Either the expression “verbal pantomime” is an oxymoron or it tells of a reality that is so paradoxical, it is itself an oxymoron of sort. I have believed for some time now that such realities do exist because I saw situations that were so beset with internal contradictions, they made no more sense on the surface than say, the expression “verbal pantomime”. With time, I even came to accept the notion that these situations have an internal logic of their own which can be discussed in accordance with the principles of reason. And then it happened that on March 16, 2011 the Wall Street Journal published an editorial under a title that reeks of the Neocon scent. It is this: “Arabs Love the Pax Americana” and I was given the opportunity to publicly discuss one such situation.
Reading the article you are hit early on with this unlikely sentence: “The Arab League is begging them to consider this abdication,” a passage that comes right after the editorial writers had introduced the premise upon which they develop their thesis. But who is them? And what abdication is that? The answer is given in the introductory sentence which goes like this: “The Arab League's call this weekend for a no-fly zone over Libya...” As you can see, the introduction reflects the reality that the Arab League made a general call that was neither a begging nor directed at anyone specifically. And you can also see that this reality is in total contradiction with the sense conveyed by that unlikely sentence. So much for the Journal's power of perception and for its credibility. But who does the Journal say have abdicated their duty and were called upon to consider? Here is the answer to this question: “Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have insisted that the U.N., NATO, the Europeans, Arabs, anyone but Washington take the initiative on Libya.”
At this point you cannot help but sense that something is bothering the editors of the Journal and that they are trying to deal with it in their own peculiar way. But what can it be? It may well be this: “Throughout the Libyan crisis, we've heard from pundits and politicians that the Iraq war tarnished brand America beyond repair, and made U.S. leadership non grata in the Mideast.” Here, we get a glimpse as to what is bothering them; and we see that to soothe their pain, they have gone through a verbal gesticulation of some complexity which may or may not have soothed them in the final analysis but has conveyed a distorted view of reality.
Knowing recent history and piecing together what they say with what we know they are hiding, we can tell that they are aware America has shot itself in the foot many times on matters pertaining to the Middle East. Rather than admit this and go on from there, they have used a roundabout way to ask -- if not to beg -- that American leadership be given a second chance in that important region of the world. They are also dying to prove wrong the local pundits and politicians whom they believe are denigrating America. I call this sort of performance verbal pantomime because the authors have conveyed their message not by using a set of words that match the message but by using a set of words that spin the message and dress it more attractively than it deserves to be. In fact, rather than beg someone to let them back in, they say that someone is begging them to come back. But fearing that their brashness may have turned you off, they try to let you know in a subtle way that they are more humble than they sound. Convoluted and sickly yet so real.
Above and beyond all this, what is it that these people really want? For starter, they want the Obama Administration to forget there is a world that counts out there. They make this clear at the beginning of the article when they mock the Administration for using the phrase “international community.” But then they inadvertently show that they want this same non-existent world to believe that the decision of the Arab League said a lot about US power, a decision they are proud of. In essence then, they are saying they will only acknowledge the existence of those who accept America's leadership. This said, they go on to fantasize about the following: “...the group ... publicly [called] for American intervention ... Though the League ... asked the U.N. ... there's little doubt that the U.S. would carry the ... burden ... The Arabs know this well, and their message couldn't be clearer.” Of course, nothing of the sort came with the call issued by the Arab League. If the message is clear to the editors of the Journal, it is not clear to anyone else. And if they are proud of the Arab decision, they are proud of a phantom created in their own imagination. But they have supposed they possess the ability to use verbal pantomime seamlessly and they felt confident enough to try and promote American leadership by putting words in the mouth of the Arabs, calling this a clear message. What a high-school-like performance by a prestigious publication!
So you ask: How do these editors get to know all the things that we don't know? Well, the editors of the Journal tell us without actually saying it that the Arab leaders tell them things privately they do not tell the rest of us. Okay. But what did the Arabs tell them that they did not tell the rest of us? Apparently, they told them this: “The only people who suffer from an 'Iraq syndrome' are American liberals and the Western European chattering classes.” Wow! Did the Arabs actually say all this? No no. Pantomime never quotes someone directly; it only makes points by expressing them through body language which, in literature, means the things you read between the lines.
But wait a minute, wait a minute. When you come right down to it, there is nothing wrong with any of this because writing things in such a way as to give the reader the opportunity to read extra things between the lines is a technique that is used by writers all the time. More than that, in literature you can also talk about someone by talking about someone else; or you can talk about the present by talking about the past; or you can speak in metaphors and in parables and so on. In fact, all these are legitimate tools used by all sorts of artists and they are greatly appreciated by the consumers of art, not considered deceptive by them.
