I wonder what the Kossites will think when they read (if they bother to) Omar Fahdil’s wry account of the search of his Baghdad house by US troops last night. Last week, after the Fadhil Brothers were quoted by President Bush, several choir members at the Daily Kos started singing a full-blown oratorio (accompanied by various backup performers in the MSM) asserting that Omar and Mohammed must be CIA agents or the like. They couldn’t possibly hold such pro-democracy views on their own. After all, they’re Iraqis!
And now they have been searched by the US Military. What are we to make of this? I’m sure any upstanding Kossite would agree that this is an obvious set-up – a disinformation effort in the grand tradition of similar operations we all know from LeCarré novels. Omar knew all along that the Americans would be showing up! Why else would he have had a barbecue going?!
Now accusations of the Fadhils being in the CIA – because they happen to like democracy – are not new. (Would that the CIA liked democracy as much as they do.) They were already occurring back in December 2004 when I had the pleasure of hosting the brothers at my house. (Here is a Cathy Seipp article – touch my heart – for NRO about the occasion.) But what’s truly interesting about the reaction to Omar and Mohammed is how they create an inability-to-hear among the self-described “progressive” elements in our society. Cognitive dissonance, the term I used in the title of this post, is perhaps not entirely accurate. It may be something closer to good, old-fashioned shame. When confronted with the Fadhils, they are face-to-face with the best in human idealism, something our soi-disant Left lost decades ago. No wonder the Kossites want to disbelieve Omar and Mohammed. I would too were I in their shoes.
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