Lack of skepticism and its consequences

No one likes an I told you so... but sometimes, it needs to be said anyway.

Two weeks ago, the "Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction" issued what may be the last in a series of in-depth reports by U.S. government on the "intelligence failures" surrounding the invasion of Iraq. Wade through the close to 3,000 pages of these reports and one conclusion is inescapable: those of us who opposed the invasion of Iraq were right on every count, notes this piece on AlterNet.

In the lead up to the war, Bush administration officials constantly insinuated a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and even the 9/11 attacks. Vice President Cheney, over and again, referred to a cock-and-bull story about a Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and the Iraqi intelligence. The Atta story was debunked in The New York Times as early as October 2002 – more than four months before the invasion.

Why does it matter? The warnings of the 'long-haired freaky people' were correct but ignored. We're there now and we have to make the best of it, right? Why look backward instead of forward?

Here's why.

If the administration is rife with incompetence (however well-meaning you may think them), then it matters. If the intelligence system is broken, it matters. If the administration has zero credibility, it matters.

If there ever actually IS a serious, imminent threat to the United States during the next four years, who's going to believe the Bush administration? How can anyone trust their next doomsday warnings?

That's why it matters, regardless of your opinion on deposing Saddam.

This analysis in The International Herald Tribune notes that the commission's report found no evidence that intelligence had been politically twisted to suit preconceptions about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, and made no formal judgments about how top policy makers had used that intelligence to justify war.

This is perhaps true. Though as War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld so famously stated: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Even so, one of the commission's other conclusions caught my eye:

It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom.

So the administration was merely incompetent, not lying outright? I'm sorry if that doesn't reassure me greatly.

But this conclusion gets to the heart of what I've long said is the Bush administration's single greatest weakness: self-righteousness.

There's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Good leaders need a great deal of self-confidence. However, great leaders are confident enough to encourage skepticism. They create an environment where debate can thrive. They realize that the presence of vigorous 'devil's advocates' strengthens their arguments by exposing the arguments' flaws and thus helping the flaws get dealt with before it's too late. And sometimes, just sometimes, they realize that they are wrong.

Skeptical analysis makes both for good politics and for good policy.

It's clear that the Bush administration does not encourage such internal skepticism... because they don't believe they can possibly be wrong. They clearly view such dissent as personally disloyal to the president. (Never mind that public officials swear oaths to be loyal to the country and the Constitution, not to the person of the president)

Given that the administration views internal dissent as treachery, it's little surprise that dissenters from the outside (ie: ordinary citizens) are treated with similiar contempt.

The administration is so certain of its rightness that it doesn't broker the possibility that it might only be 99% right. To contemplate a plan B is a sign of a weakness, of disloyalty, of disbelief in The Cause. That's why the occupation has been so badly managed. No one considered the possibility that ordinary Iraqis (not just Saddam loyalists) might not be ecstatic about living under foreign domination. This makes for weak leadership and flawed policy making.

It's also worth noting a parallel. The fundamentalist religious beliefs of the president and many in his administration make them distrust science, which is based on skepticism. So it's little surprise that they reject skepticism and adopt an uncritical, Crusading approach to other areas.

Pride goeth before the fall. And the administration's rejection of debate has led to the debacle in Iraq... and ultimately to a more vulnerable America.