If someone finds ways to exclude any source of possibly disconfirming evidence from the realm of credible authorities, they are probably a crank.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
So that would be Al Gore?
Henceforth this shall be known as "Megan's Law."
Or "McArdle's Law" but that doesn't seem as euphonious somehow.
Shucks. I also had a thought for today, and perhaps it went along similar lines: that the more people know about global warming, the more apathetic they become.
Benny Peiser at the German blog "Axis of Goodness" (Achse des Guten) planted the thought into my head.
Maybe it really is better to proclaim the debate over and the science settled -- to muzzle the opposition -- in order to have the desired effect.
I didn't mean Gore was the ONLY one.
How about some prominent vegan?
Charlie, the term Megan's Law is already taken. GIYF
Not sure what this is in reference to (vaccines) but Philosophy of Science suggests that it is attempts to disprove theories that drive scientific progress. You can accumulate all of the confirming evidence that you want but it is where your theory fails that is informative.
So rejecting evidence that seem to disprove particular theories does rather remove one from the realm of scientific debate.
On the other hand, you can still argue that a theory is the best of the existing options while acknowledging it has limitations.
"If someone finds ways to exclude any source of possibly disconfirming evidence from the realm of credible authorities, they are probably a crank
Uh-oh. By declaring any such person a probable crank, you've found a way to exclude any source of possibly disconfirming evidence for the statement itself from the realm of credible authorities, hence . . .
[brain overheats, boils over]
You don't reject evidence that disproves theories in science. You either modify the theory or figure out why the evidence is leading to a conclusion you think is incorrect. Flat out rejecting it is not science.
Seeing (from "credible" sources) is believing.
But sometimes, in order to see, you have to believe first.
Ask Galileo.
Dan S.
Relax, breathe slowly, add a pinch of salt.
(Hey, it works for pasta)
If someone finds ways to exclude any source of possibly disconfirming evidence from the realm of credible authorities, they are probably a crank.
Or a well paid lawyer? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense
You mean like how you dismiss everyone who was right about the Iraq War as rewriting their memories, even if they can point to archives of what they were saying at the time?
Your position that everyone simply invents after the fact the reasons they were right on the Iraq War requires the non-existence of YouTube, tape recorders, the internet and pen and paper.
Here is one of those brainless "loony left" anti-war guys from 2003:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j012003.html
"As many as 1 in 3 senior officers questions the wisdom of a pre-emptive war with Iraq. The reasons aren't surprising: the U.S. military is already stretched across the globe, the war against Osama bin Laden is unfinished, and even if the march to Baghdad goes quickly, a long postwar occupation looks inevitable."
Is it still hindsight and rewriting memory if it was actually written in January of 2003?
"Relax, breathe slowly, add a pinch of salt.
Oh, that's much better. Mmm . . . pasta. (I have a pretty good recipe for whole-wheat spaghetti w/ leeks, fennel, and olives, if anyone's interested . . .)
----
Margalis, Margalis, don't jump on her when she's trying to mea-culpate! After all, pointing out that everyone who found a way to exclude any source of possibly disconfirming evidence (that rushing to war with Iraq was a great idea!) from the realm of credible authorities (by insisting that they're all ANSWER-worshipping dirty smelly pacifist hippies - to say nothing of never quite re-evaluating that opinion year after bloody year) is a crank - that takes guts.
Of course, actually dying because of the monumental idiocy of the last few years tends to involve even more guts, often outside the chest cavity - a place where they might well have happily dwelled inside for years otherwise - but it's no doubt impolite to point that out.
And to be fair, she did admit that there were some people somewhere who "who were right about the war for the right reasons," and even affirms that "we should examine what their thought process was/" I look forward with eager anticipation to her posts on this subject.
Let's begin holding our breath right now.
I'm tellin' ya Megan, that spot's not gonna come out.
Charlie, the term Megan's Law is already taken.
Dammit, I thought it sounded familiar. Okay, McArdle's Law it is.
Margalis, the problem with people who were "right" about the war is that when you examine them carefully, you find they're "right" about the war because they've defined what "did" happen as what they predicted to happen.
