A governing philosophy of "the buck stops elsewhere"

If you watch contemporary politicians in America, it is clear that the overriding governing philosophy is not a governing philosophy of force. That is just the zeitgeist. It passes as the public mood passes. And it is passing as the public mood is changing.

The consequent and more dominant governing philosophy, sadly and too often, is "not my fault."

George Bush isn't responsible for this war and its turn. Hillary Clinton isn't responsible for her vote and for keeping any reservations to herself (if she had any; we don't know because she didn't give any voice) in the run-up to the war and will not - mark my words - take any responsibility if a pull-out from Iraq brings a spike in sectarian warfare and a deteriorated security situation.

Noone is responsible on the biggest issues during this period.

And, remember, this is the period of responsibility. That's why all that force is necessary, they say. To make people take responsibility, they say. Someone else, of course. Never ourselves. And that is why Jesus argued rightly 2000 years ago that people should look to remove the beams from their own eyes before they try to remove the splinters from the eyes of their neighbors. Obviously there are exceptions to that rule, where immediate physical harm or threat is involved and there are no other less forceful or violent options. But, as a rule, this is why Jesus was so concerned about our tendency to try to make our neighbors' responsible for their behavior: because it allowed us to distract ourselves from our own responsibility for ourselves.

And that is the consequence of a more punitive cultural and political mood that tells people that they will be treated poorly if they openly take responsibility and which focuses on the mistakes of others rather than on our own and grounded in our own need for self-governance as a fundamental need of liberal (and illiberal) societies.

Does more force make people more responsible in Iran? In North Korea? In Cuba? In the Soviet Union? In China? In Syria? In Iraq, pre- or post- Saddam Hussein? In Nazi Germany? In Fascist Italy? In Chile under Augusto Pinochet? In Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe?

And the bigger question for us, today, is does force make people more responsible in America, in Great Britain, in France, in Germany, in Japan, in a more democratic Russia, in any of the liberal democracies of the West or the liberal democracies of the world or the illiberal democracies of the world or the dictatorships and autocracies of the world?

Once you pose that question more broadly it becomes much clearer that the answer has always been no (there certainly is a substantial discussion to have about that question, but I am fairly clear that the most honest conclusion to that discussion must be one that is very skeptical of the use of force and power for the purposes of progress in liberal democratic or illiberal societies) and that the impetus for liberal democracies was to correct for this tendency in liberal democratic societies as much as illiberal cultures and by illiberal governments. But what has also been true is that we are perpetually seduced by this romance we have with force and with violence to resolve our problems. And it is responsible for the long march of mistakes and abuses of power that have been as much a part of our long history in liberal democratic societies and our less liberal and illiberal predecessors as much as the history or less liberal and illiberal societies that currently populate the world.

Without any presumptions or explicit limitations - the use of the terms least possible necessary aggression or force is an explicit effort to create presumptions against force or aggression as much as possible and clearer limitations on its use - a governing philosophy of force can only move in the direction of either Nazi and Soviet-style rationalized permanent presence or overreach and failure, the second of which I'm fairly confident is the direction that liberal democratic societies are and will take given more genuine and honest reflection on the fruits of this thinking and its use as a government philosophy.

But one of the more pernicious consequences that governments and governing periods that have centered themselves around force as a governing philosophy all have in common is that noone is responsible for their failures. Noone. Ever.

Other than John Edwards, you heard any Senator or Representative publicly take responsibility for their vote for this war without a debate or discussion that might have approached and perhaps found some solutions to so many of the concerns that have come up for the 4 years of its execution? Surely that Senator from New York, who is vying to be her country's Commander-in-Chief and who wants to clean up Washington and make the President be accountable for this war has taken responsibility for her vote, right? Surely the President, who with Ms. Clinton and other Senators has sought to regulate so many of the choices of his fellow citizens in the name of taking responsibility for America's problems has or will take responsibility for this war and its consequences?

And it's not just on the war. It's on any serious issue where political candidates do not want to be affiliated with the poor, even unintended, consequences of failures in policies that they have advocated.

Noone is taking responsibility. Everyone is too scared of the consequences to pony up. Which is quite natural and common. It just would probably be better if we owned up for that more honestly and stopped trying to ignore and romanticize our more repressive efforts like they have been more effective at facilitating that kind of responsibility than they really have.

And since government has been the center of our contemporary obsession with might making right in liberal democratic societies - where such a notion is rebuked in our cultural histories - it seems appropriate to note that the major political leaders seem not nearly adequately concerned with their own responsibility in the failures of either this governing philosophy and approach nor with any of the policies they advocate. Democracy offers us defense in such situations, giving us an opportunity to not let such bad governance get worse. But it also offers us proactive opportunities, as well, to think, express, criticize, and articulate more openly, freely, and responsibly better ideas of life and governance that might tackle our problems more effectively.

Barack Obama is being beseiged, unfairly, for doing just that, right now, in this Democratic race. I don't even agree with all of his thinking. But I like the fact that he is doing it openly and I find the cowardice of Hillary Clinton's propensity to keep cards conveniently close to her chest so that she never has to either be out of step with the electorate nor challenge people to think more or better with better ideas and more honest engagement to tackle problems like the war in Iraq and our military and political efforts to combat terrorism unworthy of Presidential leadership.

But what I find most distasteful about this period is that everyone wants someone else to take responsibility. But noone models how to do that themselves. And then we all say, "This is how the world is supposed to be."

And noone takes responsibility.

I'm getting better at it and I regularly take public responsibility insofar as I feel safe to do so. But the buck can't stop with us, for real, until we create a climate that makes it more likely for responsibility to be taken and less likely for people to perpetually shift out of it.

Perhaps we don't really care whether we're successful in this effort or not. Or, more likely, we are far too satisfied and complacent with our failures and own mistaken thinking about such issues that we give into our jaded notions that such cynicism is the nature of reality of human affairs rather than the consequence of our failures.

But the failures will persist until we take responsibility for them. And "the buck stops here" will always be a political fable we tell our children to make them proud to be an American but that we persistently fail to provide in our example as long as we ignore the reaping of the failure that more forceful and aggressive efforts sow.

For now, the buck stops elsewhere. And it will continue to do so as long as no-one takes responsibility for our failed logic and aggressive policies.

Love,
Ben

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