke had been taken seriously. The origin of the new inland sea bullshit is a mystery. But I guess when you prefer the raving opinions of the warming denialists to the global scientific consensus, your capacity for critically evaluating the reliability of your sources has self-evidently collapsed long ago.