Protein Psycho

Protein Wisdom's "Bravo Romeo Delta" on what happens if (he writes "when") a terrorist group ever succeeds in a WMD attack on the US (graphics - the infamous pic of a naked, crying Vietnamese girl running down a road placed next to a pic of people fleeing the fall of the Twin Towers):

When we respond to the Big Terrorist Attack with a vengeance it’s not going to be the more familiar kind of rage that occasionally marks human affairs, because it will pop this boil and it’s going to be messy and foul. Our response will, at least viscerally, be a lot more like one of those very strange temper-tantrums that children occasionally have in which they exhibit hysteric, almost superhuman strength; the kind of apocalyptic anger where it takes four adults to wrestle down an uncontrollable, teary-eyed fury, a runny-nosed rage which has taken the form of a very hurt, very angry 8 year old kid. But make no mistake – it won’t be a childish response and won’t be amenable to ice cream or spanking.

...The rest of the world will gasp in horror at the terrorist attack, and shed its tears, and then give us the nod to retaliate. And we will. Again. And again. And again. And the rest of the world will start to look on in amazement and slowly, slowly turn away in abject shock and profound horror. We will make Curtis Lemay’s application of airpower against civilian targets look like Wesley Clark coordinating with NATO allies in the Kosovo Air War.

Our appetite for blood will be nigh well unquenchable. That’s what will kill us. We will drink and drink until we’re full and it won’t slake our thirst. And we’ll drink more until our organs burst and split and we start to hemorrhage internally. Then we’ll start throwing it all up – every last drop we drank. But because we’re bleeding internally now, we’ll continue to vomit up black blood until we die.

I suppose the best way I can approximate it in less dramatic terms, is that we will respond on such a scale that we won’t be able to reconcile the mass carnage with the concept of the United States as it stands.

...We might become the For Serious World Conquering Imperialists we’re so often accused of being. We might start applying the “I’ll give you something to really cry about, you dumb bitch!” theory of domestic relations to our interactions with the rest of the world. We might rip ourselves to shreds in a paroxysm of self-loathing rage, and unassailable guilt. We could really start a Total War against Islam around the world – and don’t think the slaughter of 1.1 billion individuals is impossible, or that we could never be crazy enough with pain and rage to try. Or that we could never be consumed with enough guilt after something like that to want to turn the metaphorical gun on ourselves. I don’t know what will happen. I just don’t. I don’t know, but it does scare the crap out of me.

We can’t really see beyond this particular event horizon, but I can sure as hell tell you that beyond that point there is no more “United States of America” that would make sense to any of our grandparents – heck, there’s a good chance that we won’t be able to recognize it.

So, yes, we will lose the War on Terror – but not in any sort of way that’s obvious. Islam will succeed in destroying the United States – something else will rise in its place, but the United States of then and now will not be the same beasts. I fear, however, that the attendant destruction visited upon the Islamic world in the process will not be metaphorical in the slightest.

You have to read this whole thing to appreciate the enormity of how wrong it is, on so very many levels. I tell you, I want to wash my brain with Clorox after reading it.

Is there a psychotherapist in the house?

Update Shamanic at Simianbrain calls the Protein Wisdom post a "form of pornography" in its zeal for rightous and biblical violence. She then makes the point that many have spoken out against the Bush administration's institutionalizing of this war porn in its Rovian pleas for votes:

a great many of us supported the proportional response of invading the country that hosted our attackers (and refused to turn them over to us after we were attacked) and replacing that leadership with a democratically elected, internationally engaged, and publicly accountable government. It didn't stop a lot of hyperpatriots, busy imagining the next attack, from considering our support soft.

When many of us opposed the next response, usually for very sound reasons that have been validated by facts on the ground, we were called all sorts of names by the people who were fantasizing about the next attack. We were marginalized and scapegoated. The public was told that we would leave the door open for those who would bring us the next attack. So our government went forth on a disasterous and preposterous course of retribution for the last great attack.

I don't disagree at all with BRD's assertion that we can lose the war on terror by failing to act with wisdom. I also know that it won't be people like BRD who save from us that fate.

