Beyond a reasonable doubt: the standard of proof for pre-emptive war

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve long been puzzled by the need of the antiwar and/or anti-Bush factions to give Saddam the benefit of enormous doubt in the buildup to the Iraq War, and to give Bush and his administration none.

It’s not so much that these people were supporters of Saddam; they were not. It’s just that they acted (and still act) as though they were his advocates in a conventional court of law, holding those who removed him to a standard of proof that can only be described as being “beyond a reasonable doubt”—and, perhaps, in some instances, even beyond an unreasonable one.

Our legal system was designed with a strong presumption of innocence, because we feel that the best protection for society is to guarantee the rights of the individual against overreaching by the state. Therefore the standard of proof for guilt for the average person in a trial is extraordinarily high: our society has decided to err on the side of sometimes letting the guilty person go free in order to protect the rights of the innocent. This is laudable, and most of the time it works, and part of the reason it works is that we live in a relatively lawful and civil country.

Does a similar rule apply to war? How high should the standard of proof be? Is someone like Saddam innocent until proven guilty—accent on the word “proven?” And how can one prove anything about a society as closed as Saddam’s Iraq was? There are risks to erring on the side of caution (the enemy attacks our shores) and risks to erring on the side of pre-emption (an unnecessary war against that enemy), and all judgments must be made with incomplete and sketchy information. That is the dilemma, and anyone who suggests it’s an easy one to solve is being disingenuous.

After all, the intelligence community doesn’t have the rules of courtroom discovery on its side—no subpoenas, no interrogatories, no ability to compel the release of evidence. Au contraire; one has to infiltrate, go by rumor and innuendo, and draw conclusions from the uncertain and fragmented evidence available.

The UN arms inspections, based on the idea that the UN possessed something like the power of a court to compel evidence, were useless without some sort of enforcement. and the actions of the Bush Administration in the UN during the buildup to the war were in part designed to give teeth to the UN’s ability to overcome Saddam’s defiance of the rules of international law. Unfortunately, the UN did not fully cooperate in its own behalf to enforce that law.

War is a serious thing, and should not be undertaken lightly. But not stopping a looming threat by a sworn enemy is another serious thing. Because we ultimately made the decision to go to war in Iraq, we know the consequences (so far) of that action. We can only guess at what the consequences would have been have been had we not gone to war there.

As Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review:

If we had left Saddam in place, the sanctions would have disintegrated in short order ”” Security Council members France, Russia and China were bought and paid for in Oil-for-Food bribes. Once the sanctions had collapsed, Saddam would have been right back in business ”” his WMD programs ready to be up and running again (to the extent they were not running already) as he sat there with about $20 billion in Oil-for-Food profits and an ongoing relationship with al Qaeda (among many other jihadist groups).

If you want to say we shouldn’t have gone to Iraq, and should have anticipated the present chaos there, fair enough. But at least have the honesty to say you’d prefer the alternative: A Saddam Hussein, emboldened from having faced down the United States and its sanctions, loaded with money, arming with WMDs, and coddling jihadists.

I don’t imagine we’ll hear that sort of honesty from those who were and are against the war. What we tend to hear, instead, are legalistic arguments about how it couldn’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt whether Saddam (take your pick) had WMDs, could have built them after sanctions were removed, wanted to build them, might have used them if built, was allied with al Qaeda, was sympathetic to al Qaeda, was looking for uranium in Niger, and so on and so forth.

George Tenet’s new book and recent interviews are replete with language about whether or not something or other was proven or absolutely known. But I’ve not read a quote that deals with what standard of proof of dangerousness should be necessary to make real-world decisions about whether a government constituting a threat (especially a nuclear one) should be taken out.

Tenet’s book states, for example, that there was plenty of “worrisome” evidence of connection and cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda. But in his interview with “60 Minutes,” Tenet says the CIA couldn’t “verify” the connection. Similarly for evidence of Saddam’s Niger yellowcake efforts; as McCarthy says, it’s never been proven false and if most likely to be true, a situation he likens to “probable cause” for indictment.

