I have been bothered for some time by a notion most obvious at the UN but quickly spreading elsewhere and that is that any and all disagreements are best solved by compromise. If two parties differ, then it's the disagreement itself, and not the fallacious notions that may have led to it, that needs to be papered over. On the surface, it's an attractive idea in that it calls up our earliest instincts about how playground disagreements ought to be resolved:
There are ten swings. Nine of them are taken. Johnny and Billy both want to use number ten. Miss Sweet, their kindergarten teacher, informs them in a soothing voice that they need to stop fighting and share the time remaining. Never mind that last week Johnny poured lighter fluid on Billy's cat and set the poor creature ablaze, that he routinely steals personal items from Miss Sweet's desk and that the whole disagreement started with Johnny storming over from the other side of the playground, throwing Billy from the swing and kicking him in the teeth.
Compromise. Play nice. Looking for truth and justice is too hard and might make some look bad and hurt their self-esteem (e.g., Johnny's dad is a notorious drunk who beats Johnny's mother and sexually abuses him). And besides, it might open up a career-ending can of worms (don't get within a mile of the religious, racial, ethnic or cultural angles unless they have to do with Billy's 'prejudice' towards delinquent, criminal behavior). Let's just make everything appear placid on the surface. Split the difference. Split the baby.
Billy, you play nice with Johnny and give him a turn on the swing, you hear?
And so it is with the national disagreement over virtually everything that's happened since 9-11.
The New York Times printed an editorial yesterday simply titled "9/11/06". I noticed it only because I was reading about
yet more doping revelations from the Tour de France and the 9-11 piece was on the top of the list of frequently e-mailed items from the last 24 hours. It begins innocuously enough:
The feelings of sadness and loss with which we look back on Sept. 11, 2001, have shifted focus over the last five years.
OK. Fair enough. Except that for some,
the focus can never shift because 19 Islamic fanatics chose to do evil that morning:
a closet filled with clothing that will never be worn again... a hair brush that still brings tears for the faint relics it contains... an infant child who will only know mommy or daddy from photographs already starting to fade...
The NYT editors then shift into high gear:
The attacks themselves have begun to acquire the aura of inevitability that comes with being part of history. We can argue about what one president or another might have done to head them off, but we cannot really imagine a world in which they never happened...
Well actually, we can and we should (imagine them not happening, that is). They were perhaps preventable, very likely delayable or reducible, and
certainly forseeable--particularly when our security agencies were not allowed to speak with one another as the result of deliberate choices made by the previous administration. It is anti-intellectual
--anti-reason in fact--to urge that we not look too closely at what mistakes were made, what false assumptions went into making them, and what character flaws in our leaders led to that tragedy being possible. Otherwise, we are doomed to repeat those mistakes and invite future tragedies of far greater magnitude.
Can one even begin to imagine the MSM urging such brushing under the rug of responsibility or scrutiny with regards to say Vietnam? Or Watergate? Or the Iran-Contra scandal?
Oh, it's history. Never mind whether it was a Republican or a Democrat who bugged the opposition's headquarters or escalated the war in Indochina or did secret deals outside of the purview of Congress. We can't imagine a world in which those things didn't happen. And anyway, all that's behind us! Let's be happy and forgive and move on and just call it our shared history, OK?
Not a chance. Laughable on it's face. But when it's
their darling former President being hung out to dry--and rightly so--by an independent, factually grounded documentary, the editors end up parodying themselves with their inadvertent reference to the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which,
as liberal blogger 201 K puts it:
Michael Palin plays a comically greedy Scottish lord whose son's wedding is violently and murderously disrupted by John Cleese as the sword-wielding and not-too-bright Sir Lancelot. Quickly weighing the carnage and destruction all around him against the possible financial benefits of Lancelot's acquaintance, Palin turns to the bloodied guests and wedding party and says, "This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who..."
When you believe yourself to be losing, calling the game over, or pleading for a 50/50 compromise of intractable positions is an excellent strategy. But wait... it gets better.
[After 9-11] was a time when the nation was waiting to find out what it was supposed to do, to be called to the task that would give special lasting meaning to the tragedy that it had endured.
