Our need for a stronger discussion

Robert Dallek has a column in the Washington Post, today, that exemplifies a disturbing trend I am seeing in the debate and discussion about the war in Iraq.

Iraq Isn't Like Vietnam - Except When It Is

The war in Iraq, Dallek argues, is lost. All that is needed is for President Bush to recognize this.

As he argues:

"But unlike Johnson and Nixon, who eventually accepted that victory in Vietnam was probably impossible, Bush can't bring himself -- in public, at least -- to admit that success is out of reach. He and GOP surrogates pilloried Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, for saying recently that "this war is lost." But even LBJ was wiser than that. In 1968, after the Tet Offensive, Johnson finally understood that South Vietnamese ineptitude, Viet Cong strength and American impatience with the grinding conflict meant that the United States simply had to end its involvement and cut a deal at the Paris peace talks."

The study of history, apparently, from Dallek's comments in this column, creates an ominiscience that stupid people like President Bush and Frederick Kagan and myself just don't have access to. Iraq is Vietnam, if we would just open our eyes. Liberals were right about Vietnam and they are right about Iraq - just as they are right about every serious policy issue is everyone else would just open their eyes or trust their clearly greater wisdom - and what they are waiting for is for conservatives and independents, like me, to face this reality that is so plain to them.

It is an arrogance about the better wisdom of liberals and liberal academics like Dallek that bothers me. Conservatives have it too, especially when the political moment favors them as it does liberals, today. What bothers me most has nothing to do with ideology. It has to do with people in powerful and influential positions like Dallek's acting like there really isn't even a need for more engaged discussion and debate, if we could all just accept their wisdom. That is the reason why liberals are in love with force as a means, today. Because they are tired of people questioning and challenging and disagreeing with all of their wisdom. What they need is for people to finally just do what the hell they say, because noone is smart enough to really be trusted to offer any other credible option.

Dallek has no crystal ball. He has an expertise, that is now and forever limited, in 20th century history and history around President Lyndon Johnson, in particular. He is a good man. He is a very smart man. I really enjoy listening to and reading everything he has to share about Lyndon Johnson that I've read and heard from him. But he is still a man. As is President Bush. As is Frederick Kagan. As am I.

Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us. Hubris that we have finally figured it all out. Especially when we are all engaged in one big political and cultural civil war, today, where each of us is going to finally prove that one ideology or the other has really figured out all of the answers that we need.

I sincerely hope that every student or person I read is seriously skeptical of everything I say and write, because I and everyone else who wishes differently is remarkably full of shit to wish that they or anyone has all of the important wisdom that they might want or need in life. Our wisdom and understanding of the world is now and forever limited by our limited outlook, study, and experiences. There is no way to escape that fact, no matter how hard we might try. Our efforts matter. But they are limited. Now and forever. There is no exception to that very real fact of life.

The arrogance of so many more established and less established people, these days - and likely all days - that they have finally figured out everything that we need to know to make wiser choices in the world is remarkable and bullshit all at once.

This is why we all need so much more freedom to make our calls. Because noone knows for sure what the future holds. Ever. We are lying if we say that we do. We may have wisdom that can help guide us through the uncertainty. But the uncertainty is far more present than our certainty. The more we know, as Einstein said, the more we realize what we don't know. And what we don't know far outstrips what we do, now and forever.

What we need in America and in the world, right now, around all of the issues that matter most in our lives, is a more patient, engaged, decent, humble, noble, committed, constructive, and intelligent discussion about how to deal with all of our most serious issues, including the war in Iraq and so many issues that we face together.

