What can you say when people, who are obviously intelligent, do truly stupid things? The easy thing to say is that they’re mad, insane; but that isn’t the answer. Life is far more complicated than that.

Let’s go back in time, over 30 years ago. No one ever accused Richard Nixon of being stupid; yet he did what seemed to be an incredibly stupid thing: he did not destroy the secret audio tapes he had made of his conversations in the White House. At the time amateur psychologists of every stripe tried to understand this truly bizarre behaviour. Why would you hold on to the “bloody knife”? Without the tapes it would have been John Dean’s word against Nixon, H.R. (Bob) Haldemann and John Ehrlichman. Most people did not believe that Dean had a photographic memory. Then a Mr. Butterfield came before the committee and admitted a system of taping had been put in place and used by Nixon. Much sturm und drang followed with the Supreme Court finally ordering that the tapes be turned over.

Now, I’ve encapsulated a lot into a short paragraph; but what I’m curious about is not the machinations of that time. What peaks my curiosity is why Nixon kept the tapes. Why did he do something so unalterably stupid? Of course, we’ll never know. We can guess, speculate, and conjecture ’til the end of our days; but we will never know.

So, this brings us to today. How could some supposedly smart people get us into the mess we are in the world, in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who are the intelligent people I am thinking about? There’s a plethora of them: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perl, and William Kristol to name just a few. These are not stupid people. They are smart. How could they have done something (so many things) so stupid? Why would they not ensure that the outcome would succeed? Now that we know that they were warned not to do precisely what they did do, the question must be asked: Why would they ignore every warning, at every turn?

There appears that, in the beginning, there was an ends: going into Iraq. What had to be decided on was the means. Wolfowitz has admitted that WMD were the most politic of all of the reasons that had been suggested in the pre-war planning sessions in the White House. But, even Former Treasury Secretary O’Neill has written that from the first days of this administration there was an on-going discussion about going war against Iraq.

We can say all we want that the administration is in denial, that they have a messianic belief that they are right and have the right to do what they are doing; but that does not answer the basic question: how can so many smart people do things that are so stupid?

I don’t have an answer here. Hey, I’m still trying to figure out Nixon. And, once again, it’s cold comfort to find that you were right all along. Too much blood has been spilled and will be spilled to feel smug or even smirk. But, when really smart people in power do truly stupid things all that we ordinary folks can do is stand by and watch the disaster unfold. No jingoistic phrases, no hyperbole, no aphorisms will salve the wound. It’s as if it were some big film extravaganza and we know that the all blood and treasure that will be spent, in the end, is our own, the viewers.

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

And, of course

The sculpture is by Ron Mueck. For me, he’s emblematic of this administration and the situation it’s placed itself in. The second photo is to give a sense of proportion.

*After this, therefore because of this
(i.e. : False reasoning)