It's Not the Problem, It's the Solution

Too many American elites, whether in business or politics, prefer to take out the anxiety caused by difficult problems on those who offer solutions. In his column today, Arnold Kling cites Churchill as an historical example of a leader who faced just this problem when he argued that Hitler posed a threat to peace. This "strange paradox" stems from an intellectually incoherent stance summed up by Churchill in 1936 (quoted by Kling) as:

"So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

We see this in action in the work of the 9-11 commission, says Kling:

"The Bush critics would have us believe that the Administration could have prevented the attacks with immaculate pre-emption. Assuming that we had discovered and disrupted the hijacking plot, there might have been no war in Afghanistan, much less in Iraq. It is as if the critics see the alleged preventability of the attacks as justification for acting as if they never happened. Confronting the Islamic death cult would have been unnecessary. In that sense, the real agenda of the left on the 9-11 commission is to justify hating the solution. "

He also observes something worth remembering as we critique Bush's performance on terrorism: we have nothing with which to compare it. And he makes clear that, other than withdrawal from foreign affairs (which he rightly sees as both undesirable and politically impossible), we have little choice but to press forward with our efforts to steer the Muslim world away from what he calls the "death cult of terrorism." This is a long-term, difficult, and expensive proposal, and we need fresh ideas on how best to construct a coherent, workable strategy and then implement it effectively. And fresh ideas are in short supply among the administration's partisan critics.