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Originally Posted by hkbajwa  BD i'm with you on this. Every situation has a myriad of possible perspectives and thus an almost infinite number of interpretations.
That said, i still believe that there can be no doubt that Bush and Blair's administrations wilfully attempted to disregard, dismiss and outright repress certain perspectives.
In the sense that it was not possible to state in the US that maybe Saddam didn't have WMDs. There should DEFINATELY have been some sort of coverage covering the aspect that NO leader in this world would wilfully subject his nation to inspection, judgement and approval by an outside power. It runs contrary to the concept of sovereignty.
However there was virtually none. Any differeing perspective was pushed down because the proponents of those perspective didn't have the "incontrovertible intelligence" ( conveniently classified) that PROVED Saddam had WMDs.
It is possible that Bush and Blair believed in the Iraq war. It is also possible that they ensured through a variety of means that anybody believing differently was not heard. Remember the mysterious suicide of a British weapons inspector (David Kelly) who had spoken out against the war? I've always wondered why that story fizzled out so quickly. | Well, a primary conclusion of the paper that I posted was the reality that politicians are bound by functional purpose to make decisions based on facts, however incomplete those facts may be. And, it is quite impossible for any politician to enact policies that could acknowledge every single imaginable perspective of those facts.
Using Iraq prior to March 2003, for example, it would have been functional impossible for a politician to BOTH promote economically isolating Iraq in order to help force Iraq to become more transparent regarding her weapons program (the "realist" perspective) AND promote economic development within Iraq in order to help force Iraq to become more transparent regarding her weapons program (the "liberal" perspective).
Thus, in other words, in order to develop any governmental policy at all based on whatever facts are available, a politician would undoubtedly have to disregard some perspectives of those facts since policies drawn from different perspectives conflict with one another. In short, ALL politicians have to act emphasizing one particular perspective in the end since they cannot functionally act in a way that emphasizes all possible perspectives.
And, in 2003, the Bush Administration chose to see the facts surrounding Iraq and promoted public policy from the "identity" perspective in the sense that they thought that "only a change in the identity of regimes in the Middle East that creates a more common dialogue can discipline the use of force and realize the promises of diplomacy."
So, one can argue that different perspectives weren't acknowledged by the Bush Administration in 2003. But, it really would not have made any difference if they had all been acknowledged because politicians could only act using one particular perspective. And the same "you can only act using one perspective only" reality would be forced on any single politician or collection of politicians. |