Argument From Circumstance With A Vengeance

Reasonhas interviewed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD).  Here is a choice excerpt: 

Reason: When you voted for the war you said that the Americans who would overthrow Saddam were “peacemakers.” Do you stand by that?

Gilchrest: I stand by that rationale. That rationale was based on the Persian Gulf War of 1991. I was here during that war, during the debate, during the development of the authorization to use force, and this authorization for this war was virtually the same. What it meant was that you only go to war with all other options exhausted. After a couple of years, when all that began to unravel, that’s when I knew if I had a chance to vote on authorization again I wouldn’t vote for it. What I failed to consider was whether the executive branch was competent, informed, and had integrity [bold mine-DL].  Under the circumstances, I don’t think it was.

He failed to consider it?  I can understand, with some reservations, that members of the House might have regarded the administration as “competent,” “informed” and bursting with integrity, but were mistaken and then felt foolish for having trusted the administration.  To not even consider whether or not this was the case seems crazy to me. 

It seems to me a safe bet, and the conservative bet, to assume that the administration is always incompetent, uninformed and corrupt until they prove otherwise on a consistent basis.  This is how I view government in general, and I have to tell you I am not disappointed as often as I should be.  You don’t entrust war powers to the chief executive on the assumption that he is going to do everything right, but you should only vest the President with lawful, constitutional war powers (which would involve a declaration of war) after you have already accepted that the President will almost certainly make a hash of it, doesn’t know what he’s doing and may be on the take from or under the influence of special lobbies but that the war is nonetheless in the national interest and must therefore go ahead.  After living through the age of Clinton and Bush, how could anyone ever again make the mistake of assuming a plenitude of competence and knowledge in the executive branch? 

Note what Gilchrest doesn’t say.  He doesn’t say that it was a mistake to meddle in Iraq in general, or that it was wrong to invade another country without good reason, or that there is something profoundly wrong in effectively calling those who start wars “peacemakers.”  He embodies the kind of critic of the war that Hanson et al. skewer (and with some justification): when things go poorly, then they discover that the war was a mistake, but should things turn around they will suddenly rediscover their inner hawk.  I guess this is what a lot of people in the so-called “political middle” are like, and it reminds why I try to stay as far away from the “political middle” as I possibly can.