Being careful of what we wish for

Michael Gerson has an excellent reminder for us, today, in the Washington Post, of the terrible tragedy that awaits an effort to take the easy way out of Iraq.

An Exit to Disaster

It is the most tragic fact of all in this terrible, terrible period of action and reaction, without regard to vision or deeper thought about our actions.

We invade a country with very little thought or discussion or debate given and with much pressure for Americans to shut up and get with the bandwagon.

Then, when things don't go as planned, we clamor and pressure to abandon the security responsibilities of a country that didn't ask for the security nightmare that we created for it, again with very little seriously and honestly engaged thought or discussion or debate.

It is the single most important reminder for me for why popular moments and popular reactions are not the same thing as good, decent, and thoughtful choices in my lifetime. There have been many times in my life when I have made choices that were not popular that would only show fruits years later and would involve some sacrafices of immediate gratification in the moment.

But I have never faced a time when it has been so clear to me that Americans are persistently choosing and pressuring for options that address their immediate fears and frustrations, but which do not give enough thought to the longer term consequences of those actions.

I have made similar choices in my own life. So I know what it's like to act foolishly without enough thought.

But we will be responsible for the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal, at this point, whether we want to face those consequences or not.

We seem to have become a nation that wants and will pressure for what it wants when it wants it, consequences be damned. We are facing the likelihood of the most dangerous consequences we have risked yet: the inexplicable tragedy of plunging a country into a civil war and then attempting to wash our hands clean of that responsibility by abandoning our subsequent security responsibilities in that country before the governing authorities are ready to take over those responsibilities.

Doing so would not satisfy the Iraqis, nor the activists clamoring for such a withdrawal, nor the American people reacting to the political moment. It will only make the tragedy all that more inexplicable.

And the only good that will come of it, in the face of so many unnecessary deaths that America will have on her hands, will be the opportunity for Americans, all Americans, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, intellectuals and average citizens, to face our hubris and the failures wrought by our self-righteous ideological power struggles and our belief that we, finally and always, know what is best for others enough to force them into submission.

It is a tragedy too great to ignore. I can only hope that we will find courage, which, up till now, we have confused with our cowardice.

Surely we can be worthy of more faith than that.

Love,
Ben