in·tel·le·scru·pu·lous·less·ness, noun.

by Jer

(Originally posted on The Drain on 4/2/06 in response to an editorial written by Robert Gordon Kaufman, I thought it only fitting to repost 'Intellescrupulouslessness' in advance of his upcoming book, In Defense of the Bush Doctrine.)

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H. L. Mencken

I decided I would make up a word for this week's installment of The Drain.

Intellescrupulouslessness. Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

And somebody call Webster. If the word "muggle" from the Henry Potter series can get in the dictionary, then intellescrupulouslessness has gotta be a lock.

The definition of intellescrupulouslessness is pretty straightforward. It refers to the quality of being so smart that it leaves little room for a functioning conscience. It is logic run amuck and scruples run into the ground. I was inspired to come-up with this word after reading a pro-war editorial by Dr. Robert Kaufman in the Pepperdine Graphic, entitled U.S. should push the Bush Doctrine.

Dr. Kaufman is a professor at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy in Malibu, California. He has his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law School and his BA, MA, M.Phil, and Ph.D. from Columbia University (I didn't know there were that many letters in the alphabet). On top of all that he's been published in various scholarly journals and he has a book coming out called "Moral Democratic Realism and the Bush Doctrine." In short, the man is brilliant. Having worked at Pepperdine for a couple of years, I can attest to the fact that they have lots of folks like that walking around on campus. The fact that I'm willing to challenge the thought process of a man of his intellectual ilk just goes to show how stupid I am.

In his editorial, Dr. Kaufman bases support of Bush's "grand strategy" in Iraq on three premises:

1. Depending on the threat, history has shown that it is better to use preemptive force against an aggressor.
2. Nobody, especially the UN, is up to the task of dealing with a threat, such as Iraq, as well as the United States.
3. Bush's goal to spread democracy is supported by history and serves as an essential tactic in the war on terror.

Towards the end, Dr. Kaufman also briefly mentions that it is unfortunate that "the bloodshed in Iraq will continue to prevail."

Not that he needs my affirmation, but I think he is absolutely correct in his assessment of the Bush administration's justification for going to war. But as we know, being correct and being right aren't always the same thing. In fact, one could argue that Dr. Kaufman is demonstrating a high level of intellescrupulouslessness (cheap plug, I know).

I was a sophomore in college when the first Bush waged the first war against Iraq. And while I wasn't entirely certain that the war was justified, I was at least entertained by it each and every evening; it was reality TV at its most realistic. During the day we read about it in the paper and at night we watched it in our living rooms. It made short-term household names out of reporters like CNN's Bernard Shaw and NBC's Arthur Kent, a.k.a. The Scud Stud.

It made a long-term household name out of The Hummer.

But what I remember most was the level of wide-spread patriotism; in my lifetime, I've never seen the country so unified under one banner. Every house was adorned with an American flag. Red, white and blue bumper stickers were affixed, it seemed, to every other car on the road. Yellow ribbons were tied to more than old oaks trees. It was enough to bring goose bumps to the most curmudgeonly among us.

It was also the first time - for my generation and younger - that the country was at war and we were around to experience it; a select few of us experienced it from the battlefield. 'I know somebody in Dessert Storm' was a pithy a way to start a conversation that year.

But It was such a quick-&-dirty war, it hardly gave us time to question the morality of it all. Whereas the second war against Iraq is now over three years old, the first was done and won in about a month. Iraqi losses, for the most part, were limited to the Republican Guard, keeping civilian losses at a minimum.

But now we are fighting in a different war and we have had lots of time to think about it. Opposition to the war has been a slow turning for some. For others it was immediate. For me, it took two weeks after the attacks started to decide that it was a morally wrong. On April 2, 2003 - three years to the day that I type this - I read these words:

Fifteen members of one family were killed late Monday when their pickup truck was blown up by a rocket from a US Apache helicopter in the region of Haidariya near Hilla, the sole survivor of the attack said. Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji, sitting among 15 coffins in the local hospital, said he lost his wife, six children, his father, his mother, his three brothers and their wives.

Call me soft. Call me short-sighted and unable to see the big picture. Call me a bleeding heart. Hell, you can even call me liberal (you'd be wrong, but you can call me that). The moment I read that story and started to imagine what it must have felt like to be Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji, I determined whatever is gained by this war will never be enough to justify putting that man through such agony. And we all know he's one of thousands caught in the wake of "unfortunate bloodshed" as collateral damage.

So, to Dr. Kaufman and all the other intellescrupulousless folks who continue to support Bush's "grand strategy", please tell me what is so grand about about tearing apart the lives of people half-way around the globe and when you do, please don't footnote or one-line their pain and loss. No matter how many letters come after your name, it just makes you sound stupid.