The water had barely started to rise in the streets of New Orleans when people started looking for someone to blame. Fingers were pointed in every direction — any direction but their own, or that of their interest group. The fault lay with: the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bush administration, Governor Blanco, Mayor Nagin, the Louisiana political culture, the local levee board, black people, white people, poverty, Democrats, Republicans…. anyone and everyone who could conceivably be responsible for the terrible tragedy we witnessed on our televisions.
Because it certainly wasn’t your/my/his/her fault.
“Well yes, I bear some responsibility for this, but…”
When did the United States become a “some, but…” country that cannot take responsibility?
The Katrina reality, of course, is that millions of people were affected by generations of action or inaction, yet such complexities were mere mental hurdles for the blame gamers: inconvenient, but surmountable.
Judging from this WaPo article about the way things are shaping up around Iraq, it seems clear that the blame gamers learned a great deal from our recent exercise in national self-exoneration:
From troops on the ground to members of Congress, Americans increasingly blame the continuing violence and destruction in Iraq on the people most affected by it: the Iraqis.
[snip]
This marks a shift in tone from earlier debate about the responsibility of the United States to restore order after the 2003 invasion, and it seemed to gain currency in October, when sectarian violence surged. Some see the talk of blame as the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement.
“It is the first manifestation of a ‘Who lost Iraq?’ argument that will likely rage for years to come,” said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University expert on terrorism who has worked as a U.S. government consultant in Iraq.
We’re playing the “some, but…” game again. From the neoconservatives to the liberals, we’re off and running, eager to absolve ourselves from responsibility in Iraq… and even when someone does manage to shoulder part of the load, it’s bafflingly quantified:
Blaming Iraqis for the woeful situation disregards recent history, some experts argue. Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert and adviser to the Iraq Study Group, calculates that because of policy missteps and other errors, the United States bears about 60 percent of the blame. “You can’t say, ‘We did this and the Iraqis didn’t rise to the occasion,’ ” she said. “There’s enough blame to go around.”
60%? I can’t help wondering what factors went into this calculation.
What weight is given to the historical antecedents, for instance? Can we give away an extra point or two if we include how the country was formed? And how do we divvy up the remaining 40%? If it belongs to Iraq, then maybe incorporating the Syrian / Iranian involvement will provide further American absolution.
I bet we can reduce that percentage with just a tad more effort. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if we work on it long and hard enough, we’ll eventually arrive at the conclusion that Iraq owes us.
When we finally arrive at that point, we’ll have perfected the blame game. Almost there…
(Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.)
I have found the most admirable people to be the ones who are willing to look at their actions and say, “My bad.” That may be asking too much of policy makers and politicians but one would hope for a little honest, “Here is what I could have done better.” I don’t advise holding my breath.
We are all flawed. We all make mistakes. Only a fool refuses to beleive that he has erred.
Besides the big issue is not how we got here but how the hell do we get to an acceptable outcome in the shortest, least painfull way. After all, nobody ever got out of quicksand by figuring out who was to blame..