In a professional sense, there is nothing I admire more than intellectual honesty. It is one of the reasons why I rail against political parties and ideologies, because they encourage people to approach an issue or event thinking, "What’s in this for me and my side?" or "How do I spin this to support my preconceived notions?" instead of "What’s really going on here, and what are its true implications, regardless of what I want them to be, and what is the best course for the greater good?"
This is human nature (in the sense that it is something that someone who wants to be a better person should strive to rise above). And the moment one declares a party affiliation or embraces an ideology, one has surrendered to the temptation to follow this easy path. That’s why I avoid doing those things (one reason, anyway). But am I immune to the pull of this corruption? Of course not. I make my living laying opinions out before the public, and it is in my nature as much as it is in anyone else’s to approach each issue or event wanting to find in it justification, rather than refutation, of the position that every reader knows I have taken. After all, a portion of my reputation, such as it is, depends upon my opinions holding up reasonably well to scrutiny. But my reputation is worthless if I’m not able to able to resist that temptation sufficiently to see things as they are.
Whether I succeed in that or not, I leave to others to judge over time. My purpose in this posting is to recognize such intellectual honesty in another writer.
I get so sick of both knee-jerk criticism and knee-jerk defense of what our nation is doing in Iraq, that when I see someone approach the issue in an open-eyed manner, it is refreshing, and renews my faith in the potential of the human race. So it is that I would like to bring this piece from The Washington Post to your attention. It is written by an expert (which I am not) who supports our mission in Iraq (as I do) and has done so since the start (as I have), but because he cares so much about the mission, is enormously frustrated with mistakes the Bush administration has made in this critical endeavor (as am I). So you might say I think this guy is intellectually honest because I agree with him (mostly, anyway). And you may be right.
But there’s one important way in which this writer is different from me — his son is a soldier, and "Before long he will fight in the war that I advocated…." That gives a particular urgency to Eliot A. Cohen’s soul searching. And his own display of honesty is all the more admirable because he has been identified, fairly or not, with a particular ideology. The piece is well worth the read.
Probably my favorite part appears at the very end. I include it here in case you have trouble getting to the link:
There is a lot of talk these days about shaky public support for the war. That is not really the issue. Nor should cheerleading, as opposed to truth-telling, be our leaders’ chief concern. If we fail in Iraq — and I don’t think we will — it won’t be because the American people lack heart, but because leaders and institutions have failed. Rather than fretting about support at home, let them show themselves dedicated to waging and winning a strange kind of war and describing it as it is, candidly and in detail. Then the American people will give them all the support they need. The scholar in me is not surprised when our leaders blunder, although the pundit in me is dismayed when they do. What the father in me expects from our leaders is, simply, the truth — an end to happy talk and denials of error, and a seriousness equal to that of the men and women our country sends into the fight.
Both the cheerleaders and those who are doing all they can to make public support for the war "shaky" should read this realistic assessment. Then they should drop their simplistic poses and think about how we proceed from here.
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The action in Iraq allowed us to move out of Saudi Arabia. That in turn has allowed us to pressure the House of Saud. There are those who maintain that one objective in ousting Saddam was to pressure the Saudis to move against the Wahabis.
The “root causes” Cohen cites – the breakdown of sanctions, failure of weapons inspections – were not sellable to the international community or American opinion-makers. Knowing that, the Bush team relied on the WMD and failure to comply with UN resolutions as the legal rationale for the invasion. Cohen rightly cites that the stability policy was a failure and inane. Yet that policy was ingrained in US government agencies, specifically the State Department and the CIA, a spy agency that had no indigenous spies in Iraq, Syria, Iran, or Saudi Arabia and doesn’t know ham when it sees it. I have worked with wonderful folks in the State Department and the Christians in Action, but have greater faith and more trust in the revitalized Defense Department, primarily because there’s one selfless guy at the helm who’s interested in doing what his president orders.
As for post-war planning, the story is that State was doing a masterful job but Defense wrestled the responsibility from it and screwed it up. That may or may not be the case. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US engaged UN elements in planning for food, medicine, and other essentials before the invasion. The historians will have to handle this while we await their verdict on the seriousness of other post-war issues like looting, the protection of Iraqi historical treasures, and so forth. I should mention that there’s really only one way to stop looting, and that’s to shoot the looters and broadcast the policy. But that was not an option.
In his criticism of the post-war reconstruction, Cohen overlooks the “small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs” that military units conducted. US military units used appropriated and seized funds to contract for manpower and materials to rebuild infrastructure. A lot has been accomplished with these thousands of small contracts.
While I can’t find a citation, I do know that he’s wrong about the leave policy. My nephew – a lieutenant, West Point grad – and the other members of his unit got a mid-tour R&R back to Germany, where they were based, and from there a free round-trip to the US. But that’s a minor quibble.
What was viewed as one of a number of possibilities at the outset has happened: Iraq has become the flypaper for outsider militant Jihadists to fight the Crusaders upfront and personal, a mixed development. It’s good in that it allows us to neutralize them directly – most of them would not have been able to mount attacks in the US, but could have planned attacks against US interests overseas. The downside is that they attack and intimidate Iraqis, prolonging the suffering and delaying permanent infrastructure improvements. We know that and are adjusting our military doctrine and everyday actions to counter that.
I agree that Cohen has written an honest, personal column, but don’t you think that he’s in part influenced by the Washington elites? I work in the DC area with a defense contractor and see at the social level the sturm und drang that war supporters contend with daily. The pundits are masters at Monday-morning quarterbacking, sharp-shooting, second-guessing, and the like. It’s quite difficult to maintain one’s composure and bearing in an environment of constant attacks, and even more difficult to get any reasonable answer to the question “What would you have done?”
Do you think journalists, as a whole, are intellectually honest? How about columnists who refuse to admit when thay are wrong, regardless of facts?
I think of Nina Totenberg with NPR, bringing the Anita Hill fiasco up in order to subvert the Thomas vote. Or the treatment of Dan Quayle. (all the lib journalists happily said he was right- years later when it was far to late.) Or Rathergate, Newsweek, David Gergin. There are exceptions like Raspberry and recentlt Molly Ivans.
To Chip:
As a whole? No. Or maybe I should say, yes and no.
Journalists, as a whole, are HONEST in a way that rises above the norm, in that they are dedicated to trying their best to report things impartially.
But they have a huge blind spot that gets in the way of true intellectual honesty. This is particularly true of news people (as opposed to those who write opinion). News people spend so much time trying to keep their opinions out of their work that they seldom examine what their actual opinions ARE. This is a handicap in terms of being able to look at, and report on, things as they are, no matter how hard most journalists try.
Columnists and other opinion writers have to think about they really think, because they have to write it for thousands of people to read, and second-guess, and challenge. This CAN lead to intellectual honesty — the kind where you examine and challenge your own positions with eyes wide open. It can also lead them to run screaming AWAY from honesty.
By that, I mean that too many opinion writers decide that all this independent thinking is just too hard, so they sign up with one side or the other in this false left/right dichotomy that divides our society. Then, they have a fan base that cheers them on and slaps them on the back, and all those people out there who disagree with them can just go to hell as far as they’re concerned, because they feel all warm and cozy in their support group.
You mention Raspberry — yes, he is one of those who is intellectually honest. He’s constantly open to different ways of looking at things. Tom Friedman is another.
And who are the ones who have been seduced by the Dark Side? I’ll give just two examples: Thomas Sowell on the right, and Paul Krugman on the left. They have become partisans.