Humility and Truthfulness
I’m sure you’ve heard this quote by now:
We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq.
Poor guy. You couldn’t trade his job security now for the proverbial political warm pitcher of spit.
The view was given by Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department , in an interview with Al Jazeera. While many would disagree with the “tried to do our best” part, the rest of the statement is more than simply true. The ironic thing here is that, were the U.S. to officially endorse statements like that (the White House has already denied this, saying “Those comments obviously don’t reflect our position”), the U.S. would be in far better shape in the Middle East.
What the Bush administration has not shown in Iraq or the rest of the region is humility and truthfulness. Had we been as humble from the beginning (remember Bush, in the 2000 debates, said we should be humble to other nations?), we wouldn’t have half the problems there that we have today.
This diplomat is going to get crushed because of what he said, which was simply the truth. The fact is, we need to emulate this guy, we need to promote the views he espoused, instead of the arrogant, stupid take that Bush and his people have tried to shove down everyone’s throats. If any plan in Iraq has a chance of working, humility on our part like this would be a necessary component.
Just don’t expect it from Bush.
Well, you certainly can’t have diplomats running around telling the TRUTH. Sheesh.
I’m working through a book called “Our Inner Ape”, written by a guy who studies chimpanzee and bonobo behavior. Bush (and, by proxy, the United States) has acted like a chimp threatened by an interloper- screaming, yelling, throwing our weight around, and generally making fools of ourselves.
What we could have done, though, is thought our way through the situation and been better than our Inner Ape. We could have leveraged a leadership role into being able to truly shape the next century, or at least the next decade, through properly handling the 9/11 attacks and Afghanistan War.
Instead, we acted like jerks, and this guy is right in pointing it out.
Paul
Seattle, WA
It’s all about image for these people–to lose even the smallest amount of face due to humility is unbearable for them. They would rather point up at a blue sky and call it orange than admit to the smallest mistake in any specific fashion.