The Belgravia Dispatch: Floridly Vulgarized By Power

January 03, 2007

Floridly Vulgarized By Power

With apologies for posting these pieces well after they originally appeared, but I'd still urge readers to read both this Martin Amis piece (lengthy, even by B.D standards), as well as this response from Pankaj Mishra. And while I'm more with Pankaj M., I think, can I just say that this portion of the Amis essay is just priceless:

It is by now not too difficult to trace what went wrong, psychologically, with the Iraq War. The fatal turn, the fatal forfeiture of legitimacy, came not with the mistaken but also cynical emphasis on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction: the intelligence agencies of every country on earth, Iraq included, believed that he had them. The fatal turn was the American President's all too palpable submission to the intoxicant of power. His walk, his voice, his idiom, right up to his mortifying appearance in the flight suit on the aircraft-carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln ('Mission Accomplished') - every dash and comma in his body language betrayed the unscrupulous confidence of the power surge.
We should parenthetically add that Tony Blair succumbed to it too - with a difference. In 'old' Europe, as Rumsfeld insolently called it, the idea of a political class was predicated on the inculcation of checks and balances, of psychic surge-breakers, to limit the corruption that personal paramountcy always entrains. It was not a matter of mental hygiene; everyone understood that a rotting mind will make rotten decisions. Blair knew this. He also knew that his trump was not a high one: the need of the American people to hear approval for the war in an English accent. Yet there he was, helplessly caught up in the slipstream turbulence of George Bush. Rumsfeld, too, visibly succumbed to it. On television, at this time, he looked as though he had just worked his way through a snowball of cocaine. 'Stuff happens,' he said, when asked about the looting of the Mesopotamian heritage in Baghdad - the remark of a man not just corrupted but floridly vulgarised by power. As well as the body language, at this time, there was also the language, the power language, all the way from Bush's 'I want to kick ass' to his 'Bring it on' - a rather blithe incitement, some may now feel, to the armed insurgency.

Contemplating this, one's aversion was very far from being confined to the aesthetic. Much followed from it. And we now know that an atmosphere of boosterist unanimity, of prewar triumphalism, had gathered around the President, an atmosphere in which any counter-argument, any hint of circumspection, was seen as a whimper of weakness or disloyalty. If she were alive, Barbara Tuchman would be chafing to write a long addendum to The March of Folly; but not even she could have foreseen a president who, 'going into this period', 'was praying for strength to do the Lord's will'. A power rush blessed by God - no, not a good ambience for precautions and doubts. At that time, the invasion of Iraq was presented as a 'self-financing' preventive war to enforce disarmament and regime change. Three and a half years later, it is an adventurist and proselytising war, and its remaining goal is the promotion of democracy.

The Iraq project was foredoomed by three intrinsic historical realities. First, the Middle East is clearly unable, for now, to sustain democratic rule - for the simple reason that its peoples will vote against it. Did no one whisper the words, in the Situation Room - did no one say what the scholars have been saying for years? The 'electoral policy' of the fundamentalists, writes Lewis, 'has been classically summarised as "One man (men only), one vote, once."' Or, in Harris's trope, democracy will be 'little more than a gangplank to theocracy'; and that theocracy will be Islamist. Now the polls have closed, and the results are coming in, region-wide. In Lebanon, gains for Hizbollah; in Egypt, gains for Sayyid Qutb's fraternity, the Muslim Brothers; in Palestine, victory for Hamas; in Iran, victory for the soapbox rabble-rouser and primitive anti-semite, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the Iraqi election, Bush and Blair, pathetically, both 'hoped' for Allawi, whose return was 14 per cent.

Second, Iraq is not a real country. It was cobbled together, by Winston Churchill, in the early Twenties; it consists of three separate (Ottoman) provinces, Sunni, Shia, Kurd - a disposition which looks set to resume. Among the words not listened to by the US Administration, we can include those of Saddam Hussein. Even with an apparatus of terror as savage as any in history, even with chemical weapons, helicopter gunships, and mass killings, even with a proven readiness to cleanse, to displace, and to destroy whole ecosystems, Hussein modestly conceded that he found Iraq a difficult country to keep in one piece. As a Sunni military man put it, Iraqis hate Iraq - or 'Iraq', a concept that has brought them nothing but suffering. There is no nationalist instinct; the instinct is for atomisation.

