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| Iraq |
| Chalabi, Snow White and Pinocchio |
| 2015-11-06 |
| Meredith Willson's sappy 1962 Broadway show "The Music Man" illuminates an inscrutable side of American foreign policy: Why do Americans persist in believing that they can remake the world in their own image, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? We Americans love crooks and swindlers who appeal to our national narcissism, even when we know that they are crooks and swindlers. Willson's hero is a turn-of-the-twentieth-century rogue who styles himself a professor of music, and sells marching band equipment to midwestern towns with the promise that he will teach the local kids to play--but disappears before keeping his end of the bargain. In one Iowa town, the "music man" is caught red-handed, but pardoned by the townsfolk who bask in the warmth of his flattery. He has a long list of antecedents, such as Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. The Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, whose death last week revived the controversy about the 2003 Iraq war, lives on in the hearts of the neoconservatives for the same reason that the burghers of River City, Iowa embraced Willson's swindler. It reveals the better side of the American character: We're too dumb to lie about other countries' politics, which we understand about as well as Sanskrit, and we have no natural defense against sociopaths who lie whenever their lips are moving. There are very few uniquely American jokes: one queries what Snow White said to Pinocchio ("Lie to me, Baby"). That was the adult content, by the way. We Americans love it when the Pinocchios of foreign policy lie to us. Those who view American democracy as an export industry still haven't managed to fall out of love with Chalabi. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |