NYT Letter With Which I Regretfully Must Agree
Neglected to link to this when it appeared, so I'll just have to type it all in:
From the NYT 6/7/2005:
To the Editor:
Thomas Friedman says liberals "deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed." I am, admittedly, part of that faction, and I have no doubt that there are a lot more people in this country like me. But I dare say that there are more like us, even a majority, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
We're fighting this sentiment as much as we're fighting the insurgency itself. If America were led by a more diplomatic, reasonable, respectful administration, one that was a little less arrogant and contentious, maybe we wouldn't have to win an image war as well as the war on the ground."
Mike Polikoff,
Evanston, Ill., June 15, 2005"
Hear, hear, Mike.
I'm fighting these sentiments in myself much of the time. If I could flip a magical Iraq war switch with 'succeed' and 'fail' settings, I'd flip it to 'succeed.' But that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes realize that deep down I'm sort of hoping that they'll fail. I believe that they are bad and not terribly bright people who in essence stole the election of 2000 and deceived the American public into an ill-advised war that undermined our efforts against al Qaeda. I can't help but hope with part of my heart that they get what they deserve. Then, reflecting on that and recognizing what that means for so many innocent people, I hate myself for having such feelings. But it would be dishonest to deny that they are there. And, like Mr. Polikoff, I know that many, many other people feel like I do--they, too, would flip the switch to 'succeed', but they have the other feelings, too.
So, once again, I think Friedman is right about something important.
I've been meaning to write about this for a long time, but it's a complicated and embarrassing subject. Quickly, though, I'll say this much: this whole Iraq adventure has been rather like watching a good friend make a series of stupid and immoral decisions. In the end, you wouldn't want him to suffer irrevocable tragedy...but part of you can't help being so mad at and disappointed in him that you feel some weird sense of satisfaction when you contemplate him reaping what he has so foolishly sown. Especially when you've been giving him good advice all along, and he's been not only assiduously ignoring it but making the most outlandish accusations against you for trying to convince him to do the right thing.
None of this is particularly pretty, but note that conservatives feel the same way about liberal presidents. In particular, many conservatives spent most of the Clinton presidency hoping for something--anything--to go wrong enough to bring him down. The glee in some of their voices after things went badly in Somalia was unmistakable, and it was clear that many were hoping for us to fail in the former Yugoslavia. The feelings liberals are having about Iraq are, for what it's worth, far more understandable than those.
Neglected to link to this when it appeared, so I'll just have to type it all in:
From the NYT 6/7/2005:
To the Editor:
Thomas Friedman says liberals "deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed." I am, admittedly, part of that faction, and I have no doubt that there are a lot more people in this country like me. But I dare say that there are more like us, even a majority, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
We're fighting this sentiment as much as we're fighting the insurgency itself. If America were led by a more diplomatic, reasonable, respectful administration, one that was a little less arrogant and contentious, maybe we wouldn't have to win an image war as well as the war on the ground."
Mike Polikoff,
Evanston, Ill., June 15, 2005"
Hear, hear, Mike.
I'm fighting these sentiments in myself much of the time. If I could flip a magical Iraq war switch with 'succeed' and 'fail' settings, I'd flip it to 'succeed.' But that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes realize that deep down I'm sort of hoping that they'll fail. I believe that they are bad and not terribly bright people who in essence stole the election of 2000 and deceived the American public into an ill-advised war that undermined our efforts against al Qaeda. I can't help but hope with part of my heart that they get what they deserve. Then, reflecting on that and recognizing what that means for so many innocent people, I hate myself for having such feelings. But it would be dishonest to deny that they are there. And, like Mr. Polikoff, I know that many, many other people feel like I do--they, too, would flip the switch to 'succeed', but they have the other feelings, too.
So, once again, I think Friedman is right about something important.
I've been meaning to write about this for a long time, but it's a complicated and embarrassing subject. Quickly, though, I'll say this much: this whole Iraq adventure has been rather like watching a good friend make a series of stupid and immoral decisions. In the end, you wouldn't want him to suffer irrevocable tragedy...but part of you can't help being so mad at and disappointed in him that you feel some weird sense of satisfaction when you contemplate him reaping what he has so foolishly sown. Especially when you've been giving him good advice all along, and he's been not only assiduously ignoring it but making the most outlandish accusations against you for trying to convince him to do the right thing.