Third, only the sack of Mecca or Medina would have caused more pain to the Islamic heart than the taking, and befouling, of the Iraqi capital, the seat of the Caliphate. We have not heard any discussion, at home, about the creedal significance of Baghdad. But we have had some intimations from the jihadis' front line. In pronouncements that vibrate with historic afflatus, they speak of their joyful embrace of the chance to meet the infidel in the Land Between the Rivers. And, of course, beyond - in Madrid, in Bali (again), in London. It may be that the Coalition adventure has given the enemy a casus belli that will burn for a generation. [emphasis added]

I wish I had written the phrase "not just corrupted but floridly vulgarised by power", I really do. Maybe some day. More seriously, however, Amis is spot on about Dubya's "palpable submission to the intoxicant of power," with all that has entailed in terms of the attendant faith based adventurism we've witnessed these past five odd years. As for Amis's "three intrinsic historical realities" he contends foredoomed the Iraq project, I suppose each is debatable and we can question degree and whether Amis gets a tad hyperbolic, but certainly the first two points must be very well taken (the real perils presented by 'one man, one vote, one time', Iraqi society's tendency towards atomization). As for the singular importance of Baghdad (versus Cairo or Damascus, say), I'd defer to expert historians of the region, but it doesn't seem particularly implausible a contention to me.

Posted by Gregory at January 3, 2007 12:12 AM

Comments

I have to say Amis' essay comes off as a better worded Perle or Ledeen, post-war. Eloquently daft. Mishra:

...his essay, whose pseudo-scholarship and fanatical conviction of moral superiority make it resemble nothing more than one of bin Laden's desperately literary screeds.

Posted by: Klaus at January 3, 2007 12:57 AM | Permalink to this comment

Excellent commentary. Too bad it cannot be acted upon here in America in removing from power those who wish to not only continue the policy, but add more wood to the fire.

Amis is certainly a mathematician at the calculus level to neo-cons's mere arithmetic.

Posted by: Dan at January 3, 2007 01:18 AM | Permalink to this comment

What a load of 20-20 crap.

Posted by: neill at January 3, 2007 03:28 AM | Permalink to this comment

Puhleeeeze! Lets get a grip here. Sure the explanation for problems in Iraq is Bush in his flight suit. Right.
It seems to me a more likely starting point is the completely overblown reaction to Abu Graib by the left and the media, the constant calls of "Bush Lied, people died" etc from not only the usual suspects on the left but from former VP Gore to Dick Durbin. This constant barrage of sneering attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the war and the motives of leadership of the US has been infinitely more damaging than any hubris or arrogance shown by Bush and Cheney. Sorry if this doesn't fit the paradigm here, but that post is just DUMB.

Posted by: Steve W at January 3, 2007 08:10 AM | Permalink to this comment

Steve W - please write more. I had no idea that Dick Durbin and Al Gore were responsible for the utter lack of security in Baghdad, or for the fact that insurgents feel free to execute Shia families in the streets of Diyala. I'm sure these problems could all be solved if people just stopped criticizing George W. Bush.

Posted by: tequila at January 3, 2007 10:13 AM | Permalink to this comment

You just quoted at length from Martin Amis? Bollocks, the whole thing is run through with bad history (the entire nonsense about Caliphate blah blah Baghdad is nothing but half-understood history, and of absolutely no relevance except in the imaginings of Amis) and excessive use of style over substance. Of course, that would be Amis par excellence.

Bloody hell, I really can't believe you quoted at length from this, well, vulgar novellist for "analysis."

Posted by: The Lounsbury at January 3, 2007 10:52 AM | Permalink to this comment

Bloody hell, I really can't believe you quoted at length from this, well, vulgar novellist for "analysis."

Posted by: The Lounsbury at January 3, 2007 11:47 AM | Permalink to this comment

Martin Amis:

Today, in the West, there are no good excuses for religious belief - unless we think that ignorance, reaction and sentimentality are good excuses.

So Amis is a materialist as smug and self-righteous in his skepticism as any fundamentalist in his beliefs.

Posted by: David Tomlin at January 3, 2007 12:13 PM | Permalink to this comment

Greg was correct in quoting with admiration Martin Amis's observations regarding the "florid vulgarization by power" of American (and British) leadership. As a westerner, Amis understands on an elemental level the way the western mind works.

But Amis's analysis of "Islamism" is practically without merit, for, as Pankaj Mishra points out....