We need more people who take those discussions more seriously, who take the thinking and the reflection and the engagement that makes them stronger more seriously, and who take the ambition that makes our common goals more achieveable, and more understanding when our goals are not always achieved. We need more genuine open-minded and open-hearted thinking and discussions around serious issues like the war in Iraq and so many issues that we face in America, the world, and in our own lives. We need more people who can make better realities of so many of the issues we face and who treat one another better in achieving those realities so that they will be more genuinely achieved rather than all of the lying and ass-covering that occurs with more aggressive, forceful approaches. We need more appreciation for the liberal values that make so much of what we have available to us, currently, possible, and an appreciation for the need to constantly enlarge those values, not to shrink them in the name of whatever cause we advocate for.

None of us are the gods or the clairvoyants or the masters of all knowledge and wisdom that we would all like to pretend.

That is the most important lesson this war has taught me. That all people, no matter how smart or wise or decent or rich or successful or whatever - everyone - are kind of full of shit. Me too. Me especially.What we need in this world is more people who know that so that we can root each other on more, support each other more, know our own shit stinks, and otherwise stop trying to prove, all the time, that we have all the answers or that peoples' lives would really be so much better is everyone just followed our advice. There is noone, no matter how smart or ambitious, who has all the answers. Noone. That is the real lesson to be taken both from this war and probably the most important lesson from history. Will people use that fact to rationalize all kinds of bullshit pursuits or treatment of other people? Sure. Sadly. People use it all the time to rationalize whatever they might do other than be more honest and decent with one another. Me too. Though I try to honest about the important stuff and lie only when it really is the more decent thing.

This world we have full of violence and pressure and murder and mayhem, full of pain and hurt and selfishness, in the name of power or wealth or whatever purposes we might pursue with our more insensitive and indecent ways. It does not have to be this way. But it will take letting go of this cynicism and pursuing more common decency and engagement and non-threatening opportunities for honesty and sharing and thought to make that possible.

That is what made Bobby Kennedy a great leader. It wasn't his policies, necessarily. I disagree with many of this policies and think many of his intentions have likely resulted in counterproductive results. What made Bobby Kennedy great was that he was a political leader who took the idealism and the high-mindedness that made politics purposeful and he infused his speeches and commitments with them. He did not get lost in bitterness and dispair after his brother was murdered. After John's death, he experienced as he said announcing Martin Luther King's death and as Aeschylus once wrote:

Even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

Bobby forgave his brother's murder and he found deeper wisdom in it. It is the opportunity that all of us have to face the ugliness and hardship and meanspiritedness and selfishness of the world and build something better in its place.

And the most serious and important place that could start, I am convinced, is in a more humble, decent, and honest, and unpretensious discussion about our most important issues without a need to figure out who is right all the time and who is wrong all the time because that is most certainly not any of us. Ever. There is no way around that fact.

If there is any more important wisdom that we could all have about this war and about policy and humanity, generally, I think that may be it.

And bringing that spirit to our work together makes for a far stronger discussion and far better choices and support for one another, even when our choices are not so hot, in the long haul.

Love,
Ben

A clarification about freedom and limits

I just wanted to take a moment to talk about freedom and limits and what my work and experience has meant in this regard.

My belief is not at all that we should not live within limits for our freedom. To the contrary, I very much believe in limits governing our lives. What I believe is two-fold. First, that limits that revolve around reason, which are gentler, more loving, and more understanding, and which create as much room as possible for self-determined choices are the best limits both because they indicate to those we are responsible for - children, employees, citizens, etc. - that they need limits and creates relationships and engagement that allow us to spell out, over time, what those limits might be, while acknowledging the reality that they will make choices that exercise their own limits or lack of them over their behavior. Second, that the only real sustainable limits that people will exercise over their lives are ones that they self-govern their behavior with, regardless of what others do.

Long term, adults will either figure out the need for limits or they will ignore them. We need to step in only when people are in real danger. Otherwise, what we need people to learn is having limits for their own behavior and self-governing their choices and behavior. Limits that are based more in reason - in love and logic, as Jim Fay would say - which are more loving and understanding of and sensitive to the need for autonomy that children have and the confusion and conflict they experience for themselves and with adults in exericisng that autonomy appropriately, and where better choices are made freely by people from that reason are the only real sustainable means of governing behavior over the course of a lifetime.

