Just do it

Former White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, told CNN on Thursday that the "good thing" about the Bush presidency, and the thing that got him re-elected, was that he "tried his best" to do good.

You may not always agree with him. But I think he's demonstrated that he's doing something - the things that he is doing, however bold or aggressive or wrong-headed that some people think they are, he's doing what he thinks is best for this country.

Bartlett, who may be on to something, reminded me of something I wrote in May 1986 after Ronald Reagan had ordered a bombing attack on Libya because of it's supposed involvement in bombing a disco in Germany frequented by US GIs.

It wasn’t long before a war-level fever was being whipped up among Americans, one so intense at times that, had it been our style, we probably would’ve been jamming the streets chanting “Death to the Infidel!” We Americans, despite all our supposed sophistication and worldliness, are still prepared to use mass violence when faced with events we can’t control or won’t understand. Our ability to deal with frustration is very limited, and frustration leads to rage.

A, perhaps the, quintessential Americanism, submitted for your approval (with apologies to Rod Serling, but it makes me feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone): After Jimmy Carter remarked in the wake of the killing of Qaddafi’s daughter that if someone killed Amy he’d be more likely to swear vengeance than back off, a newspaper columnist called him “an embittered loser who still doesn’t get it,” adding (here it comes) “history will judge” if Reagan was right or wrong, but “at least he did something.”

That’s it: Do something. Never mind if it’s right or wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral, sane or insane, effective or ruinous, do something. Americans can’t stand feeling helpless - and there’s one of the dangers to the future that the attack on Libya symbolizes, because uncontrollable events will surely continue, even increase in number.

That cultural tendency, of course, isn’t limited to Americans, and neither is the one of valuing pride over practicality, image over intelligence, face over the future. But sharing a tendency doesn’t excuse it, and it was that latter notion that was the immediate spark for the raid. ...

And so we had our blood-letting, our orgasm of national pride; our rage at the world is now temporarily spent. ...

And when the next bombing, the next set of murders takes place, we will of course see no connection between it and our bombing of Libya, just as we saw no connection between the disco bombing and our repeated humiliation of Libya in the Gulf of Sidra. Americans, to quote something I wrote in 1980, suffer from “a political insanity that clouds our national vision and distorts our national judgement...a disease of the soul of a society and the minds and attitudes of its leaders, one that, like a child, sees no connection between its actions and others’ reactions and thus constantly sees itself as the innocent victim no matter what the facts.”

Keep that in mind when listening to news about Iraq or Iran and ask yourself if in that coverage anything bad that happens or might happen to any American or American interest is any way connected to anything we have done or are doing - with the exception, of course, of "bringing democracy" and "providing security" - and how much of it revolves around the idea that we've got to do something.

Thanks to TalkingPointsMemo for the link.