See, eg, the predictions of "disaster", which were tens or thousands of fatalities in the first weeks and military defeat if we didn't supply 300,000 to 400,000 troops --- and are now "disaster" with 4000 fatalities in the first five years and complete military victory, followed by occupation, with a maxiumum of about 150,000 troops.
""You mean like how you dismiss everyone who was right about the Iraq War as rewriting their memories, even if they can point to archives of what they were saying at the time?"
Or like how someone continually erects straw men to misrepresent someone's argument in order to continue bleating about it through every thread? And how those someones glom on to someone who did, even in a vague manner, elucidate the future problems they either perceived or were told of by others, as evidence that the someones have any real grounds upon which to be riding around on high horses and browbeating everyone they've got a beef with? Or how those someones have the luxury of cherry-picking which "people who were right" were actually right in order to maintain their self-righteous self-righteousness?
"The problem with people who were "right" about the war is that when you examine them carefully, you find they're "right" about the war because they've defined what "did" happen as what they predicted to happen."
And you've done this to any great degree?
"See, eg, the predictions of "disaster","
A link, perhaps? It shouldn't be hard, because there were people making this general argument. Many anti-Iraq War folks didn't, of course, and many who did, despite showing questionable military judgement here, have a rather better common-sense record of other issues in the run-up to war. In other words, they didn't get that right (though if Saddam did have WMDs and the national support to try a Stalingrad - well, given some of the pro-war folks' own claims, it wasn't insanely unreasonable), but still did better than certain people.
My personal position: I knew that I didn't know much, on any sophisticated level, about the Middle East, international politics, military strategy, and so on, and that my judgement wasn't particularly good. Nor, while very much not a fan of Mr. 28%, was I an utterly deranged Bush hater. Indeed, there was a time, when the inspectors had been let back to Iraq and were roaming around, where I seriously wondered if I had misjudged everything, if Bush, despite my disagreements with so many of his politics, wasn't the right man for the time, a cowboy who through a risky but ultimately successful game of chicken had helped neutralize and hinder one potential, future threat. (As I said, my judgement isn't particularly good).
All I had was some knowledge of history and a low-grade, somewhat buggy bs detector - and honestly, that was all one needed. We were obviously getting played - intentionally or not - there were no supportable grounds for an immediate invasion, and even if war did eventually prove necessary (which I really doubted, but couldn't be absolutely certain) - it was clear that the kind of deeply misleading, overheated, jingoistic, group-thinkin' carrot and stick (mushroom cloud!!/throwing flowers!!) approach was virtually guaranteed to lead to disaster, unless we were lucky far beyond any right to expect. The details, I couldn't pretend to be sure about. I was worried about higher immediate military casualties, but I was worried about a lot of things, and by no means based my argument on it. Unfortunately, my general and hazy broad guess - no WMDs worth invading for, followed by a long, grinding misstep-laden occupation in a foreign land resulting in basically inevitable atrocity/ies which would destroy any remaining American moral authority and help recruit flocks of baby terrorists, while making Iraqi life rather shitty - was depressingly accurate, if lacking in very many important particulars. Other folks foresaw the civil war aspect. No one listened to them.
Honestly, for folks who were in a place to see it - and I think that's an important bit getting a little glossed over: the importance of initial conditions and tendencies, path dependence, networks of influence, trust, and information, psychological reactions, etc. - it was kinda obviously a scam. I wish someone would do a Run-up to War Retrospective, recapturing the late 2002-early '03 media environment. With the exception of the bitter-enders still lurking here, I think folks - reformed war supporters, and even anti-Iraq War opponents to a degree (given the shifting of memory) - would be really taken back. It was like a significant chunk of the country (and it seemed far more significant than it really was, thanks to all the big microphones, and the silencing effect of all the traitor, traitor, America-hater!! crap) had gone somewhat insane. Imagine if the President of the U.S. suddenly went on teevee and said that he had the answer to our short- and long-term financial woes - you see, he had just gotten a really exciting offer in his email from a fellow from Nigeria . . . and everyone from pundits to postmen were nodding along very seriously. It was a little like that. Emperor's New Clothes? Nah. The clothes weren't invisible, they were very visible, cause they were a layer of bullshit thick enough to be laid on with a trowel.
