Will: Ethnic cleansing ‘sad but perhaps tranquilizing’

December 28, 2006

When it comes to the war in Iraq, George Will has not always been entirely unreasonable. He’s denounced neocons, and in a surprisingly hard-hitting 2004 column, described the war as “untenable,” compared it to Vietnam, and said the war could “unmake” Bush’s presidency.

With this in mind, I was a little startled to see this Crooks & Liars clip of Will from Sunday’s “This Week” on ABC. Will said:

“Baghdad is the problem and while we debate what to do about Baghdad, the Shiites are changing the facts on the ground in Baghdad through incremental, not at all stealthy, rather rapid ethnic cleansing so we may get a monochrome Baghdad out of this, which would be sad but perhaps tranquilizing.”

The whole transcript is not available online, but to offer some context, the roundtable discussion was addressing the likelihood of an escalation, with as many as 30,000 additional troops in Iraq. Melinda Henneberger, from the Huffington Post, had just commented on the potential problems with the strategy, including her take that “this is only going to escalate the problem in Baghdad.” It prompted Will to make his “sad but perhaps tranquilizing” remark.

I’ve been trying to come up with some explanation for what in the world Will was talking about here, but I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss. Watching the video, it certainly sounded as if Will was characterizing ethnic cleansing in Baghdad as having an upside.

Now, call me overly concerned about human life, but looking for the silver lining in ethnic cleansing that results in the deaths of thousands strikes me as more than a little callous.

It’s not that Will is inherently wrong; it’s that his perspective is inherently horrible. Yes, of course, there will be “tranquility” when one side of a conflict finishes annihilating their rivals. A widespread massacre, once complete, can do wonders for producing a degree of serenity. But in what moral universe does that make it preferable?

Obviously, “tranquility” in Baghdad would be preferable to the status quo, but doesn’t it take a high degree of “moral flexibility” to start justifying ethnic cleansing?

Will might find it helpful to clarify these remarks sometime soon.

“Sad but perhaps tranquilizing”

Like an old ghost town,

or a graveyard.

  • Will is unable to admit that his dear, beloved GOP has made a mistake of historical proportions. He’s rooting through the manure, convinced there must be a pony. He is so full of his own manure, that he can’t even begin to grasp how ghastly his rationale sounds.

  • Ah, George F. Will. What a fun guy.

    First of all, as Will might clarify, ethnic cleansing does not require genocide, or the total destruction of a people. The Sunnis in Baghdad are being driven out of mixed and eastern (of the Tigris) neighborhoods. Amusingly, Shi’a are being driven out of western neighborhoods. People are MOVING out, terrorized by murders of course, and the death tolls are in the hundreds per week. But I suppose both sides are achieving their goals, which is to divide Baghdad between them. Perhaps a key to watch are the neighborhoods of Adhamiya (Sunni but on the eastern side) and Kadamiya (Shi’a but on the western side). If the U.S. Military and the Iraqi Government can somehow protect and maintain those two neighborhoods they might maintain a unitary Iraq. If they don’t? How stable a situation can exist when a city is being torn apart along a river dividing line I don’t know. As long as both sides have mortors that can reach across the river I expect nightly shellings.

    Kind of fun to note that the Green Zone is on the west side of the Tigris, along with the Sunnis.

  • Will thinks he covered his ass in this typical rhetorical flourish by saying it would be “sad” if ethnic cleansing of the Sunni minority succeeded. Oh, the humanity! Not to worry, though, George understands the reprehensible incipient Nazism of the policy because it’s so obviously sad. He even said as much! Where would we be without George Freakin’ Will to explain life’s moral ambiguities with such clarity? After all, there’s no tranquility quite like the tranquility of death, ain’t that right??

    Expect no clarification from this douchebag.

  • Hey, Will belongs to the party of moral values and moral clarity. Not that what he espouses is especially moral, but it does have some clarity, and they never really claim to possess ‘good’ values.

    Maybe a little rapid cleansing in the Washington area press and pundit corps would be good too–eliminate Will, Broder, Cohen, Friedman, Kristol–that would sure be tranquilizing.

  • I’ve been trying to come up with some explanation for what in the world Will was talking about here,

    Sometimes old men get jaded and crabby

  • “Hmm! Oh! Yeah. I’ll tell you who is an attractive man; George Will…Yeah! He has clean looks, scrubbed and shampooed…” -Cosmo Kramer

    It’s always easier to look away while one group slaughters another, hoping for the ‘tranquil’ day when it’s over. This is George Will’s “final solution.” It is very much like the psychology that propelled the Nazi’s. “A very special blend of psychology and extreme violence” as Vyvyan from The Young Ones would say.

  • I’ve been trying to come up with some explanation for what in the world Will was talking about here, but I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss.

