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I don't think the parent is levying any judgment about whether they were right or wrong. I think they are pointing out that any reasonable person working in a s
by morley 12y ago
I don't think the parent is levying any judgment about whether they were right or wrong. I think they are pointing out that any reasonable person working in a spy agency at the time would be doing the same thing. Or, to put it differently: regardless of your ideology in the present, if you instead happened to work for a US spy agency during the Cold War, you might have made the same decisions, because
> The pragmatism of the present rarely considers the lofty disapproval of the future
I don't know the parent's true intentions, but I read this less as approval of their actions and more as a mournful observation about how few choices any of us really have.
- voidlogic 12y agoYou understood my intent perfectly. Thank you.
- thesteamboat 12y agoI think I'm interpreting the parent's intentions the same as you -- but I was hoping that quote would stand alone to challenge efficacy of those choices (rather than their morality). The rest of this comment is just my speculation/justification for why moral considerations might make for more effective policies than "pragmatic" ones. I think that (there's a reasonable chance) the security agencies did themselves (by which I mean American society) more harm by acquiring flawed assets than the cost of waiting to develop appropriate assets on their own. It's the same general problem as security theater -- a system that focuses on "doing something", rather than making a principled understanding of the costs/benefits and trying to optimize some security tradeoff. One reason principles are great is because they (are supposed to) act as commitment devices that keep you from doing some tempting, short-term thing, and keep your actions in line with your longer term goals.