I don't know why others never picked up on this. If I recall, this was a statement made in the context of "making mistakes," and illustrates why I don't like Bush very much:
He can't recall mistakes, but if someone 50 years from now proves he made a mistake, then he'll own up to it. Oh wait, he'll be dead and still unaccountable. Slippery weasel.
Rich
But the judgment of history, if it's to be taken seriously, does care how many people died; that's part, though not all, of the evaluation. The reason that the 50-yr retrospective point of view is the wrong one for guiding actions, it seems to me, is that the real facts are inaccessible, and wishful thinking rushes into the vacuum. Hence we tell ourselves just-so stories about how freedom turns out to have been on the march, and so on.
Yes. Because why do we want to reorganize society? Oh yeah, right, because we want it to be better for people. Like, that's what we mean by society. Groups of people. Duh.
Also the "cooties" post is brilliant, and thanks for the link, but I feel that 2 comments/visit-day is really sufficient for me since I should be doing oh, some work or something.
Right Labs, I wrote carelessly. What I meant was that planning with a 50-year-perspective makes immediate deaths likely to seem trivial, not that history necessarily forgets them.
Rich: I didn't feel like making a partisan point this time around, but if I had, that would have been it. ;)
And B, don't fight it.