    Seems pretty simple to me: Once one side wipes out the other, they’ll be no more fighting and things will be more peaceful. You know, like Poland in the late 30’s …

    What I find sad is that, every once in a while, Will makes sense. Then he goes and says something like this. It’s as if some days he ties his bowtie too tight, thus cutting off the oxygen to his brain.

  • “A very special blend of psychology and extreme violence” as Vyvyan from The Young Ones would say.

    Haik gets a gold star for “The Young Ones” reference …

    **stands and claps**

  • What a morally bankrupt thing to say.

    I’m sure all those that will die in the coming days, weeks and months will be glad to learn that their deaths contributed to the impending tranquility.

    It sure does make genocide more palatable to learn that it lends itself to peace. I just never made the connection that Will does – he is so smart, y’all!!

  • “I’ve been trying to come up with some explanation for what in the world Will was talking about here, but I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss. ”

    CB says that and then proceeds to explain that he knows exactly what Will is intimating. Someone is in denial.

    There are 2 sides that violently hate each other in Bagdad. If we pull out, how can the situation not get worse and ultimately be ‘resolved’.

    Reminds me of Cambodia and how everybody knew what was going on and nobody wanted to do anything about it after the disaster in Vietnam. Now everyone remembers the killing fields and how misguided US military policy created the instability that lead to ‘the year zero’, but no one remembers that we(all of us) did virtually nothing to stop it.

  • Clearly, Will has abandoned the bigger picture in all of this. An “ethnic cleansing” of Baghdad will not stop in Baghdad; rather, it will spread into the entirety of Iraq. Even on a national scale, such a profound move by Iraq’s shia-centric militias will bring the House of Saud into the conflict—which, in turn, will bring in the Iranians—resulting in further escalations of violence not dissimilar to the events that are “justifying” America’s current escalatory plans.

    You don’t like the word “surge,” CB? Think, just for a moment or three, about what happens when the sequels to “surge” start popping up—and envision a madman in the Oval Office who screams “air assault!” every time he hits a hump with his mountain bke. Think a Rambo-esque character who, instead of bucking the system all by himself, has an army at his fingertips. Think “American Shogun….”

  • I wonder if anyone in Nazi germany ever defended the killing of Jews (and Poles, and Russians etc.) with the intent to exterminate them as ‘tranquilizing.”

  • I imagine a conversation in the White House:

    Shrubya: Now, if all the Iraqis were dead, there’d be peace, right?
    Underling (nervously laughing) Yes, Mr. President
    Shrubya: Now, how close to peace can we get?

  • Look, folks, Will is right. This is what is going to happen, and it will bring the closest resemblance to stability that Iraq will know.

    For a bunch of people who pride themselves on being a part of the reality based community, you seem remarkably intent upon ignoring basic facts. The United States Army is the only thing standing in the way of full scale ethnic cleansing. If were to be pulled out now, that’s exactly what would happen.

    Of course, it’s happening in slow motion anyway. The US Army’s presence isn’t preventing it from happening, just slowing it down. I’m in favor, therefore, of a US withdrawal. I also know that Will is absolutely correct.

    Grow up and face facts. When people say that bad things are going to happen whether we are there or not, this is what they are talking about. At least show the courage to admit that you understand the consequences of what is going to happen, even if it is the right decision.

    Instead, you’ve chosen to mock George Will for stating the perfectly obvious. The ethnic cleansing will be sad. It will be, perhaps, tranquilizing. It is also inevitable. Will isn’t right often enough to miss a case where he is.

  • While I see what you’re getting at, Michael, I don’t think anyone here disagrees on what would happen or is ignoring a single fact. If you can show me anyone here who has done so, I’d love to see it.

    I think the issue is that Will (and, apparently, you) think that killing tens of thousands of people would be “tranquilizing.” To call it “tranquilizing” is perhaps one of the more pathetic examples of piss-poor political punditry I’ve seen all year.

    Hell, even the word “sad” wouldn’t cover it — it would be horrific. Or tragic. Or **insert word from the Thesaurus here that describes genocide here**.

    I’m not sure what you expect us to do. Are we to praise Will for being so callous?

  • “Instead, you’ve chosen to mock George Will for stating the perfectly obvious. The ethnic cleansing will be sad. It will be, perhaps, tranquilizing. It is also inevitable.”

    Wow. Herman Goehring couldn’t have said it better himself.

  • #Unholy Moses I’m not sure what you expect us to do. Are we to praise Will for being so callous?

    Quit pretending to be innocent virgins about it and dont blame bushco alone for all the deaths that result when we dont stay the course. There are more virgins in whorehouses than there are in foreign affairs. It’s an embarassing assertion.

