Unfortunately, Mark, even those who take that very difficult first step will find the going tough because they keep on making the same extravagant assumptions about human nature over and over and over again, often resulting in a curious self-loathing that leads too easily to a blame America first world view.
Salon's Gary Kamiya, an antiwar journalist, makes a stunning admission.
"I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings.
"Some of this is merely the result of pettiness – ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media. That part of it I feel guilty about, and disavow. But some of it is something trickier: It's a kind of moral bet-hedging, based on a pessimism not easy to discount, in which one's head and one's heart are at odds. . . .
washingtonpost.com |