None of this is particularly pretty, but note that conservatives feel the same way about liberal presidents. In particular, many conservatives spent most of the Clinton presidency hoping for something--anything--to go wrong enough to bring him down. The glee in some of their voices after things went badly in Somalia was unmistakable, and it was clear that many were hoping for us to fail in the former Yugoslavia. The feelings liberals are having about Iraq are, for what it's worth, far more understandable than those.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:05 PM
13 Comments:
That's why I enjoyed Adam Smith's other book, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments so much. Man, he really had us humans wired:
That wherever we cannot sympathize with the affections of the agent, wherever there seems to be no propriety in the motives which influenced his conduct, we are less disposed to enter into the gratitude of the person who received the benefit of his actions.
This accounts for why there seems to be so little sympathy for the continuing victimization of the Iraqi people and their pathetically hopeful purple fingers.
I think I'm both more anti-Bush and less divided re success in Iraq than you, but it seems to me you leave out the argument that it might be good for America in the long term for Bush to fail clearly enough that the christianist elements of the GOP are broken and that the American people develop a lasting revulsion for reckless, non-transparent, unchecked, divisive, emotionally manipulative, Lysenkoist, extremist governance.
Oops, to go honeymooning and on returning to respond to the top post at a favorite blog without reading beyond the next few posts is a classic dumb mistake - I see you've made exactly the above argument already.
"...the christianist elements of the GOP are broken and that the American people develop a lasting revulsion for reckless, non-transparent, unchecked, divisive, emotionally manipulative, Lysenkoist, extremist governance."
7 pejorative adjectives (and a noun and an adverb in there for good measure) in a row. My compliments.
Congratulations on your marriage, rilke. It has not diminished you.
Well, tvd, we're thinking about having kids, and the prospect of them growing up in a country weakened and divided by Bush's spendthrift and knee-jerk-partisan ways in a world made more dangerous and splintered by his arrogance and stupidity - well, seven adjectives don't do justice to my fear and anguish for them.
Rilkefan posted
"...the christianist elements of the GOP are broken and that the American people develop a lasting revulsion for reckless, non-transparent, unchecked, divisive, emotionally manipulative, Lysenkoist, extremist governance."
Seven accurate adjectives (and a noun and an adverb in there for good measure) in a row. My compliments on your succinct summation of this administration's actions in the run-up to its invasion of Iraq.
(Well, maybe not Lysenkoist in the run-up to the invasion. But, if we turn to global climate change we can find Lysenkoist.)
And, my congratulations on your marriage -- may your time together be healthy and happy.
I feel you, Rilke, but what if the christianists are right?
I'm doing enough worrying for the three of us.
But remember, we're fighting them in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them in St. Louis.
I've always wondered how the Iraqis would feel about that. Making sacrifices to keep Americans safe.
so sez The Duke of Prunes
Funny you should mention that... I just had a similar thought while driving down the road. Even if it were true that we were fighting them there so we didn't have to fight them here, it would still be wrong. It's roughly equivalent to saying "Hell, it's better to tear up Iraq and get some Iraqis killed than to risk similar death and destruction in America."
Because, of course, American lives are worth more than any other lives in the world. Perhaps because of our special national relationship with God...
What is strange is the Muslim-on-Muslim suicide bombing of innocents, which was more characteristic of places like Pakistan.
We hope that these tactics, if you can call mindless murder "tactics", are making even the Sunnis realize that al-Qaeda, et al., are the enemy of all humanity, not just the West.
It's they who are to blame, not St. Louis.
Uh, I think you may be missing the point here, t... Nobody's blaming St. Louis...
Aw, I don't miss much, WS.
What the soldier meant was that if al-Qaeders want to obliterate themselves to gain a ticket to heaven, better they present themselves to a fully-armed member of the United States Armed Forces than to public transportation in Missouri or Madrid.
Had the US/UK invaded some innocent bystander like Jordan to create a magnet for Islamicist terror, that would of course have had been unconscionable and I would agree wholeheartedly with the above, but that's not the case here.
These guys are blowing themselves up along with innocent fellow-Muslim Iraqis instead of heartland Americans. Unfortunately for humanity, they don't care which. Magnetism simply draws them to the nearest place to die.
Um, false dilemma?
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