As children grow up, this is the only way that they can govern their behavior as adults that is most reliable. They, generally, are the only people who are in their own presence all of the time. Hence the reason why we emphasize that consciences tell us how to behave when noone else is present. People will, inevitably, screw this up. We are all sinners, as many Christians remind us. But they can only sustainably and reliably learn to live within limits for their behavior insofar as they internalize those limits and the need for them, especially the recognition that without them our more hurtful or dangerous behavior can go on without limits and hurt many people in the meantime. The only sustainable path out of this possibility is people, of their free will, learning to set limits for their own behavior. Parents, teachers, religious leaders and peers, family, and others can only limit behavior for us and one another so much. For the most part, either we learn to set limits for ourselves or we spend our lives constantly testing those limits and making mistakes largely out of an immature desire to test limits that is on-going in lieu of our understanding of the need to set limits for ourselves.

Many people live entire lives or long lives testing their various limits and those set by society. It is a clearly immature way to live life, perpetually challenging limits set by responsible adults around them in lieu of learning and discovering why setting those limits was so important and valuable and why it is important to set them for ourselves.

In the meantime, the reality is that until people learn to set those limits for themselves, no amount of external policing by others will set those limits permanently for them. Either those limits will be internalized by reason and understanding - especially the understanding of the need for limits - or people will either spend lives obsessed with challenging limits, or, almost as bad if not worse, they will spend their lives obsessed with having those limits rigidly in place. Either extreme - one generally considered a more liberal extreme and the other generally considered a more conservative extreme - are foolish wastes of life that miss the point of limits and their relationship to freedom and free will, as far as I am concerned, as people obsess about limits rather than using them, freely and effectively, to govern their choices and behavior so that they can live rich, engaged, contributing lives.

The limits which are most based in reason and genuine concern - love and logic - are the most likely to promote this kind of reasonable self-governance where limits are internalized as an understanding of how to govern one's own behavior and choices so that they can live fulfilling and contributing lives, because fear is a sign of an externally imposed limit rather than a more mature internalized limit based on reason and understanding, especially for the need for limits in life.

So a life of freedom is not at all a life of unbridled behavior. Quite the contrary, a life of freedom with responsibility is a life where limits are more reliably and sustainably internalized, where they govern behavior more effectively, rather than externally imposed by fear and force, which often, unintentionally but counterproductively, undermine internalized, self-governing limits.

I do not advocate, at all, a life without limits. Such a life would be foolish and wasted. I advocate freedom as the most sustainable path to a life of self-governing, internalized limits which are more reliable and effective and more ever-present in the long run. And all efforts to impose limits externally, primarily, waste the potential of people who might otherwise learn and need to learn to internalize self-governing limits which are more sustainable, reliable, and effective for the long term. I don't doubt the intentions of the teachers I work I with. I doubt their understanding of the consequences of adopting a policy that is focussed, primarly, around externally imposed limits rather than working to cultivate internalized self-governing limits based on reason and understanding. More effective schools and more effective parents clearly work, primarily, to inculcate the latter form of limits, while falling back on externally imposed limits when they are concerned they have no other alternative. Less effective teachers and parents rely primarily on externally imposed limits, which limits their effectiveness and their capacity to be more effective, self-governing, contributing adults.

Similiarly, more effective leaders, managers and administrators, and others responsible for the efforts and welfare of others will work, as much as possible, to develop a sense of reasonable, understanding, self-governing limits. We generally call the kind of people who exemplify those qualities and virtues professionals (though their understanding of those limits is generally limited, as well), and we develop those professional abilities in liberal universities and schools which give people the freedom to be responsible for their activities so that they can learn to be more responsible, autonomous people and professionals. Often adults don't learn these skills well enough in college, which often leads to all kinds of disgruntlement on their part with what college did not teach them (which is somewhat ironic since this is a skill of independence that adults and young people must learn to internalize on their own, ultimately, though many teachers and responsible people help along the way).

