"Irony won't save you either."

According to Gen. Casey, the "surge" can stop "surging" by the end of the summer and the new troops can come home---is the reverse of a surge a backwash?  Once people feel safe in their neighborhoods, Casey says, they won't need us there anymore to actually make them safe.  Or something like that.   More proof that the "surge" is just an attempt to look as if we're accomplishing something.

Steve Kuusisto on Woody Allen, Oprah, and the "surge":

There was a moment when the film maker Woody Allen understood that he was not going to be sufficiently funny anymore.  There's a scene in his film "Stardust Memories" in which a UFO appears and extra-terrestrials tell Woody Allen that he ought to give up on serious film making and return to his earlier funny movies.  The joke is of course all about the Id, that base of consciousness and drive that animates western people.  The humor is that we can know precisely what's wrong with us and still somehow be helpless in the face of it. Knowing this won't set you free no matter what Oprah Winfrey might say.  Irony won't save you either.  If you know you're failing and you proceed to fail anyway and somehow you know the reason why this was inevitable, you are a tragic figure according to Aristotle.  If you choose to find this funny you are dabbling in high comedy and the difference between this and tragedy is simply a matter of degree.

What's worse, of course, is that you can see people who are perfectly self aware who are making other people pay for their conscious decisions about how they will think about their lives.  This is the new American decadence in our new century.  The plan for a "surge" of American troops in Iraq is the product of this contemporary decadence.  Think tankers and politicos alike know that this is a policy that won't succeed.  Back in the days of the Viet Nam war this idea of a "surge" was called "escalation" and we all know how that worked out.  Foreign troops cannot prevail in the midst of a civil war.  Everyone knows this . But look!  The new American decadence about self-hood has taken over.  We can know for certain that a plan is bad and endorse it anyway because the infrastructure of the plan still suits our idea about ourselves.

The italics are mine.  Steve has a religious objection to italics on Fridays.  Click on the link to read the whole of his unitalicized post, American Tragedy.

Comments

[Mike Schilling]

The joke is of course all about the Id, that base of consciousness and drive that animates western people.

While eastern people are animated by, what, Pixar?

[Steve]

Is the opposite of a "surge" also the opposite of an "augmentation"? Condi Rice's term continues to confuse me.

Thanks for the link. You are too kind.

[Roxanne]

I didn't think I'd ever see "Woody Allen, Oprah, and the 'surge'" in the same sentence. I'm going to have to get a double latte and think about that for a while.

[Kit Stolz]

The key words being "perfectly self-aware." But how aware is Bush of his own psychology? And didn't we Americans have almost this same problem with Reagan? Because he he lived in a fantasyland of his own creation, and couldn't be bothered with remembering little details such as the "neat idea" of trading Hawk missiles for American hostages, then he couldn't be held responsible for Iran-Contra. That was the theory, anyhow.