Quote of the Day--Andrew Bacevich

I listen to Andrew Bacevich, graduate of West Point, retired army Colonel, and professor of international relations at Boston University, who, according to Wikipedia, has described himself as a "Catholic conservative," and I think that he makes so much sense that I must be conservative, too. And that's because Bacevich is an old-fashioned conservative: prudent, moral, reasonable. Here is a quotation from a short essay of Bacevich's that has been posted on Salon as well as TomDispatch:

When it comes to avoiding the repetition of sin, nothing works like abject contrition. We should, therefore, tell the people of Cuba that we are sorry for having made such a hash of U.S.-Cuban relations for so long. President Obama should speak on our behalf in asking the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for forgiveness. He should express our deep collective regret to Iranians and Afghans for what past U.S. interventionism has wrought.

The United States should do these things without any expectations of reciprocity. Regardless of what U.S. officials may say or do, Castro won't fess up to having made his own share of mistakes. The Japanese won't liken Hiroshima to Pearl Harbor and call it a wash. Iran's mullahs and Afghanistan's jihadists won't be offering to a chastened Washington to let bygones be bygones.

No, we apologize to them, but for our own good -- to free ourselves from the accumulated conceits of the American Century and to acknowledge that the United States participated fully in the barbarism, folly and tragedy that defines our time. For those sins, we must hold ourselves accountable.

To solve our problems requires that we see ourselves as we really are. And that requires shedding, once and for all, the illusions embodied in the American Century. (Andrew J. Bacevich, "Farewell to the American Century," posted on Salon, Wednesday, April 29, 2009.)

You can watch a YouTube clip of Bacevich covering a shorter version of this essay here: "Andrew Bacevich: "Farewell, the American Century." Months ago I listened to an interview that Terry Gross, the host of NPR's Fresh Air, did with Bacevich, and I was impressed then. Bacevich fought in the Vietnam War and remained in the army until the early 1990s. His son, and namesake, died as a soldier in Iraq, in May 2007. His book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, is now out in paperback.

Sane Voices

I just love intelligent, thoughtful, sane voices. James Fallows is one of those voices. I don't know the man personally, he lives a more international life than I have ever had the opportunity to live (though I have traveled way more than Sarah Palin--sorry, couldn't help it), and he is a member of the "elite" media (and I don't mean that word "elite" to be pejorative in any way: I'm all for an elite. well-educated, and humble corps of writers and leaders in this country). But over the years I've enjoyed reading James Fallows' writing in a number of publications. I now read his blog at The Atlantic. Here's a link to today's posting which cheered me up, and I'm not quite sure why it did: "If campaigns are driving you crazy."

Maybe I'm cheered because although the public discourse right now seems to be absolutely stupid, focused on the most trivial details and the most outrageous lies, there are people who still think truth matters and try to suss out truth in the best ways they know how. They listen to other thoughtful and intelligent people and adjust their judgments and views to accommodate what they have learned rather than repeating over and over the trite and partisan phrases that resound in their own heads. Listen to Terri Gross interview Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a retired Army colonel, (the link is there on Fallows' post and here), who lost his son in Iraq. You might well ask: why aren't our presidential nominees listening to this guy?