We Must Keep Our Presence of Mind

“…though embattled…we are [called] to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle.” — John F. Kennedy

The 130 people killed in Paris on November 13th and the 14 Americans killed in San Bernardino on December 2nd, are a malevolent reminder that we’re at war with Islamic militants. And while the attacks and senseless murder of these people was terrible, it wasn’t something any of us can honestly say we never thought would happen. We’ve been hearing from experts in the media for years that it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” attacks like this will take place inside Western nations. Of course this is not something experts had to tell us, we’ve always known this as a fact of life.

It’s not surprising that militants operating covertly in our open societies, on a mission to kill Westerners and willing to die in the process, will eventually succeed in pulling off high causality attacks. The critical question now is about how we respond. We can do many things, but what we cannot do is overreact. This is exactly what the forces of reaction across the West, especially in the U.S., will cause us to do if we’re not collectively determine to combat it. This leads to costly mistakes and it’s exactly what our enemy wants us to do. Like a good fighter, our foe prods his bigger and stronger opponent, hoping we will lash out and overextend ourselves–tactically, morally and financially–and make the foolish and costly mistakes that we’ve proved so willing to make. They’re playing the long game, and so must we.

For responsible, and I dare say sensible people, we cannot let fear and anger dictate our response. There is a lot of fear stoking going on, especially by certain cable news channels and politicians who spread mindless outrage and fear for shameless political gain. Just as we resist our enemy, we should resist these sirens luring us toward the rocks.

Out best weapon is our ability to keep our presence of mind.

In the aftermath of these tragedies, America and her Western allies will examine security policies and make some reasonable adjustments. European nations, specifically within NATO, need to come together and formulate a more comprehensive, active, and long term strategy for thwarting and defeating these militants. For the Europeans it will require, and America should demand, a much greater commitment in manpower, money, and materials abroad. The U.S. needs equal partners in this long war. This is a generational conflict and all Western nations should be actively committed–beyond mere rhetoric–to waging this long war.

With that said, President Obama is absolutely correct: “There is no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.” A crisis, again, I remind you, that we Americans are partly to blame for creating by invading Iraq in 2003. Our invasion of Iraq destabilized the region. Let’s not add more fuel to the fire. Winning this long war will ultimately be about diplomacy, alliances, politics, and economics…not blood and iron. In the short term we must fight and defeat our enemy, but we must realize that the war of today is fought to win the peace of tomorrow.

Going forward our war against these terrorists should be a steady and ruthless counterterrorism campaign waged by air power, special forces, and intelligence operatives across the middle east. Along with that, we must have sensible policies at home that allow us to deal with enemies amongst us, plotting to kill innocent people. This is critical. This will include supporting laws like the Patriot Act, which are in-fact important in keeping us safe.

It’s my hope that Americans will be actively resistant to any large scale boots-on-the-ground action in the middle east. Another ground invasion will only create more terrorists, while needlessly killing and maiming more American soldiers and costing the American tax payer hundreds of billions of dollars we don’t have on another large scale misguided military venture we can’t afford. We need to focus our fiscal resources on rebuilding a stable American middle-class, not on invading and rebuilding Iraq or any other part of the middle east.

We need to fight a smart war, not one that exhausts us morally and fiscally.

What do you desire?

Some may find it easy, but many, I’ve found, have not. When we’re young it’s a faint question in the background; it’s a passing thought that’s constantly being put off until later, until we’re older and supposedly wiser. And then “later” comes and we’re older, in grad school or working a full time job, in a career and all grown up, maybe even married with a family, many years have passed, but still we have not answered that question. It’s still there, asking of us: What do you desire?

I know some people who seem to have answered that question. Some were very young and found their “itch” quickly and have pursued it all their life. But many, I think, are still trying to answer that question.

What do you desire?

The Wisdom of Proportionality

Greek runners protecting the torch
Illustration by Ann Ronan pictures, print collector/Getty

One of the common themes in ancient Greek art and philosophy is proportionality. For the Greeks, proportionality was the idea that there was an optimal mix of qualities or virtues that, properly harmonized, promoted human flourishing. We see and experience this idea in the beautiful statues and architecture that have survived in Ancient Greece. The idea of proportionality is a theme throughout Plato’s dialogues, especially The Republic, and Aristotle’s virtue ethics is constructed around the idea of a golden mean or “middle state” between two extremes.

Meden Agan (“Nothing in excess”) is one of the surviving inscriptions on the ancient temple of Apollo at Delphi. One of my favorite quotes in the ancient texts is from Tacitus. As a Roman patrician, Tacitus’s education consisted primarily of ancient Greek art, literature and philosophy. In writing about his father-in-law, Agricola, Tacitus says “he took from philosophy the greatest lesson of all: a sense of proportion.”

Another fine example of this idea is embedded in the ancient Olympic games. One of the competitions, know as the Lampadedromia, involved a relay race of runners carrying torches. The challenge was to win the race without extinguishing the torch. This meant it usually wasn’t the fastest runners that won, but those adept at running just fast enough (the right proportion) not to extinguish the torch in the wind while getting to the finish line first, before the torch oil ran out.

The idea handed down through the ages suggest that success, beauty, happiness and good judgment are very much the results of a wise proportionality.

A Quote to Note: Friederich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.

To Weigh and Consider

It seems almost beyond saying, but then human psychology seems never finished teaching us the same lessons over and over, that there is almost always more to something than we’re led to believe at first blush. We are, as Daniel Kahneman says, “a machine for jumping to conclusions.”

This is not to say we shouldn’t decide quickly when we must. When the situation demands it, then we must make a quick decision based on the what we know at the time. Hopefully, we can correct mistakes made as they’re realized along the way.

But in many instances we don’t have to make quick decisions. We usually have time to weigh and consider, to be thoughtful and morally responsible. We have time to do the work—and it’s mental work!—that someone who really cares about truth, or the pursuit of it, will do and take seriously. And this is so very important and responsible and noble where the lives and welfare of our fellow human beings are at stake.