November 15, 2018
Through my sophomore and possibly junior year of high school, I argued in favor of America’s involvement in Vietnam. I also argued on the wrong side of history leading up to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. I was persuaded by Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations; less by the substance than my trust in the man. Although a member of a deeply flawed administration, he was, I felt certain, honest and cautious. Once again, I was practically alone among my friends in my stand. Afterwards we learned Powell had been manipulated by John Bolton and other so-called neoconservatives. In fact, Iraq had no chemical weapons and lacked effective nuclear capability.
A few months ago, my wife Laura and I were having dinner at a Manhattan restaurant with friends who knew about that old position of mine, along with my eventual change of heart. I found myself expounding on how Bush’s destabilization of Iraq, and then the entire region, had caused millions of people to flee, many of them making dangerous journeys to Europe where their arrival caused a backlash against immigrants. In turn, this backlash led to an extremist rightward political turn in Hungary, Poland, Austria and elsewhere. Although Britain’s recent immigrants are mainly from Eastern Europe, the continent’s anti-immigration mood surely contributed to the referendum vote favoring Brexit. “Bush’s fatal decision to invade Iraq,” I concluded, made him responsible for all those events.
Laura told me afterwards that throughout my speech, the couple at the next table smirked and giggled. I hadn’t noticed. But I could hardly not notice when the man stood and clasped my shoulder, saying, “Hillary voted for the Iraq invasion.” He and the woman promptly stalked out of the restaurant.
Had he not fled, I would have told him that if I’d been a U.S. Senator like Hillary Clinton, I, too, would have voted with Bush. I’d have gone on to say that the people in Bush’s administration had much more information than the Senators did and that what they made public was doctored to hide an agenda unacceptable to legislators and the public alike. After that, my friends and I would undoubtedly have invited his companion and him to elaborate on their views.
As my youthful Vietnam vote and later Iraq position suggest, I am open to conservative points of view. By temperament, although not by politics, I am conservative in that I seek the familiar and balk at change. But although I can understand the conservative political desire to keep things much as they are, I cannot help but question a status quo that works only for some and contributes to global tragedy.
It ought to be possible for liberal-minded friends sitting at one restaurant table to talk on a human level with conservative-leaning friends dining at the next. Making what is intended as a devastating retort and fleeing does nothing to advance social cohesion. It can, instead, betray devastating ignorance about the people at whom it is targeted.
Note: I deleted the original of this post from the website in August 2019. For some reason, and after some revising, it now feels right to restore it.
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