Saturday, January 08, 2005
Lowry Talks to Los Angeles
The War Against Rumsfeld: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has managed both to be targeted by the Bush administration's usual Democratic critics and to lose the support of some Republican senators and conservative pundits. They contend that the Iraq war has been prosecuted incompetently, with Rumsfeld bearing the major responsibility.
The attacks, of course, depend upon a fiction that a perfectly run, low-casualty war is always possible, as long as we have proper military leadership. If only that were so. Instead, waging war is unavoidably difficult, unpredictable and deadly. To think otherwise is certain to weaken public support for the use of force and therefore only undermines our ability to apply it when necessary. "
The clairvoyance that Lowry so eloquently talks about is something I have had difficulty digesting as well. Wanting a clean war is, in effect, wanting no war. I should say that none of us want war, but rather feel compelled to support any war against those that want us dead. To see it in other ways seems to say that we need to wait until they have killed more of us to justify to the rest of the world that it is necessary. A gathering threat, it seems, should be the same as an armed threat or an enemy who has already struck.
The attacks, of course, depend upon a fiction that a perfectly run, low-casualty war is always possible, as long as we have proper military leadership. If only that were so. Instead, waging war is unavoidably difficult, unpredictable and deadly. To think otherwise is certain to weaken public support for the use of force and therefore only undermines our ability to apply it when necessary. "
The clairvoyance that Lowry so eloquently talks about is something I have had difficulty digesting as well. Wanting a clean war is, in effect, wanting no war. I should say that none of us want war, but rather feel compelled to support any war against those that want us dead. To see it in other ways seems to say that we need to wait until they have killed more of us to justify to the rest of the world that it is necessary. A gathering threat, it seems, should be the same as an armed threat or an enemy who has already struck.