Our failure to learn this lesson about limits leaves us perpetually lamenting the very freedom that offers us the capacity to internalize limits more sustainably, thus perpetually waiting for someone or something to impose limits that they could never reliably impose as well as we could internalize them. It's a very sad, immature fact of many, many peoples' lives. And it is a fact of their lives nonetheless.

I am learning a lot of these lessons just this year, actually, so I share them as I learn them. I have always known I was on the right track on this question. And now I am sure of it because I am internalizing, myself, the need for limits and how not learning to respect them and internatlize them abuses trust and undermines more responsible, proactive behavior. I didn't want to be afraid my whole life, or forever lamenting my incapacity to be responsible for my own behavior, choices, and limits as so many of the adults who mentored me did. I wanted to be responsible for myself genuinely. And it turns out that to do so means to internalize limits based on freedom and conscience and thought and understanding rather than externally enforced by some external force or authority.

The least possible necessary aggression is the most sustainable way to facilitate the free internalization of limits and to externally enforce them only insofar as all other methods have really been exhausted (and not just rationalized because of more aggressive, less reasonable instincts). As much as possible, we want a world of maturity where people limit their own behavior by their own self-governing reason. And even when that ideal is not lived up to, the reality is that the most sustainable, reliable, and effective way for limits to be set and taken seriously is when they are internalized and self-governing reason. And insofar as they are not, people still have their freedom and make their own choices. The question is will we face this, substantially enough, and the reality of the limits of power and externally enforced limits to recognize the need to focus our primary efforts and setting limits in this more internalized, self-governing realm. Liberal societies are not strongest for no reason. They are strongest because they recognize this need to facilitate more self-governing behavior, and the potential that is unleashed when people and a culture learn to limit their own behavior and proceed to engage in contributions that are most reasonable and valuable, rather than relying on the more artificial, less reliable, less effective, less sustainable, and often counterproductive method of imposing limits externally, which often creates rebellion among those who have not or do not know how to set limits for themselves as they persistently fight and engage passive or open conflict with effort to impose limits.

After a entire history of humanity experiencing largely failure with a more externally imposed route and a 200+ year history of more success in more liberal societies, you would think that liberal socieities would embrace the need to internalize reasoning self-governing values, limits, and understandings, at this point. Too little faith in our capacity to do so, I think, very much like the too little faith that representatives of the British Empire expressed in the notion that the people of their North American colonies could be self-governing. They were wrong, and so are we.

With freedom comes responsibility - especially the responsibility to set limits for our freedom and behavior - is a bit of wisdom that has been handed down from generation to generation among liberal societies. And it is this kind of wisdom that allows us the opportunity to live more self-governing lives, and which is the perpetually taken-for-granted basis for the level and quality of self-governance that we practice today.

If we think about, there is no other serious option but to embrace that freedom and the responsibility that comes with it, both because it is the clearly most sustainable route to self-governing behavior and, almost as importantly, because it is the only real alternative, since externally-imposed discipline or limits is limited in its capacity to actually govern behavior for any longer than any brief period of time. For the long term, we need freedom, responsibility, and reason.

Here is to the liberal democratic world embracing the freedom, responsibility, and reason that are the foundations for their values, societies and ways of life.

Love,
Ben

The debate over withdrawal from Iraq

I am watching Bobby, tonight, the beautiful movie by Emilio Estevez about the tragic assassination of one of America's truly great and courageous politicians, Robert F. Kennedy, which, if you haven't seen it, is brilliant. It embodies so many of the principles of liberalism that inspired me in my youth.

There are three debates about withdrawal of troops that I think matter most to the situation in Iraq.

The first, of course, and the one that is catching the most headlines, these days, is the debate between the President and the U.S. Congress and in the American public over how long they will support troop deployment in Iraq, funding security and other efforts in Iraq, and how much patience the Congress and the American people feel for the situation in Iraq.

