Classic: Michael Ignatieff is an asshole

[As a disclaimer, this was written in August 2007, not June 2008. Plus I got a little worked up while writing this, so the language may be a little rough. And by 'a little rough' I mean it sounds like it was written by a sailor with VD.]

For the (much delayed) second installment of my fancy-ass new blog, I have some current events commentary. I came across this article and basically, it pissed me off. Here's my partially thought-out reaction. It may be a bit judgmental, sue me. [Really, don't sue me. I have nothing.]

[There should be a link here. If not: www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05iraq-t.html ]

In Aug 5th’s New York Times Magazine, Michael Ignatieff, the neo-conservative (though I suspect he’d take issue with that label) pundit/intellectual wrote an article both expressing regret for and defending (and rationalizing) his support for the invasion of Iraq. Given other prominent intellectuals’ (like Francis Fukuyama’s almost a year ago) similar writings, why is this noteworthy? Well, mainly because Michael Ignatieff is a clueless, self-serving prick. (The preceding opinion is based solely on this article, and not on other instances of intellectual cocksuckery of his I’ve read.) Why does it matter that some guy is a clueless, self-serving prick? Because powerful people listen to this guy.

Ignatieff traces his mistaken support to the significant gap between intellectuals and politicians, stating that politicians’ ideas need to be true and applicable, while intellectuals’ need only be interesting, This, to me, is an extreme cop-out, and even with his defensive rationalizations, the part of his article which I most take issue with.

It should be noted at first that there is some truth to this point. An idea which is strictly academic does indeed live and die by how interesting and engaging it is, rather than its applicability to the real world. While the entire storyline of “Crime and Punishment” may have been avoided if someone had just given Raskolnikov a job, that isn’t nearly as intriguing as his character’s similarities to the Devil. Whether or not Raskolnikov is like the Devil may be entertaining to think about, but it doesn’t actually matter. At all. It’s ultimately irrelevant; no one should get worked up over it, and certainly no one should ever die because of it.

But this is only the case with strictly academic ideas. If you stand up in a class and say something totally out-the-box, like Julius Caesar was just a big homo, people will think you’re strange and then go on doing whatever the hell they were doing. Cause again, it doesn’t fucking matter whether he liked it in the butt or not, and it really doesn’t matter what you or anyone else thinks about the subject. But Ignatieff doesn’t teach Russian literature or ancient history; he teaches political science, and ideas tossed around in political science classes aren’t strictly academic. If you stand up in one of his classes and say—for instance—that Iraq should be invaded in order to form a more secure Middle East, you’re not just pissing into the wind. And if you say that in, I don’t know, the New York Times, and happen to be a prominent Harvard professor and adviser to presidents, well then, somebody may die because of it.

Political ideas, even if raised in an academic setting, are not merely academic, and all potentially have real-world implications, no matter who says them. The problem is that Ignatieff apparently doesn’t understand the fucking difference. He rationalizes his support by invoking some kind of intellectual immunity, that because he was at a university when he espoused these ideas, it’s okay--acceptable, even. He wasn’t a politician or a general, how could he predict or be responsible for the potential consequences?

Speaking of consequences, Ignatieff states that it was his job, as a scholar, to take his ideas all the way to their conclusion: “An intellectual’s responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead,” yet it is up to politicians “to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm.” I certainly agree that politicians bear a huge responsibility--more than intellectuals--to use ideas only as necessary and helpful. But does this mean intellectuals bear none of that responsibility? If it was Ignatieff’s duty to follow the consequences of invading Iraq (which I believe it was), wouldn’t failing to predict the actual consequences be a failure as an intellectual? And even if he couldn’t predict the consequences, since when is it acceptable for an intellectual to blindly follow an idea? Isn’t it also an intellectual’s duty to challenge and alter theories as circumstance dictate? If Einstein’s theory of relativity is disproved in an experiment tomorrow, any physicist who sticks by it unchanged would be considered a hack. How then can Ignatieff support his theory of military intervention for humanitarian reasons and its application, no matter the circumstances, and still be a considered competent intellectual? While the theory may have worked in Bosnia and Kosovo, it clearly does not in Iraq, making Ignatieff at the very least incorrect. Ignatieff, to his credit, admits he was wrong about Iraq, but only, he says, because those who correctly predicted the consequences did so either out of luck, or because they exhibited slightly better judgment, despite their similarly faulty knowledge of the situation.

Which, if I may say, is self-serving horseshit. Ignatieff states (as a rationalization) that he followed his emotions and was ignorant of the circumstances in Iraq. Since when did it become okay for intellectuals to spout (technically speaking) ignorant ideas? I understand this frequently happens, but its frequency doesn’t make this kind of half-assed intellectualism okay. Isn’t it also his duty, besides following his idea, to fucking find out where it might be going? He couldn’t read a book, or, God forbid, do some research before he ran his mouth off in the New York Times? He adds, completely disingenuously, that the people who correctly predicted Iraq “labored, as everyone did, with the same faulty intelligence and lack of knowledge of Iraq’s fissured sectarian history.” Um, what? What about all the actual experts who knew what was going on? How about the Knight-Ridder reporters who discovered in 2002 that there were no WMDs? How about Jacques Chirac telling Tony Blair (in 2003) that the invasion was a mistake because a Shia-led government wouldn’t equal democracy and civil war was inevitable? Everyone labored with the same lack of knowledge? How the fuck does Ignatieff get off defending his ignorant opining as merely a lesser assessment of the situation?

Apparently Ignatieff, now a member of Canadian parliament, understands the difference between the role of ideas among politicians versus among intellectuals, and any improved self-awareness among politicians is certainly a good thing. But eventually his term in parliament will end and he’ll go back to the other side, and I can’t help wondering if he learned anything about what an intellectual is supposed to do. Frank Rich, in his column from the same day on a similar topic, calls Ignatieff’s article a personal mea culpa, but in all honesty I see a whole lot of ‘mea’ and very little ‘culpa’ here. Ignatieff blames the insularity of academia, the role of the intellectual, the difficulty of politics, faulty intelligence, even reality, before he blames himself. And it is for primarily this reason that Michael Ignatieff is a clueless, self-serving prick.