Getting honest with ourselves

Here's the bottom-line on this situation.

Documents on US-Lybian ties outrage IRA victims

I am deeply saddened by the fate of the victims of the Lockerbie terrorist bombing. What that man and the terrorists involved did was wrong and what happened to those people is tragic. Similarly, I am very sad for the people killed by the Irish Republic Army during that long and tragic conflict referenced in this most recent opportunity for some people to express outrage. Terrorism, in all of its forms, is wrong. And no person should have to live in fear of it.

But here's the no bullshit version of this situation.

If you do not want to be the more decent human being and let this man or Susan Atkins or anyone else go die in peace, even with their past inexcusable behavior, so be it.

But stop pretending that you are being the better person, for goodness fucking sakes.

You aren't. Those people who are acting out of compassion are.

If you can't bring yourself to be the better person. So be it. Keep it to yourself. And stop pretending that you are being a better person than you really are.

If you do not want to be a better person, make that choice and live with it. Namely, live with the fact that people who do choose to be the better person do not treat you or your reactions as better than they are.

Why in the world we are confusing the actions of those who are being better people with the reactions of people who openly and avowedly are not, I have not the faintest clue.

Don't be the better person. So be it. But noone needs to pretend like you are when you so clearly are not. And stop trying to bully and pressure people who are trying to do the right thing from doing so.

Go home and tell your wife and kids about why you can't bring yourself to be the better person. And if you're genuinely struggling with that fact and honestly trying to be the better person, that I'm right there with you and will support you the whole way.

But, in the case of so many folks acting like their outrage should be treated more seriously than it should, if you are really not interested in being a better person but just pretending that the reactions of someone who is not interested in being better should be given privilege over the actions of someone who really is being a better person, tell it to your wife and kids and stop acting like the world owes your baser instincts to be pandered to just because you don't wanna.

So you don't. Humble thyself. And learn to appreciate the examples of people who are being better people and doing the right thing.

And if looking in the mirror is too difficult for you to manage at this very moment, then find another time. But, for goodness sakes, stop acting like you really are being better than people who really are trying to do the right thing.

Go get honest with yourself. Stop bullying. And stop acting like a jackass is really the same thing as being a better man. Or woman. Or whatever may suit your fancy.

Some people have a lot of fucking gall. Be nice if that could be directed toward something worthy.

Real strength

Former U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has the strongest insider reflection on the Afghan and Iraq wars 8 years on that I have read to date. This is a must read for anyone concerned with these wars and what they mean for America.

Eight Years On: A diplomat's perspective on the post-9/11 world

"Americans tend to want to identify a problem, fix it, and then move on. Sometimes this works. Often it does not. Of course, imposing ourselves on hostile or chaotic societies is no solution either. The perceived arrogance and ignorance of overbearing powers can create new narratives of humiliation that will feed calls for vengeance centuries from now. What's needed in dealing with this world is a combination of understanding, persistence, and strategic patience to a degree that Americans, traditionally, have found hard to muster.

We have learned much since September 11, 2001, but we are still learning this lesson. As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, with U.S. casualties rising and the Taliban revived, public opinion is turning against what was always, compared with Iraq, our 'good war.' No one, least of all me, has an easy fix to propose. But over the last eight years I was intimately involved with our country's effort to manage its relationship with the Middle East and South Asia. I know that success only comes from a solid, sustained commitment of resources and attention."

I highly recommend this article in its entirety and the video about Ryan Crocker and his long career efforts to end terrorism at the top of the first page of that story. Lots to learn in this column. And much that Ryan clearly has learned from his efforts over the last 8 years.

Ryan is right. Patience is the virtue we are in most need of in our efforts to make us safer, these days. As he says well, building confidence is a long process. Anything solid is built over time.

Patience is not a virtue I come by easily, always, is the truth. But it is that quality that we need, right now. Aggression is a more natural instinct. It is easier to come to anger and react against our hurt or our fear than it is to quiet the heart and bring a calmer, more dispassionate, more thoughtful consideration to our efforts. I am guilty of that former too often to recall. It is likely responsible for my most serious failures in life, is the truth. But much experience and reflection has taught me that it is better to acknowledge that failure than to pretend that it has served me better than it has.

America has failed often over this period. Many Americans would like to believe that it is President Bush who is responsible for their failures. But that wouldn't be honest. President Bush is responsible for his own failures. But we are also responsible for our own.

