Balkinization

Why Dissent Remains Important

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has recently grumbled to reporters that criticism of the Administration's war policies can encourage terrorists and make America's war on terrorism more difficult, Newsday reports.

Many, I assume, will accuse Rumsfeld of trying to stifle dissent. My objection is somewhat different. I think Rumsfeld does not properly recognize the reason why dissent about the war can be important to the success of American foreign policy, even if it does complicate the Administration's efforts.

Rumsfeld and other members of the Administration have shown a decided penchant for disdaining the views of people who disagree with them. They were supremely confident about how easy it would be to topple Saddam and install a friendly democratic state in Iraq. We would be greeted as liberators, we were told, and our victory would smooth the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. How naive these assertions now sound in light of recent events.

The Administration also refused to disclose how much its Iraq adventure would cost, and how long American troops would have to stay. Rumsfeld was determined to show that a war of preemption could be performed on the cheap, with minimal forces, and without dragging the U.S. into a quagmire. He and others in the Administration wanted to show that preemption was a viable policy for the future, and that we could act without very much international cooperation.

The Administration's critics protested repeatedly that the Administration was underestimating the dangers of a preemptive attack on Iraq, that even if victory would be swift, stabilizing the country would take many years and great expense, and that an unacceptable number of American lives would be lost in the process. Critics also argued that the Administration's overconfidence, its refusal to level with the American people about how much the war woud cost and how long it would take, and its thumbing its nose at nations that disagreed with its policies would come back to haunt it someday.

Almost all of these warnings of critics have come to pass. The President has given up the triumphalist tone of his May 1st strut around the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, in which he asserted "Mission Accomplished." He now has somberly informed the American public that he will need 87 billion dollars to stabilize the country, an astonishing sum if you consider that it is more than the cost of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He has grudgingly come to agree that international assistance will be necessary, although he cannot yet bring himself to request help. Instead he simply notes that other countries "should" help the United States.

This brings me to the value of dissent. If the President and his Administration had listened to the dissenters in this country and throughout the world, and taken their arguments seriously, he might well have chosen a wiser path, even if he did not follow their advice in all respects. He might have prepared more thoroughly for the occupation. He might have spent more time working out the details of how to search for weapons of mass destruction in the chaos of war. He might have waited until October and picked up the support of more countries, or even gotten the U.N.'s blessing.

The President and his advisors did not listen to dissenters before, dismissing them as pessimists and mere impediments to the realization of his grand plan. They proved to be much more able and prescient than he was willing to believe. He has now grudgingly come to see the value in much of what they said.

Given this lesson, perhaps the President might try listening more closely to those who disagree with him and consider their objections and concerns more seriously. Dissent provides a crucial counterweight to wishful thinking. If the Administration simply dismisses the dissenter today, as it did in the past, it risks making the same mistakes it made in the past two years-- the mistakes of hubris, the mistakes of overconfidence, the mistakes of a naive belief that the truth and good and righteousness lie only on your side, and that all those who disagree with you are either fools or knaves.

The Administration has made those mistakes once before, and now is beginning to see the consequences of its arrogance and its blindness. Isn't it time for it to gain a bit of humility, and begin recognizing the practical value of dissent?

UPDATE In my original posting, I posted to a Washington Post story at the following location that had the same quotes as the Newsday story. (A version of that story from Reuters, by Tabassum Zakaria, is here.) However, a day later, a different story by Dana Milbank, which omitted all of Rumsfeld's quotes about dissent, had replaced the original story. Does anyone know why this would be the case?

Posted 6:28 PM by JB [link]