The second, and more important debate, I think, is the one occurring in the Iraqi parliament, right now. There are conflicting reports about what the Iraqi government might want. The Washington Post reports that Iraqi lawmakers are backing a bill on troop withdrawal. The Post reports that a bare majority of 138 of 275 lawmakers have signed a measure to establish time lines for American troop withdrawal. The Associated Press indicates that Al-Sadr alligned officials report 144 signatures, a stronger majority.

The Associate Press reports that the Maliki government and its allies, on the other hand, are urging the American Congress not to authorize an American pull-out until Iraqi troops are ready to take over security responsibilities.

Which one of these government representations of the view and will of the Iraqi people should be taken most seriously is unclear to me, at this point. My democratic instincts would tend to say what parliament says goes. But my instincts as a political observer tell me that Prime Minister Maliki is a far better faith political leader for the Iraqi people than is Moqtada Al Sadr and his political coalition which helped secure the legislation to compel an American withdrawal.

But there is another debate about the war in Iraq that I think is as important and, in many ways, more important than the debate going on the Iraqi parliament. And that debate is the thoughtful, empirical policy debate about what would be the best course of action in Iraq given the current situation.

Joe Nye argues that, "[T]o defend this (or any future war) on the basis of the moral clarity of our intentions is impoverished one-dimensional moral reasoning. Whatever the president's motives, his inadequate attention to means and the full range possible consequences makes this an unjust war."

Francis Fukuyama argues that we need to start having "a very different debate from the one we have been having up to now, a debate not about surging and not about withdrawing with our goals accomplished but about how to draw down our forces in a way that minimizes the costs that will inevitably accompany our loss of control.

Benjamin Barber argues that "potential American partners (and perhaps even friends) are being kept at arm's length by a U.S. government obsessed with a losing campaign in Iraq. When the final balance sheet is produced, it will be clear that in failing to win his foolish war against global terrorism in a country where there were no global terrorists until we got there and drew them into the battle, Bush may have also lost several winnable campaigns for friends and allies elsewhere around the globe."

Frederick Kagan makes what I think is the most thorough and reasonable argument, which is that security is a necessary and non-negotiable prerequisite for political resolution of the chaos in Iraq, and that Americans must stay as long as is needed in a situation that we created, whether we want to take responsibility for that decision or not. Abandoning the Iraqis, Kagan argues and I agree, leaves them vulnerable to Al Queda terrorists and Shia (and Sunni) militias who seek a permanent base in Iraq, in the case of Al Queda, and to dominate militarily and politically, in the case of the Shia (and Sunni) militias, which will result in the brutal, needless, and tragic deaths of Iraqis who are counting on American assistance to the elected Iraqi government to provide security.

As Kagan argues:

"In Iskandariyah, I met Major General Qais, the commander of the Babil Province police forces. I asked him the same question, What is your greatest challenge. Without hesitation, he, too, said: Shia militias. The Iraqi police are known to be infiltrated by Shia militia fighters, but General Qais has molded a force that he uses against those very militias on a daily basis. He has survived attempts on his life, and he and his family are under constant threat. They, too, rely on America to help them fight the agents of Iran who seek to defeat us. Across Iraq today, decent people are standing up and identifying themselves. They are reaching out to us, working with us, and fighting alongside us against our enemies, even against the powerful Shia militias. If we abandon them now, they will be tortured and killed, along with their families, by the militias. We will have exposed every decent person in the country to destruction...