Anyway, Megan's admitted that some of us were right for the right reasons, and that we all need to examine the underlying thought processes there. I know I didn't give a very good account above, but you might want to try another gentleman here:
"Anyway, the secret to every analysis I've ever done of contemporary politics has been, more or less, my expensive business school education (I would write a book entitled "Everything I Know I Learned At A Very Expensive University", but I doubt it would sell). About half of what they say about business schools and their graduates is probably true, and they do often feel like the most collossal waste of time and money, but they occasionally teach you the odd thing which is very useful indeed. Here's a few of the ones I learned which I considered relevant to judging the advisability of the Second Iraq War. . . "
Now, I shouldn't say that 'none of this was hard,' because that's misleading; obviously for lots of reasons it was hard for lots of people - fear, trust, etc. - but it often was pretty basic. You didn't even need an MBA. In fact . . . well, never mind. Honestly, one could have just gone by folk tales and fables and still made a logical, reasonable, and accurate case.
MM: " And how those someones glom on to someone who did, even in a vague manner, elucidate the future problems they either perceived or were told of by others, as evidence that the someones have any real grounds upon which to be riding around on high horses and browbeating everyone they've got a beef with? Or how those someones have the luxury of cherry-picking which "people who were right" were actually right in order to maintain their self-righteous self-righteousness?"
OK, perhaps we all need to take a deep breath and think a little. Forget all this stuff about picking cherries from high horses and beating people's brows with beef, or whatever (although 'self righteous self-righteousness' is pretty good). I'm not saying all of us who got it right are perfect flawlessly correct and proper angels, but the real issues here are the ongoing attempt to marginalize all 'non-Serious' (that is, anti-Iraq War) views and voices, and to minimize any occupational or influence-based consequences for those who got it very, very wrong - to insist that ok, we might have gotten it wrong, sure, but for all the right reasons, and we're Very Serious and Very Important and you should listen to us, but they, they're just a pack of stinky hippie peaceniks, and so yeah, maybe they got lucky somehow, but it doesn't count, they're so stupid, it was for all the wrong reasons and you shouldn't listen to them, you shold listen to me me MEME MEEEEEEE!
Now it is a little striking that the nation would almost certainly a lot better off had it, in the late winter/early spring of 2003, listened to, say, some random dredlocked college kid with a big puppet and a Free Mumia! t-shirt than the Pres. of the US and most of Congress and the punditocracy and etc. But we're not saying that you need to slavishly obey anyone with a Free Mumia t-shirt (to be honest, that's not always the best idea). If you remember, the thing that really reopened the whole right/wrong failure/success series here (besides the anniversary itself) was a remark Megan quoted from Tim Noah. And no, it wasn't a demand that everyone was got it wrong on Iraq should utterly abase themselves and grovel before him, or march through the streets flagellating themselves while moaning 'I was wrong! [smack!], I was wrong [smack!], I was . . .(etc.), or even hand all power over to an unholy triumvirate composed of George Soros, Markos Moulitsas, and Paul Krugman.
Nope. It was that on the fifth anniversary of that disastrous decision, major media outlets had decided to devote their little features and series to a parade of folks explaining how they had gotten it wrong (not in itself bad, however execrable some of them were), and once again not a single voice who had gotten it right. This isn't about enthroning some kid in a Free Mumia shirt, this is about getting some actual balance, and finally getting to (I should really say having to) listen to some of the entirely reasonable and respectable voices who starting all those years ago tried so hard to tell you - for reasons at very worst no worse that the pro-wars' best, and often very better - why we were making such a horrible mistake.
Nobody has to grovel (although . . .), nobody has to march through the street flagellating themselves (so unhygienic!), nobody has to hand over all power and control over to the dirty hippies. That's not what this is about. It's about admitting that yes, you actually were wrong, and not particularly heroically so, and those horrible, horrible icky people that you (may have) got so invested in hating and opposing, well, some of them might have had something useful to contribute, and that now you're gonna be quiet for just a little bit, so you can sit and actually listen to the reasons (not pathetic caricatures of the very weakest arguments) they had, the ideas the have, in order to decide if you can learn something from them. And maybe in the end you'll decide you can't, but if it could at all help to either fix this mess or avoid getting into another one with unseemly speed - well, you kinda owe some people that.
No. Not us. The ones who can't speak for themselves anymore. The ones who will always be silent now. You owe it to them.
