The Editor's Desk

My editorial for Tuesday’s paper about freedom, Independence Day and Iraq, will be posted online Monday afternoon. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re now putting much of our content up live on the Web site the evening prior to the paper’s publication, so you don’t have to wait to read tomorrow’s news.

Anyway, back at the subject at hand: I find it extremely difficult to write editorials about Iraq. I seem to be caught up with some sort of obsession to present new ideas and views about our involvement there, which is pretty silly, as everybody has their opinions and there’s very little new insight to be had.

I come to many of my moral and ethical conclusions by an interestingly selfish way: I put myself in the situation and ask myself not just what I would do, but what I would accept and how it would have an impact on me if I actually had to face the consequences of my conclusions.

For example, I’m against capital punishment not for some overly abstract reason, but something very simple — I don’t want to be executed. Logic would dictate that I could avoid execution by not murdering anybody. This is true. But the nature of our justice system is not omniscient. I asked myself, “If I , as a completely innocent man, were convicted of first degree murder, but logically accept the nature of our justice system and its flaws, what is the harshest punishment I would accept?” I would accept life in prison. Horrible as it may be, there is a possibility that my innocence could later be proven and I would be freed. It’s an imperfect solution to a problem that has no perfect solution. I would not accept execution, because it’s not reversible. And so, extending the logic, I could not accept execution for anybody. If we had an omniscient justice society and knew with 100 percent certainty who was guilty or innocent of crimes, I probably would have no objections to the death penalty.

This leads to the discussion of the war. I’m in the situation where I’ve actually talked to family members and friends who have lost loved ones in the war. I ended up reporting Fort Irwin’s very first casualty in Iraq, Staff Sgt. Joseph E. Robsky, back in 2003. It’s difficult to keep an abstract, academic position about the war when you talk to both the supporters and opponents of the war who have been personally affected by it, unless you choose to be a myopic jerk, as some have.

I was uncomfortable with the way some opposition of the war had been approached, even though I agree that we shouldn’t be there any longer (I say “any longer” because I never could decide one way or the other about the invasion in the first place. I wimped out there). There is a heavy emphasis of supporting the troops, regardless. But what does that mean?

Ultimately when I formulated my attitude about the military’s involvement in Iraq, here’s what I imagined: I don’t know what it’s like to be in the military; I do know, however, what it’s like to be in charge and be expected to produce results.

Let’s say, by way of example, the Desert Dispatch went out of business. (We’re not — don’t worry). It may well not have been my fault. There may have been things about the environment here I could not control. Maybe it was inevitable that the Desert Dispatch would have gone out of business, regardless of who was in charge.

However, there would be a part of me that would I always feel like I was responsible. Nobody would be able to convince me otherwise. It’s the nature of leadership.

I projected that sense of responsibility onto a battlefield where people’s lives hang at stake. Now the sensitivity makes more sense to me. The resistance to pulling out is more understandable. That is a huge psychological weight to bear, much more than that of some failed business. And the same guilt follows — it would be very hard to convince these men and women that they don’t bear some sort of responsibility for a collapse in Iraq, even if you could prove there was nothing they could have done to stop it.

So that projection serves as the basis of my argument against involvement in Iraq. We made our troops ultimately responsible for something for which they should not be responsible — the direction, fate, and leadership of a nation. They are not capable of taking on this challenge, not because of a deficiency on their part, but because nobody, except the citizens of Iraq, has the power to succeed at this task.

Sadly, because of the way this has conflict has been managed, there are going to be thousands of American men and women who feel guilt and responsibility over something that went well beyond what we should expect of them.