...But the most moving scenes were in some of the worst neighborhoods of the city. Our uparmored Humvees rolled through Ghazaliyah and Dora, two Sunni neighborhoods heavily infiltrated with al Qaeda and under pressure from Shia militias. There are few services in these neighborhoods, and IED attacks and killings had been regular features until very recently. We walked through raw sewage in the streets and saw bullet and bomb holes in the buildings. But to my amazement, we also saw children in those streets who did not glare or run or stand dourly as the occupiers passed. Instead they smiled and waved, asking for candy or just saying hello. Even in the worst places in Iraq, we have not lost the children. They still look to us with hope. They still expect us to deliver them from death and violence. They still believe that we will honor our commitments to their parents.

What will happen if we abandon these children? Death will stalk them and their families. Al Qaeda will attempt to subjugate them. Shia militias will drive them from their homes or kill them. And they and their neighbors, and everyone in the Middle East, will know we left them to their fate. Everyone will know, "Never trust the Americans." Everyone will warn their children, "The Americans will only betray you." We will cement our reputation as untrustworthy. We will lose this generation not only in Iraq, but throughout the Middle East. And we will have lost more than our reputation and our ability to protect our interests. We will have lost part of our soul."

He is right about that, I believe. If the Iraqi parliament is expressing a genuine belief by the Iraqi people that American troops should withdraw, then we should honor that desire, I believe. But if that vote is a manipulated effort by Iraqi militias, whose allies in parliament led and secured the votes to pass this legislation, to undermine a more just peace so that they can impose a sectarian and bloody end to this war on their Sunni and Kurd neighbors and undermine a more genuine democratic future for Iraq, then America should think twice about pulling out.

Frederick Kagan is right about one very important feature of this war. As he writes:

"From time to time, nations face fundamental tests of character. Forced to choose between painful but wise options, and irresponsible ones that offer only temporary relief from pain, a people must decide what price they are willing to pay to safeguard themselves and their children and to do the right thing."

America, right now, is indicating a preference for what I believe to be the less responsible option to bring some speedy kind of closure to this tragic war regardless of the consequences for Iraqis and their security. That is understandable, given the more than 3000 American soldiers who have died and the countless Iraqis who have died.

The question before us is not, "Who is right, liberals or conservatives, Congress or the President, Americans or Iraqis?"

The question before us is, "How do we engage this discussion and make this decision with much more genuine integrity to our best understandings, highest ideals, strongest character and most serious responsibilities and commitments?"

Do we abandon a situation because we fear futility, even as many people are counting on us to stay with our commitments in order to find a more honest way through this war? Or do we stick with this situation until it is either clear that the Iraqi government, military, and law enforcement do not need our assistance or until it is clear that they do not want our help?

Colin Powell's comments on this situation are the ones that make the only sense to me. It is Pottery Barn rules. You break it, you buy it.

We broke the situation in Iraq. We are responsible for it, even if we don't feel like being responsible for it. I opposed this war, up front, with concerns about exactly the kind of political and military situation that we face in Iraq today. But I know better than to abandon a responsibility this serious just because it doesn't feel as hopeful as I might like, right now. If Iraqis are unequivocal that they want us to leave, then we should leave. The worst hubris in this whole situation has been our stubborn pretension that it did or does not matter what Iraqis think when, as it concerns Iraq, what Iraqis think matters more than anything else, and certainly anything that we might wish differently given how we invaded their country, without their permission or consultation. Iraqis, ultimately, should decide the fate of Iraq. If they say that they need our help, then we owe it to them to provide it. And if they say they want us to leave, then it is our responsibility to respect that wish and to leave.

I am unclear, at this point, what the Iraqis really want. I want to take the Iraqi parliament seriously, but it is very difficult to do so when the vote for American withdrawal was so clearly orchestrated by the very militias who threaten a very bloody and brutal end to this war for fellow Iraqis. And I trust that Prime Minister Maliki and his government, which have pleaded for American troops to stay, is a better faith actor than Muqtada Al Sadr and his militias and political representatives who arranged for this vote for Americans to leave. I trust the Iraqi government, better, to offer a credible monopoly of force to work more impartially on behalf of the interests, better, of all Iraqis, than the sectarian ambitions of Al Sadr or the Jihadi or anti-American interests of Al Queda. That is where my trust is invested, at the moment. But I am open to a discussion about what we might do next given the evolving political situation in the Iraqi government and, more importantly, among the Iraqi people.

