Standards
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? With it we can see exactly what was wrong with our thinking or actions in a given moment. How many times do we look back on someone's words to us and say, "I should have said…."? How many times have we looked at how we handled any given situation and tell ourselves that we could have or should have done something differently? everyone beats themselves up for a bit over some missed opportunity, or some omission or some action they wish later they had not taken. I call these "tinfoil moments" for the physical reaction I have when I think back on some of these things is almost identical to biting down on a piece of tinfoil - an involuntary cringe.
It's part of being human, it's part of being fallible, it is part of what we are. Nobody is perfect, right?
So why is it we try to hold out leaders to a higher standard? Oh - they should be, in general, better at certain things than we are, that's why we need them to lead. But are they infallible? Leaving the Pope out of this, since that is a matter of faith, are any of us , as human beings infallible? I'm not. I'll bet not one of the many bloggers out there are. In fact I'll submit that there is not one person on this earth of ours that is. So why do we insist in perfection in our leaders? They cannot meet that standard.
When Ulysses Grant sent his army in to the attack at Cold Harbor, he must have believed he was doing the right thing. Historians have for many years judged his actions in the bright light of hindsight and judged him lacking. But can anyone in good conscience say he did not believe that he was right at that moment? When Lincoln put McClellan in charge of the Union armies, does anyone really believe that he did so knowing that McClellan would so badly botch his assigned duties? Historians have again, with the perfect light of hindsight, said Lincoln should have seen the weakness in the man and acted to remove him sooner.
I think reasonable people accept that nothing is ever perfect, and no person is perfect. We expect some people we select to lead to be better at some things than we are. We reasonably expect our leaders to group good people around themselves to help manage the burden of leading us. Yet some persist in holding our leaders to standards we could, ourselves, never meet.
So in today's Washington Post Joby Warrick implies, again, that the President should somehow have been informed within one day of a minority field report of an obscure assessment team laboring as part of a huge effort to investigate numerous leads, hints and evidence simultaneously. The implication is that this team, reporting to a DIA group compiling results for a lot of different investigation teams should have done what? Drop everything they were doing, seize upon the one piece of dissenting evidence and rushed it over to the CIA to make them stop the issuance of a white paper that was undoubtedly under preparation for some time.
I don't know about any of you, but I don't think it could possibly have gotten to the President's desk unless everyone had been breathlessly waiting for it to arrive. Even then it would have been close.
Was Bush given bad intelligence - without a doubt. Did he intentionally lie - no he did not.
To maintain otherwise is to try to hold someone to an impossible standard. A standard that not one of his critics could meet.
Go read John Hughes in the Christian Science Monitor.
By Tom, Thursday, 13 April , 2006 @ 2:08 pm
20/20 hindsight is always the clearest.
By Gauis Arbo, Thursday, 13 April , 2006 @ 2:37 pm
Yeah it is
By John Palmer, Sunday, 16 April , 2006 @ 5:02 pm
You’d have a point, if Bush hadn’t pushed a story that was favorable to himself as quickly and as vigorously as he could. He shouldn’t have said *anything* if he wasn’t sure if the truth.
Think about this: you’re basically saying that he should be forgiven for shooting his mouth off without having the facts.
But he’s the President, and in charge of the most powerful military force that has ever been assembled. He can’t go shooting his mouth off! He *has* to get the facts.
What harm would have occurred if he’d merely said that the military was investigating certain leads? None. He would have lost a chance to hype his accomplishments and attack his critics, but a strong leader doesn’t need to do either.
By Gauis Arbo, Sunday, 16 April , 2006 @ 5:23 pm
No, John. He relied on his intellegence department to do what they were supposed to. You are being unreasonable. This was a minority of a minority report, you cannot expect that outweighed two teams that had decided the trailers were bioweapons.