And the truth is that the aggression that has consumed America in the last 10 years in lieu of the patience and confidence-building that Ryan Crocker describes in this piece is the fault of most Americans. The truth is that the aggression that came to characterize the foreign policy efforts of the Bush Administration and has now come to characterize the domestic policy efforts of the Obama Administration is something that Americans have clamored for loudly in the last 10 years. And no matter how much it fails, we clamor for more.

It is exactly those instincts that led to the rise of Adolph Hitler. A scared, defeated, and desperate population turned to Hitler to discipline a nation and to use any and all means necessary, namely aggression, to force out of existence their problems and the supposed conspirators against their safety and prosperity.

It is one long dark, demented fantasy about aggression and power and what it could and could not do to make people and a nation strong.

And the truth is that America has been indulging a similar fantasy for the last 10 years, but with the thankful benefit of a mature democracy, with divided government, separation of powers, diverse political parties and peoples to check the abuses of power of their counterparts, and, most importantly, the freedom to speak out, to criticize, to call into question, to organize and protest, and to otherwise express their displeasure with this obsession with power among competing players. And we've enjoyed the freedom to go on living our lives while this national drama takes place without having to worry, as the citizens of Germany did, that this fantasy would become our own unintended nightmare.

It is people like Ryan Crocker, and not people like Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il, Paul Hill or Malcolm X, or any of the various representatives of the fantasies of power that Americans and peoples around the world have indulged, that represent real strength.

Real strength is not found in bullying our neighbors into submission. Real strength is the patience in engaging one another thoughtfully and honestly about differences and respecting the consciences and choices of our neighbors. Real strength is having faith in our capacity to work together and, in its fullest expression, to love one another, rather than giving into the temptation that aggression offers. As someone who has been given to that temptation, I understand its appeal. I also understand, with much experience, its failure to resolve what thoughtfulness and strong relationships and building confidence in ourselves and one another are better able.

To do so freely is what most people crave, I believe. To not be bullied into that position is what most people want in their deepest hearts, is my belief. If there is any one best explanation for the fact that younger generations seek more freedom than their parents' generation perpetually thinks is good for them or likely to lead in better directions, this is it, I think. To make that possible will involve much love and forgiveness, patience and understanding and letting go of our propensity to try to substitute aggression for trust in our relationships. It is a long and complex lesson that I have confidence that we are learning and will learn, slowly, patiently, with time. Myself included.

And that ability to make choices, even bad ones, and learn from them is what makes America, all liberal democracies, and homo sapiens, as a species, great. There is no other species on the planet that learns as well or as often as homo sapiens. It is a very special feature of our existence as human beings. It is the most special feature of our existence.

It would serve us better, I believe, to appreciate what all that learning has to offer.

Making the free world such a remarkable place to live

Matthew Continetti has an excellent description of the relationship that most Americans, as reflected in the poll numbers and is consistent with my own personal experience, are feeling toward their government, right now. And for good reason.

People power: A wake-up call for America's political elites

"Congress returns this week, and here's hoping that its members, Democrats in particular, learned a little something from this summer's town hall meetings. The lesson to be drawn from these occasionally raucous events is that America is on the verge of--or already knee-deep in--one of those moments that periodically roil the country and rearrange our preconceived notions about public life. And not a moment too soon.

Popular outbursts serve as a check on, and corrective to, our elites' behavior. The people know things the elites forget or don't want to remember. The political class is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around. As Gerald Ford said after assuming the presidency on August 9, 1974, 'Here the people rule.'

For a while now, the message from Washington has been that we know what's good for the public, whether the public likes it or not. One after another, both parties have attempted to foist a series of grand reforms on a skeptical populace--in areas ranging from Social Security and immigration to energy and health care. Politicians have made decisions affecting millions of lives without accountability and oversight. The upshot has been more government, more debt, and--coming soon to a 1040 form near you--more taxes. No wonder the public is anxious.

It should hardly come as a surprise that the public views American elites with suspicion and disdain. Ordinary Americans have a point when they assign blame for the current mess to Wall Street CEOs, federal regulators, corrupt politicians, and gullible reporters. When Americans look at the economic landscape, they see dismal growth, high unemployment, and large deficits. But when they listen to the president and Congress, they hear that 'stimulus'--borrowing ever more from tomorrow to spend today--will work like some kind of magic cure. They hear that this perilous moment is the time to build a 'new foundation' with even more expenditures and taxes through 'cap-and-trade' and Obamacare. It's as if spending and debt are no problem; as if it's fine that the federal government--which failed in its fundamental duties to build guardrails for the financial system--owns large chunks of that system; as if the political, financial, and think-tank elites have proven themselves worthy of the public's trust."

