Mitt Romney's Underwear --- Plus Antiwar Groupthink

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Dear Stumped,
Bill Clinton was asked whether he wore boxers or briefs. Now I want to know if Mitt Romney always wears his secret Mormon underwear. Have you ever seen the tell-tale underwear line that all Mormons look for in other Mormons?
-- A curious non-Mormon

Dear Curious Non-Mormon,
I hope we never know the answer to your question. Whether Mormons opt to wear the traditional "temple garment" under their clothing, symbolizing their covenant with God, is a personal issue, and I don't think it ceases being a personal issue when you run for president. And no, I don't think the "boxers or briefs" question put to Bill Clinton when he ran for president deepened our understanding of him or his candidacy.

Of course, Mitt Romney was dealing with more profound questions yesterday in his speech on the role of religion in American life. Romney's burden is that many secular-minded Americans are suspicious that he may be too religious, and many religious-minded Americans, especially evangelicals, are suspicious of his religion.

So how did Romney do yesterday? Since you asked? I think he did exactly what he had to do -- no more and no less. Much like John F. Kennedy in 1960, he made clear that as president he wouldn't take orders from his church, whose authority "ends where the affairs of the nation begin." He also stood up for religion generally -- with a passing shot on the supposed war on Christmas -- in trying to make common cause with evangelicals, without quibbling over doctrinal differences.

It would be more satisfying (or merely entertaining?) to watch Romney forcefully take on his religion's critics, but there is little upside for Romney in becoming the national explainer/defender of Mormonism. He is wise to avoid getting into such questions as the true location of the Garden of Eden or, yes, whether he wears the "temple garments."

Dear Stumped,
Conventional wisdom is that Iraq was a debacle, fiasco, really bad, etc., etc. So, what would have happened if we hadn't invaded and deposed Saddam?
Cheers,
John Birkhold
P.S. Why do we feel the need to say, "etc., etc." vs. just "etc."?

Dear John,
Your p.s. is most illuminating. I think we say "etcetera" only once when we are saying something original, but we say "etcetera, etcetera" when we are saying something familiar, maybe even too familiar, to the listener or reader. "Etc., etc.," brings to mind a rolling of the eyes, the tiresome, garbled speech of adults in the "Peanuts" series, the "yadda, yadda" of the famous Seinfeld episode, etc. (Or should that be etc., etc.?)

So your use of the double "etcetera" is revealing, as it suggests that all right-minded people have digested the same cant of what Iraq is supposed to have become -- fiasco, quagmire and so on, to a point where it is no longer necessary to spell it out.

On to your first question. The short answer is, I don't know what would have happened if we had stayed out of Iraq. To examine just one plank of the conventional wisdom, Iran is usually cited as a clear winner in Iraq. But it's worth speculating: Would Tehran have stopped working on its nuclear weapons program, as we now know it has, if Saddam were still in power? Conversely, if it was the fall of Saddam that emboldened Iran to be a bigger regional player, do we owe recent hopeful developments, like the Annapolis conference, to a broadening concern over Iran's growing influence?

All I'm saying is that there are plenty of unintended consequences out there. I suspect it will take history a long time to sort them all out, and the picture will be a lot more mixed than the antiwar conventional wisdom suggests.

Look at the transatlantic alliance, for instance. The arrogance of the Bush administration in pursuing this war was supposed to have forever weakened transatlantic solidarity. Yet we now have leaders in both France and Germany who were elected in part to reverse policy and improve ties with Washington.

In terms of domestic politics, it is impossible to divine what might have happened without the Iraq war, in part because it is impossible to divine what would have instead soaked up this administration's energies. Because of where things now stand, I don't think the Iraq war will be the decisive issue in 2008. And in 2004, perhaps, it was too early for it to have been enough of an issue to dislodge Bush (unlike in 2006, when it dislodged the GOP's congressional majority). This leaves me with the unsatisfying conclusion that Iraq may not be the defining issue in any presidential election. That can't be right. Can it? (I'm happy to elucidate this point -- ask me about it!)

P.S. (Which, as we know, are often revealing.) Critics of the war are quick to mock the "groupthink" in Washington that got us involved in this conflict. But today's antiwar "groupthink" can be equally dangerous. Even former President Bill Clinton, who sounded very much like he supported the war at the time we invaded Iraq, is trying to retroactively embrace the antiwar script, preposterously saying he opposed the war all along.

Such a distorting caricature of the underlying issues could make it all the more difficult for a future president to engage in necessary, justifiable military engagements. Certainly, the liberal impulse to engage in humanitarian interventionism, the notion embraced by Tony Blair and Kofi Annan in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and genocide in Rwanda, must be counted among the most prominent victims of the Iraq war.

