Masters of Illusion American Leadership in the Media Age Phần 3 doc

P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 The Sources of Our Illusions 85 They are simply special pleaders, not willing to acknowledge that there are circumstances in which their proposed cure is worse than the disease. For those whoargue thatthereneverhas beena justwar, wasthe warto end slavery in America unjust? Was the war to end the Nazi horror unjust? Even if one can imagine that slavery and Nazism could have been ended without war, does that make the wars to end them unjust, or simply unfortunate? Wishful thinkers must prove they see the world for what it is – dangerous and treacherous (in which our enemies can hide successfully for years) – and to do so they must repent their first sin, excusing Soviet Communism, and condemn Lenin and Stalin (to recognize the full evil in the world, including the bin Ladens) and must show that they really care about the victims, and don’t simply write them off as unfortunate road kill in the race toward a better future. Continued whitewashing of the Soviets disqualifies wishful thinkers on the left for power in today’s world. It has always been a deception: using supposedly idealistic goals to try to justify force and brutality. It could be seen as such by moderate people even in the heart of the great ideological controversies of the twentieth century. Glamorizing the Soviets was a vice of the left, but there is noneed to cite conservative to make the point. We can turn instead to John Maynard Keynes – for decades the darling of liberals because of his advocacy of interventionist economic policies – who saw the deception clearly. Writing in 1926 Keynes said, “We lack more than usual a coherent scheme of progress, a tangible ideal. It is not necessary to debate the subtleties of what justifies a man in promoting his gospel by force; for no one has a gospel” [that is, a compelling explanation of the present and ideal for the future]. Because no one, including the communists, had a real vision, what they claimedwas an ideology ofprogress wasconcocted to rationalize the use of force. Force was used to gain and hold power, not to promote a vision of a better world. 3 Wishful thinkers rejected Keynes’s opinions then, and may do so today, preferring a fantasy that keeps them from seeing the full scope of danger and evil in the world. This isn’t a mere ideological fantasy (that is, a fantasy about an ideal – like the conservatives’ fantasy about perfect competition), but is a fantasy about history itself and about what the world is. Nor is the fantasy a pardonable exaggeration made for political purposes. There is nothing pardonable about the fantasy because of the great evil it caused us to accept in the world – Communist slave labor camps and mass exterminations of people (in the USSR during Stalin’s period and more recently in China during the Cultural Revolution). But liberals are not alone in such wishful thinking; conservatives defend rightist dictatorships (as some did Hitler’s regime and that of Mussolini P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 86 American Public Culture and the World before World War II). Again, wishful thinking ignores the brutal realities of these regimes. THE DELUSIONS OF WISHFUL THINKING Wishful thinking prevents us from perceiving the world as it is. Wishful thinking is expressed by, and can mislead, American politicians, thought leaders and citizens at every level. It is not confined to either end of the political spectrum – liberals do it and so do conservatives, and in surprisingly similar ways. Different ends of the political spectrum take their wishes to opposite conclusions. The liberal argues for a less-well-armed America working closely with other powers; the conservative argues for an American remaking the world in our image. Forexample, one of the central themes of the Congressionally mandated report on the failures of intelligence that led up to September 11 is that we weren’t ready for September 11 because the intelligence community did not want to see it coming. Over many years, people in the field and analysts in Washington and Langley had seen careers ruined because somebody tried to warn the policy makers that trouble was coming. The policy makers didn’t want to hear that sort of thing because they were not prepared to do the unpleasant things that knowledge of the real situation required. The ultimate example was the Clinton White House, where the top people simply refused to even receive information about Osama bin Laden’s activities in Sudan. Clinton was hardly unique; the NSC under Bush senior simply refused to believe that Saddam would invade Kuwait, and even ignored seemingly incontrovertible information provided the night of the invasion, when General Brent Scowcroft went home early. 