Losing Trust :

In an article published to the Daily Gather group titled, "What is the merit behind a troop surge in Iraq?" on December 26, 2006, the question was asked ,"Would a temporary troop surge in Iraq be a wise tactical decision, or just a feeble attempt to mask a failed strategy? " Below is the comment I posted to that article in response to this question:
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Someone once said, " facts are facts " and the sad fact is that the knowledge of what to expect as the result from invading Iraq was known not only to the administration, but to the American people as well, before the invasion took place.
Experienced military personnel told the administration ( and us ) that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to stabilize the region after the initial military victory was achieved.
At this point, the reason why the administration chose to ignore that advice is not relevant. What is relevant is the way in which the administration chose to ignore that advice. The administration didn't simply reject the suggestion that more troops were needed, they also publicly dressed down and intimidated anyone making such suggestions.
When someone humiliates a subordinate in public, they damn well better know what they are doing. Because if they don't, any future actions they take that incorporate the exact same ideas as those submitted by those that were humiliated and intimidated will simply not be endorsed. Because, even if the idea is a sound one , the leadership will have lost all credibility at that point.
Sending more troops now would drag the morale of our nation further down , no matter how practical it is from a strategic point of view. It appears that the administration is not capable of throwing itself on the mercy of the American people and asking us to help figure a way out of this situation.
When someone makes a bad strategic decision, the only way out is to admit it and to ask all those involved to help find the best path to follow in the future. This is a fact, not a pretty fact, or a face-saving fact, just a fact, and facts speak for themselves.
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After posting this comment I started to think about how different access ( the right or privilege to approach ) to our elected officials has become in my lifetime. Today, physical access and even access by correspondence to our elected officials has been virtually eliminated. For most of us, the only access we will ever have will be through tv, the Internet, radio, or print media. On the surface, it might appear that this type of isolated , controlled, access would give an unfair amount of power to our elected officials, in that they could very easily manipulate what we know about them while they are in office. The reality, it appears, is that trying to control access actually erodes the power of elected officials.
As I reread my comment from the Daily Gather article, I was struck by the fact that rather than the current administration's strangle hold on denying access to itself by we, the people, giving the administration unchecked power, that lack of access has, in fact, made this administration more vulnerable than any administration in current memory.
On every major issue since it's initial days in office, this administration has blocked all outside access and issued its own directives on how policies would be initiated with little or no explanation as to why. Dissenting voices from the public to any of these policies were distant voices echoing in the wilderness, but dissenting voices from within the structure of our government were documented more throughly than anything uttered by a public official in the last century. After all, these dissenting voices were news, and news sells.
In justifying their stranglehold to access, the current administration used ridicule in an attempt to remove any merit dissenters to their policies might have. I suppose their reasoning was that no one would endorse access to them be given to parties they could make look foolish. What the current administration apparently didn't count on was the remarkably large volume of their own words that has been recorded, videotaped, and written down in the process.
Now that it has become evident that those the administration tried to defame were, in fact, correct in many of their assertions. Nothing the administration does or says will be readily accepted by the public. The reason ? When you make someone look bad, simply because you don't like their ideas or opinions, you place your own integrity on the line. If those accused of being "not worth listening to" are later proven to be right, whoever "dissed" them in the first place loses the trust of their audience.

If hindsight truly is 20/20, I wonder if the current administration realizes that had it allowed more access initially, today it would have more control of events than it currently does ? Perhaps, the real history lesson here is a lesson in how and why our system of government works when it isn't tinkered with. Perhaps our founding fathers knew through experience what happens when those in power deny access to themselves. Perhaps they knew that allowing criticism isn't a sign of weakness. Perhaps they knew that only the strong allow criticism, because if you allow criticism you have the guts to look someone in the face and understand why they disagree with you. Perhaps our founding fathers figured out that the worst thing you could possibly do in a free society is to cut off the voices who disagree with you. 'Cause guess what ? Nobody is right all the time. Perhaps those founding fathers learned what they learned the hard way through experience, and they actually knew what they were talking about .