The truth is that many political folks are also wrapped up in a political moment that ordinary citizens have clamored for, as much as they are, rightly, I believe, clamoring against it, today. It's a classic case of "Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it." Watching this period, I can see how despotism maintains itself. Public support for power to find magical solutions to all kinds of problems is not terribly difficult to come by, apparently. People tend to be seriously naive about power and what it can do and what it can't do, is my experience. The hard part is undoing what has been done. And the lucky thing about a democracy is that we can openly challenge arrangements that limit our say over our own lives. And we do, thankfully. As much as we get it wrong.

The truth is that Americans have as much responsibility in this era of romance with big government as much as their representatives. They are both wrong, I am convinced, that power can do the things they want done absent the consent and commitment of ordinary folks and that it doesn't frustrate the best efforts, in the process. That's the beauty of a democracy. Even when noone wants to take responsibility for their mistakes in this or any matter, there is always someone to check them and another opportunity to turn the ship around.

One thing is for sure. Political elites and most Americans need to get straight what many Americans have been getting straight this past summer. We do need to help one another when we need it. And we do need to be willing to show courage when others need it.

But, to do so, we cannot wait for a paternal government to force us or one another to make those things happen. We must be freely responsible for our own lives, first, and to build the strength necessary to share that strength with others. And that cannot happen when we are persistently looking to the goverment to build that strength for us and when we are the only ones who can do that for ourselves, in our lives, and it cannot happen when we are perpetually taking weaker routes and pretending that we are being stronger than we are.

Real strength comes from within. Not from the largesse of government. Not from defeating an opponent. Not from feigning superiority in any matter to compensate for self-doubt about where strength more real might lie.

Real strength is the kind that we build for ourselves and from within ourselves that does good because it is the right thing to do, not because someone else or something else is looking over our shoulders or compelling our will. Especially when that someone or something else might be and often is wrong. With real strength comes the humility to acknowledge that you might be wrong, which leaves you more humble in the use of power over the lives of others, not more emboldened. Those who romanticize power as an elixir to fix all problems are engaging in fantasy and conceit about their abilities and the abilities of power to do more than it can. They are not strong, no matter how much they pretend to be so. And the results of their efforts have failed in spades, absent the voluntary efforts of peoples, like the American people, to fulfill worthy visions out of a sense of honest commitment to the needs of others. To pretend otherwise is to demean those efforts. And, sadly, that is exactly what we have been doing for the last 10 years, in particular. But, really, for much of humanity's history.

Freedom is the heart of liberal values for a reason. Because it is the value that best respects the choices and self-determination of all people more honestly.

And no amount of cynicism about our capacity to manipulate others for our own more self-centered purposes will ever compensate for that genuine commitment that made America and all liberal democracies great, no government oversight necessary. Government has limited purposes it does well. We have assigned it responsibilities that it cannot sustain that we need to engage in more thoughtful discussion about how they might be maintained in a more sustainable and financially and otherwise healthy fashion. Most of the major liberal democratic governments have had serious problems financing these worthy efforts, as much as their and our insatiable appetites. All of them will need to face this fact if we are to build programs of real strength to genuinely care for our neighbors in need.

But, first and foremost, Americans and others need to look into themselves and ask themselves what they need to be doing to help build the strengths necessary to share with their family, friends, and neighbors before they look to government to provide those things for them.

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," was as good a way of putting that as any.

That is the spirit Americans and the world are missing, today, as we rush to care for the needs of others but fail to consider the benefits and the necessity of expecting people to contribute their own efforts to guarantee more safe, healthy, well educated, financially secure, freely chosen and responsible lives for everyone. Ordinary Americans, ordinary Iraqis, ordinary Afghanis and ordinary peoples around the world find themselves in that same position, with more or less freedom to do that successfully being the most important distinction between their existences.

If despotism, terrorism, and tyranical forces of all kinds are to ever end, we will all need to end our fantasies of power swooping in to fix our problems that only our own efforts and the efforts of friends and neighbors can ever finally resolve. That kind of confidence and the efforts that come with it are our only hope for the kind of solutions we are looking for, if we will only offer them up.

And that world is one we can and will rightly be proud that we created for our children. Because it is that world, alone, that will allow them to live safely and freely to pursue the kinds of ambitions that make the free world such a remarkable place to live.