4 The impact of wishful thinking in our public culture is surprisingly significant. First, it keeps us from perceiving the world as it really is. Tolerance, pluralism, and conflict avoidance encourage our political and thought leaders to downplay the deficiencies of our rivals, even though their economic and political systems violate all the axioms of western public culture. This approved contradiction in our beliefs prevented American intelligence agencies from correctly assessing the Soviet Union’s performance and potentialfor years, overestimating itsprovision of consumer goods, underestimating its military strength, and overestimating its internal political cohe- sion. Wishful thinking also misled them in dealing with the terrorist threats. Second, wishing leads to underestimating the risk of conflict. If only there were similarity in government (democracy) and economic structure P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 The Sources of Our Illusions 87 (capitalist free enterprise), the expectation goes, then there would be geopolitical harmony. But this is also not proven. Because European democracy is pacifist doesn’t mean all democracies are similar. In fact, that American democracy today is not pacifist, seems a bitter reproach to the Europeans – something that angers many. Third, wishing causes us to overreach. For example, in Iraq our high- est priority must be that Saddam and his ambitions for weapons of mass destruction and for support of terrorism are gone, and a new Iraqi government doesn’t follow him in trying to do those things. Then we’ve pulled the teeth of the Iraqi demon. More is not necessary. But more may be desirable. Thus, democracy, capitalism, free markets, liberal attitudes toward women’s rights, the love (or the hearts and minds) of the Iraqi people for America – that is, the hopeful agenda – are good things, and we should urge them on the Iraqi people and support them if they seek these things, but all these things are not necessary to our security and if they are rejected by an Iraqi government, we should not press for them. The danger of wishful thinking is that it causes us to see these good things as required and that in seeking them we overreach ourselves and end up disappointed, disillusioned and perhaps defeated. Fourth, wishing deflects us from a strong response to threats. Forexample, writing in the summer of 2003, Michael Ledeen pointed to two peace initiatives – the Saudi peace plan of 2002 and the roadmap for peace in Palestine in the spring and summer of 2003 – as efforts to stall the American war on terror. Both peace initiatives had been accepted by the Bush Administration and each allowed our enemies in the Mideast and our rivals among the large powers to attempt to frustrate our energetic attacks on terrorism: Just as the delay after Afghanistan permitted our enemies to organize their political, diplomatic, and terrorist forces against us, so our current defensive stance enables them to intimidate and indoctrinate the Iraqi people, murder our own men and women on the ground, and galvanize the president’s critics and opponents, both at home and abroad our regional enemies in Iran and Syria had plenty of time to plan their response to our pending occupation of Iraq. As they unhesitatingly and publicly proclaimed to anyone who cared to listen, they organized a terror war against us, accompanied by jihadist propaganda, mass demonstrations, and hostage seizures, just as we experienced in Lebanon in the1980s. The president gave voice to awelcome revolutionary doctrine when he refused to deal with Yasser Arafat: He said that just as only free Middle Eastern countries could be expected to abandon terrorism and join us in fighting it, only a free and democratic Palestinian people could make a durable peace with Israel. 5 P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 88 American Public Culture and the World This often perceptive article offers a perfect example of how far hopeful- nesshas penetratedalmost allAmerican thinkingaboutcombatingterrorism in the Middle East. The two peace initiatives Ledeen cites were part of a strategy by our adversaries to delay our response, yet they were accepted by the United States as a result of the notion that the world is made up of well- meaning people with whom peace can be made by diplomatic initiatives given adequate time and support. ButLedeen’s proposed remedy, to build democracy in the region as a basis for establishing peace, is itself a version of the same fallacy he otherwise con- demns. His remedy reflects the conviction that America should try to export democracy (and most likely free enterprise) expecting it to change the com- plexion of the region. This is as much an illusion as the expectation of many people that dialogue with our adversaries will bring a just peace. Instead, the reality is that our secure defense lies in destroying the leadership of our enemies, then restricting our further involvement to supporting indigenous efforts at democratization and economic reform, but not imposing them. It’s the effort to impose not only regime change, which has been accom- plished, but also democracy and free enterprise that have mired us down in a guerilla war in Iraq. Wishing causes us to overreach; it causes us to equivocate; each is disastrous for our security and one or the other is deeply built into the thinking of Americans of both parties. Thus it is very difficult for America to act in ways consistent with our current role in the world – difficult for us to objectively assess the situation and adopt policies that are in our own interest. POLITICAL PARTISANSHIP Political parties seek popular support. To gain it, they behave little different than advertisers, seeking to attract an audience, obtain identification with the audience, and then persuade the audience to support them. An effective way of doing this is to associate the party and its candidates with views held by the electorate. The