California Conservative

Last night, I caught the last portion of a presentation by Michael Crichton on C-SPAN2. That caused me to visit his website to read some of his speeches. I’m glad I visited it. What I found was that, during a speech to the National Pres Club, Crichton said something particularly useful in examining the worth of the Iraq Surrender Group’s report and also the worthiness of ‘consensus judges’ that Democrats talk so much about. Here’s what Mr. Crichton said:

“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”

That’s solid advice. Let’s think of it this way: Consensus just means that people agree on something. It doesn’t make the agreed-upon issue right or wise. In fact, conceptually, it’s morally neutral. Theoretically, the agreed-upon thing might be awful or it might be positive. That’s hardly a high bar to clear, especially with a bunch of retired politicians and ‘diplomats’. An old-time politician is someone skilled in the art of dealmaking. Ditto with diplomats.

I suspect that these folks saw the outcome of the election and decided to give the people what they wanted. That isn’t the mark of leadership and it certainly isn’t a profile in courage. In this instance, it’s my opinion that it’s just agreeing for agreement’s sake.

It’s time that people just scrapped the ISG’s report and we got people looking for a way to win. George Bush, Tony Blair, John McCain and Joseph Lieberman are right; losing in Iraq isn’t an option. There’s much too much at stake. In the end, it really isn’t so much about helping the Iraqis. It’s about doing it for our protection.

As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s in our interest to drain the swamp & keep hitting the most important targets. If we fail, Iran controls a huge share of the world’s oil and al Qa’ida regains the training base it lost in Afghanistan. Those results are totally predictable.

A year ago, most serious people said that losing in Iraq wasn’t an option, that there was too much at stake. Is there less at stake now? I’d suggest that there’s even more at stake now than then. If there’s more to lose now, what’s caused people’s opinions to change? I suspect that they’ve lost the will to fight this to victory.

It’s time America told the world that it’s serious about winning in Iraq and wherever terrorists are found. It’s time that we found Democrats with the will to win because we can’t fight to win without them.

Technorati Tags: Michael Crichton, State of Fear, Consensus, ISG, Joe Lieberman, John McCain

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 12:29 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Culture, Elections, Iran, Iraq, Terrorism, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.