Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Worth Reading
Robert Trancinski on why Western leaders keep evading the obvious:
Everyone knows that Hezbollah initiated a war with Israel in order to justify its status as a military "state within a state," billing itself as a defender of Lebanon against Israel--even while, far from defending Lebanon, Hezbollah is causing Lebanon to be torn apart. And everyone knows that Hezbollah deliberately operates among Lebanon's civilian population, cynically exploiting the resulting civilian casualties as propaganda.
But even more insidious is a kind of cognitive altruism that tells men to sacrifice, not just their interests, but their judgment, subordinating their knowledge to the opinions and prejudices of others. That is what seems to be operating here. Whatever Secretary Rice knows about the Iranians' strategy is discarded the moment lurid images of civilian casualties are splashed across the front pages of European newspapers and the broadcasts of Arab television stations. Just as, in this self-abnegating morality, you have to consider the interests of everyone except yourself--so, in this morality of cognitive self-abnegation, you have to consider everyone's opinion except your own. Thus, faced with the united force of "world opinion," the formerly "tough-minded" Secretary of State was flustered into an ignominious surrender of American interests.
This is a strange kind of war, in which we have more than enough military capability to crush the enemy's "lousy army." Nor do we lack the intellectual power to understand and counteract the enemy's strategy. But we lack the moral confidence to use both our power and our knowledge.
# posted by Grant Jones @ 3:32 PM 
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