Hagelian logic
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 28, 2007
The Iraq surrender bill is about one thing, and one thing only: Chuck Hagel’s vain — in every sense of the word — attempt to get the Republican nomination for President, and the liberal media (now soured on, or perhaps merely tired of, John McCain) that is promoting him:
Here’s Newsweek (”reluctant rebel”).
Here’s Time (”Would the war have gone better if John Kerry had won in 2004? Well, I don’t think you can go back and undo those kinds of things.”)
Here’s Esquire (”If Hagel were better fitted for metaphor, Zorro would be an awfully good one …” — I couldn’t
resist the picture!)
Here’s GQ (note the URL!) (”Sitting in his office on a recent afternoon, Hagel leaned back in his armchair to explain, in a voice reminiscent of sandpaper on rough oak, how he was deceived by the president, and won’t let it happen again.”)
Here’s NPR (”Hagel’s opposition to it makes some Democrats giddy — the way they were in 2000 with McCain”).
Here’s even the Nation (”he has the courage to challenge a President from his own party who so clearly didn’t”).
Senator Hagel has a masterful strategy to win the general election, what with rounding up all this media support. All he has to do now is find the political party that will nominate him. It sure as hell won’t be the GOP.
UPDATE: Check this out.
March 29, 2007 at 7:44 am
I don’t know you well enough to know if you are really serious here?
Hagel? That’s it? We ignore the 60+% of the public that wants to end the occupation … and “blame” this on Hagel? Or better yet, blame it on the media that blames it on Hagel?
You’re serious, aren’t you? Please tell me you’re not.
March 29, 2007 at 7:50 am
The story is Hagel. I’m dead serious. It is not news that this vote would go along party lines. I really don’t care about opinion polls — ever — and neither do you when they indicate public disapproval of late-term abortion, etc. — in any event, we do not govern by opinion poll. So fine, Ara. We have a party-line vote. The story is Hagel’s vote. Is he playing up to the media? Of course. Is he sincere? I am sure he is. He is sincerely deluded about the damage such an insane policy — a legislative deadline for withdrawal without regard to the situation on the ground, which no serious student of policy or strategy would ever recommend — would do, ironically, to the very office he so desperately covets.
March 29, 2007 at 9:45 am
Whatsamatta with you, Ron? Don’t you know yet that any Republican who throws in with the Democrats to advocate the defeat of his own country is a courageous hero? Read any paper you happen to see.
March 29, 2007 at 9:53 am
I really don’t care about opinion polls — ever — and neither do you when they indicate public disapproval of late-term abortion, etc.
Oh come on, Ron. You have no idea how I feel about late-term abortion, nor does it have anything to do with this discussion. Let’s stay focused here.
So while I will acknowledge the fallibility of any single poll (snapshot, and all that) when all the polls trend in the same direction, well, you have to take that into account. We are, after all, a government of all the people. George W. Bush is not the President of Fort Leonardwood, Missouri. He’s not the President of Angie’s Diner in Beavertail, Idaho. He’s not the President of Republican Voters for Bush.
But let’s leave aside the science of polling for now. There is, of course, only one poll that matters and respondents provide their input in the polling booth. Can you really ignore that poll? Especially when it changed the balance of power in Congress?
By that measure, Bush’s policies are seriously off on the wrong track. It is Congress that represents the will of the people right now.
Now you can say that in the long run, Bush will be viewed as a strong leader who kept pushing ahead for right versus wrong, a resolute leader of uncommon vision. And/But you can also say, as Justice Frankfurter did, that in the long run we’ll all be dead.
So what?
We do the best we can with what we have, where we are. And when you look at Iraq after four years of our occupation what do you see? A population in despair, our military in strategic peril, an Iraqi government too weak to provide security, militias and armed bands killing innocent people at will, and worse.
And yet we’re asked to believe that more of the same will produce — what? — a different result. Does that really make sense to you? I’d suggest you apply Occam’s Razor to this conundrum.