But the call never came. Without ever having asked to be exempt from the demands of this new post-9/11 war, we were cut out. Everything would be paid for with the blood of other people’s children, and with money earned by the next generation. Our role appeared to be confined to waiting in longer lines at the airport. President Bush, searching the other day for an example of post-9/11 sacrifice, pointed out that everybody pays taxes.
That pinched view of our responsibility as citizens got us tax cuts we didn’t need and an invasion that never would have occurred if every voter’s sons and daughters were eligible for the draft.
It's hard to know where to start with this. The NYT editors are correct in noting that most of the nation--on both sides of the political spectrum--has had to sacrifice very little since 9-11. But are we to believe that the NYT would have stepped to the president's defense had he raised taxes, instituted a no-exceptions draft and rationed gasoline, butter and steel? Are they joking? And do they truly think that from their perch overlooking Times Square that they can speak for the family scratching to make ends meet somewhere outside Manhattan who really could have used more of
their own hard-earned money back? "Tax cuts
we don't need"?!? Where is Ronald Reagan's wonderful, fatherly outrage when we need it?
It's all terribly hard to believe from a paper that routinely trounces this administration for continuing the war on Islamofascism past a few months' worth of retaliatory skirmishing in Afghanistan, never mind their criticism of even calling the enemy by that name. They seem to confuse cause and symptom as if the stubborn, head-in-the-sand failure of most
Democratic leaders since 2003 to even acknowledge that we're at war has nothing to do with the country feeling free to go on about its happy business.
Is it really the fault of the
president that the left and particularly the MSM resolutely refuses to understand that--given the opportunity--the same shadowy forces that attacked us on 9-11 would do the same over and over and over again until we
all bow our heads to allah and lock our daughters at home until
they're ready to "marry" at age 9? The editors continue:
With no call to work together on some effort greater than ourselves, we were free to relapse into a self-centeredness that became a second national tragedy. We have spent the last few years fighting each other with more avidity than we fight the enemy.
Do these people
actually read the speeches? (
"The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and the calling of our generation.") What more of a call are they expecting?
Do they need a personal invitation delivered by singing telegram to get on board? (OK, the speech I've referenced happened yesterday evening. The editorial was a few hours earlier. But this is hardly the first time Mr. Bush has made such a plea only to be lambasted by the left for imperial ambitions and personal greed.)
Is the left so enamored of big government that they won't believe there's a war on until we take them at their word and re-institute a draft (a terribly bad idea, IMHO) and send a carload of FBI agents over to their house to drag their darling son off to Iraq instead of letting him matriculate at Yale? Gimme a break. Yes, we are free to lapse into self-centeredness and many have. The Times is absolutely right on that point. But blaming it on the president is the height of silliness and psychological projection.
The editors continue with what the left has virtually patented these days (alas,
it wasn't always so): pre-emptively declaring defeat in what Mr. Bush said at the very outset--reflecting simple common sense--would be a very long war indeed. The editors continue:
When we measure the possibilities created by 9/11 against what we have actually accomplished, it is clear that we have found one way after another to compound the tragedy. Homeland security is half-finished, the development at ground zero barely begun. The war against terror we meant to fight in Afghanistan is at best stuck in neutral, with the Taliban resurgent and the best economic news involving a bumper crop of opium.
It's all valid to a point, but deeply misleading overall in that each example invites vague, wishful comparison to an ideal the editors never state outright. One thing left unstated but clearly hinted at is the idea that Democrats would have done a better job. That's possible but it would be a lot easier to buy with, well... proof... or at least a cogent statement of awareness and truly differentiated strategy.
What, for example, would the editors say that a "finished" Homeland Security department might look like--exactly? And what sacred, left-leaning bureaucratic cows might they be willing to shoot (e.g., the CIA) or critical pieces of supporting legislation might they support (e.g., Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping of foreign-based terrorist calls into the U.S.) in order to make it work more efficiently to our collective security?
Or which among a maze of regulations in New York City might they be willing to let slide in order to fast-track development there? And how is it that now--with a few truck bombings in the headlines--both Afghanistan
and Iraq are failures? When did the mandarins snatch that one out of the air? (Perhaps when it became harder to show that Iraq was a morass... just a thought.) Tell that to a few tens of millions of women who are now voting, holding jobs and sending their daughters to school--or to their husbands not cowering in fear of being tortured in a hellhole like the Abu Ghraib that existed before it was liberated from Saddam and a few rogue soldiers got stupid and were punished for it.
