Download - Paving the Way for the Road to Damascus

7/29/2019 Paving the Way for the Road to Damascus

1/5

1 | P a g e

Appeared in:

Asia Times(9/13/13)

Foreign Policy Journal (9/11/13)

Paving the Way for

the Road to Damascus

ByNorman Ball

Most of all, [the Syrian conflict] is all about control of natural resources and channels of distribution.

Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, September 9, 2013

Like most battered tropes, the tail wagging the dogoffers a durable, if dog-tired, metaphor

for much that afflicts us. While rhetoricians are apt to groan over rote recourse to tired imagery,

regular folks use clichs because they strike a resonant, cognitive chord. After all, mass appeal is

what exhausts language in the first place. The bane of poets, clich is a sign of democratic

affections. Lets have more of it.

This particular metaphor derives its power from the sense that, rather than addressing the

thing-itself, we are forever grappling with epiphenomena, proximate reflections and spunrealities. Everything is mediated. Nothing is authentic and palpable. Manufactured consent is all

about assembling a coalition of the deceived. True, we are being lied to with Goebbellian

ambition to a point where deceit becomes, for many, an undetectable ethos. No sooner does one

explain to a seemingly perceptive friend or colleague the diversionary intent of the current

chemical weapons debate than they nod their heads in sage agreement, take due note of the

submerged icebergs immense size and resume stock sound-bites the very next day. Such is the
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-03-130913.htmlhttp://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-03-130913.htmlhttp://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/11/paving-the-way-for-sen-lindsey-grahams-road-to-damascus/http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/11/paving-the-way-for-sen-lindsey-grahams-road-to-damascus/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/11/paving-the-way-for-sen-lindsey-grahams-road-to-damascus/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-03-130913.html


2/5

2 | P a g e

power of the frame. There is also, Im convinced, a social component. Just as people want to make

good around the water cooler, no one wants to be the offices perennial, contrarian weirdo. The

frame du jour is where polite small-talk gathers. Nothing ventured over doughnuts, nothing

gained.

Within the mainstream media, we are presented

daily with messagestailsthat attempt to corral bodies

of facts on the ground. The messages are illicit rearguard

actions designed to exert mastery over sleeping dogs.

Since lies have a habit of demanding further lies, why

undertake this great exertion of deceit? Hovering

somewhere between Straussian arrogance and neo-

Platonic contempt, the elite are loath to address, in an

open-air forum, the many hellhounds nipping at all ofour heels. Are we wrong to dignify this aversion with

philosophical pretentions as perhaps it has long since metastasized into pathology? Our leaders

seem convinced subterfuge abets their power.

Meanwhile what Syrias reallyabout involves a knotty confluence of water rights, dueling

pipelines, nation-state reconfigurations, militarized economies, competing CIA and DOD

fiefdoms, Islamic sectarian divides, the global affliction of nihilism, domestic (US) shale oil

ascendancy, Saudi panic, the fading Petro-Dollar, French colonial re-visitations, shifting Israeli

internal demographics, Persian and Ottoman empire re-imaginings, etc., etc. With all due respect

to the Syrian civilians who (apparently) died at the hands of someagency of chemical weapons,

this is hardly about them. They are but ghoulish pretense. May they rest in peace all the same.

Heres where things can get a little tricky, especially in this transparent and skeptical age of

alternative media. Assads complicity in the chemical attack may or may not be fact. What is

immutably true nowhowever is the elite have selected it (for better or worse) as the controlling or

instigating frame through which they will leverage Americas entry into the region for a host of

covert reasons embedded in the issues cited above and, it should be added, at very real risk of

sparking World War Three. If the Syrian regime did in fact commit the atrocity, it becomes a

contributing legitimation within a cluster of larger reasons for American engagement. It is also a

Trojan Horse hewn to commit Americasmilitary within the city walls of the Levant. Once we are

there, the road to Tehran will be a long and arduous one; yet one our friends, Saudi Arabia and

Israel, are determined we should make.

