MAP 150

In yesterday’s New York Times, Gary Bass, associate professor at Princeton, reviews a book by economist Bryan Caplan. Caplan argues that voters are “biased, irrational, manipulable and plain ignorant.” Bass writes:
“Of all the people who deserve blame for the debacle in Iraq, don’t forget the American public…the two sides (doves and hawks) implicity agree that the public has been dangerousy unsure, or easily propagandized, or ignorant.”

This just gets my blood boiling. Congress authorized the damn war, and surely they had access to far more unfiltered information than the American people. Rather than viewing Americans’ turnabout on the war as people being weak minded, how about giving them some credit to paying attention to what’s going on? Yes, there was some information to the contrary leading up to the war, but if I recall these people were being called traitors and unpatriotric by the Administration. Congress bought the war hook, line and sinker, and they, the Administration and the media sold the war–there was no public discourse. Hey, the New York Times apologized for missing the boat on the war. Just where is the American public supposed to get its information if it can’t trust the media or the people it elects?

The lack of public discourse on Iraq compelled me to create a web page on Iraq. I guess it’s my own personal MAP 150 experiment. I wondered whether the outcome might have been different if we had all chimed in at the time. Many argue that the outcome was inevitable. Perhaps so, but you never know what an honest discussion will produce.

I do have to give Bass credit. He wonders at the end of the review whether it’s the politicans letting the voters down. Amen, hallelujiah and the like.