Martin Amis's essay on Islam and Islamism goes on for more than 10,000 words without describing an individual experience of Muslim societies deeper than Christopher Hitchens's acquisition of an Osama T-shirt in Peshawar and the Amis family's failure to enter, after closing time, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.....For instance, the writings of Martin Amis, our latest expert on the Muslim mind, in the pre-9/11 decade reveal a deepening fascination with celebrity, pornography and anti-communism in the West, but no sign, apart from a trip to China with Elton John, of any meaningful engagement with the politics, religions and literatures of the East.

Amis' analysis of "Islamism" appears to be little more than a projection of the delusions of the fictional protagonist of the novella he was writing upon the entire Islamic world. It is the equivalent of the actor who immerses himself so thoroughly in a role that by the time the run of the show is over, the actor has so fully integrated the character into his own persona that he is a different person.

As a result of his research and obsessions, Martin Amis appears to have devolved into a literary conceit of his own manufacture.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 3, 2007 01:33 PM | Permalink to this comment

Martin Amis:

Well, the civil war appears to be over. And Islamism won it. The loser, moderate Islam, is always deceptively well-represented on the level of the op-ed page and the public debate; elsewhere, it is supine and inaudible.

This is a striking assertion. I am very interested in whether or not it is true. However Amis, having made the assertion ex cathedra, passes on to other matters without bothering to offer any evidence.

Posted by: David Tomlin at January 3, 2007 01:58 PM | Permalink to this comment

Martin Amis:

The most extreme Islamists want to kill everyone on earth except the most extreme Islamists; but every jihadi sees the need for eliminating all non-Muslims, either by conversion or by execution. . . . And it all goes back to Greeley, Colorado, and to Sayyid Qutb.

In his 1964 book Signposts (aka Milestones) Qutb wrote:

This movement does not confine itself to mere preaching to confront physical power, as it also does not use compulsion for changing the ideas of people. These two principles are equally important in the method of this religion. . . . Whatever system is to be established in the world ought to be on the authority of God, deriving its laws from Him alone. Then every individual is free, under the protection of this universal system, to adopt any belief he wishes to adopt.

http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/books/milestones/hold/chapter_4.asp

Posted by: David Tomlin at January 3, 2007 02:33 PM | Permalink to this comment

Martin Amis:

In an extraordinary burst of mendacity or delusion, Sayyid claimed that the medical staff heartlessly exulted at the news of the assassination, back in Egypt, of Hasan al-Banna. We may wonder how likely it is that any American would have heard of al-Banna, or indeed of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he founded.

The Muslim Brotherhood played an important role in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It doesn't seem unlikely to me that some members of a D.C. medical staff in the late 1940s would be aware of it, particularly if any of them were Jewish, had Jewish friends, or were for any other reason interested in Israel.

In any case, I recall an occasion when a relative of mine 'exulted' over the electoral victory of a particular party in El Salvador, for no reason but that she had read an article in Time Magazine identifying this party as the one supported by the U.S. government. I wouldn't be surprised if an American were to react similarly to news of the death of al-Banna, having never heard of him, because some media outlet advised that the event was good for America.

Amis has no way of knowing if the staff exulted or not. He can only 'wonder how likely it is'. But he accuses one who was there of 'an extraordinary burst of mendacity or delusion'.

This is trivial in itself, but it adds to my growing negative impression of Martin Amis. Here he purports to write non-fiction, but he writes as a fantasist, indifferent to empirical reality.

Posted by: David Tomlin at January 3, 2007 03:15 PM | Permalink to this comment

Martin Amis:

In his excellent book, Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman . . .

Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism has to be one of the worst, lamest, most pathetic books I've ever read.

Posted by: David Tomlin at January 3, 2007 03:33 PM | Permalink to this comment

Martin Amis:

Far from wanting or trying to exterminate it, the West had no views whatever about Islam per se before 11 September 2001.

I am at a loss as to how this statement should be characterized. Neither 'idiotic' not 'ignorant' seems to cover it. It's just utterly removed from reality.

Posted by: David Tomlin at January 3, 2007 03:39 PM | Permalink to this comment

For the record, I have now read Mr. Martin Amis's three pages of moronic, pretentious drivel to their end. I dissent from the opinion that they are worthy of such attention.