public culture offers those views. For partisan political purposes politicians use and reinforce those views. Partisan politics doesn’t create our public culture (the wishful thinking of our electorate is the more basic cause) but it does strongly reinforce our public culture. Thus, political partisanship contributes to the building of the public culture. Without partisanship our public culture would be less significant and different in its context – it might be closer to reality. P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 The Sources of Our Illusions 89 Forexample, President Clinton resonated successfully – but without regard for the truth – with the wishful thinking about a peaceful world which lies at the heart of American popular culture. “For the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age,” Clinton told his audiences, “on this beautiful night, there is not a single nuclear missile pointed at an American child.” This was a line in one of President Clinton’s stock speeches – a line that always evoked great applause. But it was a lie, as pointed out by the military officer who was at his side carrying the nuclear cipher by which the president could cause the launch of American missiles, should the threat suddenly emerge. Had what the president was saying been true, there would not have been any need for the cipher to be nearby – no need for deterrence. Perhaps Clinton thought his statement was true, because he once lost the cipher completely, so little attention did he pay it. 6 Clinton’s misinforming the American people about this danger should remind us that there are two sorts of dishonesty with which a president can deceive the American people – the lie that danger is greater than it actually is, and the lie that danger is not as great as it actually is. We are indeed somewhat safer now than during the height of the Cold War, because the threat of a large-scale nuclear exchange among the great powers has been reduced. But we are not safer because our enemies have become friends – as our public culture would have it, via the harmonism and convergence illusions – but because our enemies are weaker than they were.The inability of many Americans to accept this – because they hope for a world better than it is – is one of the great limitations in America’s ability to defend itself sensibly. Butasutopia – the peaceful world so longed for by our public culture and promised by President Clinton – beckons, up rears the ugly head of national rivalries. The first presidential debate of 2004 took place strictly within the limitations of the public culture. There was little or no mention of security concerns involving Russia or China, and just a brief mention of in reference to North Korea. Neither candidate discussed where Iraq fits into the overall U.S. world situation, other than Senator John Kerry’s assertion that how we’ve dealt with Iraq has hurt our standing in the world. Instead, the candidates said the following: Both endorsed preemption. Both said what they thought what the biggest threat to the US: Kerry said nuclear proliferation, Bush said nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 90 American Public Culture and the World Each candidate declared that he has a grand vision. For Bush, it is the US championing democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East. For Kerry, it was the US avoiding conflict by acting in concert with other big powers. 7 The discussion reflected the romanticism about the American position in the world that is embedded in our public culture. Bush stressed romantic crusaderism, championing democracy all over the world, whereas Kerry stressed an equally romantic notion of multilateralism. Neither dared sug- gest that any other nation, with the possible exception of the North Koreans and the Iranians, were acting in anything but good faith – the type of illusion we have labeled harmonism. Indeed, by the closing weeks of the 2004 presidential campaign, most of the mediawas irresponsiblypartisan, and everything published hada hidden (or not so hidden)agenda of support of for one candidate or the other. There was little real news – only stories colored to advance a candidate’s chances. Nuances of terminology were always partisan. Anything that could be seized and used against a candidate was used, without regard to substantiation; and even, in some instances, in flagrant disregard of a lack of substantiation (e.g., Kerry’s charge that Bush had failed in his duty to protect American servicemen when stockpiles of Iraqi highexplosiveswerefound tobe missing from an Iraqi ammunition dump. It turned out that the munitions had been missing before American troops arrived at the dump in the early weeks of the war). Presidents sometimes argue for anticipation as a better strategy than reaction or resilience (as did Franklin Roosevelt before World War II), but our nation has historically preferred reaction, despite its enormous cost, because we cannot ever assure ourselves that the danger we anticipated was real since the party out of office cannot resist the temptation to maintain that there was really no danger at all and so no need for action. The twin pillars of today’s public culture – harmonism and convergence – reinforce the wishful thought that there is no danger that requires anticipation. Political partisanship is driving accurate information out of the