Johns Hopkins SAIS professor Fouad Ajami beats me to the mocking punch by upping the hysterics ante on his letter to Judge Reggie Walton with his monumentally stupid and insensitive op-ed comparing Libby to a "fallen soldier." In it, Ajami makes a point -- or more precisely, a "point" -- of insisting that "The Soldier's Creed" mandates that one "never leave a fallen comrade."
Of course, the creed itself, by some readings, would appear to require Libby to suck it up and take his punishment like a man. The "mission," after all, has been accomplished. It was, as Patrick Fitzgerald put it, to throw sand in the umpire's face. That Scooter was cut down in the course of the mission is not a matter of honor to Ajami and his letter writing comrades, but more akin to grounds for some sort of a lawsuit, or perhaps a sternly-worded journal article admonishing the enemy bullets for their intellectual inconstancy and lack of dedication to the flowering of democracy worldwide.
But then, neither Libby nor the person to whom Ajami addressed his second screed -- George W. Bush himself -- are or ever were actually soldiers, much less fallen ones, though I certainly don't want to minimize the fact that it was the President himself who personally absorbed the first attacks of the forces of Global Pretzelamofascism.
All in all, though, Ajami's letter is another syrupy dispatch that just doesn't provide much of note, though it does: twice invoke 9/11; refer to the "sheer joy" of "shar[ing] with him the inner workings of Wahhabist creed in Arabia" (creeds are big with Ajami, I guess), and; reveal what really wins a professor's heart, i.e., "read[ing] everything I sent him."
Like most of the letters, Ajami's seeks to elevate the mundane to near-saintliness. Scooter Libby, he tells us:
- never put on airs;
- checked in from campaign stops in Wisconsin and Ohio, and;
- worked evenings and weekends.
Therefore, obviously... something.
But lest you be left with the impression that Ajami's letter contained absolutely nothing remarkable he does remind us of Libby's talents as a novelist (a vocation he could presumably find more time for in prison), describing as "spectacular" the work that became most famed for its passages depicting the fucking of:
- caged, prostitute-training, pedophile bears, and;
- dead, but still warm deer.
Yeah. "Spectacular!"
So that's something.
Can't wait to see what prison time inspires.