Then we get to the
real doozy of a misconception that might--just maybe--have a little to do with the disagreement the NYT so abstractly and blandly decries:
Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11 when it was invaded, is now a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists.
Nothing to do with 9-11... nothing at all. Except providing a shining example to other Arab states of how to thumb one's nose at the U.S. and UN, attempt to assassinate a former U.S. president, get away with it--
even profit from it. Iraq under Saddam, the country that used to offer $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers, had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism generally or fomenting radical anti-U.S. sentiment more generally. Nah. Nothing to do with it at all. 9/11 was an independent, aberrational incident to be understood in the context of... nothing.
Never mind that Mohammed Atta hung out in Saddam's Iraq. Nothing at all to do with 9-11. Repeat until
the truth gets tired of speaking up for itself. If we say it enough, this bad dream will go away. Don't look too hard at the pictures. Can't we all just... get along? (and skip the part about looking for the truth, taking a risk, exhibiting moral courage and resolute leadership and trying to solve the
larger problem of Islamofascism once and for all.)
One wonders if the NYT is even talking about the same Iraqi dictator that
virtually the entire Democratic leadership in 1998 under Clinton was virtually apoplectic about stopping when they thought that Gulf War I would be theirs to finish under President Gore.
And while we're at it:
has anyone actually made a case for the notion that Iraq is creating more terrorists? I mean a
compelling case? Has anyone put that assertion to the test with anywhere near the force and scrutiny that the left has insisted upon when
WMD were the issue at stake? (WMD that, btw, Saddam had plenty of time to
move to Syria with Russia's help.) The NYT's self-serving irony continues with this:
Listing the sins of the Bush administration may help to clarify how we got here, but it will not get us out. The country still hungers for something better, for evidence that our leaders also believe in ideas larger than their own political advancement.
Well, that's clever. Make it look like you're calling off your ideological attack dogs and not showing favoritism--after pardoning the other guy in the first paragraph and listing all the sins of your opponent--then go on the attack yourself. Clever.
Read Mr. Bush's speech of last night (or observe his silence at the 9-11 memorials) and tell me how those words and actions are more about political advancement than, say, Mr. Clinton's sick, sad, slimy call for the censure of a television show that stains his legacy as badly as a certain blue dress that captured his attention when our men in uniform needed it more. Or tell me how anything a lame duck president does can be about "political advancement" as compared to the
thinly veiled threat by Democratic congressmen last week to revoke ABC's broadcast license. (Or as
one blogger put it:
"Wonderful network you've got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.")
Finally, we get to the split-the-baby crux of the idea I started out with:
that truth and falsehood can be averaged to achieve apparent, temporary lack of conflict and why don't we just call that fair and leave it at that? Only the truth--and more importantly the search for greater insight
leading to truth--loses badly in such a scenario.
Over the last week, the White House has been vigorously warning the country what awful things would happen in Iraq if American troops left, while his critics have pointed out how impossible the current situation is. They are almost certainly both right. But unless people on both sides are willing to come up with a plan that acknowledges both truths and accepts the risk of making real-world proposals, we will be stuck in the same place forever.
No, they are
not "almost certainly both right". Running the New York Times does not give one the right to assert with a wave of the hand (vaguely referencing third parties to deflect blame for the idea) that the current situation in Iraq is "impossible" without saying why. Prove it in the same way you called for proof of WMD.
"Impossible" implies that no progress is being made. It's a wishful and rather sad, defeatist, Vietnam-hangover assertion that the left--much less the NYT--doesn't even attempt to prove. If they did, little facts
like this map of areas turned over to Iraqi control would tend to interfere with their deeply held belief that this administration is a failure and if they only had the reins of power again, their guys are the white knights who will do oh so much better.
Trust us. Nothing will happen to your blue dress, honey. Truth and so-called '
half-truth' should not be averaged. Even a little bit of dog poo in the ice cream makes the result more dog poo than ice cream.
, [author Daniel Pinchbeck] interprets ancient Mayan prophecies to mean “our current socioeconomic system will suffer a drastic and irrevocable collapse” the year after next, and that in 2012, life as we know it will pretty much end. “We have to fix this situation... or there’s going to be nuclear wars and mass death … There’s not going to be a United States in five years, okay?”
