March of Folly - or Spirit of the Blitz

'The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all." Thus Allan Bloom parodied the prevailing intellectual climate 20 years ago in The Closing of the American Mind. And that, without parody, appears to be the lesson George W. Bush's critics have drawn from his presidency, notably the decision to invade Iraq. The invasion itself is now generally thought unworthy of debate: It is taken as a given that this was a catastrophic error -- not flawed in execution, but wrong in principle. It is Mr. Bush's persistence in this error that now excites comment. More precisely, what is intolerable is not his unwillingness to admit that he is wrong, but his apparently sincere belief that he is right. Some trace this to hubris, or an irrational stubborn streak. Others note his professed reliance on intuition, or gut instinct. There are even theories that he is guided by a biblically inspired vision of the apocalypse, the "end days" that will prefigure the Messiah's return. But what is notable in many of these commentaries is the invocation of Mr. Bush's very unwillingness to change course as further proof that he was on the wrong course to begin with. As is often the case, we are in danger of becoming prisoners of narrative here. We are familiar with the stories of quagmires past, of Vietnam and the First World War, and so it is tempting to impose that frame on current events, in our constant search for meaning and coherence in the universe. There was even a tortured attempt, in one televised commentary, to compare Mr. Bush to Neville Chamberlain: "There was another government that knew that it was right ..." You understand: Because some who believed they were right were later proved wrong, therefore the surest sign that someone is wrong is that they believe themselves to be right. Now, it may be that Mr. Bush is all of these things: arrogant, stubborn, purblind, doctrinaire, even in the grips of a Revelation cult. But that he believes he is right is not proof of that, any more than it makes the case that he is wrong. The critics cite his certainty as if it were a second indictment, when in fact it merely restates the first: They disagree with his policy. On the other hand, it may be that Mr. Bush is merely possessed of that quality of sticktoitiveness, often prized in a leader: courageous perseverance in pursuit of a long-term strategic objective, undeterred by short-term setbacks, or the second-guessing that goes with them. Are we witnessing the March of Folly, or a display of Churchillian resolve? Answer: Who can say? As long as we are disdaining certainty, we are obliged to admit that none of us actually knows. It depends on your view of the Iraq war, of which history alone will be the judge. What can be said, however, is that so far as Mr. Bush believes he is right, he is obliged by simple logic to act on that belief. We are not in the realm of mathematics. There is no obvious right or wrong answer. A decision to invade another country, like any other question of policy, will draw upon any number of considerations: costs, benefits, risks, rewards, advice from all quarters. But how these are weighed and assessed, what part each takes in the final decision, is inescapably a matter of judgment -- the judgment of the one person who must ultimately make the call. As Mr. Bush has put it, in his artless way: "I'm the decider." What enters into judgment is a fascinating question. It is part temperament, part habit of mind, part experience and pattern recognition. It can be informed by intelligence, though the one does not necessarily imply the other; they may even conflict. A part of it, as well, is intuition, the product of inaccessible processes of the brain of which we ourselves are only dimly aware -- or in other words, the stuff you know that you don't know you know. A social psychologist published a piece in the Toronto Star the other day warning that it was not enough for Mr. Bush to "trust his gut." It was just as important to "check his intuitions against the facts." And indeed it is. But which facts? How are these to be selected and interpreted? Do they truly contradict our intuition, as might appear at first glance? Or is that impression itself misleading? Alas, the facts rarely "speak for themselves." As much as we must subject our judgment to the facts, we must also subject the facts to our judgment. Indeed, we are obliged to apply our intuition to our intuition, to decide how much weight to assign specific pieces of apparently conflicting evidence, and how much to our initial assessment -- to decipher which is the forest and which the trees. How far should we trust our gut? It's a judgment call.