Flypaper in Middle Earth

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," notes Rick Santorum, an actual US Senator, though hopefully not for much longer. "It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.," Santorum continued. "You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States." This is, fundamentally, an old idea about Iraq and it continues to be a stupid one, though rarely has it achieved such an inane mode of expression as this time around. Dave Weigel tries to puzzle it out:

Was Santorum referring to the hobbits' final approach up Mount Doom, when Aragorn (George Bush) was convincing the men of Gondor (Tony Blair) and Rohan (John Howard) to make a final, diversionary push at the Black Gates? Or is he referring to the entire quest of Frodo and Sam (300 million Americans), which was aided at various points by mystical creatures - the Ents, the Dead Men of Dunharrow - that don't have any easy relations in the real war on terror?

Does Tom Bombadil have a role to play in this?

Comments

Bombadil has been x-rendered to a Syrian prison, where he's confessed to having forged the Ring himself.

Posted by Anderson | October 18, 2006 11:56 AM

Donald Luskin, of course, is Gollum.

Posted by SP | October 18, 2006 11:56 AM

Poor Tom B., completely left out of the movie versions.

Sanitorium seems to have this whole analogy backwards. While OUR eye is on Iraq it's just easier for two evil little hobbit terrorists to sneak in and do us harm.

Posted by Fred F. | October 18, 2006 12:23 PM

Don't worry about those damn hobbits. Bush may not be paying any attention, but I'll catch 'em and eat 'em.

Posted by Shelob | October 18, 2006 12:29 PM

"While OUR eye is on Iraq it's just easier for two evil little hobbit terrorists to sneak in and do us harm.

Does that make the office of the vice president Minas Morgul, or Shelob's Lair?

Oh, and Santorum forgot to mention how he's also keeping us safe from Voldemort. The Witch Queen of Narnia's been a bit shocked and awed lately, too.

Posted by DMonteith | October 18, 2006 12:33 PM

Anyone read the article? I thought the scariest thing was how Casey (the Dem leading the race) seemed to criticize Bush for...not attacking Iran before Iraq?

Just how militaristic is this country?

Posted by MQ | October 18, 2006 12:37 PM

That's wonderful, Santorum. The problem is that the journey to destroy the ring was part of a multi-century plan by Gandalf to contain and destroy the threat posed by Sauron, while recognizing that even if successful, there would still be future problems.

Sort of like Kerry was suggesting when he talked about using all our resources and moving terrorism from an "oh god we're all gonna die!" to "organized crime" on the threat scale.

Posted by Dan | October 18, 2006 12:42 PM

The people of Rohan will great us as liberators!

Posted by Saurman | October 18, 2006 1:08 PM

Mark Foley is Bombadil -- though marginally helpful to the good guys, fundamentally a lengthy and annoying digression from the really important plot line. Also, creepily solicitous toward the young 'uns.

Posted by Ryan | October 18, 2006 1:11 PM

Look, until democrats manage to muster that level of seriousness in the fight against terrorism, I just don't see how the American people can trust them on issues of national security. America faces a dangerous enemy, one we cannot appease with talk or gifts. Indeed, nothing short of a +4 sword of goblin-slaying will do.

Posted by MAX HATS | October 18, 2006 1:39 PM

Maybe we shouldn't be asking where Bambadil is. Wrong book. Santorum is obviously channelling Tom Benzedrino.

Posted by Dildo Buggers | October 18, 2006 1:47 PM

Thing is, anybody who has read the books or seen the movies knows that the Eye of Sauron is really, really scary, because Sauron so obviously has more power than the good guys do. Frodo and Sam have to journey in secret, a pathetically tiny hope arrayed against a massive power of evil.

Santorum is implying that the US Army is to Al Qaeda as Frodo + Sam are to Sauron: pathetically weak, confronted with a militarily superior foe.

The analogy just makes zero sense. On any level.

Posted by Kent | October 18, 2006 1:49 PM

BTW, its the Eye of Sauron, IIRC, not the Eye of Mordor. Little Ricky: yet to be right on anything.

Posted by Marlowe | October 18, 2006 1:50 PM

If Santorum's going to mention the Tolkien books at all, shouldn't he be advocating their immediate incineration? He's the guy who appeals to folks who consider Halloween Satanic. Isn't The Hobbitt somehow blatantly anti-Judeo-Christian as well?

