Getting Iraq Wrong - NY Times Magazine

[groovedaddy]

The following article is not only about Iraq but about political judgement in general:

Getting Iraq Wrong - NY Times Magazine - Sunday, Aug. 5, 2007
By MICHAEL IGNATIEFF

The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president. But it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion. Many of us believed, as an Iraqi exile friend told me the night the war started, that it was the only chance the members of his generation would have to live in freedom in their own country. How distant a dream that now seems.

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The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true. Politicians live by ideas just as much as professional thinkers do, but they can’t afford the luxury of entertaining ideas that are merely interesting. They have to work with the small number of ideas that happen to be true and the even smaller number that happen to be applicable to real life. In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectual’s responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician’s responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm.

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The attribute that underpins good judgment in politicians is a sense of reality. “What is called wisdom in statesmen,” Berlin wrote, referring to figures like Roosevelt and Churchill, “is understanding rather than knowledge — some kind of acquaintance with relevant facts of such a kind that it enables those who have it to tell what fits with what; what can be done in given circumstances and what cannot, what means will work in what situations and how far, without necessarily being able to explain how they know this or even what they know.” Politicians cannot afford to cocoon themselves in the inner world of their own imaginings. They must not confuse the world as it is with the world as they wish it to be. They must see Iraq — or anywhere else — as it is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05iraq-t.html?th&emc=th

[pretzel4gore]

1. 650 thousand innocent people are dead

he should refer to them, before he explains the flaws in his approach to thinking. Millions of us KNEW the war in Iraq was wrong, if only because Iraq was a 3rd world country with smaller GNP then Alabama (the poorest of the United States)
ignatief should jump off a tall building

[OwnedByFerrets]

2. Do you feel better now......

are your hands clean now that youve figuratively washed them?
No, they still have the blood of 700,000 deaths on them. You and every other idiot who blindly supported this invasion and occupation.