March 21, 2006

War on Men?

On the surface an anti-Bush screed, Ruth Marcus seems much more unhappy with the resurgence of the idea of manliness.

"The problem of manliness is not that it does not exist," Mansfield concludes. "It does exist, but it is unemployed." Well, um, excuse me, but I think -- it's just my opinion, now, maybe you disagree, and I'm sure we could work it out -- Mansfield has it exactly backward. Manliness does exist. The problem is that it's overemployed -- nowhere more than in this administration.

Think about it this way: Is a trait exemplified by reluctance to ask directions -- "for it is out of manliness that men do not like to ask for directions when lost," Mansfield writes -- really what you want in a government deciding whether to take a country to war?


The problem is, of course, that we now know that there were paid plants throughout the world's ruling elite whose self-interest trumped their national interest and they flat out shilled for Saddam Hussein. A consensus oriented administration would never go to war in those circumstances even when it was absolutely in the country's best interests to do so.

So what do we have then? A recipe for how to stymie any consequence for international bad actors. Spread the money around the Davos set and watch the West tie itself in nots, unable to forge consensus as your paid disrupters keep any consensus brief and unproductive. I won't insult the fairer sex to say that allowing the nation to be perpetually taken for suckers is a feminine trait but that's the clear implication of the author. Sad, really.

The truth is that sometimes doing what is right, bucking the consensus, and seeing things through to the end is what we need. In this president we have that. I hope that's true for the next one too, no matter what form their gonads take.

Posted by TMLutas at March 21, 2006 02:31 PM