By way of explanation...

My sudden (and lengthy) cessation of blogging resulted from a perfect storm of unforeseen and uncontrollable events. It began with greatly increased work-related demands on my time, but then a variety of other unexpected and time-consuming events occurred in rapid succession. Included in these was a completely unexpected death in the family (not my immediate family, but close enough).

While forced off-line by these events, I began to think about my motivation for blogging. More than anything else, it seems clear that my primary motivation to blog came from my belief that, unbeknownst to many, we were in an actual war against al Qaeda in Iraq (and we were not in any kind of war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan -- there, we are fighting the hapless but relentless Taliban). That is, according to my view, many Americans, most Democratic politicians, and virtually all reporters had the story exactly backwards in that they all seemed to believe that the "real terrorists" were in Afghanistan, not Iraq. That belief motivated me to blog.

The war with al Qaeda in Iraq was declared by al Qaeda after our invasion. Thus, you can blame the post-invasion war either on them or on Bush, depending on your personal politics. Regardless of who gets the blame, the passionate belief that I have steadfastly defended on my blog was that we could not possibly consider withdrawing our troops until we had defeated the vicious and evil force that declared war on us after we liberated the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein. Al Qaeda came because we were there, but they would not just dry up an bow away if they had succeeded in defeating the U.S. military. That is, al Qaeda was not seeking to liberate Iraq from the tyranny of U.S. domination. Their plans were much more sinister than that, and the stature and strength of their global terrorist organization would have been greatly enhanced if they had succeeded in their efforts in Iraq. That's why we had to stay and finish them off.

Well, it now seems clear to me that al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated. Really, truly, militarily defeated. The Shiites and Sunnis of Iraq may yet choose to have a civil war on their own (probably not, though), but I see no path for al Qaeda to make a comeback. To me, that's the important thing. It is the outcome that has global significance, whereas a civil war (or not) between Shiites and Sunnis has less significance. Now that al Qaeda has been defeated, the single greatest motivating force behind my blogging efforts has all but disappeared. Not only has al Qaeda been defeated in Iraq, they have seriously tarnished their once-vaunted reputation throughout the Muslim world because of the nearly successful strategy they employed to indirectly defeat American forces. That strategy was to slaughter innocent Shiite civilians by the thousands in spectacular mass-casualty attacks that were covered in gory detail and incorrectly interpreted as evidence of "civil war" by an easily manipulated and largely anti-Bush world media. The fact that al Qaeda's evil strategy failed spectacularly does not mean that it wasn't brilliant. It was, and it came closer to working than I ever thought possible. But it didn't work, and that seems clear now. With al Qaeda's defeat in Iraq goes much of my motivation for blogging.

And there is one more contributing factor to my recent lack of blogging. As I reflect on what I have written, I am not entirely proud of it. The reason is that political debate is absurdly polarized in America (and throughout the world, I assume), so much so that each side treats the views of the other side with contempt (not with respect). Too often, I think that I have been that way myself. Not like bloggers who, in a fit of anger, hurl invective and spew profanity at those with whom they disagree. I never blog out of anger, and I'd never sink to that low level of debate. But what I don't always do is to respect mainstream views on the left that I simply cannot comprehend. In that sense, I am a bit like those on the left who say that "Bush lied!" and other such nonsense. They simply cannot comprehend the legitimate reasons Bush had to invade Iraq, so they resort to analyzing (and always demonizing) his internal motivations, as if they have keen insight into his mind. That does not seem like evidence-based reasoning to me. Instead, it seems like a lower form of political debate (i.e., strongly advocating your own diagnosis of the internal mental state of those with whom you disagree).

