Yes Reg, I would like to offer you an apology, though not for the reason most would think I should. I'd like to apologize for making you an unwitting guinea pig in a hideous little experiment. You see, although I was somewhat disturbed by your post, I was mostly just disappointed in what I saw as an increasingly pervasive pattern (in people on both sides of the political fence btw) of what I'd call lazy thinking, which sent my bullshit detector off the scale. My goal was to shake you out of it by using a clearly out of line response to the subtle though equally outrageous spin you were putting on the story you posted about (state of Iraqi hospitals before and after the war). While many of the facts that you mentioned are certainly correct ie. the state of Iraq's hospitals ARE worse now, healthcare WAS free under Saddam and there most definately WERE people (though by no means all) that loved Saddam for that, you conveniently decided to focus on just those facts and in my opinion, completely overlooked the forest for the trees. Before I explain what I mean by that, let me relate a story and some background on the experiment.
I vividly remember my first day of class in Theater 101 when I was a freshman in college. Like most of my freshman classes, this one was fairly large (around 150 students or so) and was held in a sizeable auditorium. I was sitting somewhere near the back as the professor began to go over the syllabus and what would be expected of us during the quarter. She was about 20 minutes into her lecture when this guy sitting directly in front of me lights up a cigarette and proceeds to smoke. Now although I was a smoker myself (still am unfortunately) at the time, I was definately distracted and even somewhat offended that someone would have the audacity to actually light up in class. Looking around at those in my immediate vicinity suggested that others were uncomfortable about it as well.
It took a minute or so before the professor noticed it and of course she stopped her lecture and politely informed the smoker that smoking was not permitted in any of the school's buildings and asked if he would either extinguish his cigarette or at least take it outside. The smoker immediately became indignant and said "I paid for this class and if I want to smoke in it I will.' or words to that effect anyway. The professor became a bit more aggressive and asked the guy again to please put out the butt or leave the class, reminding him that he was in fact distracting everyone and was now infringing on everyone else's right to the class that they (we) paid for aside from the fact that he was breaking school rules. Once again the smoker ignored her request and claimed that he was not going anywhere nor was he going to put out his cigarette until he was finished with it.
By this time, another guy sitting behind me started telling the smoker that he'd be wise to cooperate and that if he didn't that he could expect to be physically removed from the class by him personally. This guy was rather large (looked like a bouncer) and was obviously serious about backing up his remarks. The smoker turned around and said "FUCK YOU!!" to the bouncer man as he flipped him off. Of course all hell broke loose at that moment. Bouncer man leaped over 2 rows of desks and took smoker man directly to the floor, and by now the entire class was on their feet and trying to get a better view of the ensuing mayhem. Things were very much getting out of control and I and a couple of other guys sitting nearby jumped into the fray to seperate the two combatants. During this process the professor became furious and was screaming at everone to go back to their seats and to sit down and stop fighting, but her words were falling on deaf ears. Finally, she picked up a chair a flung it across the stage of the auditorium where it landed with a very loud crash on a table at one end of the stage. This made everyone freeze for a moment and look forward at her.
The professor then calmly walked across the stage and picked up the chair and returned it to it's place, she then turned and faced the class and said "Class, I'd like to welcome you all to Theater 101, where perception isn't necessarily a reflection of reality and good acting can both suspend disbelief and simultaneously invoke a reaction."
Ouch! We'd been had!
The 5 of us or so that had become directly involved in the whole situation just looked around at one another in utter embarrasement as smoker man got up from the floor chuckling to himself. We had all been totally and completely hoodwinked and fell for the ploy hook, line and sinker. But it wasn't just us, the entire class had reacted and I think everyone felt like an idiot for being led so easily. The professor later admitted that the reaction was more than she had bargained for and said that that was an unfortunate side effect of trying to invoke a reaction. You can't reliably predict how the reaction might manifest itself.
Politicians and especially the media have understood this concept forever of course and with regard to either you can be assured that there is usually an agenda behind it and that it has most probably been manipulated at least in part. Any information that comes from either should be eyed with a heavy dose of skeptisism IMO. Because always, the information presented is meant to invoke some kind of reaction. Case in point: Yesterday I was at a boat and fishing trade show with a friend and there was a NASCAR magazine display there that had yesterday's Daytona 500 on a nearby TV. Just as we were passing by the booth, President Bush was being interviewed trackside. We stopped to watch and it wasn't long before a sizeable crowd had joined us. It was a fairly long interview but it was just a friendly, warm and fuzzy one that left me pretty underwhelmed, but I could tell by the expressions of the people around me that it appeared to have had a positive impact on most of them. I thought to myself that that stunt was just pure theater. Hell, I'll bet Bush couldn't care less about NASCAR, yet there he was, acting as if it was the greatest sport on the planet. All for the agenda of snagging the southern, and more importantly, Florida voter. Ahhh the deception. After spending 2 1/2 hours there and then taking off in Air Force One directly behind the track he just slathered more icing on the cake. Desired reaction brilliantly executed, hundreds of thousands unwittingly hoodwinked on the spot.
When it comes to politicians and the media, it's all about pushing an agenda, and I'm always amazed at how easily people can fall prey to it when the deception is done well. Clinton was a master at it, and I bow to his ability in that department. I suppose all of that is a necessity at the highest levels of office, because you'll never be able to satisfy all of the people all of the time. But it is after all pretty unsettling when you think about it.
That said, and getting back to my reason for subjecting you to my theater 101 experiment Reg is that I've seen that you've begun to fall into this unfortunate trap. And it won't be an easy one to escape from. You were invoking the standard liberal "Iraq is a quagmire and it's all Bush's fault" line of reasoning. Or at least something very similar. But if we are ever going to succeed in rebuilding and healing Iraq, it will require that all of us set aside our petty political squabbling and finger pointing and finish the job we committed to...together. After all your man Kerry could very well inherit that quagmire and his handling of it will come under the microscope just as readily as Bush's. Frankly, I'm not optimistic about how he would do it (but here's my fantasy anyway -> link)
I'm not calling your patriotism into question here Reg in any way, believe me. It's just that I feel that we as a country (including one Mr. John F Kerry) made a commitment to fix the Iraq situation and it is unproductive to say the least to continually harp on about the current state of affairs there or whose fault it is. It's a glass half empty mentality. Yes, Iraq still has problems, yes there is much to be done, yes the Bush admin has stumbled on many levels, yes it's going to get worse before it gets better and yes it might take longer than we thought. But Iraq has had deep and dispicable problems long before we went back to kick out Saddam and things definately weren't improving under his ruthless dictatorship and UN sanctions. Personally, I think it was a necessary evil but I DO believe that if we really want to, we can make things much better there. I hate the fact that the political left and right has become so divided on this issue, because in the end it will get us nowhere and it'll cost a hell of a lot of time and money in the process. I don't want to see it all be for naught.
I'm very much glad to see that you took my wicked little jab at you pretty much in the manner I had hoped for Reg. You thought hard about why I might react that way and gave your post some serious reflection. It seemed to also have sparked an encouraging amount of intelligent discourse on the "blindness" problem we are all so suseptable to and just as David's photo "Why We Fight" indicated, not necessarily aware of.
Sincerely,
Marc
