You might say that we're bitterly clinging to our respect for the military and the idea that sometimes you just have to fight. And that sometimes the world is a better place because you did.
I read a post on Comment is Free just before Christmas, and figured I'd leave it alone just then as I didn't want to do anything to interrupt the build-up towards peace and goodwill. The post is not of any great significance in any case, but I like it for the neat illustration it provides of a mindset in which, when it comes to issues of war and peace, the assumption is fixed in stone that there is only one viable point of view and that the writer is in possession of it and everyone else but the malign forces of government would share it with him were they not being duped by those malign forces.
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Reading this piece, it isn't just that one might disagree with him on certain points - as I do. It's his self-contained certainty that there's nothing to weigh on the other side of the question, nothing at any rate that merits being registered in order to supply an answer to it. The guy doesn't mention that Britain first went into Afghanistan in response to the attacks of 9/11 and did so with considerable public support; that one consequence was the overthrow of Taliban rule in that country, which has had some benefits for its people; or (at the end) that sometimes going to war is justified and necessary. The whole thing is framed as if George Chesterton just knows the truth and everyone else would be with him in recognizing it had they not been mistaught and mischaperoned.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
More on Intellectual Idiots
Norm Geras (a principled man of the Left) highlights an article that illustrates the casual, unthinking contempt that most "intellectuals" hold us in:
I'm rather puzzled at to what intellectuals actually contribute to society.What value do they provide,what changes do they make that can be looked back upon as enhancing society? Anyone?
ReplyDeleteIntellect combined with useful action,now we're talking!
But pure intellectualism?? I've never seen a statue honoring a "great intellectual" nor a movie critic for that matter.
I understand that the former Soviet Union would simply frog march intellectuals into the woods after a useful expiration date.
Without the military, and fighting, there would be NO "intellectuals"; they'd all be stood against the wall and shot...
ReplyDeleteYeah, the idea that you have some perspective on somethign that no one else has and that only you are right is certainly not that of an intellectual.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, a hearty discussion about why we are still in Afghanistan is probably long overdue and would be a good thing to have.
I supported the idea of going in from day one, but one we'd unseated the Taliban and more or less determined that we'd missed the boat on Osama and that he wasn't there anymore, we should have bid them all adieu and left. I'm thinking no later than early 2004.
What, exactly, we are trying to accomplish by still being there is pretty amorphous to me at this point, and I'm afraid it is even to the generals running the show.
Stability? You can't force stability that is outside of equilibrium by force of arms. No matter how long you stay, things will just go to where they would have gone anyway once you leave unless you kill everybody on one opposing side - but isn't that the sort of evil we are fighting against?
Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. The examples are myriad. You cannot force a nation to conform to a norm that they don't want to conform to without constant military force and presence, and that is not tenable.
Our future response to attacks should be to go in, kill them all, disband those we couldn't kill, and then LEAVE.