Sure, Megan, I'd agree that it is unreasonable to ignore everybody who happens to disagree with me on something.
However, what if a particle source is consistently wrong on a particular topic? Is it reasonable to ignore that source and look elsewhere for ideas and evidence?
The standard response to that is always "No, be fair! You're engaging in ad hominem! Just because you think somebody has been wrong before doesn't mean that person is always wrong." And my response is that it's certainly possible that somebody who has been wrong will get something right in the future. I'm not going to assume the opposite of what a consistently wrong person says. However, because time and attention are finite resources I will not pay much attention to somebody who is consistently wrong on a particular topic (or at least I won't pay attention to that person's future statements on that topic). I won't assume the opposite of what that person says, because such an assumption would be just as mistaken. I will, however, look elsewhere.
If, for instance, a blinking VCR clock says "12:00" I won't assume it's not noon. It might be noon, for all I know. However, I will check some other clock to find out.
A link, perhaps? It shouldn't be hard, because there were people making this general argument.
Well, then, you shouldn't need a link, should you? Should I link the meaning of the word "argument" perhaps?
As to the rest, well, you make your case for not having a clear understanding of a lot of these things quite well; you conveniently provide an example of what I was saying, too, in an after-the-fact definition of what would have been "justification" and "success" that depends strongly on things that weren't known before the fact. But consider, eg,
"there were no supportable grounds for an immediate invasion,..."
which is in itself a definitional argument. I know people who would claim that there were no supportable reasons for fighting WWII --- Gandhiji was notable. On the other hand, what invading Iraq did do was eliminate an actively hostile government with proven bad intentions to its neighbors and the USA, eliminate a source of logistics and support that was without question being used by forces hostile to the USA (remember abu Nidal?) break up lines of communication that used to run from Pakistan to Morocco, eliminate a sanctions regime that was widely reported to be killing hundreds of thousands every year, and eliminated a government that had massacred tens or hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, replacing it with a government that was elected by popular vote and is more democratic than any other Arab government. (Perfect? No, but then neither are France and Italy.) Beyond that, of course, were all the things called out in the Iraq Liberation Act, which was apparently good policy and perfectly appropriate as long as a Democrat was in office.
It's late, and I don't have the energy to go through the remaining points one by one. But all of yours points appear to come down to the notion that you were "right for the right reasons" and that's the exact point that I don't think you're making. I don't think you were "right for the right reasons" because, at base, you're wrong about the supposedly disastrous outcome of the war. Militarily, a war that freed 25 million people and a country the size of France from an entrenched fascist dictatorship, and replaced it with a democratically elected government, with a total of 4000 fatalities on our side, is a prodigious, stupendous success, not a failure. Doing so with a five year occupation, introducing a democratic government where none had been before, with no more trouble than there has been, is a pretty amazing feat, not a failure; consider what happened in Korea and Viet Nam.
The notion that it led to a "loss of respect" for the US is purely political: the supposed atrocities --- those that aren't actually turning out to have been psyops and propaganda from the other side, like Haditha increasingly appears to be --- are things that would be considered almost beneath notice elsewhere. Compare abu Ghraib to a Turkish prison, or even a French one, and it comes out pretty well; compare the number of trials and convictions for prisoner maltreatment, and it comes out looking pretty good compared to nearly any other country and any US states.
And somehow, with that "loss of respect", the pro-American leaders win pretty often in other countries elections; the US is still where people go looking for help in Darfur, the Middle East, Asia; the US is still the place from which the most foreign aid comes, from which the most AIDS funding comes, to whch the world seems to turn saying "The US must help, no one else can!". If they'd really lost respect, I think they'd turn somewhere else.
I lived in Germany during the Reagan Administration, when the world was last supposed to have "lost respect" for the US. At the depth of that "loss of respect", I was asked regularly how to get to move the America. Then the Wall fell; go to Prague, or Budapest, or Krakow, and see if that caused the US to "lose respect."
The silliest notion of all is the notion Greg Djerejian proposed a few months ago: if the purpose of the way was to make the Middle East love us, then it has clearly failed. Well, duh. The purpose of war, any war, is not to make the people you're fighting love you: it's to make them do what you want. The purpose of the "war on terror", in its Afghan and Iraqi campaigns, as well as other, less obvious forms, is to make people stop killing American civilians and blowing shit up. So far, that's worked reasonably well.