We know, of course, that Saddam had defied countless UN resolutions and was playing a cat and mouse game with inspectors—making even more of a mockery of the UN than it had already made of itself—and this constituted a violation of the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire. We know Saddam was a murderous and sadistic tyrant whose police state reign of terror over the people of Iraq was due to be perpetuated even after his death by his sons and heir apparents. We know, we know….we know enough to say this war was multidetermined, according to the best information we had at the time, and even according to the information we know now. That it has not gone smoothly ever since is another fact we know, and one we should have predicted from the outset and for which we should have been prepared.

Some of the squabbling about standards of proof necessary to justify the war is just political jockeying. But some of it represents a real difference of opinion between those who supported the war and those who did not. The long drawn out bickering over the word “imminent,” and how and when President Bush used it, is part of this difference. Some believe a threat must not only be “imminent” but must be realized—that is, for example, that no strikes should be pre-emptive and that an American city would need to be nuked to justify a retaliatory attack. Some believe “imminence” (a poorly-defined word—“imminence” is in the eye of the beholder) must be present. Some, such as President Bush, believe that in this world of potentially nuclear-armed terrorists and rogue states we can no longer wait for such “imminence.”

Bush’s use of the word imminent” in his 2003 State of the Union message bore out that idea:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

Here’s a cogent tracing of how Bush’s words came to be misquoted. But even if they had not been distorted, it’s fairly clear that many have a fundamental disagreement with what Bush was proposing about when it is necessary to act.

One of the many goals of the Iraq War was to serve notice to those who would play threatening Saddam-like games with the international community and/or the US that there would hereafter be a risk to such machinations; such threats would be taken seriously. The idea was that the Iraq war would have the side benefit of having a deterrent effect on others with agendas similar to Saddam’s. This worked for a while; for example, it seems to have been part of Gaddafi’s motivation to get with the program. But subsequent events in this country, including what’s happening in Congress right now and the irresolute message it sends, have utterly removed that effect.

The notion of needing to act to deter threats before they become imminent is not a new one. As President Kennedy said during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis:

We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril.

Kennedy was dealing with a state, the USSR, that already had in its possession a great deal of harmful weaponry. but it also had a track record of relative rationality and restraint vis a vis the US. The USSR knew the risks it faced in defying us, and it believed that Kennedy wouldn’t hesitate to use the awesome weaponry at his command.

And so we avoided a war during the Missile Crisis. The difference now is that Saddam had given no indication of restraint, nor do the terrorists of al Qaeda and other jihadi networks. On the contrary, there was and still is every reason to believe that if they obtain nuclear weapons they will use them with little fear of retaliation and little hesitance.

Who among us would have been happy waiting for that to happen? Who among us is still happy waiting for that to happen? That was the reasoning behind using a standard of proof for the Iraqi war that had more resemblance to “probable cause” than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It’s a reasoning I understand and still support—not because it is so wonderful, but because, unfortunately, there is no viable alternative that seems better.

On the couch with Tenet: “This was personal”

The New Neo Posted on by

George Tenet has written a tell-all book, another example of the talk show mentality that has pervaded this country in recent years. Correct me if I’m wrong (I know you will!), but I don’t recall that it used to be customary for retired CIA officers, much less heads of the CIA, to write self-serving memoirs.

But Tenet has written a book entitled At the Center of the Storm—interesting choice, that title. I assume he’s referring to himself in his capacity as CIA director, but he also could be referring to the accusations that he messed up, charges that appear to weigh extremely heavily on his mind.

Extremely heavily, indeed. In fact, if you read Tenet’s interview with “60 Minutes,” you’ll find he is exceptionally emotional about the entire subject. Perhaps his emotionality is clouding his judgment, because (as Bill Kristol has written in this Weekly Standard piece, and Roger Simon has elaborated on here) Tenet is either lying or sadly mistaken about some of his facts.

Tenet attributes comments to Richard Perle that Perle not only denies, but it turns out the conversation could not have occurred as Tenet states because Perle wasn’t in Washington at the time. The sloppiness of Tenet’s assertion about Perle (he speaks as though it had been “seared into” his brain, but now he says he must have gotten the date wrong) doesn’t engender a great deal of confidence in his ability to tell a narrative that depends on attention to detail and an excellent memory.

