How Likely Is Change?

Read the Iraq Study Group report, here.

The report gives a blunt characterization of the dire circumstances in Iraq, calling the situation "grave and deteriorating".

Whoah. That should give us pause. How do you go down from grave?

Lots of speculation now, ALL OVER THE PLACE about whether Bush has it in him to change direction (in some real, not rhetorical way) with the war policy. People are bringing up the President's major life turnaround, at age 40, when he quit drinking. That was an About-Face. Might another one be in the cards?

Michael Duffy reflects on this (he's not the only one) in his piece in this week's edition of Time Magazine.

The ability or inability of people to change is central to any definition of what it means to be human. Different perspectives come at the issue in various ways. Bush tends to presume in his "you can't reason with terrorists because they're just evil" paradigm, that people simply are the way they are. Good guys are good, bad guys are bad (he's also gracious enough to assure us that the good guys are us.).

Have we any real reason to think the course will change under his leadership?

Then again, as much as I like to caricature Bush's presentation, I know that most of us operate day-to-day under the same sorts of notions. We don't treat people as if they might change. It's way harder to write people off, to claim our own superiority, etc. if we do that.

What would it look like to approach life and all people as if we're truly in the process of transformation, as if we are not bound to that which we have heretofore been known to be?