Posted by: David Tomlin at January 3, 2007 04:37 PM | Permalink to this comment

Gentlemen, gentlemen: (well, chiefly Lounsbury and David T). Here's the deal: this post was inspired by Amis' nonpareil description of Rummy as "floridly vulgarized by power." (Can we at least all agree this was a particularly nice turn of phrase?) I then debated linking the subsequent grafs of "analysis", as I agree that Amis is a novelist, in the main, rather than a plausible analyst of Middle East politics. But yes, I plead guilty, I then copied and pasted his "three intrinsic historical realities" that he claims (yes, with hindsight) had "foredoomed" the Iraqi project.

Why? Because, frankly, I have always been concerned about the 'one man, one vote, one time' phenomenon, and thought he vividly (if somewhat hyperbolically) described same, and secondly the point about Iraqi tribal and micro affiliations (atomisation, in his phraseology), while ignoring elements of national fellow-feeling and solidarity that might (yes, even now) exist in some quarters (unfortunately more Sadrite ones, likely--at least to the extent they want the country to remain territorially unified)--was still worth an airing, I thought. As for his 3rd point, yes, Lounsbury, it's probably mostly bunk, and I should have been more forceful in so stating, rather than haltingly punting (though, again, I did indicate some of it might well be hyperbolic). Still, at least to the al-Jazeera watching masses, the mad looting and chaos that engulfed Baghdad certainly didn't look too swell, did it, which was really part of his point once you strip out some of the embellishments.

As for D Tomlin's dissections of other aspect of Amis's article, I concur, but again had indicated I was more with Mishra (I should have so stated more forcefully).

More generallly, yes, Amis is a novelist first and foremost, and moonlights too (as so many of our 'artists' and/or intellectuals do these days) as something of a public entertainer (see Hitch, Rushdie running around Manhattan nightspots with wife Padma that, all told, he probably shouldn't any more(!), and so on). So when Luka writes:

"Amis' analysis of "Islamism" appears to be little more than a projection of the delusions of the fictional protagonist of the novella he was writing upon the entire Islamic world. It is the equivalent of the actor who immerses himself so thoroughly in a role that by the time the run of the show is over, the actor has so fully integrated the character into his own persona that he is a different person. As a result of his research and obsessions, Martin Amis appears to have devolved into a literary conceit of his own manufacture"

I couldn't agree more.

So can I blame all my breezy linking on Rumsfeld guys? Might that mollify you all some? :)

Posted by: greg djerejian at January 3, 2007 04:51 PM | Permalink to this comment

You have to admit, Amis sure can eloquently paint a picture of Anglos getting-off on power.

Bush and Blair look like a couple of school girls popping E for the first time.

Posted by: SomeOtherDude at January 3, 2007 04:56 PM | Permalink to this comment

Can we at least all agree this was a particularly nice turn of phrase?

Sorry, no. It's actually just the sort of thing I had in mind when I described Amis's prose as 'pretentious'.

De gustibus non disputandum.

Posted by: David Tomlin at January 3, 2007 05:22 PM | Permalink to this comment

Fair enough.

But still, it is Amis, who is and always has been a self-indulgent navel gazing whanker of the first order.

And I have to agree with Tomlin, the turn of phrase doesn't seem particularly good. The idea behind the phrase, yes, but the phrase is, well "floridly vulgar"....

Well, no one is perfect. I shall go back to enjoying the comment about Rice.

Posted by: The Lounsbury at January 3, 2007 06:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

Sorry, no. It's actually just the sort of thing I had in mind when I described Amis's prose as 'pretentious'.

I would agree that the foreshortened phrase itself is pretentious, but when considered within its full context, i.e.

the mark of a man not just corrupted but floridly vulgarised by power.

"floridly vulgarised by power" really is a marvellous little dependent clause, IMHO

**************

oh and Greg, you really never want to publicly admit you agree with ME on anything! ;)

Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 3, 2007 08:43 PM | Permalink to this comment

When Amis repeats the canard about Iraq not being a real country, I do wonder if he thinks the U.K. is one. Look at the U.K. in, say, the first 80 years after the union of Scotland, Ireland England and Wales was ratified by the restoration of the Stuarts under Charles II. In the next eighty years, you had - a civil war that chased out James II, a policy of massacre in Ulster that is remembered to this day, two succeeding uprisings in 1715 and 1745, and a devastating ethnic cleansing in the Scottish highlands that was succeeded by an abysmal system of land tenure investing the majority of Scottish lands in the hands of a very few English aristocrats.

Then, of course, there was the religious fanaticism of the Protestants that would erupt into pograms against Catholics. Etc., etc.

The U.K. - lets take it apart now!

Posted by: roger at January 4, 2007 12:23 AM | Permalink to this comment