You have to let go, if you want our nation to survive

On my other weblog, Radio Saigon, I made an argument I plan to expand upon, an argument that may surprise some who have read me consistently over the past three years:

Sometimes, you must forget history.

Those on the left-wing, frothing at what they perceive to be the perfidy of the Bush administration in the lead up to the war in Iraq make statements that on the face of them are unhelpful at best and in general counterproductive to resolving the situation as it stands now.

That is what is important, the situation as it stands now, and how we can move forward from here to the prolonged success of our nation. Finger-pointing and blame-assigning are merely tactics for short-term partisan advantage.

To put it in blunt terms:

Yes, we can learn from how we got to this place, but at the moment that is far less important than answering the question of how do we move forward from the now that we are confronted with.

The Bull Moose does provide some context:

During the Kosovo conflict, many Republicans allowed their blind hatred for a Democratic President to cloud their judgment about national security. As much as we oppose the policies of this President and Administration, we must not allow our country to suffer a catastrophic defeat that will have implications for years to come.

Those on the left-wing should not allow their anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Republican fervor to overheat their minds to the point where they advocate policies that are destructive to our national security and ultimately, our future.

Yet, neither should those on the right-wing let their pro-Bush, pro-war, anti-Democrat fervor to overheat their minds to the point where they advocate policies that are destructive to our national security and ultimately, our future.

I continually exhort “THINK” for a reason.

So…

THINK…

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Do not confuse ‘duty’ with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.

—Lazarus Long

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3 Comments so far

I, personally, opposed our Kosovo intervention. I felt it was not in our national interest, and was idiotic considering we had allowed the Serbs to arm, then cut the knees out of the opposition with the arms embargo. That was a mistake on my part. I came around rather quickly. Any time you stop a genocide that is, by definition, a good thing.

There are three emotional tags that seem to be precursors to human thought.
Opinions, attitudes and beliefs in order, by emotional magnitude, drive our thinking.

It has been said that the human brain exists primarily to create excuses for what we have already decided to do.

Perhaps the deepest imprinting for learned behavior exists in the religious realm. That is not to say deep imprinting occurs outside that matrix. There certainly are passionate secular humanists who have difficulty discussing matters that are most important to those who are more outwardly than inner-guided.
The question and answer you pose seems to reside in the power of rational thought to persuade those whose passions seem beyond reason.

Right now, although vitally important to our national security, Iraq is a sideshow compared to the in-country war of ideology that exists in the U.S.

The war for hearts and minds is just as important within our borders could well parallel that ocurring within Iraq.

How to do that?: by appealing to the centrists as the potential swing vote?
Is reason and calm debate possible in Iraq when the insurgents create havoc? Is there less havoc here in the media war between our two extremes? I submit that, although simplistic, the anology of hitting the mule (not donkey) between the eyes to get his attention may be the only way to move the damn cart forward!

[...] Seriously, though, I do like the two that he has up, especially the second one, which speaks to something I wrote recently about the necessity sometimes to forget history. [...]

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