Now, if you want to talk about how it coulda-shoulda been done better, I'll listen with the degree of respect to which your apparent knowledge of conditions entitles you. But if you start out with the simply counterfactual fantasy that the war or campaign in Iraq has failed, then the degree of respect to which your opinion is entitled will be pretty small indeed.
a war that freed 25 million people and a country the size of France from an entrenched fascist dictatorship, and replaced it with a democratically elected government, with a total of 4000 fatalities on our side
And given how many significant things you conveniently ignored, I think I'll apply Megan's rule and conclude that you're a crank.
How can you even joke about this when there are people who take joy in the fact that 450,000 people–otherwise left for dead–might be walking around in Iraq!? You monsters!
[long comment, part 1]
I don't think I can beat thoreau's reply, which is not only zingingly succinct, but also brings us full circle, returning to the original post which was so quickly (if perhaps so appropriately) dragged off topic. [Cheesy 1950s nature show voiceover: 'And so the circle of life begins again in Beaver Valley'] But that sort of thing's never stopped me before, so . . .
[Charlie writes] "You conveniently provide an example of what I was saying, too, in an after-the-fact definition of what would have been "justification" and "success" that depends strongly on things that weren't known before the fact"
I'm uncertain where you find me doing this, but if we're going to talk about redefinitions, this is the (collective) pot calling the kettle black. The whole bitter-end pro-Iraq-War position has been one long march of redefinition as rationale after rationale has been revealed to be delusional or hopelessly optimistic, and each resolutely replaced with a new one.
Do you even still remember the reasons and goals of the war as presented to the American people? Far and away, it was that
1) Iraq was buddy-buddy with al Qaeda, may have even supported 9/11 (the apparently imaginary meeting of Atta with an Iraqi diplomat in Prague), and had and was making even more horrible WMDS - including a nuke program!! Saddam might at any moment choose to hand them off to al Qaeda or other anti-American terrorists - or even attack us directly with their "growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles ." OMG! We had to attack, NOW!! After all, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." [full speech here].
Way, way behind this (as turned out, complete pile of bs) was: 2) lofty rhetoric about liberating the Iraqi people from a tyrant who gassed his own people! (I do think most people who imagined this was the point were sincerely deluding themselves, rather than purposely deluding others.)
Then, for those who were paying any attention at all, there was another rationale, a kind of Straussian truth behind the 'noble lie' intended for consumption by the simplest masses: by overthrowing Saddam and installing a democratic gov't in Iraq, we would spread freedom & democracy through the Middle East - one oppressive and unrepresentative gov't after another falling like a row of dominoes - and finally bring a peaceful close to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, hence removing the root causes of terrorism and ensuring a safe homeland in a way that no security regime, no matter how good, could ever do. (I'm oversimplifying here - it seemed not the underlying rationale than one underlying rationale within a specific group, within one of many varied sets of 'why we must invade Iraq'.
Now, of course, everyone except the most bitter-ended of bitter-enders admits that #1 was a fantasy. You definitely do, if only by omission. But many of us who opposed the rush to war had very, very good reasons to doubt this back then.
Remember, by March '02, many of the specific claims had already been revealed as false at worst and deeply uncertain and debatable at best. This was a pre-emptive war, not a game of frickin' Risk; if we were going to launch an invasion of another nation, it had better be on more than vague hunches and (however understandable) 9/11 paranoia.
Then, of course, there were the arguments about why it was thought likely a secular control-freak dictator would give WMDs to al Qaeda, or why Saddam would decide to commit suicide via global cop, or why the (unlikely but not utterly and obviously insane) concern over Iraq using the threat of WMDs to pull a Dr. Evil/hostage situation (give me 250,000,000 smackaroos and safe passage to Cuba, or Tel Aviv gets nuked!) required an immediate pre-emptive invasion, given the apparent ongoing crumbling of the admin's case.
And there were the disturbingly inconsistent messages that were being sent. On one hand, we were facing a uniquely evil and powerful dictator who posed a serious threat not only to his neighbors, but to the most powerful country the world has even known - yet invading was going to be a "cakewalk"?! One way or the other, something seemed very wrong here.
