Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Insane

A "well-connected former CIA officer" has told Harper's Magazine Washington bureau chief that the Bush Administration is in considering deploying US troops to Lebanon, according to a post at the magazine's website (RAW STORY has excerpted the post below because the site loads slowly when we link directly). Harper's post is here...

According to the former official, Israel and the United States are currently discussing a large American role in exactly such a “multinational” deployment, and some top administration officials, along with senior civilians at the Pentagon, are receptive to the idea.

The uniformed military, however, is ardently opposed to sending American soldiers to the region, according to my source. “They are saying 'What the fuck?'” he told me...

The former CIA officer said that the Bush Administration seems not to understand Hezbollah's deep roots and broad support among Lebanon's Shiites, the country's largest single ethnic bloc....
I, I, don't know what to say.

10 comments:

MT said...

In terms of perception I doubt it makes a difference to anyone but Israelis and W's faithful, both of whom will be happy. I doubt any more Lebanese will die as a result.

helmut said...

Also turns it into an explicit Israel-US war, confirming other Middle Eastern countries assessment of the US. So much for democratic dominoes. The game is now domination and submission, which means it is long-term and perhaps the final death knell of any ME peace process. I can't see how this could possibly help anyone.

MT said...

They said the same about Hitler's invasion of Poland, and now we have TiVo.

helmut said...

Eh?

MT said...

Eh?

I was responding to

I can't see how this could possibly help anyone.

I was obliquely invoking the principle that one can attribute a limitles number and variety of real historical events to an equal diversity of antecedents, and so suggesting your claim is trivial, in that claims that any globally consequential event was or will be "for the best" is highly dubious. By claiming an inability to foresee possible or probable consequences, good or bad, you're just being reasonable.

helmut said...

Eh?

Sure, we can't see the future, but we can predict, even when it comes to such a highly contingent thing as politics.

The Iraq War, for instance. A cwertain well-known view had Iraq covered in rose petals, democratic institutions, and dancing angels. An entire invasion and occupation was premissed on this notion of success. But there was good evidence on a number of fronts that this was an entirely ill-formed prediction based on faulty and "cherry-picked" evidence, and that the consequences would play out otherwise. Basically, critics of the war were right on almost every count.

The very nature of intelligence seems to me the ability to imagine or hypothesize various diverse outcomes of any given action in order to then look backwards from those projected consequences or ends and decide upon which route to take, what means to use, etc. That is, in fact, the basis of phronesis, which Aristotle attributed to the wise leader practiced in the ways of knowing when and where particular actions should or should not be taken.

If that's not possible, as you seem to suggest, then there's really little point in politics or social hope at all.

MT said...

If that's not possible, as you seem to suggest, then there's really little point in politics or social hope at all.

Have I been coming off as hopeful?

MT said...

Note odds makers still give Iraq some slim odds of holding together as a democracy and W's venture turning out "for the best." Critics were right about the horrific consequences, but the time will never come that anybody can rule out that it was "for the best." That's why W is so lucky to know God is on his side. If Al Gore is right that we have a moral obligation to our decendants to combat climate change, then it might well be proper to sacrifice some billions of people or a few phyla of fauna for a worthy cause, such as a better future.

helmut said...

That doesn't follow. It's one thing to say that an incompetent got something right (from the vantage of the distant future) serendipitously. I still doubt this anyway. It's another to say that we need to take a lifeboat approach to the real threat of global warming. The latter isn't the case at all anyway.

Fununy, though, how we'll choose the stupid route over and over again.

MT said...

By "for the best" I don't mean to give the agent in question a lot of credit, nor to deny him or her any share of blame for terrible consequences contrary to his or her expectation. What W did could end up "for the best" and yet still he'd be a war criminal. I'm sure there's plenty we have to thank Hitler for. Doh! Godwin! Gotta scram!