If on the other hand it is shown the chemical attack was committed by the rebel forces, the

elite, far from relenting, will defend their rendition to the hilt. (Remember, they exist beyond

good and evil in the Straussian realm of the Noble Lie.) Thus whether a complete fabrication or a

genuine Assad war crime, the chemical attack has the practicable effect of being an incidental

expediency in all cases. The burden and aftermath of collapsing grand deceptions can be onerous


3/5

3 | P a g e

indeed. For instance, the Syrian case for intervention must climb a wall of worry constructed in

Iraq and Afghanistan. Importantly and in all cases, the elites are practicing deception (certainly the

sin of omission) when they purport that the use of chemical weapons is the sole reason for

resorting to force. I would hazard it barely cracks the top five.

As it is, the plebes are fed a steady, lurid diet of comic book WMDs and noxious gas

portrayals. Bam! Zoom! Whammo! To coin Guantanamos Jack Nicholson, we cant handle thetruth, or so it has been decided. Platos Republic might be cool with this paternalistic head-patting

except our elite manage to bollox one Guantanamo after another. (Since were treading linguistic

terrain let me say that I disparage the term elite as it conjures up notions of sure-footedness and

meritocratic station. Our elite are more in the vein of Keystone cops.)

When the Spin becomes King, vertigo rules the land and straight thinking acquires a

positively eccentric ring. Backwardation overturns causality. People are instructed to believe TV,

not their own eyes. Yet every time a regular Joe summons his dog in real life, the animal defiantly

arrives first, its tail invariably traipsing along behind. People have been known to shoot their dogs

just to silence the doggone cognitive dissonance. Imagine putting down Fido so that Senator JohnMcCain might sound a little more lucid? Such are the inestimable costs dogs of war are routinely

called upon to make.

Another hackneyed phrase is sending the right message, something weve been hearing

probably six times a day of late. For this, were back on TV, only selling soap flakes.Sending a

message is an attempted seduction via telegraph not unlike batting an eyelash. But I dont want to

be right back after this message during which a kimono is coyly lifted, revealing a bit of ankle.

Putins taken great pains to assure us hes not that kind of guy, much less that kind of adversary.

Dont mediate your intent. Demonstrate it. All these ornamentalisms are features of decadence

and feckless, late Empire. When the mediated message becomes the thing-itself, gesture has

swarmed substance. Camouflaged boys and girls from Kansas are sent in to rescue Neros sound-

bites. Merely embarrassing the elites becomes a veritable Pearl Harbor to be dealt with swiftly.

With repetition, a Quixotic syndrome develops where people increasingly conflate

windmill-mirages for clear-and-present foes. This is a form of collective madness which, if not

unique to the television age, is certainly an emblematic feature of it. Ironically, no group is more

perilously removed from the visceral (and so convinced of their message-making s existential

heft) than are our rarified leaders. Surely a certain decadent nadir has been reached when their

foremost concern involves the veracity and sanctity of the imparted message. Youd think the

Red Line was pinned down on Iwo Jima with a two-day supply of water. No matter, a command is

sent down from some high-up place: Summon the kids (well, our kids anyway). The message

must be preserved at all costs! A contemptible equivalency has been struck: Losing a limb, ours,

is a reasonable price to avert losing face, theirs. Never mind that the Red Line isnt a cornered

battalion, but merely a botched metaphor wrapped in a rhetorical gaffe. It happens also to be the

exoteric casus belli.

These quotes are revealing:


4/5

4 | P a g e

to communicate with [the Iranians] we have to be very clear, very forthright.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough

Youd think if America wanted to send a very clear, forthright message to the Chilean

people, there are better ways to do it than bombing Nigeria. How about Antarctica? Its closer and

less populous. I would submit that Iran is, far and away, the most forthright target by which tosend the Iranians a forthright message. These non sequiturs are compelled by veiled objectives.

Then too, had we wanted to push Iraq decisively into the Iranian orbit, there were far less costly

and bloody ways to go about it than Gulf War 2. Maybe my brain is not cut out for all this strategy

stuff, but from this low chair, McDonoughs argument suffers all at once from logical indirection,

geographic inexactitude and disingenuous message-talk. Were also back to hopelessly mixed

metaphors of sending bulletins with bombs, communicating with shrapnel etc. when Mr.

McDonough should know that messages dont kill people. Bullets kill people.

Then theres General Petraeusthe most brilliant military strategist of our generation,

doncha knowwith this to say:

Failure of Congress to approve the presidents request would have serious

ramifications not just in the Mideast but around the world. Military action against the

Syrian regime is, thus, necessaryto ensure that Iran, North Korea and other would-be

aggressors never underestimate the United States resolve to take necessary military

action when other tools prove insufficient.

