Haters need to admit the truth

Dallas Morning News | Mark Davis:

“What we believe we see is driven heavily by what we want to see. ... this explains how people can believe that a candidate with no chance of success is a sure thing; it explains how believers in a doomed business insist that a change of fate is just around the corner; and it explains a big chunk of the war debate now that the surge may be starting to work.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I read the headline and wondered who the haters are that Mark Davis was talking about. I was pretty sure it wouldn't be anyone conservative. I was right. It's the left that Mark Davis identifies as haters. Bush haters. War haters. No surprise there.

Mr Davis leads with a long explanation of how sports fans' perception of close calls in games are colored by their loyalties. Of course, they always think the proper call is the one that benefits their own teams. I wondered who in the war debate Mark Davis would accuse of that tendency. Sure enough, not himself, but those opposed to the war. He admits that he is a war supporter. He says his faith in the war was unshaken despite four years of debacle. He says he "recognize[d] that this war that I believe in with my whole heart might just fail." Now, he's ready to say his hint of doubt was wrong. The war is actually going splendidly, or at least "there is a basis for objective optimism." And those who don't join Mark Davis on the Bush war bandwagon "actively want us to lose."

Sorry, Mr Davis, but you are the one blindly seeing the close calls the way your heart wants them to be. Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack's New York Times op-ed piece "A War We Just Might Win" is one such close call. Your grasping at it to support your faith in this war and this President is just another example of what those psychiatrists told you to beware of. You're seeing with your heart, not your eyes.