Andrew McCarthy points out many other anomalies in Tenet’s story. I’m sure the blogs will be duking it out as to who’s right and who’s wrong on statements such as whether the CIA was able to “verify” Iraq’s involvement in 9/11 (as well as what the word “verify’ signifies, and why it’s used here), and whether the CIA had actually “knocked down” the Niger uranium claim Bush made in his State of the Union speech.

But I was struck, on reading Tenet’s “60 Minutes” interview with Scott Pelley, by his extreme emotional intensity. The entire thing reads less like the dispassionate relating of a sequence of events and more like a plea to the jury for leniency and the restoration of Tenet’s honor (the latter is a word he uses many times in the interview).

The CBS report on the “60 Minutes” interview leads with a remarkable statement by Tenet that illustrates the sort of thing I’m talking about: “People don’t understand us, you know,” complains Tenet (the “us” here being Tenet and his fellow employees at the CIA).

Tenet vents on:

…they think we’re a bunch of faceless bureaucrats with no feelings, no families, no sense of what it’s like to be passionate about running these bastards down. There was nobody else in this government that felt what we felt before or after 9/11…This was personal.

Yes indeed, very very personal. Tenet is understandably and extraordinarily sensitive to charges that he fell asleep at the switch—because, in fact, he was the one at the switch, from 1997 on. It would be too much to ask, perhaps, that he remain objective; too much of his personal reputation is at stake. But once people give themselves over to this sort of heated emotionality, it becomes likely that their intense human need to vindicate themselves can easily make them, if not lie, then misperceive and misremember events in order to throw the softest and kindest possible light on their own actions.

Here’s some more of the extraordinary feeling emphasis from Tenet:

All these commissions, and all these reports never got underneath the feeling of my people. You know, to see us written about as if we’re idiots. Or if we didn’t understand this threat. As if we didn’t understand what happened on that day. To impugn our integrity, our operational savvy.

And the following is the most telling exchange of all, perhaps:

“Somebody who was in the Oval Office that day decided to throw you off the train. Was it the president?” Pelley asks.

“I don’t know,” Tenet says.

“Was it the vice president?” Pelley asks.

“I don’t know,” Tenet says.

“Who was out to get you, George?” Pelley asks.

“Scott, you know, I’m Greek, and we’re conspiratorial by nature. But, you know, who knows?” Tenet says. “I haven’t let myself go there, but as a human being it didn’t feel very good.”

I’m all for feelings, and talking about them. But there’s a place and time. This sort of thing rightly belongs in a therapist’s office. But sometimes it seems as though the whole world has turned into a therapist’s office.

What’s the news in Iraq?: the blind men and the elephant

The New Neo Posted on by

As the Democrats declare the Iraq war moribund and failed, others are not so sure. General Petraeus (oh well, what does he know?) reports that Sunnis are turning away from support for al Qaeda, and that the number of killings is significantly down since the surge began.

The perception in the MSM is different, and it’s no accident. That’s because the terrorists in Iraq are focusing on big bombings, media events that get our attention and cause a perception of ever-increasing carnage. Terrorists are savvy about how our media works, and about how to wear down support for the war still further; they have no reluctance to use the murder of Iraqi civilians to speak to Reid, et al, in the language they understand and respond to.

But statistics indicate the terrorists’ overall killing capacity is down, at least for the moment. Quite a few leaders have been captured recently, as well, although the operation is fueled by resupplies from Syria and Iran, the engine that drives the whole thing.

I was listening to an interview with Foud Ajami on Fox News, in which he made reference to an item with a fairly low profile on the media radar screen, the resignation from the Maliki cabinet of six al Sadr supporters. Ajami thought it was a good thing, symptomatic of al Sadr’s growing weakness, and good in the practical sense as well because these particular six ministers were overwhelmingly corrupt and useless (in some cases, actually illiterate).