American system – either because the media are playing the political game themselves and doctoring their reporting to that purpose, or because the intensity of political controversy,involving leaksand demonizationof opponents, causes people with information to keep silent. This is rather like how the threat of violence keeps people from informing on criminal activities. During the antiterrorist campaign, there has been primarily partisan criticism – the content of which is always predictable because it is partisan, and unconvincing because it is predictable. P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 The Sources of Our Illusions 91 Our presidents are not fools. They know when they are pandering to the illusions of the public culture; they know that the realities of geopolitics are quite different. They sense the constraints placed on their actions and words by the public culture and reflexively try to loosen them. Their adversaries push in the opposite direction. The resulting tug of war sometimes leads to unpremeditated, gradual, and often unpredictable modifications in public culture. Alexis de Tocqueville commented that in America some are raised to the common level inhuman knowledge thatdrives politicsin America and some are lowered to it. 8 We call that common level public culture, and recognize that there is a difference between one who is raised to it versus one who is lowered to it. Those who are raised to the public culture do not fully understand it. They accept it and play by its rules. In contrast, those who lower themselves to itare choosing to play according to the rules of the public culture, though they see other alternative ways of being and thinking outside the public culture construct. Presidents sometimes fall in this category, as do many of their advisors. There are consequences. As Americans latch on to a sanctioned belief system provided by our public culture they develop an unhealthy fear of honest brokers of information. “One of the worst by-products of our ven- omously partisan political culture is a growing distrust of anyone who claims to be nonpartisan. Red and blue combatants have systematically attacked the credibility of a wide variety of professionals whose jobs require objectivity: judges, pollsters, economists – and particularly journalists. Many of these same crusaders have simultaneously worked to under- mine the very professional standards that all of these occupations have developed to promote neutrality. In the news business, things have gotten so bad that the term ‘mainstream media’ has actually become an epithet. Problem is, imposing higher standards would drive upthe cost of journalism while cutting its dramatic value. The plain truth is that opin- ionated content is often simpler, snappier, and less expensive to produce than objective content.” 9 THE MEDIA In general, our media rely on and support the public culture. They draw their interpretation of events from it. Our politicians reference it in order to draw support for their positions. This is often done to the exclusion of truth telling. P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 92 American Public Culture and the World Interestingly, the public culture is formed not by the reporting of events as much as by the meaning that an event is given. In this way it is much like the party line of a totalitarian state. We first noticed this surprising similarity several decades ago in the Soviet Union. Our Soviet hosts would listen surreptitiously at night to the English-language radio broadcasts of the Voice of America and the BBC in order to obtain information about developments in the world. (Incidentally, the Russian language broadcasts of the VOA and the BBC were jammed by the Soviets, so that only the intelligentsia who understood English, and were largely Communist Party members, were able to get their news via this illegal but tolerated means.) Then the next morning the intelligentsia would read Pravda – the journal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – to find out the meaning giventoevents by the Party. Often Pravda, printed in Russian and available broadly, didn’t report the news, but only the interpretation – relying on its more sophisticated readers to have received news via the English-language broadcasts. So it was that our Soviet hosts and ourselves, Americans, had the same information as to world events, but gave them dramatically different inter- pretations. It is by such a device in America that the public culture persists despite openness about reporting events. That is, a free press is not sufficient to a realistic interpretation of what is happening in the world. In America events – the “news” – is reported reasonably accurately, often as well as reporters can do it, but then its meaning is often exaggerated or given a twist (when the White House does this, it is called “spin”). The meaning of the event or events is distorted to fit a particular political agenda. In this way, the media and politicians can claim accuracy as to reporting the news, yet be wildly inaccurate as to the significance of the event. Newspapers direct the meaning of a news story by leaving to editorial directors the headlines on a story. Less commonly do they alter a story itself, and when that happens a reporter often objects that it is a violation of journalistic ethics. TV accomplishes the same objective