Commenting about the war
July 2nd, 2007, 4:26 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Scott Shackford
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.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
From time immemorial, non-suicidal humans have pondered the prudence of sacrificing a valuable asset, namely one’s own life or others’, to things like ideas, perceived threats, or seemingly justifiable retribution. Lincoln, the President with the most unfortunate decision to make in U.S. History, and Congress were painfully aware of these truisms. Both prior and subsequent leaders and legislatures have had to deal with substantially the same decisions with more or less real impact on human lives depending on their, and the American publics’, level of commitment to a course of action.
Like you, I am enamored of living, and fervently hope that everyone will respect my love of life by not depriving me of it, but I also realize that there are some individuals or groups that don’t share my selfish regard for my own existence or share the eternal hopes of my fellows in their earnest pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. But if I or anyone else should do something so execrable that life is justifiably forfeit, or we decide that defense of our comrades or beliefs is worth the risk, I fervently hope that my fellows will in the one case have the courage to implement the court’s judgment against the transgressor, and in the second allow us the dignity of carrying our decision to its ultimate conclusion, whatever that may be.
Having said that, I must admit categorically that I do not share your dislike for capital punishment. This does not imply that I have somewhat less respect for human life, to the contrary. It implies that I have immensely more respect for the lives of the innocent victims than those who would put perpetrators back on the streets, or support them ad infinitum behind bars for what I perceive as purely emotional reasons because, from substantial past experience, there is little reason to suspect that the execution of one non-political criminal will have any negative effect on the lives or rights of the law-abiding, or the frequency of similar crimes.
You may now be seeing where I am going here. I have enthusiastically supported the decisions of our leaders and jurists that have made difficult decisions affecting the lives and liberties of our citizens, regardless of party affiliation, and I will probably continue to do so; not that I have not had considerable reservations that the impact of their decisions might adversely affect the nation or the lives of its citizens. In my personal estimation, the cost was justifiable.
Even though I was fortunate to go into the service between the Korean War and the Vietnam War, I ultimately ended up in the Vietnam War, where I infrequently experienced a great deal of fear along with being in charge and expecting results. But much of my service was during the relatively peaceful lacuna between wars. At that time the world, except for that perennial disease called the Middle East, was comparatively calm. Of course the Cold War was in full swing but, in retrospect, and as an expert Monday morning quarterback, we were obviously in less danger of the global nuclear disaster than predicted by the faint of heart, and significantly more danger of being attacked by fanatical Islamo-fascists promising annihilation to western civilization as worshippers of the Great Satan. Communism for all its travesties promised to destroy capitalism from within, not necessarily with weapons of mass destruction. We are now faced with the reestablishment of the Caliphate, which has proven to be a more potent clear and present danger to the West, so far having far less genocidal success than communism, but having far greater potential in the long term.
I consider the decision to go to war with Iraq no less important than any other just war that we have fought, and neither do the great majority of active individual American service men and women. From polls taken at the time of the invasion, the overwhelming majority of the American people (minor exceptions included peace activists, chronic conspiracy theorists and other eccentrics) either justifiably believed that the threat from Saddam Hussein was real or that the Arabs needed a wake-up call, call that vengeance, because of 9-11. The cries of the meek from the wilderness were ignored and reasonably so at the time. Now the American people, are faced with the consequences of their decisions and want a do-over. They are rationalizing that it was someone else’s fault, who knows who, that they made the decision to invade Iraq. Oh yes, it was W’s fault not the fault of Congress who supported the decision and then didn’t.
But just like hitting the ball into the rough, you’d better have the skill to get to the green, or give it up, and that is where we are today. But the consequences of a bad decision are no less serious than they were the day we invaded Iraq with the overwhelming support of the fickle and attention deficient American public.
Friends, we blow this one and it will make the fall from grace, and prestige, following Vietnam look like a minor setback, not to mention that it will amplify the power of terrorists and political blackmailers like North Korea to a fantastic degree. We stayed the course in Korea, can Iraq be any less significant. If the American public are losing their taste for war, let’s become isolationist after we prove to the world that we are what we stand for, justice and freedom, rather than weakness and appeasement. Our enemies, both within and without the Middle East are counting on the latter.