A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Let the peaceniks have their say!

Good article at Reason on the Ron Paul-Rudy Giuliani showdown:

No one knows precisely what morbid formula inspired the Sept. 11 attacks. Most likely, it was some mix of U.S. foreign policy exacerbating radical Islamists’ already deep-seeded contempt for Western values.

But to suggest that we shouldn’t even consider that our actions overseas might have unintended consequences is, frankly, just ignorant. And to attempt to silence anyone who says otherwise by attempting to define them as the lunatic fringe of political debate is not only ignorant, it’s an embrace of ignorance—a refusal to even hear ideas that might challenge your own perspective.

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One response to “Let the peaceniks have their say!”

  1. Kevin Carson

    Apparently their position is that correctly understanding the enemy’s motivation, as opposed to the regime’s official dogma about what motivates the enemy, gives aid and comfort to the enemy.

    Along these same lines, it’s always struck me as interesting that, under the neocon understanding of “deterrence,” the U.S. is apparently the only country in the world that is not supposed to engage in rational calculus or learn from the consequences of its own actions.

    All the rival powers in the world are self-consciously “E-VIL,” like Snidely Whiplash, twirling their moustaches and saying “Curses! Foiled again!” at the prospect of superior force wielded by the guys in white hats. The idea that Acton’s dictum might apply to the U.S. government, or that it might be a good thing for rival powers to possess a deterrent capability, is outside the realm of acceptable discourse. The suggestion that the U.S. ought to be deterred from aggression by the prospect of harm to itself, or that it ought to restrain its future actions in response to the pain it is currently suffering as a result of past aggression, is even less acceptable–amounting to “defeatism.” This is the equivalent of saying “if you stop beating your head against a wall to make your head stop hurting, the headache will have won.”

    American exceptionalism is taken to a new low, in which the U.S. is the only power absolutely required to be stupid on the grounds that rational thought is tantamount to “defeatism.”

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