Thursday, April 17, 2008

Through the Looking Glass

John McCain said,

"We can look back at the past and argue about whether we should have gone to war or not, whether we should have invaded or not, and that’s a good academic argument."
Let's set aside the idea that anything academic is trivial because, you know, people who are trained to understand things like history, ethics, and political science to the highest degree possible certainly wouldn't have anything meaningful to contribute to conversations about policy.

Instead, we can just look at the idea that the train wreck on the ground in Iraq has no history, there's no cause and effect, after all no one actually made judgments in that case, right, judgments that might say something meaningful about one's ability to make good judgments about topics like, say, I don't know, foreign policy.

This, of course, is not to say that there are not important markers concerning one's capabilities of deciding on important issues concerning foreign affairs. It just turns out that they have nothing to do with actual foreign policy decisions. The place to look for such crucial indicators is, of course, a matter of flag pins.

Stupid has become institutionalized.