  • This has been floated by rightwing thinktanks for the past year. As in the past, they are moving the goalposts to give them a position where they can say what is happening is the best of all possible worlds. What we have is ethnic cleansing, so you either say ethnic cleansing isn’t happening, or you say it’s a good thing. Otherwise, you fucked up.

    So, this is the new talking point. Just as our strategy went from finding WMD to Democracy, to stability, to fighting them there so we don’t fight them here, it’s now about releasing tension. Why we have to take part in this tension release basically comes down to the fact that we have to claim credit for the “tranquility” the emerges.

    But, reality teaches us other lessons about ethnic cleansing. Killing people tends to foster resentment. The entire center of Africa is now in a war due to the spill over of the stress release in Rwanda. People have been trying to wipe the Kurds out of the gene pool for centuries, and they’re still around causing problems. The only ethnic cleansing I can think of that actually worked is the American Indian.

  • “Instead, you’ve chosen to mock George Will for stating the perfectly obvious. The ethnic cleansing will be sad. It will be, perhaps, tranquilizing. It is also inevitable.”

    Wow. Herman Goehring couldn’t have said it better himself.

    How incredibly insightful. Rather than address whether ethnic cleansing in Iraq is inevitable or not, you’ve chosen to call me a Nazi. I hope that you maintain your moral purity into the future by never coming to grips with reality.

  • But, reality teaches us other lessons about ethnic cleansing. Killing people tends to foster resentment. The entire center of Africa is now in a war due to the spill over of the stress release in Rwanda. People have been trying to wipe the Kurds out of the gene pool for centuries, and they’re still around causing problems. The only ethnic cleansing I can think of that actually worked is the American Indian.

    Well, there’s also the post-WW2 ethnic cleansing. A lot of people would prefer to forget it, but ethnic Germans were driven out of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. What we now call Wroclaw used to be Breslau. What we now call Gdansk used to be Danzig. This process was just as brutal as what is happening in Iraq, but because it came on the heels of even more brutal German aggression, it isn’t remembered as such.

    It was a sad piece of an incredibly sad time. It was, I think, also a necessary part of the post war world. The German acceptance of the Oder-Neisse as the proper, legal border between Germany and Poland was vastly easier since there were no longer any Germans to the east of that line to worry about.

    This is what happens, folks. If this is not what you are prepared to see happen in Iraq, than you must be in favor of taking steps to prevent it. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of commentors here are vehemently opposed to taking such steps. To my mind, this is a good thing, because the steps that would be necessary to prevent it would be so expensive, both in terms of lives and treasure, both Iraqi and American, that trying to implement them would be both immoral and a serious practical mistake.

    Watching you people sneer at the mere idea of countenancing the obvious consequences of policies that you support is both saddening in the big picture, and pathetic in the specific instance. There are no longer any good options in Iraq. This is primarily the fault of the Bush administration, though Saddam Hussein still being in power doesn’t really constitute a good option. What we have left, though, are even worse options.

    Nevertheless, no good options in Iraq means that there are no good options. In fact, they’re all pretty sad. If you want to pretend otherwise, go right ahead. There is not any reason to take you seriously if you do so, though.

  • Reality is that the Saudi’s pulled Cheney’s leash all the way to Riyadh and told him in no uncertain terms that they will back the Sunni in Iraq. Then again, the Shia are getting backing from Iran. I wouldn’t be in a rush to pick a winner. There are a whole lotta chips that aren’t on the table yet.

    So if you think that George can predict who will get “cleansed” and what a “tranquil” Baghdad looks like, then I dare say that you’ve put about as much thought into this as he has which was not much.

    But what puzzles me was if he was implying we should go with the “pick a winner” option and just help the Shia out. Now that’s just ugly and stupid. US military supply lines are very vulnerable. If one side or the other thinks that the US have picked sides then things get very ugly for our guys VERY quick.

    I happen to think that we’ve just made the most positive step we could make for getting a handle on Iraq and that was tossing the Repubs out of control in Congress. We have little to no control over events in Iraq so it’s best to start with the things we do control.

  • “If this is not what you are prepared to see happen in Iraq, than you must be in favor of taking steps to prevent it.” – JMN

    I’m not sure we have the capacity to prevent it. It’s ongoing, driven by local forces, universal and practiced by both sides. Even when you post American soldiers at the entrances of ethnic enclaves (Adamiya and Kadamiya say) nothing stops the opposite sect from dropping morter rounds into the neighborhoods.

    And mixed neighborhoods are simply going to unmix. Mixed families are going to flee Iraq and families of the “losing” sect are going to flee elsewhere in Iraq.

    We could kill every Iraqi leader who supports this ethnic cleansing (and none admit to as far as I know) and it would still go on. Boy George II has lost the capacity to win this war and only hopes that someone else will be there to take the blame when it is lost (like Ford taking the blame for losing Vietnam when it was Johnson’s and Nixon’s and Kissinger’s faults).

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