Bush On The Defensive

I've got to thank my friend, John, for sending along this New York Times editorial. The Times takes President Bush to task for his latest tactic of accusing his critics of "rewriting history." This is in relation to the pre-war intelligence that the administration interpreted -- or twisted -- into claims that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.

It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.

Bush's attack posture has been pretty laughable, especially since much of the facts are so clear. Gone are the days when he and his cohorts can simply make up things and expect the public to believe them. But that's exactly what he's trying to do to counter the growing criticism over how our country started the war in Iraq.

Bush also says that Democrats have no right to complain because they also voted to go to war based on the intelligence. But, as the Times editorial notes, this ignores the verified fact that Bush had better intelligence and that the administration deliberately had reports reworked to validate their preconceived ideas. And now Bush has the gall to blame Democrats for buying the bill of goods he was selling.

Just the latest step in the decline of the Bush presidency.

In a related note about the war in Iraq, I should note that I wasn't in favor of the Democratic proposal that was defeated earlier today that would have forced the administration to set a timeframe for withdrawal from Iraq. The Republican alternative is a bit toothless, however, calling for regular updates and saying next year should be "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty."

What is needed in this situation is for certain criteria to be established that, once met, would be the signal for us to leave. That's kind of what the Bush Administration has been saying, but only in vague, formless statements about leaving "when the job's done." By establishing tiers of well-defined criteria that must be met in Iraq, we can hopefully withdraw in an orderly way, leaving a stable Iraq behind.

Granted, that's very idealistic, and there may be no way in which this whole mess will ever be counted a success. But neither an arbitrary withdrawal date nor vague promises of leaving whenever we feel like it will help improve the situation there.

The Revolution Of Evolution

Just wanted to point out a very interesting essay in Harvard Magazine regarding Darwin and his theory of evolution. The link actually goes to a series of essays the biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote to introduce each of Darwin's four major works. Wilson discusses much of the current debate over the attempts to insert religious teaching in place of scientific fact in the classroom and whether scientific humanism can finally triumph over the religious worldview that, while responsible for much of human culture, also leads to bigotry and, coupled with "toxic tribalism," brutal warfare.

Wilson also has a nifty definition of scientific humanism that sums up how I try to approach things:

Still held by only a tiny minority of the world's population, it considers humanity to be a biological species that evolved over millions of years in a biological world, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided by complex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning. Human nature exists, and it was self-assembled. It is the commonality of the hereditary responses and propensities that define our species. Having arisen by evolution during the far simpler conditions in which humanity lived during more than 99 percent of its existence, it forms the behavioral part of what, in The Descent of Man, Darwin called the indelible stamp of our lowly origin.

It's an enjoyable read, but if you can only skim, skip down past the sketches of the monkeys to find Wilson's critique of current events.