by what context is givenastory in a news broadcast, and by how much of the event is related. It is by such devices that the public culture is manipulated and reinforced continually. Possibly in America the CIA is best at this game. It documents carefully. It composes abalanced assessmentof outside“authoritative”opinion, butthen falsifies oneor twothings. Almostno one catches on,except in extreme situa- tions – as in thecase of the weapons of mass destruction not found in Iraq, or P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 The Sources of Our Illusions 93 in the case of the underestimates in the Cold War of Soviet military capabili- ties and the overestimates, also in the Cold War, of Soviet economic growth. JOURNALISTS News reporters are extremely important in our political life, and they are generally well intentioned in trying to do an honestand professional job. But there are fewer of them; they have less resources with which to work; they are employed for increasingly commercially oriented businesses that try to manipulate their reporting; they are subject to the direction of news directors who have motives that are primarily commercial (including the ratings competitions) rather than professional; and they are subjected to increasingly ham-handed interference in their work by courts – it’s no wonder that they are increasingly forced to lean on the public culture for assistance in their work. Journalists rely on our public culture because it provides a frame for the news and gives it meaning. “In order for an event to reach the public, it must first be viewed by reporters, then related in stories. Journalists help mold public understanding and opinion by deciding what is important and what may be ignored, what is subject to debate and what is beyond ques- tion, and what is true and false ,” wrote Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication, in astudy she coauthored. “The critical variable is usually not the facts themselves but the manner in which they are arranged and interpreted in order to construct narratives. Because the terms we use to describe the world determine the ways we see it, those who control the language control the argument. The language, stories and images become filters through which we make senseof the political world, alter the facts thatare deemed important, [and] the ways in which fact is framed and frames come to be assumed ” 10 It is the public culture that provides the framing for most news stories. The facts are framed by the public culture; when they are reported as news stories, the public culture is reinforced; and the frames (that is, the public culture itself) comes to be assumed. Journalist is a broad term that includes news reporters, and investigative- enterprise reporters, pundits, and analysts. They provide basic information, deciding what is or is not newsworthy. The stories are based on a careful calculation of what fits into the prevailing public culture. “ Reporters determine whether a proposal is considered ‘reasonable’ in public debate in large part by whether it is embraced by elite figures,” Jamieson writes. P1: FCW 0521857449c05 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 12:5 94 American Public Culture and the World “Reporters have a bias toward the use of official sources, a bias toward information that can be obtained quickly, a bias toward conflict, a bias toward focusing on discrete events rather than persistent conditions, and a bias toward the simple over the complex ” 11 Much of the public culture has its origins in experts of various sorts who tell us something we want to hear, harmonism or convergence. According to V. O. Key, journalists and the media largely transmit the ideas of others much as a trucking company carries books to a book store. The trucker is not responsible for the books content; nor the media for the ideas it transmits. 12 If this is true, we can dig further into what the experts do and what they read. “ If we are interested in the quality of information reaching the public, we must understand how it is manufactured, which is to say, we must understand the politics of expert communities as they relate to the generation and diffusion of knowledge claims, policy recommendations and general frames of reference.” 13 This extensive effort, to understand the politics of expert communities, is beyond the scope of this book, but is admirably addressed in John R. Zaller’s, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. The public culture offers reporters an easily accessible frame for indi- vidual leaders and confining the leaders within it. In the context of public culture complex national figures become simple. For instance, the media has simplified and distorted the personality of President Bush, so that he is believed by many Americans, especially among the elite, to be a person of limited intelligence. And yet he is one of the two most educated of all our presidents (Andover, Yale, and Harvard, for Bush; Woodrow Wilson had a Ph.D. from John Hopkins), and managed to get himself elected president twice, when the candidates of those who despise his supposed ignorance failed. The strength of a story frame with journalists is very great – it persists despite evidence to the contrary, or in ambiguous settings. For example, during the 2004 Presidential election Bush’s supposed limited intelligence was contrasted unfavorably with the supposedly superior intelligence of the Democratic candidate, John Kerry. When,in thespring of2005, John Kerry’s grades at Yale (which both Kerry and Bush attended as undergraduates) were released to the media, and turned out to be very similar to Bush’s, the story could have been that Bush was smarter than had been realized, as smart as Kerry. Instead, the original frame of the story prevailed, and the reports were that Kerry had turned out to be as dumb as Bush. Furthermore, the public culture seems determined to ignore that Bush has been elected to governorship of Texas, a state in which his credentials [...]