A Chris Hitchens post worth reading for both the Funke and Nate comments:
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Back to Iraq/unknowns/lies, I agree with you that the lack of information put us in the inevitable situation of invading, and I agree that (though not necessarily the specifics) it was the right choice in the end. But as far as the lying goes (and I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I can't resist my analogy), here's how I see it went down: suppose we were out, and I said 'hey, let's go to my place for the afterparty, I have a bunch of beer,' to which you respond, 'but ben, last time I was over, I seem to remember you not really having any more beer.' So I call my roommate to check, and he says 'well, I haven't been home in a while, but last I looked there was like one warm Natty Light sitting on top of the fridge and a couple of wounded soldiers (pardon the expression) from last night. Now, there could be more, and I know beer was on the shopping list last week or the week before, but I just don't know for sure.' Then, I turn to you and say, 'I just talked to my roommate, and there is definitely beer at our place, so we should go.' 'Okay.' Now when you got to my place, and all you saw was a warm Natty and two half-drank bottles of Corona with molding limes in them, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off? And wouldn't you call what I said a lie? Then what if my response was, 'I said we had beer, and we do. I did not lie.' Not cool. I'm sure that I am exaggerating the situation a little (because a lot of what we hear about Bush's lies/not lies is rumor and speculation).
Anyway, what I am really writing about is what Hitchens says at the end of his article that we should be asking the Iraqis what they want. And I, like him, think this is a good idea. But U.S. officials must already be asking this question of the Iraqi leadership. I think the real question is why haven't we heard what they want. My intuition is that either we don't trust the answer that they have/would have given or that we don't like the answer. (I seem to remember hearing Iraqi officials stating that they want us there for the long haul, which I'm sure is something we don't want Iraq's official policy to be.)
well, i don't think your beer example isn't really a good analogy...
i'll try to rework it:
let's say we're neighbors and you've had a lot of parties before and have been asked not to have any more parties by all the rest of the neighbors.
and you say, fine, i won't have any more parties. but then you continue to stockpile beer. you get caught a couple times and say, "it's my house, i can do whatever I want." then the neighbors say, "but you said you weren't having another party!" and you say, "it's not for a party," as you roll a keg by.
then i, as your neighbor, I say, "i think he's going to throw a party. let's search his house to find the beer."
and then you say, "fine, you can search my house, but just not the refridgerator."
and we say, well, actually, we sort of need to search the fridge. and then you say no.
then we say, let's kick him out of his house and all the neighbors say, "but who'll move in - maybe they'll throw more parties."
but then we say, we're sick of this douche bag throwing parties and planning another one. and then some other neighbors say, "well, how do we know he's going to throw another one?"
and then we say, "he's got a keg, he's rolling in the hard liquor, he's thrown parties before, he's sending evites out to his friends - he's throwing a frigging party."
and then they say, "Well, maybe he won't."
and we say, "Don't be stupid, he's throwing a party." And then we invade anyway.
When we invade and break up the pre party, we discover that it was an empty keg and the ketel bottles were filled with water.
and then, everyone says "You lied, you lied, you said he was throwing a party!"
i'd hardly call it a lie, I'd say we were wrong, but it's not really a lie
Can you elaborate on why this post is worth reading? I saw Hitchens speak again in person for the second time a few months ago, in a small theater at Stanford. Once more, I felt he was unimpressive. As his excellent book reviews in the Atlantic Monthly attest, Hitchens is at heart a literary man, and I don't think much of his take on geo-politics.
I recall something the author Thomas PM Barnett said, which is that people on both the left and the right who espouse action along moral lines aren't serious people. Serious people look at how we, the United States, can best structure our assets to meet our interests, and this inolved dealing with a lot of unsexy details rather than grand strategy. Hitchens strikes me as one of the unserious people, since he only talks is abstractions and is always "disappointed" by the shortsightedness of others. I remember watching Francis Fukuyama being interviewd on Book TV, and the interviewer showed him a critical quote of the book from Hitchens. Fukuyama's first response was to sigh and say "I have wonder if he ever read the book..." I don't mean this to totally knock Hitchens, but just to point out he operates out on a plane of his own.
I don't know enough to have an opinion anymore on more troops or less troops. I will support politicians not for their views on this withdrawal debate, but if they seem like smart people who have the guts to make tough decisions, and that tough decision could be to stay or it could be to leave. I don't much care for anyone who is devoted to only one path.
To be honest, I'm kind of sick of the whole debate. It just seems so far away from my life, and no matter how much information I get there is always more to learn. I see in the news that a car bomb killed thirty people in Iraq and I don't even react anymore. I'm not saying I have the right attitude, but that's where I am.
