[Peace-discuss] Wrong reasons

[John W.]

At 11:38 PM 7/21/2007, you wrote:

>I don't quite agree, John, that my barber has changed her mind for the 
>wrong reasons. We must all make the best decisions we can given the 
>constraints of what we know and understand. Inside of those constraints, 
>she made the decision for the right reasons.

Pshaw.


>When I speak to folks on the right, one point I try to make is that, even 
>if one believed that the invasion of Iraq was correct, one must also ask 
>if we had the means to carry out what we intended. Because if we did not, 
>all the death and destruction would be for nothing, and would be an 
>enormous evil. This is a separate argument from whether we were right to 
>invade, and it is valid and important.
>
>Bob
>
><mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net

Of course it's separate and valid and important.  But what "means" are you 
talking about?  Financial?  Military?  Psychological?  How do you get your 
compadres on the right to agree with you on the means you're talking 
about?  And how do you go about calculating the cost?

And what exactly did we intend in Iraq?  The Bush administration kept 
changing the story.  As fast as one lie was exposed, they came up with a 
new one.  No one in said administration heeded the myriad lessons of history.

I'll never forget being in Steak and Shake on S. Neil one day when Tim 
Johnson came in, going around and shaking hands.  (I'm sure I've already 
told this story on peace-discuss.)   He had just been elected U.S. 
representative for the first time, and Clinton had just presented America 
(supposedly) with a balanced budget - no deficit.  I said to Tim, "Tim, I'm 
not exactly convinced there's no longer a deficit.  But if that is indeed 
the case, before you go giving tax breaks to the rich, you need to shore up 
Social Security and Medicare, and start repairing America's infrastructure, 
and begin paying down the national debt."  "We can do it all!" Tim 
said.  The more I politely disagreed, the louder Tim shouted, right there 
in Steak and Shake, "WE CAN DO IT ALL, I TELL YOU!!!"  How do you reason 
with a cretin like that?  In what way is he - our elected representative in 
Congress, for Christ's sake - counting the cost?

I'll also never forget, following the fall of the USSR, when Professor 
Francis Fukiyama wrote, to great acclaim, "The End of History".  Democracy 
and free-market capitalism (which he conflates) had triumphed, he asserted, 
for all time.  How do you reason with someone like that?  How do you 
prevent history - which has in fact not ended, since it's like the law of 
gravity - from repeating itself?

How do you keep your barber and your janitor from believing the nonsense 
propagated by the Tim Johnsons and the Francis Fukiyamas of the world?



>At 03:26 PM 7/20/2007, Bob Illyes wrote:
>
> >I just had an interesting conversation with my barber that I'd like to
> >relate. She's Republican, a strong supporter of the military, and from a
> >military family. Her son returned safely from Iraq. She has a relative
> >there now. I always talk to her about Iraq and about the corruption
> >surrounding the administration. I try to do it without ideology, since
> >doing otherwise would annoy her so much that it would prevent communication.
> >
> >She has finally turned against our actions in Iraq. "Too many kids are
> >dying." she said, "too many fathers and mothers." She thinks that our
> >effort in Iraq has been so mismanaged that there is no way to save the
> >situation. She also said that Air Force people were currently being
> >transferred to the Army to bolster it.
> >
> >This is, of course, the tip of the iceberg. Congress needs to take a
> >closer look at opinion outside of the beltway. There is no hope for the
> >neocons in the administration, of course, so they should continue to study
> >their navels.
> >
> >We'll have to wait a while for my janitor to come around, but I'm sure he
> >will.
>
>
>If your janitor does, though, it'll be for the wrong reasons.  It'll be for
>the same reasons that your barber expressed - that the war in Iraq has been
>"mismanaged" and that too many American soldiers are dying.  Not that the
>war was a blasphemous fiasco from the very start, and that too many Iraqis
>are also dying.  Not that our entire foreign policy is founded on lies and
>corruption.
>
>I often imagine where we'd be today if the hundreds of billions of dollars
>spent on destroying lives and property in Iraq had instead been spent on
>research into photovoltaic cells and other forms of alternative energy.
>
>John Wason
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