But what was most striking (or confirming) for many was the administration's behavior vis-a-vis inspections. As I mentioned, after inspectors had been brought back in, I began to seriously wonder if I hadn't gotten it all wrong, if maybe Bush wasn't a warmongering fool trying to lie the country into a senseless war for unclear reasons (oil? PNAC scheming? approval and reelection? freudian psychodrama?), but (whatever else) a daring leader cleverly - and peacefully - removing a potential threat.
Yeah. That didn't last long. No evidence of WMDs in any meaningful sense (ie, one an average frat house could pass), inspectors roaming over Iraq, Saddam humiliatingly revealed as a hapless and toothless old tiger (possibly weakening his hold on power?) - it was like none of that had just happened. Charge! Full speed ahead! Damn the utter lack of any evidence! (If anything, it appeared that the administration was frantically trying to start the war before the utter collapse of this main rationale could stop them). This didn't seem strange to you?
[...continued]
[continued...]
#2 - Again, I think many people really did believe (or let themselves believe) that the freedom and humanitarianism! rationale had any actual relation to why we were going to war, or that it made sense. [snark deleted by author]. What can I say? In modern times, claiming lofty motives is pretty much required - at least pro forma - when it comes to launching a war. While we're very far from the worst, there was nothing in recent American history nor the administration's own record to suggest that this made all that much sense.
And although very sad, that's not actually a bad thing. The world is full of horrible and oppressive governments: are we supposed to invade and nation-build every single one? Shall we invade China? No? Ok, sensible enough. How about, hmm, Uzbekistan? No? Ok, fair enough (after all, what's a little boiling people alive between friends?). How about . . .
Forget realpolitik concerns -how many deaths, how much destruction, would be acceptable in this insane crusade to rid the world of oppressive evil through military force?
Now yes, I believe in some cases, such evil is being done that preventing it justifies even war. But as horrifying as Saddam's regime was, he was not carrying out open genocide at this point (with a possible, partial exception in the ongoing treatment of the Marsh Arabs; whether or not we should have, we did not go to war to save the Marsh Arabs.) The worst abuses were - and not to in any sense condone them! - years in the past, when Iraq had been our ally (this last part would seem not directly relevant, but considering so many people high in the administration had been in power back then, too - it was very strange) or at the end of the Gulf War. In fact, back then I felt that both morality and, well, national honor required us to intervene, given that the uprising being so bloodily crushed had been encouraged by us with false promises of support. But that was in 1991, not 2003, and war is not especially useful as a means of resurrecting the decade-old dead, and the coldly logical reasons Bush I and Cheney gave for not marching on Baghdad (at least we put up the no fly zones) were even more sensible now.
Freedom and democracy? - Yes, yes, Germany and Japan, neither of which much resembled Iraq beyond being a state with borders containing people. There were many other examples that were far less reassuring. The end of the USSR gave us a concrete example of how even the peaceful end of a long-standing totalitarian gov't could be bumpy or worse - Russia was not doing well, there was Chechyna, the Georgian civil war, many of the Central Asian republics were very, very far from anything resembling a basic level of human rights or democracy, etc., etc. - and of course Yugoslavia had exploded into a bloody disaster of war crimes and ethnic cleansing requiring military intervention (which I supported). And these were places where nobody had invaded and attempted to impose democracy! Of course, many people familiar with the history of Iraq were giving good reasons why democracy might not magically bloom the second U.S. boots crossed the border, and of course they were ignored, and then later derided as racists who thought the Arab people were incapable of self-government. I should look up some of the people who reminded us of the example of the Spanish- and then Philippine-American War , which proved, unfortunately, to be perhaps one of the least imperfect American-someone parallels.
I can at least understand why the [deleted] liberal hawks [rather harsh Yiddish curse deleted by author] fell for this, even as most other liberals showed more sense. But that (many, not all) conservatives who claimed to cherish Burke and such did so also, together with (many, not all) libertarians . . . .
Of course, it also seemed kinda obvious that the whole democracy/humanitarian rationale was being puffed up to bolster the case for war just as the WMD/terrorist tie rationale started to sag rather alarmingly. This suggested a certain opportunistic approach that did not bode well for dreamy hopes.
