On Listening
October 16, 2003
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
There was a headline that grabbed me in The Times on
Saturday. It said, "Cheney Lashes Out at Critics of Policy
on Iraq."
I thought, "that must
have been an interesting encounter." Then I read the fine
print. Mr. Cheney was speaking to 200 invited guests at the
conservative Heritage Foundation - and even they were not
allowed to ask any questions. Great. Osama bin Laden and
Saddam Hussein issue messages from their caves through Al
Jazeera, and Mr. Cheney issues messages from his bunker
through Fox. America is pushing democracy in Iraq, but our
own leaders won't hold a real town hall meeting or a
regular press conference.
Out of fairness, my newspaper feels obligated to run such
stories. But I wish we had said to the V.P.: If you're
going to give a major speech on Iraq to an audience limited
to your own supporters and not allow any questions, that's
not news - that's an advertisement, and you should buy an
ad on the Op-Ed page.
Such an approach would serve both journalism and the
nation, because it might actually force this administration
to listen to someone other than itself. And learning to
listen may be the only way the Bush team is going to muster
and sustain the support it needs to succeed in Iraq.
To begin with, listening might actually force the Bush team
to frame its vision of U.S. foreign policy and its
rationale for the Iraq war on our hopes for the world, not
just our fears of it. Every other word out of this
administration's mouth now is "terror" or "terrorism." We
have stopped exporting hope, the most important commodity
America has. We now export only fear, so we end up
importing everyone else's fears right back.
Yes, America faces real threats, and this administration,
to its credit, has been serious about confronting them. But
America also has many more friends, actual and potential,
and nurturing them is also part of our national security.
We cannot spend so much time talking about our enemies that
we forget to listen to our friends, because without them,
ultimately, we cannot win either a war of terrorism or a
war of ideas.
Had this ingrown administration ever exposed itself to
people even mildly opposed to its policies, let alone
foreigners, it might have avoided some of its most
egregious errors. Had it listened to its own Army chief of
staff, who had served in Bosnia, it might have put more
troops into Iraq, as he advocated. Had it listened to its
own State Department, it might not have recklessly
disbanded the Iraqi Army without having enough U.S. troops
to fill the security vacuum.
Listening is also a sign of respect, and it is amazing how
much people will allow you to say to them, by way of
criticism, if you just bother to go listen to them first. I
heard Richard Brodhead, the dean of Yale College, give some
very smart advice along these lines to incoming freshmen
the other day. He should have been talking to the Bush
team.
"Above all," Dean Brodhead told the students, "don't limit
your associations to people who agree with you. . . . I
read that American political parties are concluding that
the old electoral strategy of first playing to the core
adherents and true believers, then reaching out to the
independent or unpersuaded, might now be passé, and that
parties will succeed best by continuing to appeal to the
party base. This may be good politics, but I doubt it's
good for the quality of thought that will result from
politics. Who do we suppose will be able to deal more
constructively with the challenges of our time: people who
have only ever experienced preaching to the converted, or
people who tested their understanding against the
countervailing understandings of others?"
Thankfully, there is one group of people the Bush team is
listening to: Iraq's silent majority. Ironically, Iraq is
the one place in the world where the Bush team has chosen
not to become obsessed with terrorists, not to focus
exclusively on them and their noise, but to just keep on
building a better Iraq for Iraqis - the only way to counter
terrorism in the long run - despite the bombs bursting in
air.
Unfortunately, in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza - where
some really sick terrorists claimed three U.S. lives
yesterday - the Bush team has decided to fall in behind
Ariel Sharon's failed strategy of only listening to the
terrorists and postponing any initiatives until they are
all defeated. So the only voice we hear there is that of
the terrorists. No alternative reality is being built to
smother or counter them, and that's just what the
terrorists want.
nytimes.com
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