Hello Geoff. I know you're busy with career business but I thought I'd reply to the first part of your Iraqi war post.
You say; "I'd say that how we got into the war in Iraq at this point is not worth dwelling upon. The pretext of WMDs was a plausible one at the time and we may never know if they were there or not or if indeed that was the real reason. I'm much more concerned with now and the future."
I partially agree. We invaded, occupied and we are there. That is done. What makes it worth discussing, however, is the second point you make when you say:
"I'd prefer to trust the president, (and notice I didn't say Bush), until given an adequate reason to doubt him, otherwise it's just an exercise substituting unknowns for fact and a waste of energy. The way he/she discharges that responsibility of office may not appear to be correct to many in sending us to war or keeping us out of a war for that matter, but the fact is, in the present, we never really know all the information that the president has access to, (this might only be known to historians years from now)."
What we now know about the reasons that were used to justify the war, the quality of the thinking, the way dissent was handled, the way counter opinions were or were not considered, the way the Administration handled adverse facts that later emerged and a host of other factors related to how we got into the war is absolutely critically important to the question of whether we should, as you term it, "trust the president."
To use an analogy; if you hired a high level stockbroker to handle your retirement portfolio and you incurred some substantial losses, you might wonder if you should continue to "trust" him or if you should change brokers. In order to make that decision don't you think you'd want to ask why he made the decisions he did, what information he relied upon, what factors he considered most important, how quickly he came to you to explain, how honestly he admitted problems, whether he had the acumen to know that he was taking risks when he made the investments and whether his assessment of the risks was realistic? Those are the kinds of questions and answers that would tell you whether you were dealing with someone who'd made some good decisions that just turned bad because of unpredictable events or someone who'd made bad decisions because he was incompetent, careless or had interests that did not parallel your own. I think you would, even though you would know that you couldn't match his expertise and that you would never know the whole story.
When we're talking about decisions that are not about your retirement funds but rather about the life or death of young Americans and a host of Iraqis, don't you think we should ask the same questions? I'd say yes and I suspect you would agree, even if it's the the President of the US whose competence, integrity, motives, intellect, efficiency and decision making ability we're questioning. For that reason the whys and hows of our getting into the war are important, not because we can undo that history but rather because that inquiry allows us to evaluate the quality, or lack of quality, of our national leader.
And I'm not saying that a president should not sometimes take actions which are unpopular. The test of quality in leadership is not whether a majority of Americans agree, the test of quality is whether the decisions are proven to have been wise, or at least to have been based on sound and solid reasoning.
And in a democracy we cannot say, as you infer, "but the fact is, in the present, we never really know all the information that the president has access to, (this might only be known to historians years from now)", and then "trust." That's too easy. We could always "be loyal" to the very end because, who knows, those people might know things we don't and history might prove them right. To take that approach, however, abdicates our sacred duty as free men to make decisions based on the best information available to us and to act on those decisions.
I'd much rather be one of those who say; "I'm bright enough to think for myself and make decisions as a free man. If you want my support then you must give me sufficient persuasive facts and information to convince me that you are right. When you're sending the sons and daughters of America to kill other people and to die in the process I will watch your every step and hold you to the highest standard of competence and justice."
I think this is a proper course for a free, thinking America. I believe that history is replete with many examples of nations which got into deep trouble because their citizens were too trusting of leadership and too loyal to leaders who were leading in the wrong direction. I don't see too many instances where the opposite is true, i.e. nations that got into deep trouble because their people were not trusting enough of their leaders.
There's a wall in Washington, D.C. which goes a long way toward proving my point.
My bottom line is that whenever someone tells me "we don't know for sure," or "they might know more than we do," or "we should trust them," I always respond that we have to work with the best information we have and it's our duty not to trust them when the information we have does not provide a rational base of support for what they're doing and saying.
When you examine their stated justifications for this war, the way the war is being conducted, the benchmarks they've given to evaluate success in the war, the validity of their projections for the course of the war, the fact that they have yet to provide a strategy for fighting the war that does not rely on changing another culture to make it want to fight the war for the same goals we have for them, and the many instances where it's clear that they were wandering in a magical thinking daze, how can we continue to support their decision to continue spending lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq? That's the question I have and I think you're going to take a shot at answering it. Ed |