The response to this is double pronged. It is “yes” in one sense and “no” in another sense. Yes, these are techniques appreciated by the consumers of art when used in fiction that is clearly labeled as such. But no, the techniques are not appreciated by the consumers when they are meant to relay factual information especially when the information has the potential to lead to something as serious as war. And, in fact, this has been the case with the Journal's article whose editors have been advocating a message of war they tried for ages to drum into the heads of the public. The trouble was that the editors had available to them only a vehicle that was divorced from their message. So how could they have proceeded? Well, the way they did it was to load the message onto the vehicle in the same way that the meaning of a message can be loaded onto the gesture of pantomime. The message is then verbalized not through words but through body language. But in reality, the editors of the Journal did not do pantomime on a stage; they wrote an article in a newspaper. So how could they have done body language? They did body language by using words which, on their face, meant one thing but when spun meant another thing. And the editors did this for the purpose of deceiving their readers which is an abuse of artistic techniques thus classifying the performance as verbal pantomime.
Moreover, the essence of pantomime being that it is a choreography, the editors of the Journal do a dance of sort. To accomplish this, they know they will need to move from one thing to another and so they gather up the things on which they will tiptoe while gesticulating what they express. They warm themselves up for the task with an introduction like professional dancers normally do. When ready, they get into action beginning the performance at a slow pace and managing eventually to give an elaborate display of mental gymnastics. The dance being the saying of things without actually saying them, the following are the 9 points that make up the rest of the Journal's article, points that the editors make without always saying them outright.
The main thrust of the editorial is that they wish to say the Arabs have America and only America on their mind and this is why America should lead the war against Libya. Here is how they do it: (1) If Gadhafi wins he will have taught the other dictators to turn their guns on their people because America is diffident. (2) Turkey wants to revive the old Ottoman Empire and Iran is determined to get nuclear weapons but the Arabs know that America is honest. (3) The Prime Minister of Turkey is doubled-faced because he now considers America a potential competitor when he thought otherwise before. (4) The Sunni Arab states fear the nuclear ambitions of Shiite Iran because two Arab regimes friendly to America were toppled. (5) A draft Libya resolution at the Security Council is likely headed nowhere because Jay Carney of the White House used the word “international” three times. (6) Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain because the Saudis lost confidence in America. (7) The Arab nations recalibrate their interests when America fails to lead. (8) A Gadhafi victory would diminish America's global standing. (9) Americans should be nervous because of what America is not doing.
It is said that editorial writers and columnists have little or no influence on the public or the politicians, therefore what they say isn't worth the paper it is written on. Perhaps. But the culture of a nation is shaped by the opinion makers, and those writers lead the opinion makers. Thus, what they say and what they write is shaping the American culture for good and for ill. Of course, it is up to the American people to decide whether or not this is acceptable to them but they should know how their culture is being shaped if they are to make an informed decision about its future. Let us look at this example to see what is going on. When America was defeated in Vietnam, there were those who went into denial. They found all sorts of excuses to explain why America was no longer fighting in that country. In time, the wounds healed and most people came to view the defeat for what it was because the logic was simple: America went into South Vietnam to prevent the North from taking over. America is no longer in South Vietnam, and the North has taken over. It is to be concluded that the North has won the war and that America was defeated. Period.
The Israelis in Israel have gone through a same sort of cycle. First, they found all sorts of excuses to explain why they are no longer in the Sinai. Eventually they came to the conclusion that if they went into the Sinai to occupy it but they are no longer there while the Egyptians who fought them are, it must be that Egypt won the war and Israel was defeated. Period.
Most Israelis have accepted this reality and have learned to live with it but guess what; the Americans don't know it. They still live with the fantasy that the Israelis were not booted out of the Sinai in the 1973 war but that they won it even though they are no longer there. To them, it is irrelevant that the Egyptians are in the Sinai and not the Israelis because you can have an undefeated booting out in the same way that you can have a virgin birth. And it is because you can have a virgin birth that you can have verbal pantomime. Get it now?
My friends, the war against Libya has started under the leadership of France without a banner that says behold a Pax Francana in the making. Still, I counsel that you brace yourselves for a tumultuous tantrum on the part of the American Neocons who will see in this development that America's dominance of the Middle East is slipping away. In the long run, this will result in that Israel may never extend from the Nile to the Euphrates which will come to mean bye bye Sinai for good.
And this may be the best thing that happened to America since the establishment of Israel.