The consequences of polarization

Michael O'Hanlon illustrates the consequences of polarizing political tendencies trying to substitute themselves for more thoughtful, committed, empirical efforts in another excellent piece in the Washington Post.

The Work Behind Our Iraq Views

There are plenty of problems that need resolution in Iraq, a workable political resolution to sectarian fighting and to facilitate a credible monopoly of force by the Iraqi military and law enforcement being the highest priority.

And the value of Michael's piece and his and Ken Pollack's original and excellent New York Times piece is that it brings a reasonable and committed perspective to a discussion that has perpetually been spoiled and distorted by the polarized, leveraged and leveraging, and unreasonable perspectives of so many people who have abandoned more reasonable and engaged thought in favor of strong-arming for a cause with very little thought, really.

I will admit. My commitment to the security project in Iraq is not just because of signs of progress. George Will's recent Post editorial on the war demonstrates his ambivalence about the effort and the uncertainty and ambivalence that most Americans have about our Iraq efforts.

I admit, I don't share that ambivalence. I opposed this war, up front, when it was popular in the country and among media pundits and the political class. I did so openly and publicly, at a time when to do so was considered to be in league with Osama Bin Laden. I have no track record, at all, of either supporting the war in the beginning or supporting it when it was popular.

But I do think that Americans have some responsibility for the mess they helped create in Iraq. And I want to see them step up to that responsibility, even when it is tough.

My commitment is not dependent on the immediate success of our efforts, though I am certainly committed to a realistic assessment of the probability of success with our various efforts. My commitment is based on a responsibility that I feel and that I think most Americans should feel after invading a country without preparation and consultation with them in a way that might have prevented some of what we are witnessing today. I don't know if the current sectarian fighting was predictable for most informed observers (I certainly did not predict it) but I do think a Vietnam-like insurgency was predictable for those who were not engaged in finger-pointing recrimination from the Vietnam era and were committed to objective analysis of what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future. I also think that study of counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism analysis of the ways that insurgent and terrorist groups use modern media and propaganda tactics to wear down the will of those they are fighting and the political responses of domestic democratic populations to the casualties in conflicts where immediate personal or national self-defense is not involved, even as critical security measures might be involved for the benefit of others, is useful in understanding this war and developing a committed strategy.

The bottom line in my mind is, "Is there still more U.S. security detail that needs doing? And if so, how can the American people be led in a direction of more courage and commitment rather than pandering to their immediate, even popular, reactions and impulses?"

And Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack do a fine job of answering both of these questions well, I think, in their original piece - A War We Just Might Win - and in this rebuttal to Jonathan Finer's generally well-reasoned criticism of that piece - Green Zone Blinders.

The consequences of this polarizing and polarized political period is that reasonable discussion gets crowded out by a macho focus on leveraging and pressuring for predetermined positions that are not nearly engaged enough to ever amount to more reasonable positions. That is the problem with force, as a rule, to get your way. You can't possible know how others might view or contribute differently to a discussion if your focus is on willing out rather than on questioning, better, if the cause that you are trying to will out for is best served by your current line of thought. And the failure to do that is the failure of governance that has plagued governments and advocates of force as a governing philosophy for most of the 20th century and, sadly, here at the beginning of the 21st century.

Tragedy without purpose is the most tragic of all. And we are getting more than our share of that right now. It is tragedy that has turned to farce. But, sadly, it is Marx's strategy of leveraging past such situations rather than engaging them more honestly and democratically that is creating the farcical consequences that he lamented. And instead of leaving that sad, long-failed strategy behind, liberal democracies have decided to embrace it one last time in hopes of somehow reforming it.

But it cannot be reformed. It must be rethought.

Love,
Ben