And then, of course, #3. Um, insane? Y'know? When I first read about this, I felt downright sick to my stomach. I mean, what more needs to be said? Does anyone look back and go, hey, that was a really smart and reasonable idea? Although I will add that the way some of the folks who had screamed the loudest about the evil terrorist-loving traitors who dared to excuse terrorism by talking about 'root causes' within a year had embraced it as part of their whole rationale for war - well, it was very informative.
[...continued]
[continued ...]
This is a very long response to a short paragraph, but what I'm trying to bring out, rather badly, is a lot of this sort of reasoning was based on rather basic knowledge and common sense. For example, it became clear that many of the claims for WMDs and terrorists links were questionable at best - and even worse, that (although this would be even clearer later) that the administration seemed to be trying to conceal (or, to be charitable, completely clueless about) how weak these arguments were, and that it was suddenly pulling up entirely new rationales as these failed. Daniel Davies attributes the maxims "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance," and "Fibbers' forecasts are worthless," to his b-school education, but one only needed to have some basic experience with human relationships (and I'm not especially skilled at that, even) to get there.
Or a very basic grasp of history - ie, that nations are well, nations (and tend, for example, to go to war for reasons not -at least in part - always quite as lofty as those officially given), and that patriotism aside, the U.S. is still a nation among nations, run by human beings, and not somehow some perfect instrument of divine (or post-historical) judgement.
Or - well, you earlier mentioned ", the predictions of "disaster", which were tens or thousands of fatalities in the first weeks and military defeat if we didn't supply 300,000 to 400,000 troops." While some people were concerned with higher direct military casualties (I can't remember anyone confidently predicting we were going to face military defeat on the battlefield, although no doubt someone did), this is mostly a garbled remembering of General Shinseki's remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which greatly impressed many opponents of the bizarre rush to war, and was often cited:
"SEN. LEVIN: General Shinseki, could you give us some idea as to the magnitude of the Army's force requirement for an occupation of Iraq following a successful completion of the war?
GEN. SHINSEKI: In specific numbers, I would have to rely on combatant commanders' exact requirements. But I think --
SEN. LEVIN: How about a range?
GEN. SHINSEKI: I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground- force presence."
I realize, of course, that retired four-star General Eric Shinseki is just a dirty anti-American hippie who was right for all the wrong reasons, but this sounds almost like actual words, doesn't it? (At least until one remembers only Serious People had language back then, the rest of us just barked and bayed, apparently).
Anyway, my point here is that Shinseki got slammed and mocked and, whether or not his retirement was merely carried out on schedule, the message was clear. It was the same message that was being reinforced at every level, from the highest reaches of the administration to the folks bringing Dixie Chicks cds to be bulldozed - dissent wasn't on the menu (nor french fries). There wasn't going to be any debate. If you disagreed, there would be consequences, even if it was just a lot of folks screeching 'Traitor!!!!' at you. And that was a bad thing. Yes, of course because it's profoundly anti-democratic and against our cherished ideals of liberty, but there's also another reason.
[...continued]
[continued...]
I was a kid when the Challenger blew up, and like a lot of people of roughly similar age it was a really shocking event, one of the first introductions (along with the Ethiopian famine and the AIDS epidemic) to public tragedy. It made enough of an impression that when I got older I tried to find out more about it, and one of the ideas I ran into was groupthink, which has been held as playing a large role in that disaster. As that Wikipedia link puts it:
"Several conference calls were held to discuss the problem [with the o-rings] and the decision to go ahead with the launch was agreed upon. The group involved in making the Challenger decision exhibited several of the symptoms of groupthink. They ignored warnings that contradicted the group’s goal. The goal was to get the launch off as soon as possible. They also suffered from a feeling of invulnerability, and therefore failed to completely examine the risks of their decision. Another factor that had suppressed the few engineers who were "going against the grain" and "sounding the alarm" was that all eyes were on NASA not to delay the launch and that Congress was seeking to earmark large funding to NASA"
What I was seeing seemed to me to be frighteningly reminiscent of this sort of thing, as it did to many others - see, ie, here. Yeah, some of the specific predictions in that op-ed were incorrect, but the thought process - that specific tool in the critical thinking toolbox - worked fine.
And that's what it often came down to - basic critical thinking skills, reasonable skepticism, a little knowledge and paying attention.