But like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, the same news is seen differently by different analysts and “experts.” Well, they can’t all be right; here are two divergent views on the subject (hint: it’s no surprise Juan Cole finds the development ominous. My guess is that Harry Reid feels the same. The former Iraqi Ambassador Rend al-Rahim, on the other hand, sees it as a weak protest from a Sadr wounded by the surge. And the basic MSM line is a quick assertion that it’s a blow to the Maliki government.)

Ajami, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins and author of a 2006 book on Iraq and the US entitled The Foreigner’s Gift, sees signs of hope in an Iraq that has seen changes in the Sunni perception of the struggle. Sunnis have been accustomed to being rulers there, but their numbers are now reduced (partly by emigration) and they are disillusioned with promised hope from foreign Arabs who never came, or came only to cause more trouble. The Shias, on the other hand, are turning on their erstwhile champion al Sadr and his cabinet ministers (and this was written before their resignation):

There is a growing Shia unease with the Mahdi Army–and with the venality and incompetence of the Sadrists represented in the cabinet–and an increasing faith that the government and its instruments of order are the surer bet. The crackdown on the Mahdi Army that the new American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has launched has the backing of the ruling Shia coalition. Iraqi police and army units have taken to the field against elements of the Mahdi army….To the extent that the Shia now see Iraq as their own country, their tolerance for mayhem and chaos has receded.

That last sentence probably is true of all elements in Iraq, and holds the key to any eventual healing. The surge is having an effect on Iraq that could, over time, lead to a possibility of such healing. But one thing we may not have is the luxury of time.

Ajami made it clear in the interview I watched that the Iraqis are following events in the US government avidly. They understand that President Bush will be in power until January of 2009, and that he will stand firm in the face of a Congress determined to repeat the “helicopters on the roof” scenario of 1975. In the race between the forces of chaos and order in Iraq, both see January 2009 as an exceedingly important date.

Comment on comments

The New Neo Posted on by

WordPress tells me that so far I’ve written 1,266 posts, with 32,417 comments from readers. Whew.

When I do the math, this means that the average number of comments for a single post here has been 25 and a fraction.

Back when I started this blog, one of my goals was to have a lively comments section. I initially envisioned it as a place where “changers” could hang out and talk—and there has been a bit of that, although eventually the comments have evolved a bit differently. But it’s still one of the major satisfactions of my blogging experience that this blog has become a place for (mostly) intelligent debate on a wide range of topics from the regulars and the infrequent flyers, the mix of people from around the world, and even now and then the trolls and the near-trolls (well, those last two categories help make it lively, anyway).

Yeltsin, Humpty Dumpty, and the death of naivete

The New Neo Posted on by

Ron Rosenbaum has written his reflections on the mixed legacy of Boris Yeltsin, who died last Monday.

Rosenbaum focuses on the hope those times represented, when the once-mighty Soviet Union withered away and died and was replaced by a fledgling democracy. But of course—as even most neocons know, although we are not commonly seen as understanding this fact—democracy is no panacea (see this for some of my thoughts on the subject).

No panacea indeed; but still, on the whole, an improvement over what went before. Rosenbaum indicates that, when the Soviet bloc fell and Yeltsin came to power, the promise of liberty was “thrilling and beautiful…and yet…unsustainable.” Russia became chaotic during the 90s under Yeltsin. He was succeeded by Putin, who has reined in that chaos at the expense of freedom.

But not totally. The Russia of today is a far freer and more democratic place than the old USSR, and its people have at least some of the benefits of a more robust economy. I disagree with Rosenbaum’s contention that this represents the death of hope; perhaps just the death of naive hope. As Yeltsin himself said:

I want to ask [the people of Russia’s] forgiveness for not fulfilling some hopes of those who believed that . . . in one go . . . we would be able to jump from a gray, stagnating totalitarian past into a bright, rich, civilized future. I believed in this myself. It didn’t happen in one jump.

No, it didn’t. And what’s more, it never has and probably never can.

That brings us—of course—to that other formerly stagnating totalitarian state: Iraq. Anyone who believed that Iraq could go easily, “in one jump…into a bright, rich, civilized future” (and that includes any neocons who actually thought so, as opposed to the ones who are misrepresented as having thought so) was sadly mistaken and profoundly naive.

