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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
First, the more I hear about it, the more dubious I am about it all. But second, lets assume all the charges that are going about are absolutely true. How would that advance the debate?
To the extent to which it contributed to real intelligence reform, this story might have some merit. To the further extent to which it undermined Washington's culture of investigations (in this case, the bipartisanly partisan 9/11 Commission), it would make a positive contribution.
But to the extent to which it replaces "BUSH KNEW!" with "CLINTON KNEW! (or should have known!)" charges, it is just part of the bipartisan circle-jerk that keeps us all busy but doesn't really contribute to a substantive debate about what policies to follow and how to make them work.
This is one of the things that has contributed to my lack of blogging recently. By no means the only reason I haven't blogged, but a significant one. Repeatedly having to rebut "BUSH LIED"! and all the other bogus distractions that act as a substitute for intelligent civic discourse is not my idea of the best use of time. I know it has to be done, and I can link to all the things, be they on WMD, intelligence, ties to terrorism (see below) and the like which refutes the litany, have done it before and likely will do it again, but this Sisyphean task grows wearisome.
Ok, so lets go back to assuming that ABLE DANGER-based intelligence revealed Mohammed Attah as a member of a terrorist cell in the U.S., a year before 9/11. What does that prove?
It proves what we already knew: we need to get a lot better at handling intelligence. It proves that a great deal of mistakes occurred, in no small part based on bad policy. Fixating on that can only be useful if it becomes part of an argument over improving our intelligence-management system, over what policy should be rather than how to fix blame.
Are things improving in the war on terror, or do we still have many unlearned lessons? For that matter, are conditions improving in Iraq, or do we need to change policies to prevent deterioration and to insure success? It is so hard to tell in no small part because these issues are deeply politicized.
I would argue, in my opinion correctly, largely by the other side, which is so determined to undermine domestic political opponents on the Right that they will use whatever propaganda they can, clearly ignoring inconvenient fact and dismissing evidence that would be more than enough if their guy was in the White House (and they'll use far slimmer evidence - often invented out of whole cloth - to demonize members of the Administration, showing a double-standard, and also that the so-called "Reality-Based Community" has little regard for, well, reality). But this has meant that "we" then focus our attentions so much on countering that, showing the "untold story" of the progress in the war (be it in Iraq or the larger war) and begin to spin a tale based on dismissing or diminishing bad news, that the picture we paint might be as distorted as the one they do - and no, putting both together does not produce anything like "the full story".
I am all for reasoned political debate, criticism of policy (be it the policies of this Administration or the previous one or the next one), skepticism, and disagreement. But too much of it seems to be done for the sake of nailing political opponents, "Gotcha!" on both sides, and not enough centered really on what would be the best way to go forward.
Jonah Goldberg, who has participated in this himself and no doubt will continue to (but then, so have I in my own way, and if you are reading this post, then most likely so have you, whichever side of the divide you are on) had this observation, which he made about TV punditry but which increasingly (IMO) applies to debates in general:
This all illuminates the rot in cable-news political discourse. I had a contract with CNN for about four years, which meant I was obliged to be on call for the usual five-minute mini-debates that are a staple on all the news networks. Before that, I committed similar punditry on Fox and MSNBC. On all the networks, but I think particularly on CNN, there’s a habit of pairing opinion journalists with “political consultants” — i.e., party mouthpieces and activists.
I hate the practice because it makes it almost impossible to argue in good faith. I disagree with the Bush administration on a wide number of issues — from immigration policy and “compassionate conservatism” to its grotesque overspending. But it’s very hard to offer a balanced defense when your opponent is shouting that you’re a whore to the GOP and that Bush is a liar with his pants on fire.
(Emphasis added).
Now, I think that the forces largely responsible for this condition need to be defeated. It is one of the reasons why, despite the fact that I think other reasons for going into Iraq were at least as important, it was important to find WMD in Iraq.
I think it's demonstrably true that mistakes on this score were made in good faith, not because "Bush Lied!" (a futher connection to "ABLE DANGER" arguments - the fault is in intel and how it is handled), and that what was found in Iraq with respect to Saddam's WMD programs (as opposed to existing stockpiles - which also shows that perhaps there was a mistake in emphasis, the programs were always more dangerous than whatever existing piles there might have been).
But the lack of discovery of such stockpiles has given a second lease on life, indeed further empowered, some of the most destructive voices in our society. We see them on the march every day, twisting and skewing dialogue in the country, ascendant in one of the major political parties, and absolutely preventing any substantive policy discussion. Everything instead is turned into a shouting match.
We face a lot of very serious foreign & military policy questions. Some people are discussing them. But the debate is largely dominated by the worse angels of our nature. This is very discouraging and demoralizing, and I'm not sure what can be done to improve the situation.
