So how do we avoid sinking into relativism?

I think there are ways to structure the system such that these things don't happen. Protocols to follow, for example, which ensure that every rule has been followed, but protects the secrets involved. Ways of detecting these violations without hearing "states secrets" thrown about, etc.

Back to the previous issue...

I think the overriding explanation, besides H's "paranoid style", in my mind, has always been nicely summed up in the famous paper: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

It's quite the paradox.

The more I think about it, the more I think that Addington & Cheney may teach us something about the nature of evil, which we tend to identify with caricatures of Hitler or Stalin, or imaginary fiends like The Joker in the newest Batflick.

What strikes me about an Addington is that he pursues seemingly laudable goals -- protecting the U.S. -- but does so in what seems obviously an evil way. I personally think that Hitler believed his own b.s. about the Jews and race, and thus by his own lights had good motives.

So how do we avoid sinking into relativism? What's striking about Addington is not just his mistaken ideas. It's his egotistical refusal to entertain contrary views, or to revise his opinions in the face of facts. Told by respectable lawyers within the administration that various programs broke the law, that torture was a chump's method of interrogation, and that he was actually endangering America rather than protecting it -- the man simply would not listen. He wouldn't argue, just browbeat people into submission.

This selfish indifference to facts and dialectic seems to me to be somewhere close to what distinguishes "evil" from misguidedness or error.

True, but it at least has a long history.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

I'd highly recommend the collection of essays by Hofstadter of the same name.

Glad it's not just me noticing that, Hein. My most charitable guess is that it's a psychological defense -- having been so wrong in the past, and finding that reality is out of sync with your political ideology, you have to kid yourself that things would be EVEN WORSE had we, say, devoted our post-9/11 attention to wiping out al-Qaeda in general and Osama in particular.

Along those lines, I'm reading Jane Mayer's The Dark Side right now, and among many terrible things, one of the worst is that we tortured people with SERE methods, which themselves were patterned on Communist methods DESIGNED TO PRODUCE FALSE CONFESSIONS.

Ponder that. Defending America is supposed to be so important that torture is okay, but in torturing our victims, we use methods that are expressly designed NOT to reveal the truth, but to confirm what the interrogators want to hear.

Think how desperately those torturers, and their authorizing politicians, and the supporters of those politicians, have to rationalize, in order to materially distinguish themselves from admirers of Hitler and Stalin.

It's not a pretty sight.

Well did you read all the earth shattering headlines of that time about the guy in Illinois that wasnt' for the war?. No?. How about the township clerk in his district?. Irrelevant.

It counts as much as lip service ever counts.

Primarily because they do not need to attack again. They wanted us in Afghanistan, and we are there. The goal is to financially break us the same way they did the USSR.

An excellent point. Bin Laden is on record saying that he hope to break us financially. He is not stupid, and he he knows that inflicting a military defeat on us is not possible.

When you look at the shape we are in financially as opposed to pre 9/11... well, its a bit scary.

So anything that any candidate did or said that was not reflected in a Senate vote is irrelevant?

But why exactly would anyone be following the foreign policy proscriptions of an obscure Illinois State Senator in 2002?

Isn't hindsight wonderful?"

That's what I was thinking. And when the messia says "I opposed the war from the start"...uh, ok. Too bad you were not around to vote on it.

I don't buy this "Only Bush was stupid enough to lead us into Iraq" theory. Back in 2002, crushing Saddam was plenty popular in the US. It was only when the occupation turned sour that public opinion shifted.

Public opinion is as malleable as play-dough. The average American is uninformed and impulsive enough to have been persuaded in 2002 that we needed to invade the Mariana Trench. The problem was that at that moment in our history we so happened, somewhat by accident, to have a President who was one of those average Americans.

As for the idea that the invasion of Iraq explains the lack of a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11, it is implausible that there is a connection between the two. To protect the homeland from another 9-11, we need solid domestic security, more investment in the Nunn-Lugar effort to secure nuclear material, and probably a very long list of things that would come before invading a country thousands of miles away where no one in AQ lived. More importantly, though, we have to accept that it is not possible to fully protect ourselves from at attack at least along the lines of OKC. Instead, we have to aspire to reduce the motivations that have lead to this threat. And invading Iraq was clearly a step in the wrong direction on that most important long-term objective.

Now one or more persons working for the current government may well deserve a lot of credit for the lack of attacks on US soil. But the only way Iraq has helped that cause is if it baited the AQ people into Iraq who otherwise would have pulled off an attack here. But to take that sort of bug-zapper approach to killing mosquitos . . . not to mention the high costs and the fact that it is breeding more mosquitos than it is killing. I feel lucky, not safer.

Primarily because they do not need to attack again. They wanted us in Afghanistan, and we are there. The goal is to financially break us the same way they did the USSR. Iraq was just a total bonus because they were not as well prepared in Afghanistan as they thought. They took big losses. We diverted our attention to Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan. Taleban finances our booming with the record poppy plantings. They have consolidated in Pakistan. AQ is also a bit isolated from other Jihadists now, especially with their adherence to takfiri. Many feel that 9/11 was a mistake, or at least that there is nothing to be gained by a similar attack.

Iraq was also an easier place to recruit for. It has symbolism throughout the Arab world. Our total mismanagement of the first few years in Iraq made for good recruiting. They would never, IMO, have been able to build back up so quickly if we had stayed out of Iraq or handled it adequately.

FTR, I think we would have ended up in Iraq eventually, but it should have been only after we settled Afghanistan and Pakistan. One would have hoped for a competent SOD like Gates in charge also.

Steve

I've been reading OTB (and it's comment-section) for... I don't know,.. maybe three years(?) from across the Atlantic. With great interest and great pleasure. I appreciate OTB for being a (from my point of view) moderately right-leaning blog. The opinions stated by the propietors of this blog usually do not quite match mine, but it's always interesting, what the other side thinks. And, as it happend, it sometimes actually swayed my mind towards a more... let's say conservative point of view.

Having said that... the Comment-Section of this Blog is becoming weird in a way that I haven't seen in all those years reading OTB. There are two regulars ("bithead" and "Zeldorf [someting something]" I believe they are called) who always used to be rather right-wing. Currently, however, they seem to have descended into a nightmare of paranoia. I've seen similar on the left side of the aisle (e.g. commentary at the "Washington Monthly", "Atrios" or diaries at Kos) around the last election. I honestly did not expect anything like that here.

Apparently your country is in (and due) for a change of management. Is that really that bad? Why not just have the other guys have a go, and cut down on the hysteria?

Why don't you explain how invading Iraq has spared us another attack? Especially since Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 in the first place.

One thing to keep in mind about 9/11 is that is was, to AQ, a success far beyond anything they expected. They did not have any follow up plan, and they are not interested in moving backwards. They have a history of being very patient and thinking big. If they hit us again, they want to hit us harder and with a high probability of success. Difficult to do now that we are on guard. They do not want to try and fail, which would be very hard on the legend of Bin Laden in the middle east.

In short, they have a difficult problem trying to mount the kind of operation they would need to to make it worth their while. Does not have a damn thing to do with Iraq...