No Niebuhrians Here . . .

Tom accuses the Bush administration of lacking a Niebuhrian balance between confidence and self-criticism; we need not look very far for evidence to bolster that characterization -- I'd suggest just about any public statement by Vice President Cheney on Iraq or the war on terror (which have now been awkwardly morphed into a single subject by the administration).  A couple of days ago, for example, he stated that the lack of WMD would not have affected the decision to invade Iraq:  "If we had to do [it] over again, we would do exactly the same thing."  A similarly jarring lack of self-criticism was reflected in President Bush's infamous inability to cite a single mistake he made post-9/11.

Rob

UPDATE: Randy Heinig forwards this link to an insightful exchange between Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother Richard regarding just war.  Randy also wonders "about the political viability of the public expression of humility on the part of political leaders."  Would humility be "a trait that the media (and culture) would understand? Would it be analyzed solely as weakness?  Not that these points excuse some of the rhetoric, but I wonder if, even if offered, it would be something that the media could report in a comprehensible manner."