Even in the administration of justice where there is more
brainpower outside the field of the sciences than anywhere else, you find that
every issue is litigated with equal fervor on both sides. And this is because
in the law, there is something called the doctrine, and something called the
jurisprudence.
The doctrine comprises the philosophical principles through
which an issue is viewed. Consider for example the issue of capital punishment.
Someone may write a book to say that the practice is a good thing to have in a
society, whereas someone else may write a book to say it is a bad thing to
have. Well, both books become part of the doctrine on capital punishment.
As to the jurisprudence that is related to an issue, it
comprises all previous cases which are similar or close to it. And the reason
why the defense lawyers and prosecutors invoke such cases in a trial is because
they know that the judge will want to adjudicate with fairness. This means that
someone who committed an infraction today should be judged and sentenced the
same as someone who committed a similar infraction or something close to it in
previous years.
Still, with all these provisions to guide the litigating
lawyers and the presiding judges as to how they should think about a case and
how they should proceed, you find that opposing jurists, even judges presiding
over the same case, will tend to see things from different angles. They will
argue the case from opposite points of view, and they will adjudicate it
differently.
This being true in a court of law, you have an identical
setup in the court of public opinion. There too, you have what amounts to a
doctrine and what amounts to a jurisprudence on almost every subject. And we
have a published case that illustrates these points perfectly. It was written
by Philip Terzian under the title: “When the U.S. Abdicates, Disaster Usually
Follows” and the subtitle: “John McCain was mocked in 2008 when he said U.S. troops might stay for years in Iraq . He looks
better now.” It was published on August 22, 2014 in the Wall Street Journal.
Terzian began the article by giving his argument a human
face. It is that of John McCain who was mocked more than 6 years ago for
suggesting that American troops may have to be stationed in Iraq for as long as
a hundred years, says Terzian. And he points out that current events in the Middle East are proving that in retrospect, John McCain
was correct. To explain all that, Terzian plays the role of lawyer and presents
his case using both a doctrine of his choosing and several old precedents.
The doctrine he chose to discuss “was that the American
people were war-weary.” And he counters that argument by saying: “The truth is
that at any given time the American people were weary (or wary) of war.” He
says they were in 1864, in 1942 and in 1949 when situations similar to today's
presented themselves. Still, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected long ago, America entered the Second World War more
recently, and “American troops were dispatched to Europe ,
where they remain 65 years later.”
And so he draws the conclusion that: “The duty of political
leaders in perilous times is to lead, not follow, public opinion.” To do
otherwise, he goes on to say, would be “dereliction of historic duty.” What
Terzian does not do is say that under Lyndon Johnson, “the leaders” of America fabricated the Gulf
of Tonkin incident, and got America
involved knee deep in the Vietnam War where it suffered a humiliating defeat.
Later, the same sort of leaders fabricated evidence to the effect that there
were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ,
and got America involved
knee deep in the Iraq War, a misadventure that spawned the current situation
for which Terzian wants to see America
get involved yet again.
As to the jurisprudence, Terzian says that “the departure of
federal troops from the Reconstruction South paved the way for Jim Crow,” and
that the American exit from Europe after 1918
led to World War II. He goes on to say that “It might even be argued that
American troops in Haiti , Nicaragua and interwar China did more
good than harm.” He then admits “It is impossible to predict Iraq 's future and … Syria 's.” To end his presentation,
he asks the question: “Which is more wearisome: The resolve to sustain our
burden of leadership, or the prospect of a world in chaos and uncertainty?”
The trouble with this kind of argument is that it duplicates
what fiction writers do when they ask the question: What if history had turned
out differently? Opposed to that, there is what historians do which is to tell
how history did turn out. Thus, the uncertainty resides in what the fiction
writers say; whereas the certainty resides in what the historians say.
The fact remains that nobody can tell what would have
happened had American troops remained in Europe after 1918, or withdrawn from Haiti , Nicaragua
and interwar China .
Opposed to that, the historians do tell what happened in Vietnam and in Iraq 2.
Terzian asked a question to which the answer is that it is
less wearisome to go with the certainty of the historian than go with the
speculation of the fiction writer.