Bobby Kennedy, in the film, tonight, has a beautiful speech that he delivers and that they play after his assassination at the end of the movie, that is appropriate to our current political period, the political discussion, and the decisions we are contemplating:

"To often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force. Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of other human beings. But this much is clear. Violence breeds violence. Repression breeds retaliation. And only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls. But when you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs, or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others, not as fellow citizens, but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation, but with conquest, to be subjugated and to be mastered. We learn at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens. Alien men with whom we share a city, but not a community. Men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in a common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.

Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in this land of ours. Of course we cannot banish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness winning what satisfaction and fulfillment that they can. Surely this bond of common faith, surely this bond of common goals can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at the least, to look around at those of us of our fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

I cannot think of a more appropriate sentiment than this at this dark and polarized moment in our nation's history and in the course of making grave and important decisions about the fate of Americans and the fate of Iraqis whom we have involved in this war that they did not invite us to wage.

None of us are inherently superior to one another. None of us. We are a common nation and common international community engaged in a common debate and discussion about our common efforts in Iraq, the country, and the world. We cannot substitute constructive disagreement and discussion with force, because it does not substitute. What we need is a common discussion of our common goals in Iraq and in the world that is premised on the notion that this kind of nobility may be beyond many of us, at this point in our lives, but it is the responsibility that we share in the terrible and grave consequences that we face in a failed effort in Iraq and in our common efforts as Americans facing our common problems beyond Iraq.

Reason is the only sustainable means of governance and self-governance. Force and politics can persuade when reason fails. But we must neither abuse that trust that comes with force and power when it is not necessary or when it disrespects the consciences of our fellow citizens and fellow men and women on earth, nor should we shrink from the need and responsibility to use force wisely and with the most genuine concern for those whom we protect with it when it is needed. Matters of security, as are pressing in Baghdad and Iraq, today, are those times when force is most assuredly needed. We must use reason, whenever ideally possible, politics, only when reason fails, no other option is available and as a protection against imposition by those who seek and manipulate power against us, and force only when absolutely necessary, and then as least and as little as possible and necessary.

But our efforts must, ultimately, be guided by reason if any real purpose is to animate our thought and actions. We must seek a world where reason, much more than power or force and as exclusively as possible, is relied upon to govern ourselves and one another. And above all, our reason must be used to guide our efforts when power and force are necessary. Reason will fail us. But it will fail us less than brute force alone. And genuine courage and humility must animate that reason which seeks to wield power and force. But that is within our grasp as well. If only we will reach for it.

This is the kind of discussion that we need about the grave situation in Iraq, currently. A thoughtful, reasoned, engaged discussion and debate, which acknowledges honest disagreement and seeks to engage dialogue about how to account for genuine concerns so that our most thoughtful, reasonable policices can be adopted, and if those policies fail, to discuss what more reasonable options we might face next.

That is the debate and discussion about the war in Iraq that needs to be taking place, right now. A reasonable debate among reasonable people with reasonable differences facing common problems and with common faith, common goals, and common humanity that seeks policy options that we can only hope can protect Iraqis and honor our commitments to them.

That is the debate and discussion we should all be most focussed on. And to the degree that this is where we are focussed, then more reasonable options will be proposed and adopted, and, as importantly, chosen in future rounds of policy discussion, where future choices can be animated more by thoughtful and reasonable understanding and options rather than by propaganda, power, or force.

This is the debate that would honor America and Iraq, and be worthy of Americans and Iraqis engaged in common aspirations for a free and democratic Iraq.

May we be wise enough to choose such a course, and approach this standard as we face our reasonable options for resolving this tragic war. I can only hope that we will choose such wisdom.

Love,
Ben