... is not surprising, in light of this, that Europeans find Americans, most of whom still believe in the value of Western civilization, fit targets for criticism and contempt “States on the European continent regard the English-speaking peoples as masters in the art of concealing their selfish national interests in the guise of the general good,’ wrote an historian, adding that ‘this kind of hypocrisy is... core of the American self-image from the very beginning has been the notion that America is a model for mankind, a place in which humanity could start over, leaving behind the inequities of the old world and building a better new world Thus it was that the first settlers of New England, the first large-scale migration to what is now the United States, spoke – in an image borrowed from the Bible – of their... not, like Britain in a fit of absent-mindedness, but instead while trying to achieve exactly the opposite – to avoid foreign entanglements In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, it seems that Americans may be coming to a more favorable opinion of their nation’s involvements abroad – accepting them as a positive necessity, rather than stumbling into them while seeking to avoid them, as has... nation This is the most important result of September 11 and of the recent war in Iraq, and the changes in ourselves presage major changes in our future and that of the rest of the world 12: 23 P1: FCW 0521857449c07 Printer: cupusbw 120 CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 American Public Culture and Ourselves Polls show that the trust of the American people in the military is rising strongly... by the Harvard Institute of Politics, based on interviews with 1,200 college undergraduates [taken in April, 20 03] , found that 75 percent said they trusted the military ‘to do the right thing’ either ‘all of the time’ or ‘most of the time ’ In contrast, in 1975, 20 percent of people ages 18 to 29 said they had a great deal of confidence in those who ran the military, a Harris Poll found.”1 The. .. presses too hard for the application of the prescriptions of the Washington Consensus abroad To do so by overturning the governments of other countries (including Iraq and Afghanistan) and then imposing the Washington Consensus, however much we believe and assert that our interest is the welfare of the populations involved, skirts too close to imperialism We should promote the Washington Consensus so... difficult time in our nation’s history President Lincoln walked each day from the White House to the telegraph of ce in the War Department where he waited by the hour for bulletins from the armies in the field, and looking at newspapers not for information but only to ascertain what the editors were thinking and what the public was being told, no matter how erroneous it was In capsule, Lincoln read the papers... victim of the corruption of the European leadership by Saddam Hussein via the United Nations Oil for Peace program; and the victim of demonization (extended to our entire country) by the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany in pursuit of their attempt to extend and unite Europe Having blackened Bush’s name (and that of America), the same Europeans now want to turn the situation to their further... was all unintended, but it was Other countries have engaged in conflict for preeminence in the rest of the world, into which we’ve been drawn Our country was never prepared for any major war we entered (the Revolution, the Civil War, World War I or II), and that’s the most convincing evidence for our lack of design Having spent two centuries trying to avoid engagement with the geopolitics of the world,... philosophy of the role of government at a given time.19 In fact, Skowronek’s regime is a significant part of our concept of the public culture Skowronek sees presidential success in affiliating and expressing the particular regime of the times His is a formal expression of the efforts of American presidential candidates (and most of our presidents remain candidates while in of ce) to follow – not lead – the . threats. Forexample, writing in the summer of 20 03, Michael Ledeen pointed to two peace initiatives – the Saudi peace plan of 2002 and the roadmap for peace in Palestine in the spring and summer of 20 03 – as efforts. ignores the brutal realities of these regimes. THE DELUSIONS OF WISHFUL THINKING Wishful thinking prevents us from perceiving the world as it is. Wishful thinking is expressed by, and can mislead, American. lies in destroying the leadership of our enemies, then restricting our further involvement to supporting indigenous efforts at democratization and economic reform, but not imposing them. It’s the

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