From the outset of the Iraq war I expected the task to be fraught with difficulties, and fully expected it to take at least a decade (if not more) of careful occupation. When the looting began at the beginning of the postwar period it troubled me greatly, because it seemed that we weren’t doing what was needed to get the inevitable chaos under some sort of control.

Previously, the crime-ridden and nearly-disintegrating Russia of the 90s had made me wonder something similar—whether there was anything more that the US and Europe could do to prevent its slide. We were not in charge of Russia, of course, but its potential instability would affect us, and the world. And with our present occupation of Iraq we have an even greater responsibility to see that the chaos there comes under control.

Although it’s a child’s nursery rhyme, the parable of Humpty Dumpty expresses a profound truth, which is this: it is exceedingly difficult to put together that which is broken. By the time Yeltsin came to power Russia was a broken nation and, without the strong and harsh cement that tyranny provided, its fragmentary nature became more and more apparent. In fact, Soviet unity had been illusory, and almost immediately many of the satellite nations seceded from the USSR and became autonomous once more. Russia itself, which had been a nation for centuries prior to the Communist takeover, was in deep disarray, and Putin’s harsher hand has brought it a measure of stability at no small cost.

This ebb and flow between chaos and tyranny is the legacy of every state trying to repair itself from a broken and violent past—and that includes Iraq, one of the most broken and violent of all. The United States, on the other hand, has had the luxury of not having been broken at its outset—it was, rather assembled from various parts that came together with a common vision, although not without some disagreement. The fragmentation that might have occurred following our own Civil War was averted and the damage slowly repaired. And, despite the cries of those who shout “tyranny” and think our civil liberties deeply threatened, we have always—throughout our long history—been among the freest nations in the world in terms of the individual. That remains the case today.

Russia’s post-Communist path has been so difficult that there are many citizens who believe life was better under the Soviets despite the suffering of those times—although they tend to be the older people. Dictatorships, after all, have their pluses—“Hitler built the autobahn,” “Mussolini made the trains run on time“—and generations who were brought up under their firm control may have difficulty with the crime and chaos, as well as the social inequality and “unfairness,” that goes with the beginnings of a free market democracy (Dickens had a bit to say about the suffering inherent under those conditions, as well).

It may be human nature to believe that, once a tyrant’s yoke is loosened, paradise will magically ensue. If so, it’s a dangerous belief. But even though the road is hard, that doesn’t mean a tyrannical regime should stay in power. It just means that extraordinary patience is needed in the attempt to put Humpty back together again afterwards. The task requires—if not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men—then a great many of them, and a great deal of time as well.

As I’ve said, I don’t think I was as naive as those who thought rebuilding Iraq would be easy. But I do admit to having been naive in a different way, and that is that I expected the majority of people in this country to understand what would be involved and to be willing to stick it out much longer than seems to be the case at the moment. That particular naivete of mine is now officially dead.

The margin of the pullout vote and public opinion: not your father’s Vietnam

The New Neo Posted on by

The Democratic leadership is pushing vigorously for further confrontation with the Bush administration over a timetable for a pullout. They clearly seem to think they have a winner for themselves in the political sense, whatever the fallout for Iraq itself.

The Vietnam playbook for the role of Congress in the early-to-mid-70s is being followed, as predicted here and here.

There are two very important differences, however. One is the fact that the war in Iraq is arguably far more important than Vietnam ever was, and the second has to do with how much support the Democrats have for their Iraq agenda.

Don’t get me wrong; in human terms both wars were/are very important, and the regional bloodbath that followed our withdrawal from Vietnam was probably just as large as the one that would follow our withdrawal from Iraq. But although the North Vietnamese were a featured part of the lengthy global battle between Communism and capitalist liberal democracies known as the Cold War, and defeat there had an effect on the duration of that struggle, a pullout in Iraq would have even more direct consequences for the US. It would embolden an enemy far more apocalyptic in its goals and far more able to bring the war directly to us in terms of terrorism.

Therefore, the stakes now are more immediate, and higher, for the US itself, although the Democratic leadership is bent on denying that fact.