Posted by sglover | October 18, 2006 3:42 PM

If Frodo's and Sam's mission = America, then does that mean that America is like two male hobbits mooning at each other and caressing each other for 3 long hours as they ever so slowly march across Mordor and up Mt. Doom? Maybe THAT's what Santorum was really driving at.

Posted by Derek | October 18, 2006 4:32 PM

MQ, you read the following passage from the article to suggest that Casey favors war with Iran?

Casey criticized Bush for going first to Iraq, the weakest link in the “Axis of Evil,” while Iran and North Korea have developed nuclear capabilities.

It seems to be either a condemnation of Bush for dealing with (in whatever way he was going to deal with it) the lowest threat first, or saying that invading Iraq gave Iran new bad incentives, or saying that invading Iran, by committing a large amount of the U.S. military, reduced our leverage in negotiations with other countries, or all three.

Posted by washerdreyer | October 18, 2006 4:35 PM

It appears Rick Santorum did the one thing that gave him any possibility of winning my vote, and it wasn't enough.

Posted by MDtoMN | October 18, 2006 6:30 PM

I seriously doubt that Santorum has read the books, and as has been pointed out, Tom Bombadil's not in the movie version.

Besides, Republicans can only use bad entertainment effectively; good entertainment's too complicated for them.

Posted by latts | October 18, 2006 10:06 PM

The comment about Tom Bombadil is surprisingly astute. Yes, he didn't appear in the movie version, and I suspect the reason for that is that he complicated the story. Bombadil was the one example in The Lord of the Rings of a major power that was neither on the side of evil, nor on the side of good, and mostly just wanted to be left in peace. In the real world the vast majority of people are neither what one would considr good, nor evil, but simply want to be left in peace. This even applies to the very powerful. In the novel it was recognized that these existed and that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with this. In the real world, on the other hand, not only does our current administration refuse to acknowledge the possible presence of neutral parties ("you're either with us, or with the terrorists") but it even refuses to recognize that those who might be considered evil and good are anything beyond two-dimentional cutouts. That everyone has their good sides and their bad sides, and that it simply takes a quirk of circumstance to bring one side or the other out.

Or perhaps I should say that this administration insists on presenting this viewpoint to its gullible voter base. Simple stories are always easier to swallow and more satisfying, but that's rarely how the real world works, or even, really, how the world of The Lord of the Rings did.

Posted by Archimedes | October 19, 2006 3:24 AM

This ought to be a boost for HRC's presidential candidacy, given that no mortal man can defeat the Witch King of Angmar . . .

Posted by rea | October 19, 2006 7:08 AM

Tom Bombadil wasn't a "power" in the political or military sense. He was the equivalent of the belief that there was a natural goodness in life. I have no idea what he was doing in a book based on The Lord's Prayer.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 19, 2006 5:02 PM

Bombadil is a cipher, but he's not morally neutral. He doesn't "fit" into the rest of the story b/c he's not explicable in terms of elves-and-elffriends vs. Morgoth / Sauron. He's powerful, but limits himself to a small area, boundaries of his own setting and so on.

Still, as few here would disgree, Santorum is an idiot. Sauron was pure evil, and knew it, and liked it. Power for power's sake, crushing, dominating, choking out, hating life and beauty because they were alive and beautiful. Nothing productive can come of trying to understand terrorists in these terms. We can rightly say the things they do are in many cases purely evil, or close enough to it as to make no difference. One of our concerns has got to be figuring out WHY these people are willing to do what they do - why they think it's good. My guess is because they have totally bought into a religious view that says we - really, all people but them - are evil and violence against us is sacred.

Posted by DG | October 20, 2006 11:39 AM

Re: Isn't The Hobbitt somehow blatantly anti-Judeo-Christian as well?

Nope. Tolkien was a devout Catholic and his fantasy books are filled with covert Christian themes (very covert: none of the blatant allegory stuff that CS Lewis stuffed into his fiction). And I don't want to knock Tolkien as a writer (he's long dead anyway) and I did enjoy tbe books, but the guy was a very conservative Catholic and would probably agree with Santorum on a whole lot things.

Posted by JonF | October 21, 2006 9:45 AM