3 comments:
Back to Iraq/unknowns/lies, I agree with you that the lack of information put us in the inevitable situation of invading, and I agree that (though not necessarily the specifics) it was the right choice in the end. But as far as the lying goes (and I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I can't resist my analogy), here's how I see it went down: suppose we were out, and I said 'hey, let's go to my place for the afterparty, I have a bunch of beer,' to which you respond, 'but ben, last time I was over, I seem to remember you not really having any more beer.' So I call my roommate to check, and he says 'well, I haven't been home in a while, but last I looked there was like one warm Natty Light sitting on top of the fridge and a couple of wounded soldiers (pardon the expression) from last night. Now, there could be more, and I know beer was on the shopping list last week or the week before, but I just don't know for sure.' Then, I turn to you and say, 'I just talked to my roommate, and there is definitely beer at our place, so we should go.' 'Okay.' Now when you got to my place, and all you saw was a warm Natty and two half-drank bottles of Corona with molding limes in them, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off? And wouldn't you call what I said a lie? Then what if my response was, 'I said we had beer, and we do. I did not lie.' Not cool. I'm sure that I am exaggerating the situation a little (because a lot of what we hear about Bush's lies/not lies is rumor and speculation).
Anyway, what I am really writing about is what Hitchens says at the end of his article that we should be asking the Iraqis what they want. And I, like him, think this is a good idea. But U.S. officials must already be asking this question of the Iraqi leadership. I think the real question is why haven't we heard what they want. My intuition is that either we don't trust the answer that they have/would have given or that we don't like the answer. (I seem to remember hearing Iraqi officials stating that they want us there for the long haul, which I'm sure is something we don't want Iraq's official policy to be.)
well, i don't think your beer example isn't really a good analogy...
i'll try to rework it:
let's say we're neighbors and you've had a lot of parties before and have been asked not to have any more parties by all the rest of the neighbors.
and you say, fine, i won't have any more parties. but then you continue to stockpile beer. you get caught a couple times and say, "it's my house, i can do whatever I want." then the neighbors say, "but you said you weren't having another party!" and you say, "it's not for a party," as you roll a keg by.
then i, as your neighbor, I say, "i think he's going to throw a party. let's search his house to find the beer."
and then you say, "fine, you can search my house, but just not the refridgerator."
and we say, well, actually, we sort of need to search the fridge. and then you say no.
then we say, let's kick him out of his house and all the neighbors say, "but who'll move in - maybe they'll throw more parties."
but then we say, we're sick of this douche bag throwing parties and planning another one. and then some other neighbors say, "well, how do we know he's going to throw another one?"
and then we say, "he's got a keg, he's rolling in the hard liquor, he's thrown parties before, he's sending evites out to his friends - he's throwing a frigging party."
and then they say, "Well, maybe he won't."
and we say, "Don't be stupid, he's throwing a party." And then we invade anyway.
When we invade and break up the pre party, we discover that it was an empty keg and the ketel bottles were filled with water.
and then, everyone says "You lied, you lied, you said he was throwing a party!"
i'd hardly call it a lie, I'd say we were wrong, but it's not really a lie
Can you elaborate on why this post is worth reading? I saw Hitchens speak again in person for the second time a few months ago, in a small theater at Stanford. Once more, I felt he was unimpressive. As his excellent book reviews in the Atlantic Monthly attest, Hitchens is at heart a literary man, and I don't think much of his take on geo-politics.
I recall something the author Thomas PM Barnett said, which is that people on both the left and the right who espouse action along moral lines aren't serious people. Serious people look at how we, the United States, can best structure our assets to meet our interests, and this inolved dealing with a lot of unsexy details rather than grand strategy. Hitchens strikes me as one of the unserious people, since he only talks is abstractions and is always "disappointed" by the shortsightedness of others. I remember watching Francis Fukuyama being interviewd on Book TV, and the interviewer showed him a critical quote of the book from Hitchens. Fukuyama's first response was to sigh and say "I have wonder if he ever read the book..." I don't mean this to totally knock Hitchens, but just to point out he operates out on a plane of his own.
I don't know enough to have an opinion anymore on more troops or less troops. I will support politicians not for their views on this withdrawal debate, but if they seem like smart people who have the guts to make tough decisions, and that tough decision could be to stay or it could be to leave. I don't much care for anyone who is devoted to only one path.
To be honest, I'm kind of sick of the whole debate. It just seems so far away from my life, and no matter how much information I get there is always more to learn. I see in the news that a car bomb killed thirty people in Iraq and I don't even react anymore. I'm not saying I have the right attitude, but that's where I am.
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