The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Prince of Tides, Tacking and Attacking
Yet Mr. Kerry's case has a hollow center. He was asked at his press conference on Tuesday about W.'s snide reminders that his rival gave him authority to go to war (and, playing frat pledge to W.'s rush chairman, inanely agreed that he would still have voted to give that authority even if there were no W.M.D.).
That vote, he replied, was correct "because we needed to hold Saddam Hussein accountable for weapons. That's what America believed."
Not all Americans.
The administration rolled the Democrats on the authorization vote. It was clear at the time that going after Saddam to punish Osama made no sense, that Cheney & Co. were going to use Saddam as a lab rat for all their old neocon agendas. It was clear, as the fleet sailed toward Iraq, that the Bush crew had no interest in diplomacy - that it wanted to castrate the flaccid U.N., the flower child Colin Powell and his pinstriped State Department, snotty Old Europe, and the despised Saddam to show that America is a hyperpower that is not to be messed with.
As I quoted a girlfriend saying in September 2002, a month before Mr. Kerry's authorization vote, "Bush is like the guy who reserves a hotel room and asks you to the prom."
When Mr. Kerry says it was the way the president went about challenging Saddam that was wrong, rather than the fact that he challenged Saddam, he's sidestepping the central moral issue.
It was wrong for the president to take on Saddam as a response to 9/11, to pretend the dictator was a threat to our national security, to drum up a fake case on weapons and a faux link to Al Qaeda, and to divert our energy, emotions and matériel from the real enemy to an old enemy whose address we knew.
It was wrong to take Americans to war without telling them the truth about why we were doing it and what it would cost.
It wasn't the way W. did it. It was what he did.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Monday, September 20, 2004
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Friday, September 17, 2004
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Maureen Dowd: Pre-emptive Paranoia
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Pre-emptive Paranoia: "Iraq is a vision of hell, and the Republicans act as if it's a model kitchen. "
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Thursday, September 02, 2004
The New York Times Editorial: Mr. Bush and the Truth About Terror
The New York Times > Opinion > Mr. Bush and the Truth About Terror: "The Bush campaign is betting the ranch on the idea that Americans, in the end, will vote for the candidate they think is most likely to keep the nation safe from terrorism. The president has been honest about saying we will never be totally safe. He has been much less frank about explaining that even relative safety depends on our ability to create international alliances and to pick our fights not on the basis of where our armies can successfully fight, or of settling old scores, but where the gravest dangers lie. There are few venues less promising for truth-telling than a political convention, but there are also few better opportunities to make the public listen."
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Kristof: Crowning Prince George
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Crowning Prince George: "Instead, Mr. Bush emulates Coriolanus, a well-meaning Roman general and aristocrat whose war against barbarians leads to an early victory but who then proves so inflexible and intemperate that tragedy befalls him and his people.
Unless Mr. Bush learns to see nuance and act less rashly, he will be the Coriolanus of our age: a strong and decisive leader, imbued with great talent and initially celebrated for his leadership in a crisis, who ultimately fails himself and his nation because of his rigidity, superficiality and arrogance. "
Unless Mr. Bush learns to see nuance and act less rashly, he will be the Coriolanus of our age: a strong and decisive leader, imbued with great talent and initially celebrated for his leadership in a crisis, who ultimately fails himself and his nation because of his rigidity, superficiality and arrogance. "
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Laura Bush: Upbeat Republicans Revive Bush Theme of Compassion
The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Upbeat Republicans Revive Bush Theme of Compassion: "'No American president ever wants to go to war,' Mrs. Bush said. 'Abraham Lincoln didn't want to go to war, but he knew that saving the union required it. Franklin Roosevelt didn't want to go to war, but he knew that defeating tyranny demanded it. And my husband didn't want to go to war, but he knew the safety and security of America and the world depended on it.'"
If Lincoln had gone to war against Kansas, would we praise him now? If Roosevelt had gone to war against Mexico, would we be grateful for his courage and practical wisdom? Republicans say we should feel safer under George Bush's leadership, but he picked the wrong enemy! He doesn't know what he is doing. However sure our president is that he's doing the right thing, no amount of steadfastness can substitute for poor judgment. In fact, his self-assurance makes him unable to see his mistake.
If Lincoln had gone to war against Kansas, would we praise him now? If Roosevelt had gone to war against Mexico, would we be grateful for his courage and practical wisdom? Republicans say we should feel safer under George Bush's leadership, but he picked the wrong enemy! He doesn't know what he is doing. However sure our president is that he's doing the right thing, no amount of steadfastness can substitute for poor judgment. In fact, his self-assurance makes him unable to see his mistake.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Friday, August 06, 2004
What About Iraq? Consequentialist Reasoning
Cathy Young writes for Reason magazine. I like her writing and her arguments, and she's one of those columnists I read when I have a chance. The other day she published a column in the Globe where she said the jury was still out on Iraq. I thought, still out! I also thought she could be right: you can't tell how things are going to turn out.
