Wright And Wrong

Over at the Atlantic, Richard Wright discusses "The Greatness Of Ron Paul." Needless to say, it's not about Paul's attacks on huge social programs.

...Paul is making one contribution to the foreign policy debate that could have enduring value.

It doesn't lie in the substance of his foreign policy views (which I'm largely but not wholly in sympathy with) but in the way he explains them. Paul routinely performs a simple thought experiment: He tries to imagine how the world looks to people other than Americans.

[...] After observing that Israel and America and China have nukes, he asks about Iranians, "Why wouldn't it be natural that they'd want a weapon? Internationally they'd be given more respect."

Can somebody explain to me why this is such a crazy conjecture about Iranian motivation?

[...] A favorite Paul pedagogical device is to analogize foreign situations to American ones. A campaign ad promoted by a Paul-supporting super PAC begins by asking us to imagine Russian or Chinese troops in Texas. The point is that this is how our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan look to locals.

I've long thought that the biggest single problem in the world is the failure of "moral imagination"--the inability or unwillingness of people to see things from the perspective of people in circumstances different from their own. 

[...] Paul's hawkish detractors may succeed in using him to taint a non-interventionist foreign policy. Even so, if in the meanwhile Paul gets enough people exercising their moral imaginations, maybe doves will get the last laugh.

What a basic misunderstanding.  People already get this.  They know that others act not because they're simply evil, but because they believe they're justified.  Foreign policy strategists have this built in.  But it's just a starting point.  Alas, apparently to some people--Paul and Wright, I guess--this is such a revelation that they never move beyond it.

Constructively, others' motivations help in understanding the situation, but hardly point to the solution.  Yes, of course the KKK believed that rights for African-Americans were threatening them.  Of course Nazis blamed Jews for their problems.  So what?  It doesn't get you very far to shrug and say "anyone in their situation would think the same thing."

In fact, Wright and Paul have a surprisingly blinkered view of motivations.  Their empathy seems to be one-way--our opponents are to be understood but they don't cut the US the same slack.  Wright and Paul are willing to make (generally foolish and simplistic) points about Iran or Iraq's motivations, but they'd never say "of course America would attack Iraq--you can't blame us, and it's the fault of Iraq and other countries for putting the U.S. in the position it was in."

Instead, they use their arguments all too often for a convenient blame America first stance.  To further the illogic, they claim understanding others' motivations leads to being a dove. Now that shows a startling lack of moral imagination.