The second difference is the amount of support the Democrats have for their approach. Polls from February (the most recent ones I could find that contained some all-important details) put support for a pullout timetable at 53%, not a huge margin. And this margin was soft: only 46% of those who favored a pullout wanted it to be accomplished within a year (a year, that is, of February). The rest—54% of those who favored a pullout—wanted it to be more gradual.

I could only find one poll on the subject that is more recent, and it appears in the subscribers-only Wall Street Journal, so I have none of the all-important details. But here’s mention of it. In the new poll, 56% favor a withdrawal date, a very slight increase over February’s poll considering the incessant drumbeat of despair. But the summary doesn’t mention the breakdown of the timetable favored, and it’s quite possible that it’s similar to that of the earlier poll. And hmmm, that Oct. 1 deadline set by the House is only five months away.

Is it possible that the Democratic leadership is miscalculating when it figures its actions are a sure-fire crowd-pleaser and vote-getter? Perhaps.

Polls, of course, are notoriously unreliable, but despite their well-known flaws they’re the best tool we have for gauging the true extent of Democratic support. One indisputable fact, however, is that Congressional support for the Democratic position (which, of course, is not supported by all Democrats in Congress, and is supported by a few Republicans) is weak, as well.

What was the vote count on this bill in the House? 218 pro, 210 con. A majority is a majority, I suppose, and “passed” is “passed.” But no wonder it’s not veto-proof; this barely made it through.

The Congressional situation for the Vietnam pullout was very different indeed. I can’t find a record of the actual vote in late 1974 that effectively ended funding for the South Vietnamese, and thus, the war (here’s President Ford’s reaction to it). But at the time of the bill’s passage, the composition of the House was 242 Democrat and 192 Republican, and support was hardly limited to Democrats (to the best of my recollection).

Contrast that 50-person Democratic margin to today’s 31-person one. Even more importantly, an election had just occurred in late 1974 at the time the funding was cut, and a new Congress was about to be installed. This new Congress would be Democratic by one of the largest margins in history: 291 to 144, or a surplus of 147 Democratic votes. Bucking this overwhelming tide was hopeless, and Ford knew it (similar figures for the Senate of the time were 56/42 for the years 1973-1975, and 60/38 for the incoming Senate of 1975-1977. The present Senate, in contrast, is quite equally divided.)

The members of Congress who voted for a Vietnam pullout knew their votes had teeth and that President Ford was powerless to stop them. Whether or not you approve of what they did (and I do not, although I did at the time), their acts were not a cynical ploy nor a largely political battle against Ford himself. Their battle against the Republican President, Nixon, had already been won, with his full cooperation via Watergate.

Broder on Reid

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, he may be “relentlessly centrist.” But still, David Broder writes for the liberal Washington Post, and he’s out for Harry Reid’s blood (as well as Gonzalez’s).

I’m not sure I agree with Broder, though, that “the Democrats deserve better” than Reid. They chose him, and as long as they continue to allow him to be Majority Leader, we can assume they are getting exactly want they want and deserve.

The larger question is whether the country deserves him. I certainly hope not.

If I were still a Democrat, I’d be angry that my party was represented by leaders such as Pelosi and Reid. I wish I heard more dissension from the Democratic ranks, rather than fuzzy attempts such as Schumer’s (described in the Broder column) to soften Reid’s remarks. Surely the Democrats can do better than that, and they can find a better leader than Reid.

Reid’s proposal: not quite treason, but cynical managed care for war

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t been especially easy on Harry Reid lately. I think his behavior despicable, shortsighted, pernicious, self-serving, and bordering on the traitorious.

But it doesn’t fit the definition of treason, even though Tom Delay recently has called it “very, very close.” Treason has been defined by the US Constitution in such a way as to make it difficult to prosecute, and traditionally in most countries it has included intent to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

Reid’s intent is manifestly different: to defeat George Bush, placate his own party, and win the 2008 election. He said as much when he addressed the Democratic base:

I understand the restlessness that some feel. Many who voted for change in November anticipated dramatic and immediate results in January. But like it or not, George W. Bush is still the commander in chief – and this is his war.

Note the distancing from any sense that are all in this together, and might need to pull together to face a difficult enemy. No concept of the message such intense divisiveness gives to that enemy.