"But consider, eg,
"there were no supportable grounds for an immediate invasion,..."
which is in itself a definitional argument. "
Again, I'm going by the administration's (and its allies') arguments, the arguments that took us to war.
"eliminate a source of logistics and support that was without question being used by forces hostile to the USA (remember abu Nidal?) "
who may have been killed by Iraqi intelligence under Saddam.
"The notion that it led to a "loss of respect" for the US is purely political: the supposed atrocities --- those that aren't actually turning out to have been psyops and propaganda from the other side, like Haditha increasingly appears to be --- are things that would be considered almost beneath notice elsewhere. Compare abu Ghraib to a Turkish prison, or even a French one, and it comes out pretty well;""
This is both a horrible and a stupid thing to say. But attempting to continue the dialogue, let me put aside my disgust and state that there are two issues. One is that - perhaps under the influence of the War On Terror (tm) formulation - you seem to be thinking of Terror as a nation, a country, one which can be influenced in ways appropriate to international relationships. Of course, it's not - anti-American Islamist terrorism is a decentralized transnational movement. Now, enticing or intimidating gov'ts to help us (and not help terrorists!) is certainly an important thing, and we've seen how state support has helped terrorist groups, including al Qaeda. But one of terrorism's great strengths, in funding, shelter, and recruitment is popular support. The more people' at home' (wherever that may be) oppose anti-American terrorism, the harder it is for terrorist networks to get and funnel resources, gain recruits, so on. The more people support it . . .
And many of the polls I've seen - which, granted, have their problems - have shown a rather deep decline in support for America across much of the world, but especially in the Muslim world, since we decided to invade Iraq. (To be fair, things have improved a bit recently in Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories, but the last two still give us incredibly low approval ratings - lower than Bush's approval here!, - as do Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia (ok, we're up to 29% approval in Indonesia, so about on par re: Bush) - and only Lebanon grants us a bare majority. See this 2007 Pew poll.
And, leaving aside the claim that the shameful abuses at abu Graib are far preferable than what one might expect at a French prison (what is it with you folks and the French? Did a Frenchman steal your wife, or assault you in an inappropriate manner with a baguette, or act really rude to you when you were ordering in a fancy restaurant - what?), even if you don't feel that they are disgustingly wrong in and of themselves, I have to assume you understand that 'but look, we're better than the French, why did you get mad enough to help support/join a terrorist organization'' is a completely useless reply showing almost no understanding of other human beings. We're not going to be held to anybody else's standards for a number of reasons, including that we are claiming the moral authority to invade countries and reorder them for moral reasons. I'd like to hope that you'd realize that saying 'hey, our humanitarian abuses aren't as bad as (eg) Turkey's humanitarian abuses' isn't acceptable for Americans, and that in saying this you are, metaphorically speaking, squatting over an American flag and taking a big steaming dump onto it, but if you don't can you at least understand that providing al Qaeda with propaganda bonanzas is a bad idea?
". But if you start out with the simply counterfactual fantasy that the war or campaign in Iraq has failed,"
Well, Iraq doesn't have any nukes, so you do have a point. Of course, it didn't before and had no plans or ability to get any. And while there didn't seem to be any meaningful anti-American terrorist connections or presence in Iraq prior to the invasion, there are some number of (often new) ones now, who have contributed some portion of the 4000 American dead along with many Iraqis. And in not 'failing,' whatever that means, it has consumed massive amounts of resources and attention we needed to actually fight (rather than encourage) the production, training, and support of global terrorists.
" then the degree of respect to which your opinion is entitled will be pretty small indeed."
I've never argued that my personal opinion was entitled to some sort of automatic respect - hopefully people can judge whether or not it earns any by what they hear - and indeed, for the question of what do we do now, I don't pretend to offer any insight whatsoever, since it's not a blatantly obvious scam that a caveman could see through. But imagine how an imaginary Charlie-equivalent who got it right would feel towards the 'wrong but superior and Serious' crowd, let alone your other bitter-enders? It's amazing how gracious most of us are.
Really.
[...end]
(typo): it is, of course, Abu Ghraib. I must admit I lost interest in my own comment and stopped proofreading about halfway through . . .
well . . . that was the opposite of terse.