So what?

Aakash Rault makes an argument against the war in Iraq that I frankly don't get. I thought about trying to pull a blockquote that would summarize his point, but since I'm not sure I understand the point, you're just going to need to follow the link and read it for yourself.

Are you back now?

Ok. As far as I can tell Aakash seems to be making three major points here.

1. Lots of liberals supported the war in Iraq for their own purposes that had nothing to do with conservative principles. (I don't think there's any denying this.) Therefore:

2. The war violates conservative principles, ergo:

3. The war must be wrong.

I'm aware that he linked to other posts where he made other arguments, but he seemed to think that this was a line of reasoning that stood on its own, so I'm taking it as it is. If you think this is an unfair summary of his argument you might as well stop reading now, although I'd appreciate a comment telling me where I missed the boat here.

Assuming that this is what he was saying, then my response is, "Huh?"

Let's just start with the first point. As I mentioned above, I think it is beyond question that many liberal hawks supported the war for reasons that any right thinking conservative would consider absurd. What I don't see is how this establishes that the war was anti-conservative. Just because a ton of liberals supported the war for "reasons" that I think are laughable doesn't mean that there aren't good and proper conservative justifications for the war.

But he doesn't stop there. He goes on to list a litany of liberals, in the most derisive language possible, who conservatives probably despise most of the time just to point out that all of them support the war. I fail to see what the point of that was unless it was to try to get conservative readers to feel icky about actually agreeing with these people about something.

This whole line of reasoning just feels like guilt by assocation. Not only is it not particularly compelling, it's also wrong-headed. Just because some one is naive, intellectually lazy, foolhardy doesn't automatically make them wrong. It might be enough to make be do a double take and make sure I'm not missing something, but it doesn't make them wrong. After all, every dog has his day.

But, just for a moment, let's assume he's right. Let's assume that the mere fact that a lot of liberals supported the war means that the war fails, under conservative principles, to have been a proper war to fight. So what?

Conservatism isn't an iron-clad law. It is a default-way of thinking about a given topic. Those who cling to it do so not because they think it's perfect, I hope, but because experience has shown them that the conservative approach offerst the best answer to problems more often than it fails to do so.

And that's all it does. It's not a solution to all our problems; it's just our preferred method of approaching the problem. It's entirely possible for the most Burkean among us to analyze a problem cooly, and rationally and come to the conclusion that you're absolutely certain is the best conservative answer to a problem and yet, at the same time, be equally convinced that said solution is absolutely bonkers. (I don't think the Iraq war falls into this category, but you're mileage may vary.)

If you find yourself in that situation you are under no obligation whatsoever to choose the conservative option even though you think it's insane. As I said, conservatism gives us the best answer more often than not, but that doesn't obligate you to take the "nots" along with the good.

Conservatism is a tool, not Holy Writ. It should be used as a default position, but it'snot the only position.

The phrase, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact, " has been used so much that it's become a cliche. Cliche or no, it's still true. I love the Constitution and believe it to be one of the most marvelous things ever produced by the mind of man, but if I discovered that 15 million people were going to die in the next 10 days unless I stationed a soldier in every fourth home I'd do it in a heartbeat, Third Amendment or no.

That's not to say that violating the Constitution is a thing to be done lightly, but if I had to choose between violating the Constitution and saving millions of lives, that's an easy call for me.

You may not understand the connection here, but let me explain that while I believe conservatism to be a great ideology (or lack of one, depending on your point of view), I don't hold it as dear as the Constitution. If I'd be willing to sacrifice the Constitution to save millions, I'm even more willing to forgo my conservatism if I believe it gets in the way of doing the right thing.

A few months ago I read somewhere words along the lines of, "We can argue about the shape of Western Civilization after we make sure that it's going to have a future." That's the issue for me. You should only be willing to sacrifice your most cherished beliefs if circumstances require that you do so or perish.

As it happens, I do not find any conflict between my conservative beliefs and the direction the war on terror has taken so far. (Although I do see a few things that worry me.) But if I did, I'd sacrifice my conservatism in a heart beat. I say that because I believe we are in a fight to save our civilzation, our way of life, and our actual lives. Against that kind of threat I'd sacrifice everything but my Christian faith.

Which brings me to a point that I just thought of. Since 9/11 strange bedfellows have become so much the norm that I've almost forgotten what "normal" looked like. You do see lots of liberals, conservatives, and even libertarians uniting together in their belief about what needs to be done to fight the terror masters. Likewise people from all those ideologies have united together to oppose those same actions.

I think what we have here is a difference, not of ideology, but of fact. C.S. Lewis always maintained that morality hasn't changed much over time or across culture. One society may emphasize one part of the common morality more than others, but in general morality doesn't change. I read in one book, (possibly The Abolition of Man but I'm to lazy to go look it up) where people would challenge him by saying, "What about burning witches? We don't burn witches now, but people once did." Lewis's response was, "But that's because we don't believe that there are such things as witches."

His point was that if you really believed that there were people who had sold their sold to the devil to gain supernatural powers which you used to torment innocent people and you further believed that the only way to purify that person's sould was to burn them alive, then burning them at the stake would make perfect since to most people in most of the societies that ever existed. The reason most societies don't burn witches is not because they find witch burning, per se, to be repulsive. We find the burning of witches to be repulsive because we don't believe they were witches. This is a difference, not of morality, but of fact.

In the post 9/11 world I think we also have a difference of fact. Everyone agrees that the terrorist pose a threat. What we don't agree on is what kind of threat they pose and how acceptable the risk is.

I think just about everyone would be willing to sacrifice their ideology if they believed that the failure to do so posed a substantial risk that millions would die, that there country might be taken over by barbaric butchers, or that their entire civilazation might collapse. (Although there are some post-modernists out there who wouldn't flinch at the last one.)

To put it another way, I think most everyone has a breaking point; everyone has their own personal Rubicon that they're willing to cross when they reach the point that the danger they face appears to be great enough that they're willing the abandon their ideology.

The reason why traditional allies are at each other's throats while traditional ideological enemies find themselves allied is not so much that they've changed their ideologies as that they have different breaking points. I think a lot of people believe the threat is so great that they're willing to do pretty much anything to counter it, even if they're ideology would normally tell them not to. (Which isn't to say that everyone who supported the war in Iraq or other arenas sees themselves as going against their ideology. Just that a rather large portion see the risk as so great that they'd support the war even if their ideology said no.)

Likewise, those who opposed the war do so because they either a) don't see the threat as that great, or b) don't see the connection. I'm not, at the moment, concerned with the latter group. Liberalism, conservatism, and (especially) libertarianism all have as part of them pretty good reasons to avoid war. So if you haven't reached your Rubicon, your default position is much more likely to be against the war.

The difference between the two groups isn't ideological so much as it is factual. Either you believe, as a matter of fact, that the risk is so great that it transcends ideology, or you don't. (Yes, under some circumstances your evaluation of the breaking point may, itself, be determined by your ideology.) If you don't, then it's likely that a certain degree of escalation would cause you to change your mind.

The whole reason I went on that whole fact/ideology tangent was just to help make the point that if you feel it's necessary to abandon your ideology on a given subject to do what you believe is the right thing, that's perfectly OK.

So, I ask again, even if the war was anti-conservative, "So what?" That doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

Yeah, I know this was long and rambling, but I had to get it off my chest. It's nearly 1 and I'm tired. If you find any grammatical or spelling mistakes you're just going to have to deal with them. I may or may not edit this tommorrow.