Is it so hard to understand that maybe, just maybe, the present course has failed and that it’s time for a change? Of course it is.
Now we can debate what those changes should be. And we’ve done that. We can hire a blue-ribbon panel to come up with recommendations. We’ve done that. We can even have an election on the issue. And we’ve even done that.
And when everything is said and done, and the results are in, it’s kind of disingenuous to blame this all on … the Republican Senator from Nebraska.
You do realize how absurd that sounds, right?
It is not news that this vote would go along party lines.
It’s news that the Democrats have voted to give Bush everything he wanted — and more. Yet Bush will veto the bill.
Who supports the troops now?
March 29, 2007 at 10:28 am
You’re right, I don’t know your views on any issue you haven’t told me about (or, in theory, written on at your blog) — so I concede that, but you must concede that opinion polls are of mostly trivial interest in deciding what policies are right and which are wrong. As to the “will of the people,” we do not govern by plebiscite, and yet admittedly the House of Representatives amounts almost to the same thing. Still and all for good reason the Constitution made this only one of three affirmatively governing organs, and provided the Senate for a deeper, less “will of the people” degree of deliberation… and wisely for the military power to be in the hands of one person only. Which is why it’s probably unconstitutional for the Congress to tell the President how and when to withdraw troops it authorized him to use without any reservation of rights. But that is another topic.
No, I am not “blaming” the state of the world on Chuck Hagel. I am blaming Chuck Hagel’s vote on Chuck Hagel.
Who supports the troops, you ask? Certainly not the Congress, in voting to tell their enemies that they have won — this while those troops are still under fire.
Who supports the troops? Not the Congress that made continued funding of their mission conditional not only on surrender in the field but on the approval of billions in unrelated pork-barrel spending.
Now that is absurd!
March 29, 2007 at 12:15 pm
…for the military power to be in the hands of one person only.
Sadly, no.
The framers left it to Congress to be responsible for declaring war and additionally for allocating the funds to fight the war. The Commander in Chief is responsible for fighting the war. The framers (who rebelled against an absolute monarch) were smart — they set up a system of checks and balances so that absolute power could never again be gathered in the hands of one man. And like another Englishman once said, our system of government is bad — except for all the rest.
Who supports the troops, you ask? Certainly not the Congress, in voting to tell their enemies that they have won — this while those troops are still under fire.
Look around. Things are plenty bad now in Iraq and they’re only getting worse. Who’s fault is that? Who cares — let the historians sort that out. The fact remains: more of the same from us is not going to make it get better.
P.S. And, no, we don’t have a government by plebescite, thank goodness. But the other extreme is far worse: a man at the top who only answers to G-d.
March 29, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Of course. But I’m glad you are sad about it.
The question of war powers is a complex one, as you know. If the Congress authorizes the President to use troops, without limitation, may it peel back that authorization once they are engaged? That is a novel question. Can it ever be argued that it is good statecraft for them to do so? To me, not so novel. It is obvious… sadly… that it is a terrible idea.
“More of the same is not going to make it better” is not an argument. It is one of several possible propositions that may or may not be disproved either theoretically or empirically. Many bad situations have been made better by application of more of the same. Many have been made far worse by policies such as the ones urged by this Congress.
And in that regard there are fewer entitled to more blame than the granddaddy of them all in terms of Mideast dalliances — Ronald Reagan, who sent troops into harm’s way to aid in policymaking in Lebanon and then brought them home after they got harmed. This was followed up by Clinton in Mogadishu and in Aden. Both these presidents would not risk their political popularity — the “people’s will” — to effectuate policies they believed in. The result was the growth of Al Qaeda, built on the premise that Americans will not “finish up the job” if you inflict casualties for long enough, because their institutions do not have the will to do so.
March 29, 2007 at 1:31 pm
“More of the same is not going to make it better” is not an argument. It is one of several possible propositions that may or may not be disproved either theoretically or empirically. Many bad situations have been made better by application of more of the same.
