October 29, 2003

Bottom Line

Should the actions of the United States and the current Bush administration in liberating Iraq and progress made in rebuilding Iraq be judged against a utopian vision (which we don't seem to be able to produce here in the US), or should they be judged against a violent state of chaos, e.g., Mogadishu circa 1993?

This is more than a question of is your glass half empty or half full. It fundamentally gets to the root of whether a commentator/pundit/politician is a serious person who lives in the real world or whether they are nothing more than a cynical player of a game in which winning and maintaining power are all that matter.

I suppose I can be accused of putting forth a false dichotomy in this instance, but I don't really think I have. I did not claim that to live in the real world one must support everything the administration does, nor that we should not view everything they do with a critical eye. But that is not the same thing at all as wearing dung-colored glasses that can only see the negative and taking the phrase, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," to heart, thereby lumping President Bush into the same list of enemies as the terrorists. In my mind, this comes dangerously close to laying a bet that having our enemies win is a short term gamble that some are willing to take to secure their own sinecure.

Politics and Big Media's reporting on politics is rapidly devolving into nothing more than the automatic gainsaying of the other person's position, no matter how ludicrous it sounds or however mendacious one must be to say it. The abdication of responsible opposition to the current administration is beginning to radicalize me. And I don't think that I am alone.

Posted by Charles Austin at October 29, 2003 11:46 AM
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