CHOICES HUBRIS: In Greek tragedy, the overweening pride of those who believe the Gods are with them. Corollary: Those whom the Gods would bring low, they first raise up. 1. In the wake of America’s 60’s turbulence, David Halberstam published “The Best and the Brightest”. The reference was to the extraordinary group of young (mostly) men and women John Kennedy gathered about him in forming his new administration. Intelligent, well-educated, and successful in life, possessed of contagious energy and infectious self-confidence, they breathed an air that no problem might be beyond their abilities. Dedicated and graced with talent, they could but succeed. Halberstam’s characterization, of course, was irony: the “The Best and the Brightest” mired us in Vietnam. Our current administration’s brightest, no less self-confident, aggressively swell their chests with the air of the “Best and the Strongest”. If you are the strongest, you don’t have to be the brightest. And the “Best” - what we aspire to, and the mantle they assume – is, only too easily, seduced by the “Strongest”, and corrupted by it. The administration’s spokesmen imperturbably make their case for war with little or no real acknowledgement that they may be wrong. Potential difficulties simple common sense suggests are all too real are dismissed with a wave of the hand. They pay no more than lip service to where things may go wrong, and airily assure us things will work out as they believe. We can count on it! Seldom has so much recklessness been passed off with such dangerous assurance. The hubris of the “Best and the Brightest” is the enthusiasm of the smartest kid in the class. But we know that the smartest isn’t necessarily the wisest. The hubris of the strongest transcends anything else – and wisdom not the least. 2. From the introduction to President Bush’s “The National Security Strategy of the United States” just released: “The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology.” Quotation heading the first chapter in “War in Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You To Know.” By William Rivers Pitt, (with Scott Ritter) - just issued: “Today every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness.” - John F. Kennedy The National Security Document statement is very much of this moment. The Kennedy statement is as true today as when he made it, some forty years ago. It has stood the test of time. The National Security Document asks that we design our futures on the basis of its instant wisdom. At the very least, this should give pause. For one pass this may lead to, consider where the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is now. Whether by acceding to terror as their mode of action, as the Palestinians do, or by reflexively striking back, while insisting on terror’s absolute cessation as the whole and only basis for moving forward, as the Israeli’s do, all are BOWING BEFORE TERROR. In a world that fights no longer with sticks and stones and blades, but with nuclear tipped missiles and vials of contagion, it is giving away before a reality too much like striking matches in a dynamite factory. As such it opens a path down which we all may be pulled to disaster. The slender thread frays, and THAT danger must not be forgotten. Our current leaders betray little or no awareness of that risk. There is nothing in “The National Security Strategy of the United States”. Hubris. 3. This administration has boldly proclaimed a long-term foreign policy dramatically at odds with all previous American history, and our fundamental understandings of who we are and what we stand for. It is a breathtaking vision of world embracing ambition, whose utter beneficence they expect us, and all others, to assume. To move us toward it, they have begun to play on our reflexive post 9/11 fears. In many respects, it is a reprise of the same strategy they follow with regard to national missile defense. They paint a lurid threat with such fierce and vivid color, that our knees can scarcely keep from jerking in assent. It is well calculated to keep us from consideration of the relative likelihood of the proposed threat. That would be the first counsel of wisdom. Instead, they use the ploy of directing attention away from the question by responding that, because you can’t deal with all potential threats, doesn’t mean you can’t address some of them. Unless your resources are infinite, however, you need to prioritize. If your responsibility is as great as theirs, it becomes a moral obligation. Failure to do so, in the grave matters confronting us, constitutes a dereliction of duty unprecedented in its potential gravity and consequences. Do you doubt it? We have already seen it! Consider, if even a tenth of the expenditure on national missile defense over the past decade had been directed instead at intelligence efforts, we might have connected the dots we now know were there to connect, and prevented 9/11. All of the experts, as well as simple common sense, combined to suggest that something like the 9/11 attack was far more likely than the firing of a missile from a rogue state. It must be admitted the failure to prioritize our national security threats happened largely on Clinton’s watch, but it was the advisors and acolytes of this administration who shaped the debate, and so energetically drove forward a commitment to national missile defense, to the exclusion of other, more likely, areas for concern. Have they acknowledged their responsibility? In their afflatus, are they even aware of it? Now their “wisdom” is urging another, much greater, expenditure of resources, and this time the lives of our children are thrown into the balance - perhaps many, many of those lives. What will be said if, during, or even after, a war with Iraq, Bin Laden strikes us again, as hard, or harder, than before? It surely cannot be ruled out. After all, 9/11 took place with no known aid from, or even connection with, Iraq. What will we think when we reflect, as surely we will, that, at a cost of but a fraction of the wealth, and probably only few of the lives directed at eliminating Saddam Hussein, we might have made the necessary connections, and averted a new tragedy? They will doubtless try to wriggle out of responsibility, but we cannot. We opened the door to it; its consequences will be ours to live with, and we cannot, in conscience, avoid asking ourselves the question: Was war with Iraq the best choice, the wisest dispersal of our wealth, of our talent, and of our lives? The ultimate description of Democracy is Lincoln’s: “. . . . we, even we here, hold the power and bare the responsibility.” 4. Hubris was one of the central themes of Greek Tragedy. This administration’s war hawks are lost in their afflatus, as the National Security Document proves. They believe the Gods are with them, and the outcome can be none other than what they propose. Whether as short term strategy, with its failure to address priorities, or as sheer recklessness in the matter of how, and to what degree, things might spiral out of control, or as a long-term betrayal of America understood as “the last best hope of Earth”, their vision is fatally flawed. They are riding high now, but they have clearly laid out the paths down which they may descend to their destruction. How low will the Gods bring us if we follow, if we do not find, if we do not insist upon finding, better, wiser, choices?