Defending Hollywood When I Can

Finished watching The Path to 9/11 last night. It was very well done --something I wouldn't have expected from a film based primarily on a Commission Report. The big villain at every turn is not so much bin Laden or incompetent politicians, but political correctness. At countless points in the action, the main factor preventing authorities from connecting the dots is fear of racial incident or uncomfortable lawsuit.



The Clintonistas come off poorly not because they are ignorant or even incompetent, but because they lack prudence. Which is ironic, since Berger et. al. probably thought that by constantly waiting for more information, more specifics, an opportunity to move against bin Laden that was more obviously right, they were being prudent --but that's because Prudence is woefully misunderstood. The virtue involves three acts: deliberation, judgment and execution, and we, for all practical purposes, have reduced it to deliberation only.

The perfection of Prudence was classically understood to include eight elements:

• memory (learning from the past)
• understanding of the present situation
• docility (deferring to others' expertise)
• foresight (to judge how to achieve the goal being sought)
• circumspection (to take special circumstances into account)
• precaution (to take obstacles into account --especially the obstacle of one's own weaknesses or blind spots)

and the two elements most ignored:

• reasoning power --careful reflection when time permits
• sagacity --judging rightly when circumstances do not permit delay

I italicize the time element because given time enough, almost any right thinking person could come up with a good decision. What I wish people understood about Prudence is that it is the virtue that comes to play when a decision must be made and it isn't possible to know the one and only exact right action. After consideration, you have to act even in the face of unknowns and what Donald Rumsfeld calls "unknown unknowns."
Prudence involves making the best choice you can with the information you have --and hindsight doesn't invalidate the choice just because it doesn't lead to success. It also means that different decision-making entities and persons, given access to different information, might reasonably reach different conclusions. Time will tell which was correct, but that doesn't prove one was a moral choice and the other was immoral. Note, too, that barring the introduction of new information, the exercise of prudence entails staying the course. The prudent man sticks by his decision all things being equal; navel-gazing and second-guessing is not a virtue. Our time respects navel-gazing as intellectual and thinks the prudent man is a cowboy. (Why can't you admit your mistakes, Mr. President?)
To get back to Hollywood. Best line in the film: Northern Alliance Gen. Mamoud complaining to his CIA friend that he defeated the Soviets while bin Laden and his friends took pictures of themselves in front of tanks he destroyed and took the credit. In the old days, the CIA gave me whatever I needed. But that was Reagan. He understood.
And while I'm at it: ninme finds that Kevin Costner disapproves of the Bush assasination flick.