War Thoughts and Other Thoughts

The Lieberman thing prompts me to also post some additional comments. Someone who did not want to post emailed me to mention that perhaps this was not about Joe and moderates, but about the war. And yes, that is true. That was the main issue. This particular race was all about that.

But that I think is one of those issues where the moderates are getting pushed out.

The one side: The war was mistake, it is evil and wrong, and we need to get the hell out ASAP (in an orderly fashion), regardless of the consequences.

The other side: The war was the right thing, we replaced Saddam and that is what is important, the critics are unfair, and war is hard and things go wrong, but overall we’re doing what we need to do.

And it seems there are very few who try to stay in the area between those positions. There are a few politicians in that middle spot, but they have trouble making the case, cause it isn’t simple and balck and white. “War Good” or “War Bad” people get, and tend to pick one. Reality is more complex.

Another complex bit… The House and Senate did *NOT* vote for the war back a couple years ago. (They probably should have, a declaration of war would have been appropriate in this situation if the overall policy of invasion and “regime change” was desired.) The congress very explicitly did NOT do that. What they did do was authorize the President to make his own decision on that topic. (Something which I personally believe is an unconstitutional shifting of war powers from congress to the president, but that is another issue…)

This is a subtle difference. But an important difference. But it is completely ignored. I hear about Senators voting “for the war” all the time. That is not what they did. That pisses me off. Cause even if it the effect it had, even if it was the effect the congress wanted, it is NOT what they did.

Anyway… that was a complete tangent… back to the topic… my own thoughts on this war…

I didn’t have this blog at the time, but prior to the start of the Iraq war I remember talking quite a bit to a variety of people about how it was a mistake and we should not do it and such… up until a few weeks before the actual invasion.. at that point I thought we were past the tipping point and it would then cause more damage to shift course than to continue, and then the only choice was to go forward and do the best that could be done with it. I was pissed at W for pushing us there when we didn’t need to be there, but at that point, I could no longer feel good recommending we do something else.

Of course then W and Rummy did just about everything wrong that they could possibly do wrong for several years and to this day. It has been a complete disaster. It did not have to be. Even after having made the mistake of pushing us to war when we didn’t need to in the first place, it COULD have been handled in a way that if not “good” would have been much better than what happened. BUt it wasn’t. It was mismanaged from top to bottom. I used the word hubris a lot back then to describe how the administration was acting. I think the results have been completely in line with that.

But that doesn’t mean I think the best way to go at this point is to get out. I actually think that would be an even worse disaster. It might even be better at this point to INCREASE our involvement rather than decrease it. But it may even be getting to the point where it is too late to fix things that way either. I’m not sure. But a rash and premature evacuation would just be a total mess and leave us with even worse problems in the future.

Any way, public opinion overall seems to be slowly shifting to “just get the hell out” and that likely will have a big effect on elections to come over the next few years.

But I still say the people who are most likely to find a “good” result… well, at least “less bad”… are neither the fervent anti-war people or the neo-con apologists. They are the folks in the middle who resist the ideological arguments and just focus on the practicalities of the situation on the ground and try to figure out how to actually work on various issues and find solutions rather than worrying about what fits the party line the most.

Lieberman is one of those folks. There are a handful in both parties. And certainly each of these in SOME areas is just as ideological as the others, and if you took a bunch of them from both parties I don’t think they could come up with a set of things they could all agree on… it is less an issue of views on specific issues as one of temperment and pragmatism.

You put a bunch of them in a room and they would probably not agree on much of anything. But they WOULD (given some time) be able to hammer out a compromise that was “OK” for all of them, even though none of them would be completely happy with it.

Contrast this to the types of folks who are taking over both parties… who are partisan and ideological to the core. Put a bunch of them in a room and they will take their respective sides and throw things across the room at each other (metaphorically at least) and they will just snipe and snipe and snipe. And if they were of equal power and number nothing would ever get done. (Which of course isn’t always a bad thing. :-) Or if one side had superiority they would just start implementing their agenda without any compromise at all, making the losing side just increasingly spiteful. (A la the Dems today.)

That is what is dangerous. Not the specific views on any one issue, but the move toward increasing polarization rather than reason and compromise.