If you are in charge of the Nation’s defense, you will always tend to overestimate an enemy threat, because the price of overestimating the threat is so much lower than the price of underestimating it. You have to err on the side of exaggerating the threat, because you can’t be sure. You can only approximate. And so it is likely that the hotlist of threats, Al Qaeda, Iran, North Korea, the “insurgents”, are all being exaggerated to some extent by the administration. Otherwise they would not be doing their job. Once the cold war was over, it became clear that we had consistently overestimated the Soviet Union, and yet that all worked out pretty well. Better safe than sorry. If, however, the threats are wildly exaggerated, you wind up with a lot of cures that are worse than the diseases. And then there are the threats that are not talked about by the government, because they aren’t ready to deal with them yet, such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Pakistan.
This, it seems to me, is a way of framing the current national argument about the war. Is the threat real? Or is it wildly exaggerated? All I know is what I read in the papers. And the blogs. I read a lot of both, but of course I know next to nothing about the reality of these threats. I have no direct experience, and hardly any hard data. Just a lot of reporting and analysis from people I don’t know. I have no doubt that the govenment knows a great deal more than I do. But, ignorant as I am, I do believe that it is possible for a normally intelligent person who makes the effort, to get a sense of what is happening, by cross-referencing many disparate sources of information.
My sense of it is that the threats are real, and they are being moderately exaggerated by the administration. I think the overestimation has to do with our assumptions about the stability and competence and resources of Al Qaeda, Iran, North Korea, and the Iraqi insurgency. It looks to me like these guys, like the Soviet Union before them, are falling apart faster than we give them credit for. I think the same is true of China, where I do have a smidgen of experience. I doubt very much that the current Chinese regime will be around 20 years from now, or even 10, and I’m not at all sure that China will still be one unified nation. Similarly with Iran and North Korea. None of which means that we should adopt a less aggressive foreign policy. I wish we were more aggressive. But it should give us confidence in our ability to achieve victories on all of these fronts. And it does mean that sometimes the right thing to do is to wait, as we are currently doing with Iran and North Korea and a number of other hotspots.
As voters, we can’t really know the nature and severity of the threats we face. Nor do we get to know what steps our government is taking behind the scenes, the New York Times notwithstanding. When it’s election time, we just have to guess what’s what, and choose among candidates, all of whom are saying lots of things they don’t really mean. Events will eventually resolve the argument about the war. Here is the political landscape as I see it:
If the Democrats win in 2006 and 2008 and regain control of the government, and then there is a terrorist attack in the U.S., anywhere close to the level of 9/11, the Democratic Party is through as a significant force in American politics.
If the Republicans win in 2006 and 2008 and maintain control of the government, and then there is a terrorist attack in the U.S., anywhere close to the level of 9/11, the Democratic Party is still through as a significant force in American politics.
If either party wins in 2006 and 2008 and there are no terrorist attacks in the U.S. during the next six years, the Democrats will be in very good shape.
It’s not about national health care. it’s not about the right to gay marriage. It’s not about the right to an abortion. It’s not about global warming. It is all about the misnamed war on terror. Is there one, or is it a grossly exaggerated ploy that has nothing to do with Iraq? The answer to that question will determine the fate of the Democratic Party. As weasely as the Democrats have been on the war, their position is nevertheless pretty clear. There is no war, really. There is only George W. Bush and the totalitarian Republican Party playing on the fears of the American people. Thank the Lord, or whatever, that the New York Times is exposing the nefarious Republican schemes to subvert the bill of rights. The Republican position is even more clear. We are at war. We are facing serious threats on many fronts. And the Democrats and the mainstream media are undermining the war effort for partisan political reasons. How it all plays out in the real world will determine who wins this argument, and will determine the political future of the two major political parties.