No, the war and everything to do with it is all tied to the personage of the hated Bush—the true enemy—and when it goes away, his power goes away. And then all the problems go away. We need to look no further than that.

This, of course, is demented, although a powerfully seductive point of view that has taken hold among a large portion of the populace. And so the latest in Reid’s battle against top enemy Bush is to propose a bill that will force a troop withdrawal by October 1 (beginning as early as July 1), if Bush has not proven to Congress’s satisfaction that the surge is working.

It’s a variation on a theme that’s become more and popular in this country of late: managed care. The executive branch and the military who have been tasked with such decisions since the beginning of this country, subject only to Congress’s ability to fund or not fund, is now to be micromanaged by the middlemen (and women) of Congress, who will set up demands for quantifiable and provable results by a certain date or they will pull the plug on this patient.

In the insurance business, it’s all about money. But this is most manifestly not about money, not really; it’s about power. Domestic power, played out on a world stage, with possible horrific consequences for Democratic victory, consequences about which Reid and his supporters couldn’t care less.

When questioned about those possible horrific consequences, Reid tossed them off with an answer almost breathtaking in its failure to take responsibility for what he is proposing:

Reid was asked what the U.S. should do if U.S. troops leave and Iraq collapses into chaos. “We know this is an intractable civil war going on now,” he responded.

I couldn’t find a transcript of the full interview, and I sincerely hope that’s not all Reid could find to say on the matter. But what he appears to be saying here is: “Not my fault; it’s already hopeless, so anything that happens after a pullout has nothing to do with the pullout itself.”

That, by the way, is the key to why Reid is so hot to define the war as already a failure: he hopes that any subsequent consequences cannot be laid at the Democrats’ feet. His hands, he is saying, will be clean—and this, as I’ve written before, is one of the most pressing concerns of many liberals.

Reid’s proposal is a profoundly cynical move, as well, a bone tossed to the ravening bloodthirsty (thirsty, that is, for Bush and Republican blood) hordes on the Democratic Left.

Why do I call it cynical? Because Reid knows his bill has virtually no chance of going into effect, since Bush has declared at the outset he will veto it, and the votes are there to sustain such a veto. And so it is merely a move in the ongoing chess game against Bush, and Reid sincerely hopes it’s checkmate (note the derivation of the word “checkmate:” the king is dead).

[ADDENDUM: Austin Bay isn’t too fond of the weather on Harry Reid’s planet, as well.]

“Your words are killing us”: note to Harry Reid

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Naval officer Jason Nichols’s letter to Harry Reid on the subject of Reid’s recent declaration of defeat in Iraq. He makes the excellent point that statements such as Reid’s strike fear into the hearts of any Iraqis who might be thinking about cooperating with the US by reporting on terrorists and insurgents.

If Reid wants less violence rather than more, he should think more deeply before he speaks.

Feeling too much of your pain: therapists and clients

The New Neo Posted on by

Are clients best served by therapists who’ve had life experiences and backgrounds similar to theirs? Clients certainly often seen to want this, but do they need it for the most effective therapy to take place? And, in fact, can such similarity of experience sometimes be counterproductive?

Ann Althouse discusses an article on the subject by psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman that appears in today’s NY Times. Friedman says similarity of background is not necessary, and that empathy and understanding are not limited to those who’ve shared a certain experience, but are products of imagination. Althouse asks how a patient is supposed to know how good an imagination a therapist has.

Therapy is a funny thing—funny-strange, that is, not funny ha-ha. Although it’s an experience that’s morphed from something exotic and only for the rich and leisured into something relatively mainstream, the process is still poorly understood by some clients (and even some therapists, as well). From an endeavor that initially focused on the psychoanalytic, it has branched out into so many schools and approaches and theories of personal change that the bewildered client can be forgiven for not knowing where to turn or whom to call.

There’s a school of thought that gay patients are best served by gay therapists, abused women need counselors who’ve been there too, alcoholics require those who’ve been through a twelve-step program themselves, and so on and so forth.

