Smooth Operator
Scrapbook Smooth Operator Like a moth to the flame, THE SCRAPBOOK is unable to resist the temptation to read the acknowledgments in books before wrestling with the text. In the old days—that...
...One reason, perhaps, is that while the administration continues to claim that Iraq was the central front in the war on terror, it simply asserts this to be true, without citing any of the (increasingly voluminous) evidence...
...Speak Up When George W. Bush spoke at the Pentagon on March 19 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, he said: “There is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it...
...Alas...
...This might be the result of the White House’s eagerness to boast about, say, a new dental office in Diwaniya, while at the same time refusing to comment on the fact that the Iraqi regime was supporting al Qaeda’s second in command...
...Like olives, we concede, acknowledgments are an acquired taste...
...And last Friday, after the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank claimed that there was “no evidence” of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda, Kyl fired off a letter to the editor to correct him...
...At least part of the reason 63 percent of Americans believe the Iraq war was a mistake is that they no longer believe Saddam Hussein was a threat...
...It’s not for lack of evidence that Bush did not say more...
...The report shed light on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second in command: “Saddam supported groups either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives...
...Jon Kyl 2012...
...And yet he devoted one thin line to convincing Americans that removing Saddam Hussein was part of that war...
...Then tributes to spouses started to creep in (“my thanks also to Mandy, who has lived with Napoleon longer than Josephine ever did”), followed by creepy parental declarations (“I was devouring books about telecommunications when I should have been reading Make Way for Ducklings to you”), and the floodgates were open...
...Anyone who has read Mr...
...In THE SCRAPBOOK’s experience, however, this is the first such essay in which the shark who secured the author’s offshore royalties is acknowledged (“Cullen Stanley has been wonderful at handling the book’s foreign rights...
...To that end, allow us to offer a worldclass introductory sample, the four-page acknowledgments essay from Fareed Zakaria’s latest volume, The PostAmerican World...
...Zakaria’s previous works, or who devours his column in Newsweek, will know that the 259 pages of text in The Post-American World can be boiled down to one sentence: “The United States used to be an important country, but we’ve screwed up everything, and now we live in an increasingly complex, interdependent world that will leave America in the dust...
...There are the obligatory fawning references (“Before I came to Newsweek, I had always heard that Donald Graham was an extraordinary boss and I’m happy to report from personal experience that it’s true”), cringe-inducing clich?s (“Drake McFeely, my editor, is a class act”), and product placements (“Three years ago, I launched a television show on PBS, Foreign Exchange...
...All the way on down to the cover line, too: ‘There Can Only Be One’ vs...
...Kyl continued: The report found that Saddam Hussein worked with several different terrorist groups, including groups with direct ties to al Qaeda, and many were engaged in a jihad against the U.S...
...If only Daniel Kurtz-Phelan had read the whole thing and guarded against words like “smoothened...
...Bush’s speech at the Pentagon that day was billed as a major address about the “Global War on Terror...
...I hope I struck a decent balance between family, work, and the book...
...but THE SCRAPBOOK believes that readers will, with a little encouragement, share our enthusiasm for this, um, unacknowledged art form...
...Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona wrote an April 22 column for RealClearPolitics on the recent Pentagon report that “confirmed yet again” the fact that “Saddam Hussein actively supported and financed terrorist activities during the years he controlled Iraq...
...Best of all, there is a sentence we would like to think is supposed to be a joke, but is probably not: “Daniel Kurtz-Phelan read the whole thing and smoothened out the prose...
...Thankfully, some elected officials, tired of waiting for the White House to lead on the issue, are stepping forward...
...In fact, we say so on the magazine’s index page...
...In the old days—that is, before Baby Boomers started publishing—acknowledgments, if they appeared at all, tended to be brief, straightforward notes of thanks to librarians, archivists, and fellow scholars, or reports of permission to reprint illustrations—that sort of thing...
...After Time’s May 5 cover appeared—an Obama/Hillary montage with the headline, “There Can Be Only One”—the New Republic blog assumed its usual tone of high dudgeon: “We don’t want to say that this week’s cover of Time is a rip-off of our HillarAck cover that came out last month, but—oh, whatever—they totally ripped us off...
...Because we acted, Saddam’s regime is no longer paying the families of suicide bombers in the Holy Land...
...Rick Stengel, Time’s managing editor, politely pointed this out: “If those wonderfully wonky folks at TNR . . . watched a little more of the NBA, they would realize that the inspiration for this week’s cover was the striking ad campaign the NBA is using for the playoffs...
...Now, acknowledgments are like a bad Oscars speech—multipaged exercises in self-congratulation (“During the past 18 months I have interviewed literally hundreds of women who have undergone breast augmentation surgery”), oh-so-subtle name-dropping (“Alice, Nathan, Hugo, my former roommate and best friend George Stephanopoulos”), not-very-persuasive self-deprecation (“who saved me from my tendency to get too passionate about health care legislation”), and credential porn (“I first heard the name ‘Jacques Derrida’ in Paul de Man’s honors semiotics course at Yale...
...The answers are clear to me: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision—and this is a fight America can and must win...
...It may be clear to Bush that the war was worth fighting, but it is not clear to an increasing number of Americans...
...The Bush administration, alas, is losing this debate...
...Having digested that important insight, let’s move on to the good stuff, because Zakaria’s latest acknowledgments essay is a classic specimen of genuine self-infatuation (“This book is an outgrowth of much travel, reading, and reflection over the last few years, but it is also the product of passion”) and false humility (“I have professional obligations that are often quite demanding but the hardest part of working on this project—by far—was retreating into my study when my kids wanted to spend time with me...
...Wonderfully wonky” must be a nice way of saying totally self-absorbed...
...A month after that speech, a Gallup poll found that a record number of Americans—63 percent—believe the war was a mistake...
...The newspaper itself offered no correction, despite the fact that Milbank’s claim is indisputably false...
...The Anxiety of Imagined Infl uence The New Republic’s staff seems to be taking a lot of pride in their magazine’s influence, real or not...
...John McCain, whose candidacy is dependent to some extent on what voters think of the Iraq war, has not mentioned the new Pentagon report either...
...We Have To Choose One.’ ” Others, however, recognized in that Time cover the ubiquitous marketing campaign for the NBA playoffs...
...and its allies...
Vol. 13 • May 2008 • No. 33
