Shouldn't We All Be Getting Our Asses to New Orleans?
For the last two years, critics of the Iraq war have been suggesting that anyone in favor of the war is obliged to fight there. And if those in favor aren’t doing the fighting—comes the jeering question—has not the rationale for the war itself been falsified? A particularly eloquent example of this “argument” comes from my blog neighbor Mark LeVine, who finds it very clever to suggest that “we should all have gotten our asses to Iraq” --whence I derive my own clever title for the present post.
Let me borrow a page from LeVine's method of argumentation and now ask: should we, in compliance with LeVine’s “Principle,” all get our asses to New Orleans?
Have you seen the awful looting and mayhem taking place down there? You want it stopped? Well, get your ass down to New Orleans and stop it your damn self.
You want the levees fixed? Get your ass to New Orleans and fix them your damn self. But watch out for the rioters. They’re not in a good mood. I mean, it’s almost as dangerous down there as…Baghdad.
You want people rescued from boats, rooftops, hospitals or the Superdrome? Well get to it. What are you waiting for? Lives are at stake and you’re comfortably sitting here in front of a computer.
You think the dead bodies ought to be cleaned up out of the streets? Well, the corpses aren’t going to go away by themselves. If you’re in favor of corpse-free streets, put on some gloves and do some corpse-hauling with your own unsullied hands. Otherwise, shut your mouth.
Etcetera.
The Principle here appears to be:
“If you favor a job’s being done, you’re obliged to do it.”Well, if that’s really a principle, and not the cheap, exhausted and opportunistic rhetorical weapon it appears to be, let’s hear it endorsed in a consistent way—and acted on. Cutting checks won’t cut it. So if you accept LeVine's Principle, enough already with the maudlin appeals to this or that charity or relief agency. If the LeVine Principle is true—and how little it’s been contested here or elsewhere!--you have to go down there and risk life and limb before you can open your mouth, and you can’t open your mouth unless you’re willing to risk just that.
Further, if you don’t risk life and limb, that proves that the looting should continue, the levees should stay broken, the people should go unrescued, and the dead bodies should sit there until they decompose. In fact, it constitutes such proof even if there are people willing to risk life and limb to do those very things.
It sounds kind of stupid and vulgar to put things this way, doesn’t it? How about when you put it this way for two years running?