But I think this idea springs from an oversimplification and misunderstanding of the process of therapy. And I think Dr. Friedman’s emphasis on empathy and imagination is simplistic, as well.

It’s not that those traits aren’t important: they most definitely are. And anything that helps a client to trust a therapist enough to speak freely is a good thing—and that trust can often be fostered by having a therapist who seems to share a similar life experience and background.

But therapy is a great deal more than empathy and understanding, or being able to give good advice because one has walked in the same shoes. Therapy requires a peculiar set of traits on the part of the therapist: an ability to understand through leaps of intuition and empathy, as well as an ability to distance and to look with an objective and evaluative eye on the situation.

Therapists are human—all too human, I’m afraid—with the full complement of humanity’s foibles and emotions. And yet, in order to be effective, they must develop the ability not only to look at their patients in that dual intuitive/objective way, but also at themselves.

Two of the pitfalls all therapists must traverse, no matter what school they belong to, were recognized by Freud early on, and are known as transference and countertransference. These terms relate to the sometimes very powerful emotions the therapeutic relationship can foster in both parties, “transference” being the feelings a client brings from his/her earlier relationships (such as, typically, his/her parents) and redirects towards the therapist while in therapy. “Countertransference” is a similar phenomenon a therapist feels towards the patient.

There are special perils inherent in dealing with clients whose experiences are too close to the therapist’s own. Both transference and countertransference can be enhanced in such a situation.

This can make for a great feeling of bonding (especially if the transference and countertransference are mostly positive rather than negative). But it can also lead a therapist down false paths, imagining he/she knows more than he/she actually does about this patient, using the therapist’s own experience as a guide when it is inappropriate.

Unless the therapist has done an exceptional amount of working through of his/her own related issues, the emotions that still remain can cloud judgment. For example, a therapist can think that the way he/she worked through a similar issue is the best way, the way a client should follow, and fail to pay attention to the unique characteristics of that client that would dictate otherwise.

So, paradoxically, it’s often best to have a therapist who hasn’t had an experience too close to one’s own. Therapists aren’t just glorified friends or hairdressers who listen well—although, again, that’s certainly a skill they need to have. They are understanding listeners who can also detect a client’s patterns of behaviors and reactions; and can suggest to that client other ways of perceiving, feeling, and acting, in the interests of fostering desired change in that client’s life.

One of the most fascinating and moving aspects of therapy for some clients is the growing realization that, despite the fact that the therapist does not share the exact (or even similar) life experiences, that therapist can still understand deeply and listen with compassion to the client’s story. Many people who come to therapy (and many who don’t) have the idea that “no one can understand me,” and whatever expands their idea of the universality of their experience and the ability of even the “other” to understand them is a good thing.

Althouse asks how a patient can know that a therapist is sufficiently imaginative to empathize well. My answer is that, surprisingly enough, that’s one of the things most patients ordinarily can tell about a therapist, although not from the yellow pages or a recommendation. The only way to sense this is to have an initial consult, and usually the feeling of being understood or not understood will come through very quickly, on a gut level. Not all therapists are alike, and not all therapists are good matches for certain patients, but the patient is the one who has the final say in the matter, and should leave the therapist if there isn’t that feeling of basic rapport.

As referenced in the Friedman article, patients often come with pre-existing prejudices and preferences about what they want in a therapist. Some of these are considered therapeutically valid, such as a woman who’s been severely abused by men being more comfortable with a woman therapist. Some are arguably less so, such as a request for a therapist of the same race. I disagree with Friedman that the latter request should be refused; if a client is that uncomfortable with someone of a different race, whether it be a black person uncomfortable with someone white or vice versa, than the therapy can and should deal with the issue. But it’s not best dealt with by placing the client with a therapist who makes him/her acutely uncomfortable at the outset.

A lesser-known issue is that of therapist discomfort with certain clients. Theoretically, therapists can work with anyone, but in actuality they tend to specialize and refer out those patients who press their buttons (such as, for example, child molesters).

And, although this sounds like some sort of bad joke, I know quite a few therapists who say they would have difficulty treating a client whom they know to be a Republican. So it’s not just clients who want therapists who are as much like themselves as possible—some therapists return the favor.