Ever hear of a Hobson’s choice?
[A] Hobson’s choice is an apparently free choice that is really no choice at all. The phrase is said to originate from Thomas Hobson (1544–1630), a livery stable owner at Cambridge, England who, in order to rotate the use of his horses, offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door—or taking none at all.
Or, in modern terms, it’s like going to rental car agency and being forced to take whichever car they offer you, regardless of its suitability for your needs. But don’t try to explain a Hobson’s choice to George Will. He doesn’t know what it means. Mr. Will thinks the Democrats have two choices, not one. [note to logically impaired: one choice is no choice at all].
[Democrats] lack the will to exercise their clearly constitutional power to defund the war. And they lack the power to achieve that end by usurping the commander in chief’s powers to conduct a war.
They can spend this year fecklessly and cynically enacting restrictions that do not restrict. Or they can legislate decisive failure of the Iraq operation — withdrawal — thereby acquiring conspicuous complicity in a defeat that might be inevitable anyway. A Hobson’s choice? No, Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s.
Mr. Will was probably going for what is known as a Catch-22 situation. A Catch-22 situation is one in which two things are required but neither can be obtained until the other is done first. For example, you may not be able to find a job until you have some work experience, and you cannot get work experience without a job.
This doesn’t quite fit Will’s argument either, but the meaning of Catch-22 has been stretched to mean pretty much any no-win situation. So, for the purposes of Mr. Will’s argument, we can say that the Democrats have a choice between:
1) cutting off funds for the war and getting blamed for defeat when that defeat should be squarely laid at the feet of their political opponents, or
2) using the appropriations process to try to restrict the President’s ability to wage war in Iraq and having the President use a signing statement to ignore those parts of the bill. Then having the Supreme Court refuse to settle the issue. And, finally, being ineffectual.
According to Mr. Will, both options are available, but neither is very appetizing. Yet, the Democrats are under tremendous pressure to do something. Thus, the Democrats are in a damned if they do this, damned if they do that, and damned if they do nothing situation.
That isn’t strictly a Catch-22 or a Hobson’s choice, but logic isn’t Mr. Will’s strong suit. He’s also got something else wrong.
Option One (cutting off funding for the war) is not a matter of will power. It’s a matter of votes. The Democrats need more Republicans to join them if they want to end all funding for the war. So, since we can eliminate option one as an alternative, if we are going to use Mr. Will’s paradigm we will have to admit that Option Two (Murtha’s Plan) is the only one we have. And left with only one choice, we are indeed facing a choice of the Hobson’s variety. Mr. Will was right after all.
I still like Kurt Vonnegut’s description of Will: an “owlish twit.”
To bad Heller didn’t say it…
It would be so apropos.
A thing is good and correct intrinsically. Removing our troops from Iraq is correct no matter what the consequences politically.
The lives of our soldiers must be worth more than anything which they may achieve there under the current or future circumstances.
This is no challenge to Booman’s post; we must not allow ourselves to sink to mere political rhetoric while our friends, husbands, wives, sisters, and brothers are killed. It’s time to leave because we can do no more to help the Iraqi’s until they choose to help themselves. Neither can we (nor should we) impose our western civilization and culture upon Iraq or the region in general.
Well said.
Thanks,
Party politics is NOT the solution, it’s the PROBLEM…
The ultimate choice for the Democrats is whether they have the political balls to enact and legislate the will of the majority of the country when the country’s wishes are in direct conflict to the interests of those who profit, both financially and politically, from the perpetual state of war which the current administration desires.
The country wants us out of this disaster. They want us out now. They don’t really care about the fine details on the logistics of withdrawal. And they don’t really care if it is done through defunding. They just think we should be out as soon as a way can be devised to leave with a minimum of additional danger to our troops. They know there is a possibility that a lot of things will likely go wrong in Iraq when we leave. And they are looking for some leadership on how we would deal with that. So far, there isn’t a whole lot of it forthcoming. But there are ideas out there. None are from the administration. They are really still in the “stay the course” mode of operation, though they have put a new coat of paint on it and call it a “change in strategy and tactics”. And it has been called a “surge”.
I believe we have lost in Iraq. And by lost, I mean I don’t think we can now do anything to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. We can do some things which will result in short term positive developments in some areas but in the macro view, there is now no way to unring the bell in Iraq. It is beyond our capacity for a solution when the only tool we seem to want to use are the lives of 150-175,000 soldiers.
There is nothing the Democrats can do at this point to improve the results in Iraq. There are no band-aids in the Democratic first aid kit for this. But they certainly can, through lack of decisive action, make it much worse.
It is up to them. Do they have the balls to fight for the wishes of the American people? Or do they want to be complicit in this administration’s disaster of choice?
Harry and Nancy, the choice is yours.
Sorry for posting this twice in different threads, but it applies here. If D’s had the nackers to talk like this, unified, and in every speech, it’d go a long way to shifting public perception. Here’s a R (well, really an L) turning giving the finger to his own party because the war is wrong. Period.
Let’s go D’s. Get off your mealy mouthed “don’t want to go too far out on a limb” buttocks.