While Jeff Goldstein has a long post defending his co-blogger claiming his litany of bloodlust for crimes as yet uncommitted are more Andrew Sullivan than Bill Quick. I wonder how Sullivan will react to being associated with the original diatribe. Goldstein summarizes his thinking thus:

I understand BRD’s concerns, but I think they are misplaced. I have never really bought this notion that responding forcefully—even in a way that might sicken us, in retrospect (as it did, say, Oppenheimer)—will turn us into what we are fighting, or will (to borrow one of Andy Sullivan’s favorite maudlin laments) destroy our nation’s soul. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Instead, whatever that response will be will appeal to the pragmatism that is just as much a part of the American character as is its idealism. And so there is absolutely no reason that such a response cannot be reconciled with the “soul” (Sullivan) or “idea” (BRD) of this country, so long as we recognize that part of the American idea includes the imperative toward self-preservation as a precondition for all else.

Such an imperative is made politically manifest, in fact, in the Bush Doctrine.

That last sentence I can agree with, certainly. However, as I suggest while wondering why so few US bloggers or pundits have shown an interest in Iraq's "conference of neighbours" today, it speaks uncomfortable volumes about the rightwing's preferred method of conflict resolution, which Bush and his supporters have done their best to make a permanent part of America. The uber-right's imperative to become a paranoid, fascist faux-democracy bent on wiping out all perceived threats to American supremacy, real or unreal, is indeed what lies behind the Bush Doctrine.

Update 2 The Protein Psycho, BRD, has another very long post up defending his original post which Jeff Goldstein has already thought it necessary to defend. All this because a pair of tiny progressive bloggers suggested they might be nucking futz? Methinks they protest too much!

Anyway, BRD thinks it will be liberals who have "an absolutely painful misunderstanding of how the military-civilian relationship works" who will be the ones who are most likely to set out on his course of biblical scale retribution if we ever get in charge of the White House. "The point being" he writes, "that the folks who pride themselves on being the voice of restraint in today become almost unstoppable when they start to scream for vengeance." He then continues to imagine how we lefties would accomplish the task:

think of a country that’s lapsed into that bloody retributive mindset that has some 3,700 nuclear weapons at its disposal. That comes out to roughly one nuclear warhead for every 300,000 Muslims living worldwide. From zero hour, it would take no more than 30 minutes for the first to impact, and certainly no more than 48 hours for all of them to be used. I’m not sure I want to bet that after a sufficiently horrific attack that we couldn’t lose our self-control for two days. I don’t think for a minute that we would use 3,700 warheads but I do fear that the first 48 hours might see the use of what? 50? 100? 200? 500? Enough that we will be, a week later, looking back at 50, 100, 200, or 500 smoking craters wondering how many of them are called “Dresden”. I am unable to predict how this country would respond to such a moral challenge.

Oh, and BRD says that "this isn’t some sort of dark, perverse wish fulfillment or something. I don’t want to see millions of dead of any race, color, creed, nationality, or anything else." Yup, definitely protesting too much.

Update 3 (and last) Both BRD and Jeff Goldstein argue their cases in comments. BRD writes that he is simply "consider what kind of response *is* reasonable to a truly horrific attack, knowing full well that to think about it now is to prevent anguish and passion from ruling the day should it happen." The vim and vigor of his original describtions would seem to argue against such an explanation, though. So to, does his contention that it's the liberals who are anti-war who will visit such destruction - in comments he mentions killing 900 million - upon those unconnected to any hypothetical atrocity except by their religion. Jeff accuses me of setting up a strawman, but surely this argument is a strawman par excellence in itself. As Mona at Unqualified Offerings writes, BRD's argument on this consists of saying:

You may be ensnared in the mad delusion that you are not a blood-sucking barbarian if you have (a) opposed torture, (b)opposed the war in Iraq, (c) opposed a proposed war in Iran, (d) tended to deny that we are engaged in WWIII and/or an Epic Battle of Civilizations, and (e) if you suspect that terrorism — while a serious threat — is way over-hyped to the point of constituting a virtual pornography industry. You would be wrong. Within you lurks a monster to rival Stalin.

...to the degree you oppose war and torture, you are inversely likely to crave genocide and to rampage with insatiable blood-lust if and when the next terrorist attack occurs.