In the 1970s, an old bachelor named Jacob Radishkover used to
hang around the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem and entertain the
students with anecdotes and witticisms. It was well known that one
of the deans of the Yeshiva had a happy marriage while the other
dean’s was more, shall we say, attritive. One day, Jacob came in
and said to the boys: “I have a Biblical question and I think I can
predict what each dean would answer.” Naturally, everyone clustered
round.
“My question is from the Book of Job (2:6), where God tells
Satan that he can do anything he wants to Job except take his life.
Afterwards, Job lost his children, his money, and his health. The
question is: how come his wife was not taken?” The students
pondered; it was a valid question. “If you ask the first dean,”
Jacob continued. “He will answer that a man’s wife is his life, and
Satan could not take his life.” “Excellent answer,” the boys said.
“But what do you think the second dean would answer?”
“The second dean would answer that leaving Job with his wife was
part of the torture.”
This perfectly limns the schism between the Republican and
Democrat perspectives of the war in Iraq. If you ask Republicans
why our forces are still on the ground in Iraq, they will explain:
“Because of our great success in defeating Saddam, we need to
midwife the emergence of a historic new democracy. Because of our
great success in luring the terrorists out of their hidey-holes, we
now get a chance to mow them down far from our home turf.”
Ask a Democrat that question, he will aver: “Because of our
great failure in mistaking a tinpot kvetch for a fearsome tyrant,
we’re stuck babysitting the various corrupt and violent elements of
a provincial society. Because of our great failure in waking a
sleeping giant, we have spawned a new generation of terrorists that
would not otherwise have existed.” Whether this originated in
sincere ideology or partisan one-upmanship, the fact is that we are
witnessing a radical divergence of worldviews; to be honest, the
chasm between the two positions looks to be unbridgeable.
And yet, startlingly enough, neither side is comfortable
mentioning the name of Zarqawi. There is almost a cognitive
dissonance here: on the one hand, every Jordanian knows enough to
shout “Death to Zarqawi” when bombs explode in their capital, while
Americans of both parties hardly ever mention his name. How did his
name achieve ineffable status in the American dialogue?
THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE, although surpassingly ironic. The Democrats
cannot refer to him because he is the single greatest proof to the
Administration’s case for the legitimacy of the war. He was the al
Qaeda man who was cited by name in Colin Powell’s address to the
U.N. before the war. Powell argued that Saddam had admitted this
important figure into Iraq, thereby showing real support for al
Qaeda. And sure enough not only was this man in Iraq then,
he is still there now, and he continues
to be the single most dangerous al Qaeda operative in the
world.
On the other hand, the Republicans are forced to keep that ace
face down on the table. They have to forgo their best argument,
their trump card, in the debate about starting the war — simply
because he is a humiliation to their execution of the war. If this
were more a battle against Zarqawi than Saddam, then we have been
losing the war from Day One. We have been in there for thirty
months, and this man is not only alive, not only still in the
country, but he seems to be leading a Hydra-headed insurgency that
never lacks for volunteers or armament.
So in an ultimate irony, the guy we claim we fought — because
he’s the one guy we beat — had no weapons, no army, no energetic
defense structure. We hear about his heinous crimes but all we see
are his Hanes. By contrast, the guy we can’t really point to very
much — because we don’t want to remind folks that he’s winning —
is the al Qaeda terrorist who shows incredible resiliency and depth
in strategy, manpower, financing, and ordnance.
For goodness’ sake, our predicament is clear as a bell. We need
to get this guy. Forget about bin Laden, forget vague talk about
“the insurgency,” forget about Iraqi elections, forget about inky
fingers, forget about constitutions, forget about Saddam’s trial,
forget about developing Iraqi security forces, forget about a
democratic revolution in a New Middle East: plenty of time for all
of that later. Listen to the Jordanians. They get it. Get Zarqawi.
Dead or alive. Presto. Then suddenly, retroactively, everything
will make perfect sense, and there will only be room for one point
of view.
