I don't know when this started, but it needs to stop. Bush says that history will be the judge of his war, not us. Recently Hillary Clinton started saying it on the campaign trail, both about the Iraq war and on her campaign in general. And now yesterday Gen. Petraeus fell back on it, too.
I understand the point people are trying to make: in the long lens of history, we often get a very different view of past decisions and actions. And that's true as far as it goes, but for those of us forced to live in the present and experience things in real time, it doesn't go very far at all.
As human beings, we cannot know the future. In making political decisions we therefore have nothing to go on but our present and our past. We make guess about the future, but that is all that they are: guesses. As a result, as we make electoral decisions we have no choice but to look backwards and examine the past decisions made by our representatives, using them as a guide for our unknowable future. In that context, the "history will be the judge" line is a dodge. What it is really saying is, "look, I know things look like a mess right now, but trust me, in the future things might look better." I mean, does anyone really doubt that if things looked good now that people would fall back on this lame response? Of course not! If things looked good, people would line up to take credit for it. To suggest that we ought to withhold judgement only makes sense if judgments made today are certain to be negative.
We live in a democracy, not a military dictatorship. The people paying for this war - us - have both a right and a duty to consider and evaluate it today. That might be inconvenient for the people supporting the war, but that only makes our duty as citizens more urgent, not less. I'm not waiting for history to judge this war, because to do so would be to shirk my responsibility as a citizen of this nation. So please, stop asking me to withhold judgement. It's "We, the people," remember?
UPDATE: Want a more humorous take on this? Go read Giblets.
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