A View on Iraq

BTW, what is my view on Iraq? Well, I really don't want to have one, because I have grown so used to hearing other people's views when they really have no reason to have a view, other than the First Amendment guarantee. I had one guy who studies Late Antiquity explain to me that he could understand the situation in Baghdad because of his work in popular culture of the Middle East in the Sixth Century. This blatant essentialism left me speechless for about four months, or so. But I suppose it's no different than some British academic in the 1930's trying to explain Hitler on the basis of his knowledge of Visigothic tribal society. It's just that you'd have to be a pompous idiot to do either.

So rather than have a view on Iraq, I am trying to keep well out of it. An unusual position for an academic, but there it is. In the meantime I will let James Lileks speak for me:

As for the Iraq situation? I’m stunned that a country whose face was held mouth-down in the mud for 30 years hasn’t spontaneously produced a civil society in six months. I don’t think they’ve even started thinking about a new national anthem. Let’s give it all to the French.

I couldn't have said it better myself. If, that is, I wanted to.