Apparently loopy geography and postural message-talk captured central command

thinking too. How did North Korea creep into a military leaders clear-eyed assessment of Syria?

Is this guy still running for President? Youd think by now Petraeus would tip-toe around

message-making like it was depleted uranium. Love missives demolished his career after all. But

no, everybody is suddenly a purveyor of messages and a dime-store linguist when w eve already

got Noam Chomsky who knows everything under the sun and then some.

Are such subtleties forever lost on the powerful? I can kill you, without communique or

fanfare. Or, I can convey the message that I planto kill you. To the functionary foot solider, the

former is decidedly more lethal than the latter which is mere telegraphed intention. But then, the

foot soldier has his feet planted firmly on the ground. He knows the difference between a bullet

and a bulletin. I truly believe our elites are losing this distinction. Nay, I think theyve lost the

friggin plot.

Worse, I believe they fear the effects of a badly drafted bulletin more than they do a well-

aimed bullet. This is a moral corruption and there are reasons for it. The elite are far more

accustomed to dying in bed than in combat. What coupon-clipper doesnt yearn to expire

bedecked in a smile and plunked beside his favorite mistress ala Nelson Rockefeller? Petraeus

should be so lucky. By the way, having a mistress sends a terrible message to your wife.


5/5

5 | P a g e

I know Ill be accused of some sort of class warfare harangue. But I view this message-

promoted-to-flesh syndrome as a mental health issue that happens to afflict the promulgators

more than we the recipients of said missives. Regular folks are inoculated to some degree

because they still must take out their own trash and drop legs in faraway places. Decadence

spawns from the enervations of unearned privilege. The mainstream media and the elite mustre-

engage on an existential level with war. They must rekindle a healthy forbearance towards armedconflict that only noblesse oblige can supply. Whizzing bullets cure armchair commandos. We

need warrior-kings once again, leaders who can reacquaint word with deed. Through no accident

warrior-king Eisenhower offered the most actionable speech of the last sixty years. We failed to

heed his call and have trod a war footing ever since.

Thats why Im calling for the immediate NDAA rendition and delivery of Senator Lindsey

Graham to his new role as Damascan warlord for some merry band of al Qaeda psychopaths.

Only after he has been baptized in palpable fear (a healthy rendezvous with unmediated reality)

should Graham be allowed to resume frightening old ladies in Charleston with tales of looming

nuclear holocaust. Its high time we restored fear-mongering in America to its rightful place as aprivilege that must be earned! Of course he will first have to explain to his new charges why he

just called them crazy bastards in the chamber of the Senate. But I have faith in Grahams

rhetorical prowess if not his skill with a Kalashnikov.

NORMAN BALL (BA Political Science/Econ, Washington & Lee University; MBA,

George Washington University) is a well-travelled Scots-American businessman,author and poet whose essays have appeared in Counterpunch, The Western Muslim

and elsewhere. His new book"Between River and Rock: How I Resolved Television in

Six Easy Payments" is available here. Two essay collections, How Can We Make

Your Power More Comfortable? and The Frantic Force are spoken of here and

here, respectively. A collection of poetry Serpentrope is due out early 2014 from

White Violet Press. He can be reached [email protected].
http://www.amazon.com/Between-River-Rock-Resolved-Television/dp/148953394Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Between-River-Rock-Resolved-Television/dp/148953394Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Between-River-Rock-Resolved-Television/dp/148953394Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Between-River-Rock-Resolved-Television/dp/148953394Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Power-More-Comfortable/dp/193483212Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Power-More-Comfortable/dp/193483212Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Power-More-Comfortable/dp/193483212Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Power-More-Comfortable/dp/193483212Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Power-More-Comfortable/dp/193483212Xhttp://petroglyphbooks.com/http://petroglyphbooks.com/http://petroglyphbooks.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZuxAdOWUDYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZuxAdOWUDYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Tv4jP728Ihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Tv4jP728Imailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Tv4jP728Ihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZuxAdOWUDYhttp://petroglyphbooks.com/http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Power-More-Comfortable/dp/193483212Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Power-More-Comfortable/dp/193483212Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Between-River-Rock-Resolved-Television/dp/148953394Xhttp://www.amazon.com/Between-River-Rock-Resolved-Television/dp/148953394X

Download - Paving the Way for the Road to Damascus

Top Related