Listen to Tom Ricks interviewed by another Tom on Onpoint today. I wasn't a big fan of Ricks when listening to him on news shows a few years ago. But that was because he seemed stridently critical of Israel. I'm no strident supporter of Israel, but his smile was smug as he described Israeli generals consciously creating civilian focused havoc in the 2006 Lebanon War. I simply didn't believe him.
In retrospect, the Winograd Commission seemed to paint a portrait of another stunningly bad government going blindly into a war that was brutal, and worse, for all the brutality left its enemies in some ways better off than when it started. Whatever. Ricks is fascinating in tracking how the American military recruited the aid of several foreign born pacifists to help lead the so-called surge in Iraq, winning their respect as an institutution superior to the country they served, our's.
Most interesting was listening to Americans, several coming out of the military or having sons in service, criticizing Ricks' belief that we should continue to stay in Iraq far beyond 2010. Again, as with Obama's presidential press conference, the basic intelligence of the discussion from both sides left me feeling this country is emerging from a fog, proving home to a majority of people who are decent, thoughtful, and capable of acting as the beacon to the world we once were. Not because "we're better" but because we have a society and infrastructures that supports robust dialogue, innovation, and the courage to wrestle with hard issues.
Yeah, we have our share of crooks, fools and bigots. But having traveled a fair amount of the world, it seems to me that God granted us no greater abundance of such gifts. All to say that despite all the bad news, my sense is this nation can still do great things. Maybe that's just because I have work, and work with great people. But listen to Ricks. He doesn't say anything Hollywood would classify as "hopeful," but it's oddly uplifting.
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