She has a great post up today about acknowledging and appreciating the recent decline in violence in Iraq. Her article is great, but I’m particularly fond of her example beginning at fourth.
Fourth, noting that political reconciliation has not happened is not the “equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting “La la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”” It’s more like this: suppose I had a friend who insisted that he couldn’t kick his crack habit because he was under too much financial pressure, so I agreed to pay his bills for a few months, on condition that he use that time to actually try to quit. Liberal bloggers thought this was a bad idea: my friend had no apparent interest in kicking his crack habit, and thus it seemed pretty likely that I was just throwing my money away. No, I assured them: I have made it clear that my commitment is not open-ended. I’ve said: it’s time for you to perform, and I will judge you now less on your words and more on your performance. I’m not just giving this money blindly; my friend has adopted benchmarks for success, and I plan to hold him to them, though I won’t say how.
Now suppose that while I paid my friend’s bills, to no one’s surprise, his financial problems got better, but he made no effort to stop smoking crack. Liberal bloggers said: well, of course it’s good that your friend isn’t feeling as much financial pressure, but the fact remains that the whole point of this was to let him kick his crack habit, and not only has he not done that, he hasn’t even tried. That would not constitute sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting “La la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”, or refusing to take yes for an answer. It would just be basic common sense.
OT: A good discussion about “enhanced interrogation techniques”.