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Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Courage
Trying to get an accurate picture of how well the war in Iraq is going seems to depend mainly on who you want to ask. I tend to trust the milbloggers and the conservatives, but I doubt I could persuade anyone else to have that trust if they don't have it already. It is telling to see where people place their faith.
I follow the war, although I don't study it, and my basic sense is that we don't really know how things will turn out. I tend to dismiss those who are confident of our failure as just wishful thinkers, but those who are confident of our success can be guilty of the same, unless you define success in fairly modest terms.
My support for the war, however, does not depend too much on the turn of events on a day to day basis. To withdraw from battle at this time would be a kind of cowardice, if we can speak of cowardice in relation to a nation as a whole. I draw support for my point from Aristotle, who claims that courage involves enduring danger in those times when the outcome is in doubt. A characteristic of the virtuous is that they act with a sense that the future is open, that fate doesn't determine the course of events and social science can't lay it all out in advance. The only certainty that is important is that we should aspire to do what is noble.
There were many good people, including some conservatives, who thought that toppling Hussein was a mistake. I am a big fan of Mickey Kaus, for example, and he did not support the invasion. At this point, however, we have made a commitment, and only in the face of obvious disaster does it make sense to think of retreat. Of course, we also need to think of what counts as success, lest mission creep keep us in neverending conflict. In this venture, however, I feel very strongly that we are just at the beginning, that seeing this through will take a resolve that democracies sometimes struggle to muster. We will need to live with uncertainty. To those who are naturally fearful, uncertainty is simply anxiety. To those who honor courage, however, uncertainty is opportunity.
Eddie 8:08 AM
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