humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Apr 5, 3:34 am, Charles Bell wrote:
>
> It's still distorting the truth although you might be right.  I have
> mixed feelings and flip-flop on the issue. Sometimes I think he's a
> dummy  because his actions seem atrocious for both global and American
> interests to me.

There are two narratives on the left that are way off base. The first
is "9/11 was an inside job." I don't have anything to say about that
in detail because believing that automatically places one outside the
domain of rational discussion. If it were true, then it follows of
course that countlessly many things are lies. The more insidious
because more plausible line is "Bush lied us into a war." This places
the nuance of the hypocrisy in the wrong place. First, there is no
question but that both the policy establishment and the bipartisan
consensus was that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons. It did not
require anyone to lie to persuade anyone of this. It also turned out
to be surprisingly wrong (Risen has the details on what happened to
the nuclear research facilities--they were bombed by us, unknowingly),
and Iraq (the regime--I don't want to ascribe beliefs to individuals
here) thought it in its best interests to bluff that they had them, as
a deterrent. The overall pattern of evidence was thus very confusing
for outsiders and utterly misread. So the "I would've done this if you
hadn't've lied to me" part of the narrative is just false. Second, and
this is going out on a limb, there is some evidence that Dick Cheney,
inspired by Laurie Mylroie and her fans, sincerely believed that 9/11
was somehow attributable to Iraq. But the majority of people in the
policy establishment did *not* believe this. So when statements that
insinuated a connection or wishing to create an association in
people's minds between the two issues came out (though on a very
strict interpretation of what was said, the administration was very
very careful never to overtly *say* this), I'm not sure that I could
call them *lies*, since some of the people saying these things were
quite sincere. Lastly, this relates to the distortion of intelligence
issue. Cheney's pressure on the intelligence community was owing not
to his desire to see them make something up, but to his conviction
that they had failed to find the real evidence of what he thought the
real truth was: that Iraq was implicated in 9/11. In terms of the
conduct, the problem was not deceit, but true-believer-ism.

Where I think the "lied us into a war" line developed legs was (1) the
UN strategy appeared hypocritical, and I think that it's hard to see
it any other way. The administration was committed to going to war
with Iraq, and the idea that it was seeking a solution to a problem in
good faith, and would turn to war only as a last resort, was purely
political. I think this impression is so overwhelming that it *has*
tarred the administration with the smudge of disingenuousness, and
this *fair* characterization gets inflated and conflated with all the
honest but vast *mistakes*; (2) I don't doubt that those who thought
invading Iraq was necessary saw 9/11 as a political *opportunity* to
be exploited.

The policy was Cheney's and his judgment was seriously impaired by the
Mylroie material and its backers. The execution was Rumsfeld, and his
competence was seriously impaired by his conviction that he needed to
assert his bureaucratic authority over the Pentagon and prosecute a
war on waste and Old Age thinking *while* *we* *were* *at* *war*. You
don't drydock the boat for repairs... at sea. The responsibility was
Bush's, who hired the first out of insecurity about his own readiness
to administer, and who hired the second over the objections of his
father... to show his father who was boss.

Lesson: vote character.