Don't get me wrong. An incompetent Bush administration (including Condoleezza Rice, who too often gets a pass in the apportioning of blame) is to blame for mishandling the war. But we shouldn't allow that to cloud the context in which the decision to go to war was made. There is a reason Hillary Clinton voted to allow George Bush to go to war. Staying out was not the no-brainer today's antiwar groupthink would have you believe.

By Andres Martinez | December 7, 2007; 12:00 AM ET
Previous: The Stumped Guide to the Candidates and the War |

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A couple of things about not invading Iraq:

(1) We'd have about $1 trillion (and counting) that we could do something else with.

(2) Close to 4,000 dead Americans and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis (and counting) would be alive.

Maybe you can shrug that off, but I can't.

Posted by: dougmuder | December 7, 2007 07:49 AM

Both previous comments express my disappointment with Andres Martinez response equating "right-minded" people with groupthinkers, when we are actually just well-informed by many sources. The following statement is especially weak:

"...arrogance of the Bush administration in pursuing this war was supposed to have forever weakened transatlantic solidarity. Yet we now have leaders in both France and Germany who were elected in part to reverse policy and improve ties with Washington."

Apparently "Stumped" is the one who is "stumped." European countries who now seek to improve relations only do so as the end of the Bush nightmare draws near. It is my simple hope that the administration doesn't exacerbate the situation further in the remaining 409 days. May polytheistic deities save us all.

Posted by: Barbara Sockey | December 7, 2007 06:05 AM

What a mess. No, I'm not talking about Iraq (even though it is a mess). I'm talking about your writings.

It wasn't "groupthink" that got us into the war. It was a series of manipulated intelligence, outright lies, and preying on the fears of Americans by neo-conservatives who wanted, in the worse way, to try out their ridiculous theories on solving the Middle East muddle and, along the way, try out good old robber baron capitalism on the people of Iraq.

We attacked a sovereign nation that didn't attack us, was no clear threat to us, and had all of the military power of a third world nation.

Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, and his sons were worse. Does that mean we have to attack every country that has a bad guy as ruler? There are a lot worse than Hussein.

What give anyone the right to make that judgment call unilaterally?

And, I wonder, as if there was a way to count, whether Hussein or Bush killed and displaced more Iraqis?

And don't even get me started on how the war was run. It just proved to me that an ideologue is incapable of the complex management required to run a war (or a country). Pragmatic thinking is needed. When an idea doesn't work, you change, you adapt, you compromise, you do things that an ideologue won't do. An ideologue, when things go wrong, will just dig in their heels and refuse to change, they are too invested in their theories, they are their theories, and will cling on to them long after they've been shown to be wrong. Look at how sure Don Rumsfeld is that he will be proved right in the end.

What would Iraq look like if we hadn't invaded? There is no way to know and it is pointless to speculate.

I do know that we wouldn't have had tens of thousands of dead and injured American soldiers. We would have billions more in our treasury and fewer debts. We would have kept the military industrial complex and anyone who had a connection inside the Republican party from pillaging our tax dollars.

The question to answer now not what we should have done in the past but what we should do in the future.

We kept fighting in Vietnam long after there was any chance of victory. Billions wasted and who knows how many dead and injured.

What will happen in Iraq if we leave? Will it be worse than if we stayed? I think not, because after getting the stick from us, they will be more than willing to get the carrots from us. No country is going to invade with us looking over Iraq (except Turkey, and that is a localized problem and manageable) and no government that arises from the ashes is going to go too mad with power, unless it is another colonel led coup backed by the CIA. Why? Because war sucks and civil war sucks greatly.

We were wrong to go in, incompetent in occupation, and have lost our moral clarity as a result. Torture? Great! Invade countries who aren't a threat? Superb! Rendition? Gulag Guantanamo?

We need to say "Sorry" and back off and start again with regional diplomacy, which will require patience, perseverance, and perspective.

This isn't "antiwar groupthink". It is just clear thinking.

Posted by: capemh | December 7, 2007 01:00 AM

Martinez answer on the Iraq question embodies the Beltway elite.
He never even thinks to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who are dead becuase of the war, the four million who have been made refugees, the uncounted who have been maimed or traumatized.

They don't count in Martinez cocktail party circuit where the good news is that the D.C. Villagers can expect invitations from the French and German embassy parties again. Whoopee.

Posted by: XYZ | December 7, 2007 12:13 AM

Mitt Romney's Underwear --- Plus Antiwar Groupthink

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