Wherein Our Blogger Once Again Simultaneously Breaks his Vows of Frivolity and Pundit-Blindness

As longtime readers know, I shy away from commenting on commentators. The infinite regress of the punditry echo chamber makes my head hurt, and a world where we actually have to debate whether Ann Coulter has anything responsible or non-toxic to say is not a world that I want to live in.

The practice of “Fisking,” wherein a web journalist dices up a columnist’s arguments into semi-coherent nuggets in order to insert venal one-liners is another thing I steer clear of, and not only because of the cut n’ paste laziness and inherent contempt for the art of writing. It’s a cantankerous and shallow form of punditainment and intellectually bankrupt in its very conception - imagine trying to get serious music criticism from an episode of “Pop-Up Videos.” Now take out the cute sound effects. And the music. And the bikini-wearing, glycerine-doused dancing supermodels. What you’re left with is some half-wit angrily interrupting a Speedo-clad Mickey Kaus. And who wants to see that?

So I won’t Fisk William Safire’s limp column in yesterday’s Times, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t draw your attention to it. Safire, when he’s not serving as Ariel Sharon’s finger puppet these days, writes quite well. In this particular unapologetic call-to-arms he eloquently offers the most complete, concise, and coherent version of the argument for unilateral war with Iraq that I’ve seen.

What’s remarkable is how incredibly weak and incomplete that argument really is. It’s a colander with a Tupperware lid; the illusion of air-tightness is so superficial that true believers have to insist that it be viewed only at a prescribed angle and at a great distance. Anyone else looking at it can’t help but see all the holes. It’s a self-Fisker.

The holes are a symptom of the untreated flesh-eating disease our society has contracted during this long, fruitless lead-up to war. In another era the pro-attack right would be patching up the holes in their arguments, offering some sort of reasons why, for example, we can afford to alienate so many of our most powerful allies, why we need not fear galvanizing and inspiring the anti-Americanism of the Islamist movement, why we are so embarrassingly unable to convince the the world of Iraq’s possession of illegal weapons when we claim that their existence is an undeniable fact, how we can have the gall to expect other nations to ever abide by U.N. decisions when we ourselves make such gleeful proclamations about our right to ignore them.

Safire says, “It is futile to try to reason with passionate marchers waving signs proclaiming that America’s motives are to conquer the world and expend blood for oil.” Is it? It’s hard to say - the Bush administration hasn’t even tried. Trying would involve actually replying to reasoned arguments (from the left and the right) directly, answering objections point-by-point rather than merely repeating what spurred those objections in the first place. No trial prosecutor has ever won by completely and utterly ignoring the evidence, witnesses and arguments of the defense. This is something the administration should’ve taken into account while failing so spectacularly to “make the case” these past eight months.

But the most telling evidence of this short-sighted blindness to reason and the inevitable consequences is best expressed by Safire’s own conclusion, a surprisingly clumsy attempt to add some elevated Shakespearean glamour to the proceedings:

“This campaign near the Ides of March will make us safer, allaying our fears; it has the potential of making the world freer, justifying our hopes.”

Despite the bizarre conceit of equating Saddam with Caesar, I couldn’t have picked a better allusion myself. After all, didn’t Brutus base his decision to move forward on the nebulous fear of what Caesar might do if he became more powerful? And didn’t he and his conspirators plan their arguably justified assassination a bit too rashly, without the buy-in of a few key allies, and with ultimately tragic results? Maybe I need to brush up my Shakespeare, but I don’t recall “Julius Caesar” ending on March 16th with a joyous keg party and Mark Antony giving Brutus a big hug.

Safire was doubtless cribbing off of one of George Bush’s term papers from Yale. He should’ve looked at the grade at the top of the page.