No Comment (Harper's Magazine)

No Comment (Harper's Magazine): "In reaching to war in Iraq, Bush and Rove, the co-presidents, betrayed one of the most fundamental rules of Anglo-American conservatism. Edmund Burke wrote that a leader must never sacrifice a present benefit for a doubtful advantage in the future. “It is not wise to look too far ahead; our powers of prediction are slight, our command over results infinitesimal. It is therefore the happiness of our own contemporaries that is our main concern; we should be very weary of sacrificing large numbers of people for the sake of a contingent end, however advantageous that may appear. We can never know enough to make the chance worth taking.” Or as he put it elsewhere, “There is this further consideration that is often in need of emphasis: it is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition.”"