Waiting for History

I would love to say something insightful (or even inciteful) and profound about the whole Najaf Al Sadr holy shrine of Imam Ali engagement, but the truth is I have no idea whether it has been handled brilliantly or badly. In order to say anything intelligent about it I would have to be, not only a military expert, but an expert on all the ins and outs of Iraqi Shiite politics, and knowledgeable about the psychology and relative strength of all of the competing and cooperating Iraqi subcultures. People with these qualifications may exist, but I’m not aware of any. I’m not sure that anyone really knows for sure if things are going well or badly for the U.S. in Iraq. We’re there. We’re doing the best we can. And only time will tell whether it was a bold, brilliant, noble endeavor, or a big mistake. I and others are betting on the former. Many are betting on the latter. None of us knows for sure.

I used to hate it, back in the day, when supporters of the war in Viet Nam said that the government had information that we, the protesters, did not have, and that we therefore just had to trust our leaders. Of course that notion can be abused if carried too far, but, generally speaking, it really is true. We vote for who we think will do the best job of managing the war, and then we can only hope and pray that they know what they’re doing. When I look back on Viet Nam, especially after reading McNamara’s mind-boggling account of the high level decision making process, I am forced to conclude that, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the war, we, the protesters were extraordinarily ignorant about how and why it was being conducted, and about the character and intelligence of those who were conducting it, both in Washington and in Hanoi. To the extent that we were right, it was mostly because a stopped clock is right twice a day.

On the other hand, the competent, dedicated, intelligent, decent men who were in charge, were incredibly ignorant about the history, culture, politics, and psychology of both our friends and enemies in Viet Nam. And they were inextricably, albeit with good reason, bound to see everything through the lens of the cold war. As we can see from the current revival of the Viet Nam debate, history has not yet, even after 35 years, rendered its judgment. But I think it’s safe to say, that mistakes were made, by all of the parties.

The Democratic and Republican primary voters have determined that we get to choose between John Kerry and George Bush to lead us in the war against Islamic fascism for the next four years. All we really have to go on is a personal subjective sense of who these men are, based on their records and how they present themselves in public. All of the strongly held opinions about whether Iraq is a quagmire or a brilliant success are, likewise, unverifiable except by our personal subjective sense of the honesty, knowledge, and intelligence of the men and women expressing them. Unfortunately, these judgments about elected officials and the punditry, are often determined more by habitual ideology, than by an unfettered assessment of reality.

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