Some Things are Just Hard

Michael Ubaldi has an article on Andrew Sullivan's take on the philosophy underlying the Terror Wars. It's worth a read.

I've not really understood a lot of the criticism of the war and its aftermath, in that much of the criticism seems to assume that it's possible to have perfect knowledge (even in advance of events), perfect predictive ability, and perfect execution of plans - that, in other words, perfection is not only possible, but required. (I suspect many of the critics do not hold the same standard for wars started by Democrat presidents.) This is a common-sense issue: have you ever had a perfect experience getting the oil changed in your car? Even once, have all of the following happened: the oil was changed exactly on the mile mark it should have been changed, the time to get to the shop was minimal because all of the lights were green and no one else was coming to a stop sign when you were, there was no wait at the shop, the charge was zero and the oil was the best-quality oil on the market - all of these at the same time?

And if you answered yes, then why did you buy a car whose engine contaminates the oil in the first place? That is the level of criticism that the Bush administration's prosecution of the Terror Wars is getting, and it's just not congruent to how the world works: some things are just hard, and nothing is absolutely perfect.

At some point, we all either learn to live with this or we learn to live under the tyranny of those who do understand.

Posted by Jeff at April 20, 2004 10:37 PM | Link Cosmos