Short Term Death

by digby

Reading this article by Jacob Weisberg on the subject of Bush’s creation of the Axis of Evil, I realized that one of the most frustrating aspects of right wing hawkish thinking is their belief that it is useless to have any kind of short-term solution to a problem unless it can be guaranteed to result in a long term resolution. Indeed, they even think of truces and ceasefires as weakness. Here’s Bush a couple of months ago talking about Lebanon:

“Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace — not a temporary peace, but something that lasts,” said Bush. “We want a sustainable ceasefire. We don’t want something that’s, you know, short term in duration.”

Right. Tell it to the people who died or were wounded because that “short term” solution just wasn’t good enough for George W. Bush.

That is just one very bizarre aspect of their black and white thinking that leads to such things as their ridiculous posturing on North Korea in which no interim agreement (like that achieved by Clinton with the Agreed Framework) is countenanced because they will only accept a permanent solution. I suppose one could say that this might be a useful way to run a kindergarten, but real violence in the real world is something that should always be punted if at all possible. This is not because of a general moral revulsion toward violence, although that should certainly be a factor. Nor is it simply that to delay would save lives “in the short term.” It’s because we cannot tell the future. Kim Jong Il could die from a heart attack. A short term cease fire in Lebanon could have given everyone a chance to catch their breath and perhaps recognize that escalating the war was indefensible. Anything can happen. A break from violence creates a possibility that it won’t start up again. A crazy dictator delaying the development of a nuclear bomb opens up the possibility that he won’t develop one.

I realize that Bush and his pals think that their “enemies” are nihilistic at best and animals at worst. But they are humans and humans are always subject to change from within or without. The idea that it is “useless” to put off something like a a war or a nuclear showdown until tomorrow when you can have one today (or put off a ceasefire ’til tomorrow when you can have one today) is beyond stupid or irresponsible. It’s sick.

* I should note that the right has come to think that anything short of a hostile, aggressive military response to everything is “appeasement.” It isn’t.

“The word in its normal meaning connotes the pacific settlement of disputes; in the meaning usually applied to the period of Chamberlain’s premiership, it has come to indicate something sinister, the granting from fear or cowardice of unwarranted concessions in order to buy temporary peace at someone else’s expense.” D.N. DIlks, Appeasement Revisited, Journal of Contemporary History, 1972.

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