Recently, I've begun to worry that I am like that, too. I try not to demonize the anti-war left, but I often act as if there is not a legitimate point on view on that side of the spectrum (at least not with respect to post-invasion Iraq -- I certainly do respect the view that we never should have invaded in the first place). How could withdrawing our troops at the height of violence in Iraq (violence that was deliberately engineered by al Qaeda) be a legitimate position when virtually everyone agreed that genocide would result (the very outcome sought by al Qaeda)? I cannot understand that point of view anymore than the anti-war left can understand that Bush had legitimate reasons to invade in the first place. That being the case, I've accused some Democrats of lying about their reasons for wanting us to withdraw our troops in the face of al Qaeda's malicious offensive against the Shiites of Iraq. I wish I hadn't done that. Those who adhere to that impossible-to-understand position (i.e., withdrawing U.S. forces at the height of violence) include the center left, and, that being the case, I should just accept that they had what seemed like good reasons to them for advocating what even they must have known would, with a fairly high probability, result in a genocidal explosion of violence. The mere fact that I cannot comprehend their reasoning should not be taken by me to mean that no decent and clear-thinking person would ever hold to that view. I think their view was that an explosion of genocidal violence was going to happen regardless, so our withdrawal would only be accelerating the inevitable (something like that, anyway). In any case, my failure to understand their position sometimes caused me to attribute their positions to anti-Bush rage instead of to reasoned analysis. The anti-war left does seem to have a lot of anti-Bush rage, but my mistake was to simply take for granted the fact that such emotionality explains their impossible-to-understand point of view on post-invasion Iraq. When I take that step of diagnosing the secret origins of their position, I become just like the "Bush lied!" crowd. I definitely don't want to go there. Yet that's just where I sometimes find myself. Right now, as I write this, I know that decent and intelligent people had legitimate reasons for wanting to withdraw our troops at the height of violence in Iraq. In the heat of daily political debate, though, that thought is nowhere to be found in my writings.

I've come to think that polarized political debate (and the impossibility of understanding the views expressed by the other side) stems largely from differences in what each side counts as evidence. I am an evidence maniac, and I marshal massive amounts of objective evidence to make my case, whether the topic is Iraq or the economy. When I do, the case often seems open and shut to me. But if you have a different political orientation, it won't seem that way to you no matter how much evidence I present, and that's often because what you count as evidence differs from what I count as evidence. Occasionally, both sides slip into talking about the same evidence, as if the evidence can determine who has the stronger argument, but that's just an illusion. Take casualties in Iraq, for example. Sometimes, people on the left have said that it's a lie to suggest that casualties have decreased substantially since the onset of the troop surge (e.g., Hillary Clinton told General Petraeus that it required a willing suspension of disbelief to take that idea seriously), and they predict that violence will only get worse. Such claims seem to suggest that, to the left, casualty statistics are directly relevant to the debate. That, in turn, prompts me to start summarizing the objective evidence on the matter even more furiously. In time, though, I have come to appreciate that such evidence is not considered to be very relevant to those who strongly disagree with our efforts in Iraq (even if they occasionally make reference to that evidence). What matters to them, I believe, is other evidence and other considerations that do not matter very much to me, such as international law and the opinion of ordinary people in other countries (opinion as expressed in simple opinion polls but not as expressed in the outcome of election polls). To me, international law is critical when the topic is free trade but is largely irrelevant when the topic is national security. It's not that way if your political worldview leans to the left. Thus, the real source of the heated disagreement seems to lie in the answer to this question: what evidence should get the greatest weight when we were trying to decide whether or not to withdraw U.S. troops at the height of violence in Iraq? The left and the right attach much different weight to the various bits of evidence, and then they find the views of the other side incomprehensible. Demonization seems to be the automatic next step.

In any case, I'd like to find a way to forcefully disagree with others using evidence-based reasoning (always and in great detail) without also disparaging their views. By its very nature, that is hard to do when it comes to political debate. I'd like to someday better understand the nature of polarized political debate, but even if I never fully understand it, I want to argue forcefully yet in a way that better respects the views of those with whom I disagree (even if I am completely unable to comprehend their position). It could be, of course, that my political opponents really are evil or are driven by emotional rage (just as many on the left really believe their own diagnoses of the evil Bush White House), but, odds are, they are not that way. They are (from my point of view) just wrong. Being wrong is not the same as being morally depraved.

OK, that's it. I know that soul-searching is about as uninteresting a topic as one can imagine for a blog post, but I've gotten a lot of e-mails asking what is going here. That's the story. I think I will plunge into blogging again, but I'd like to find a way do it in a way that better resists the natural tendency to disparage the seemingly incomprehensible views of those on the other side of the argument.