Every society has its status symbols. In HezbollahLand, anyone associated with martyrdom is in like Flynn:

The mother [whose son was killed in a 1988 Hezbollah operation] explained that she now has a special status among the people who now show her more respect. She is also looked after by the party and is frequently invited to visit religious sites in Syria or Iran. She repeatedly says that “a female Hezbollah official” frequently takes her by the hand when she attends a function and lets her sit-in the front row. She added, “Do not believe that the mother of a martyr is unhappy. She may cry sometimes but she is happy.” The father then turns to me and says, “Do not forget that we gain a lot of support. The Martyr’s Institution covers all our medical, housing, and school expenses.”

Bribery, corruption, intimidation, preying on the weak and needy, exploiting the religious beliefs of simple people, feeding on their anxieties and fears—that is how “charitable” organizations like Hezbollah operate: they’re mini-totalitarian societies. You give what you have—your sons’ lives—to the cause. In return, the party takes care of you and your entire clan for life.

Here he comes to save the day. (Single-handedly!) Mighty Anderson is on the way:

No two ways about it, the Fourth Estate is on life-support — and the public is eager to pull the plug. Once regarded as the noblest of professions, journalism has toppled from the heights of David Halberstam to the muck of Judith Miller.

Still, there’s one decidedly silver lining in this clouded sky — Anderson Cooper, the prematurely gray, ultra-soigné Anderson Cooper, whose award-winning coverage of everything from Bosnia to Katrina has been heralded as creating a new genre of journalist: the “emo reporter.” Capable not only of dealing with disasters both natural (New Orleans) and man-made (Somalia), but doing so with something resembling identifiable human empathy, this feisty yet elegant man-about-the-globe has quickly become the sine qua non of reportorial style. And what complements a celebrated style better than a celebrity scent?

Hey, wait. AC wouldn’t really do that, would he?

Initially Cooper turned him down,

Whew. That’s better. It must be all that good breeding I mentioned a while back. Hold on, though. “Initially” he turned it down? Then what happened?

…  but Mom (that’s Gloria Vanderbilt to you) thinks it’s a swell idea. And being the Marie Curie of celebrity product placement, she certainly knows what she’s talking about. So Cooper is reportedly going to give it some thought.

And why the hell not? It’s not as if anyone respects TV “news” personalities anymore anyway.

I wish I knew where Christopher Hitchens gets his stick-to-it-ive-ness:

The third assumption, deriving from the first two, would be that if coalition forces withdrew [from Iraq], the AQM gangsters would lose their raison d’être and have nothing left to fight for. I think I shall just leave that assumption lying where it belongs: on the damp floor of whatever asylum it is where foolish and wishful opinions find their eventual home.

If I am right about this, an enormous prize is within our reach. We can not only deny the clones of Bin Ladenism a military victory in Iraq, we can also discredit them in the process and in the eyes (and with the help) of a Muslim people who have seen them up close. We can do this, moreover, in a keystone state of the Arab world that guards a chokepoint—the Gulf—in the global economy. As with the case of Afghanistan—where several provinces are currently on a knife-edge between an elected government that at least tries for schools and vaccinations, and the forces of uttermost darkness that seek to negate such things—the struggle will take all our nerve and all our intelligence. But who can argue that it is not the same battle in both cases . . . ?

Not I, Hitchens. Certainly I cannot argue that point.

and who dares to say that it is not worth fighting?

Well, many dare to say it, as the inimitable Jules Crittenden reports:

Genocide-preferring NYT ed board, noting that Britain’s slow exit from Basra has left serious problems in its wake, takes a firm stand for a more responsible rush to abandonment. Aptly headlined “Wrong Way out of Iraq” is short, sweet, and utterly chilling in its cold willingness to relegate U.S. troops to encircling Iraq and watching the mass murderfest, with a mandate only to lob bombs at questionably identifiable targets

In fact, some folks are getting downright “comfy with genocide,” says Ron Rosenbaum:

One has to admire the honesty of Barack Obama, who argued in the recent Democratic YouTube debate that even if rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq might lead to genocide, he’d favor going ahead and getting the troops out. He wasn’t saying he was happy about the possibility—he was just expressing the view that the word genocide shouldn’t freeze all discourse: He wouldn’t let it be a deal-breaker.

And Obama isn’t alone:

Our reaction to Darfur, however, an unequivocal ongoing genocide, illustrates what one might call a feel-good reaction to the phenomenon. It keeps going on and on, and we keep denouncing it and feeling good about ourselves for denouncing it, and nothing gets done.

I have no idea how we can right the wrongs we have committed in Iraq in the hope of bringing liberty as we Americans understand it to the people of Mesopotamia. I don’t know how we can restore our good name, rescue our good intentions from the wretched results so far, and implement those good intentions.

But a gal can dream, can’t she?