With all due respect Ron, I have no idea what it is you just said.
Is this one of those situations? And if it is, how do you know? (Note: Hope is not a plan.)
Fact is, all objective reality, all verifiable evidence points in the opposite direction.
Many have been made far worse by policies such as the ones urged by this Congress.
Look back all you want. But at some point you have to look ahead at what’s in front of you, too. Things are bad and getting worse. What’s your proposal for turning it around? Escalation and endless occupation?
It’s over Ron. Saddam is dead, there are no WMD and Iraq’s voters have ushered in a new age of democratic self-governance. If I were you, I’d declare victory and come home.
March 29, 2007 at 1:46 pm
What I said — don’t worry, I give you the benefit of the doubt on respectfulness, you’re good! — is that “more of the same is not going to make it better” is often wrong. Sometimes you can show it’s wrong on the back of an envelope; sometimes you have to see what works. Sometimes more antibiotic makes an infection go away; sometimes it doesn’t. Hope is not a plan; neither is surrender.
No, I don’t propose “endless” occupation, but between here and eternity I want to pull out when it makes tactical sense, not electoral sense. If escalation is necessary to preserve what has already been gained at the cost of great wealth and blood, then some degree of escalation may be called for.
But we agree: Iraq is a democracy, and we get the credit. The sticky question of when that democracy can be left to defend itself against its own wolves — wolves unleashed in part because of our efforts — cannot be, “When we get tired of fighting.”
March 29, 2007 at 3:17 pm
I give you the benefit of the doubt on respectfulness, you’re good!
Gosh, maybe we’ve scaled new heights in the “Alphonse & Gaston” routine…
Sometimes you can show it’s wrong on the back of an envelope; sometimes you have to…Sometimes…sometimes…
I get your point, but can you imagine why I think this sounds like so much navel-gazing?
between here and eternity I want to pull out when it makes tactical sense, not electoral sense.
In America, in our peculiar form of self-governance, where the military is governed by civilians, the voice and will of the people cannot be ignored. This is why I bristle when John Boehner says that General Petraeus should be left alone to call the shots on the ground in Iraq.
No. Just…no. No, no, no, no. That might have been feasible 4 years ago, or three years ago, or even two years ago. But not now. I’d suggest that a stronger leader than Bush might have been able to sway the populace for this long; or maybe that leader, too, would have been diminished by the wisdom of the crowd as they, we, collectively peered into the Iraq abyss and calculated the return on investment for the whole debacle. I don’t know — again, that’s one for the professors and historians.
All I know is we’ve passed the point where our leaders can count on our support. And without that support, the occupation must now end.
P.S. I didn’t exactly say that Iraq is a democracy; what I said was that “Iraq’s voters have ushered in a new age of democratic self-governance.” That’s not quite the same. For example, I don’t consider it “government of the people, etc” if their mullahs sit in final judgement of their constitution. That way lies chaos and madness — and I like to think you (who crossed that line in the sand at DW) would agree. I just hope they have the good sense to not go too much further down that road. Like Justice O’Connor said:
“At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. … Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly.”
March 29, 2007 at 4:26 pm
You don’t like navel gazing? Don’t read blogs!
This largely comes down to your view being that we’ve reached “that point” — and you have me there, because I admit there must be a “some point.” But I don’t believe this is it and, because of the political moment, I believe it most assuredly is not it.
I don’t think church and state have anything to do with this!
March 29, 2007 at 5:58 pm
You don’t like navel gazing? Don’t read blogs!
OK, Hoss, you got me there.
I don’t believe this is it and, because of the political moment, I believe it most assuredly is not it.
For you, when “it” comes, what will “it” look like?
I don’t think church and state have anything to do with this!
Oh, but it does, my friend, it most surely does. What, for example, do you think we’re fighting for over there, if not government of the people?
March 30, 2007 at 8:01 am
I’d settle for a government non-threatening to outsiders.
March 30, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Regardless of the cost?