Having had a couple of days to reflect on my discussion with Senator X - I have a couple of quick impressions.
First - in the case of what percent of Iraqi's no longer want the US in Iraq. Senator X has interviewed people - but the witness before Congress lives there everyday, and was quite hesitant to provide an answer to the question of our popularity when asked. As well, polls indicated the numbers ARE what the witness reflected. Why would Senator X both not be aware of the numbers, and choose to not believe them?
Second, X didn't know the position widely reported in the press that the Administration is seeking a long-term presence deal with some pretty dubious authority granted to US troops, and didn't support that authority - or the conclusion of a treaty without Congressional approval. Now, either Senator X just isn't reading the news (since a story quoting Al Maliki said THAT SAME DAY - that Al Maliki felt the US demands violated his nation's sovereignty, or X isn't being told the truth, or X wasn't being honest when he said he thought the deal only protected the rights of US troops to defend themselves). I choose A (that he didn't know).
Senator X is, by comparison, a more centrist Republican, but that's not very center - he's maybe a 7 on a scale of 1 to 100 in political tilt (0 being Rush Limbaugh, 100 being Louis Farrakhan), and I'm glad that he feels any treaty must be approved by Congress and must maintain Iraqi sovereignty, but his stance seems to be consistent with all too many positions we hear from the right.
Ignore the testimony of experts, and ignore the widely reported reality of the conduct of this administration. In short, ignore facts which aren't convenient, and find your own (his interviews of Iraqis - for example). While I respect the Senator's decency in the discussion, it starkly illustrates the vast gap between how good policy decisions are made, and how the right has chosen to make the facts fit the policy. I could not for a moment consider supporting someone who would put their own 'findings' ahead of the widely reported and documented realities. Perhaps the issue in that case isn't the 'media', but instead the colorized, and slanted nature X's supporters use to 'seek' the truth. In short, you can find facts to support anything, and that tendency is what lead us into Iraq, and into a four year calamity, in the first place.
"I could not for a moment consider supporting someone who would put their own 'findings' ahead of the widely reported and documented realities."
ReplyDeleteThis has been a problem in our country for a long, long time--we suffer from a sort of cognitive dissonance in that we must know where and when we are making "facts" up but rather oddly refuse to deviate from our rather fantasy-laden view of the world.
We're better than that, so let's act like it.
It's time to deal with reality, and stop fantasizing like children. Our young folks (and others) are dying because of our Hardy Boys view of the world.
My proposition is for the U.S. government to encourage university students to study a full year in a foreign country through a tuition-payment program beneficial to the students. This will give them the impetus to build connections with people worldwide, and travel widely.
I spent a full summer in Germany when I was fourteen. That was decades ago, and I have since lived and worked in the U.K. and elsewhere, and know people around the world.
It's not rocket science--get the kids out of The States for a considerable length of time, and get them to live with locals in other countries (as opposed to living with other Americans), and the same thing will happen to them.
They will come back to the U.S. as smarter, more worldly people. They will make fine American leaders, indeed, as opposed to what we have now--intelligent but insular folks as leaders, groping blindly through foreign affairs as one would in the pitch dark of night.
I agree entirely.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, the Senator simply didn't accept the testimony of someone friendly to his cause - and instead deferred to his own 'evidence'. It's highly reminiscent of Cheney's decision to ignore better intelligence, and go with the opinions of 'cuverball' and Chalabi.