The problem with this reasoning is that it's consequentialist. Consequentialist reasoning is where you judge the rightness or wrongness of something based on its consequences. By this reasoning, we don't know yet whether going to war in Iraq was the right thing or the wrong thing to do, because we don't have a full balance sheet yet on all the good and bad consequences of the decision. Consequentialist thinking about the war is totally mainstream. Most of the public commentary on the war fits this model. We shouldn't have gone in there because so many bad things happened as a result. We should have gone in there because we got Hussein and we're bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. The battle of consequences continues, and as the election approaches, neither side seems to have much of an advantage. And as Ms. Young observed, the jury is still out because we're still in the middle of the war.
How about an argument that says we shouldn't have attacked Iraq because it was wrong in itself? We don't need a jury to tell us that an unprovoked attack on another country is wrong. We don't need a jury to tell us that you don't attack a country because they might pose a threat to you in the future. If we're going to go to war on that basis, we should start preparations to march on Beijing right now.
So the moral question on the Iraqi war is easy to answer. The charges about weapons of mass destruction were trumped up, and it was obvious before we went in there that they were. The charges about links between Hussein and Al Qaeda were trumped up, and that charge was so laughable I still can't understand how our leaders could have made it. If they hadn't made that charge, sympathetic historians might have said the war in Iraq was an honest, understandable mistake, in light of 9/11. Having suggested the connection, having persuade people it was true, historians will have to see the grounds for war as dishonest, the war itself as a vicious fraud.
I should add before I sign off that I use consequentialist arguments myself. You can't make good evaluations without them. The biggest consequence of the war in Iraq, I've argued, is that it makes defeat in our war against Al Qaeda much more likely. We cannot lose that war and survive as a civilization. This misstep in Iraq will be with us for a long time, and if we do lose the war against Al Qaeda, historians will see the attack on Baghdad on March 19, 2003, as the first step toward defeat. That's a big consequence.
So please don't conclude that I regard consequences as unimportant. Rather, we should evaluate consequences and the thing itself. Sound judgment depends on good reasoning in both areas. We've had a lot of analysis that centers on the war's results. That's no surprise, since the analysts are policymakers and others who evaluate policies based on costs and benefits. Cost-benefit analysis is useful for economic decisions, but it's not your tool of choice for moral questions. A decision about war or peace is the supreme moment in moral reasoning. Our decision to initiate war was a grave moral failure. We attacked a nation that was not capable of attacking us, and we let escape an enemy that had clearly demonstrated its ability to attack us. The only way to correct this failure is to admit the mistake, carefully extract ourselves from Iraq, then pursue our real enemy with all vigor. Are we capable of that?
The problem with this reasoning is that it's consequentialist. Consequentialist reasoning is where you judge the rightness or wrongness of something based on its consequences. By this reasoning, we don't know yet whether going to war in Iraq was the right thing or the wrong thing to do, because we don't have a full balance sheet yet on all the good and bad consequences of the decision. Consequentialist thinking about the war is totally mainstream. Most of the public commentary on the war fits this model. We shouldn't have gone in there because so many bad things happened as a result. We should have gone in there because we got Hussein and we're bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. The battle of consequences continues, and as the election approaches, neither side seems to have much of an advantage. And as Ms. Young observed, the jury is still out because we're still in the middle of the war.
How about an argument that says we shouldn't have attacked Iraq because it was wrong in itself? We don't need a jury to tell us that an unprovoked attack on another country is wrong. We don't need a jury to tell us that you don't attack a country because they might pose a threat to you in the future. If we're going to go to war on that basis, we should start preparations to march on Beijing right now.
So the moral question on the Iraqi war is easy to answer. The charges about weapons of mass destruction were trumped up, and it was obvious before we went in there that they were. The charges about links between Hussein and Al Qaeda were trumped up, and that charge was so laughable I still can't understand how our leaders could have made it. If they hadn't made that charge, sympathetic historians might have said the war in Iraq was an honest, understandable mistake, in light of 9/11. Having suggested the connection, having persuade people it was true, historians will have to see the grounds for war as dishonest, the war itself as a vicious fraud.
I should add before I sign off that I use consequentialist arguments myself. You can't make good evaluations without them. The biggest consequence of the war in Iraq, I've argued, is that it makes defeat in our war against Al Qaeda much more likely. We cannot lose that war and survive as a civilization. This misstep in Iraq will be with us for a long time, and if we do lose the war against Al Qaeda, historians will see the attack on Baghdad on March 19, 2003, as the first step toward defeat. That's a big consequence.
So please don't conclude that I regard consequences as unimportant. Rather, we should evaluate consequences and the thing itself. Sound judgment depends on good reasoning in both areas. We've had a lot of analysis that centers on the war's results. That's no surprise, since the analysts are policymakers and others who evaluate policies based on costs and benefits. Cost-benefit analysis is useful for economic decisions, but it's not your tool of choice for moral questions. A decision about war or peace is the supreme moment in moral reasoning. Our decision to initiate war was a grave moral failure. We attacked a nation that was not capable of attacking us, and we let escape an enemy that had clearly demonstrated its ability to attack us. The only way to correct this failure is to admit the mistake, carefully extract ourselves from Iraq, then pursue our real enemy with all vigor. Are we capable of that?
