A Very Human Foolishness

Ralph Luker begins a column today at Cliopatria with this truly intelligent and, sadly, apropos quote:

Anyone who thinks they can predict the consequences of a political assassination is a damn fool.

-- Eric Rauchway

So true, so true. Yet there is nothing more human than to try to master events by understanding them.

Traders in international markets scurry for cover; presidential spokesmen give answers to questions that they cannot easily answer. No one can. Presidential candidates try to show that they can give better answers. (They can’t, though they might be better leaders when clear answers are hard to come by.)

This is not uniquely political, or uniquely selfish. Traders are supposed to protect their clients with their knowledge. Politicians are supposed to do the same for their constituents. Their constituents and clients “hire” them to protect against an uncertain future with leadership and knowledge. Often the clients (and that includes me) demand too much, and out of pride and the desire to keep or gain a job, often the experts and leaders pretend they know more than they can. It is a foolish but very human dance.

I feel the desire to take part myself. I would like to add some understanding to the event, something to tell my students or tell those who read this posting, but I know far too little to make even a bad guess. Perhaps Christopher Hitchen’s lament or Nicholas Schmidle’s comment on Musharraf’s dilemma are close to the truth. Both do echo the early conventional wisdom that Musharraf had nothing to gain from her death, particularly in a locationso drenched in politics and violence. But I truly do not know.

So, simply as an American, I look abroad at those events, I ponder our nation’s long and entangled relationship with Pakistan, and for one of the rare times in this past 7 years, I have a bit of sympathy for President Bush. His job is to know what to do. American’s demand it, regardless of the circumstances. But even he may know that, in this case, certainty is something only “a damn fool” would feel.