[Industrialblog,
March 26, 2004]
Self-Deception and Analogies
Clever and articulate. These two adjectives are normally seen as positive qualities. Yet who among us has not known someone who is "too clever by half" or whose skills at articulating points merely convince himself, not others?
Here's an example over at Pandagon, which provides a fascinating case study in the "vision of the anointed". These folks have been / are excellent students and have learned their lessons well. And the result is they've got bad case of anointed vision, that is, as Thomas Sowell puts it, self-congratulation as the basis for social policy (or support of liberal policies / positions in this case).
In this post, one of the Pandagon hosts takes a National Review writer to task.
First of all, I can't resist picking on the phrase that starts the third paragraph, "In actual reality ..." Oh, actual reality. As opposed to fantastical reality. (A side note, actual is a faux ami in French, so translating that into French you'd have 'In present reality ...' which wouldn't be as bad.)
Second of all is the vividness and cleverness of the analogy. This is good stuff. Applying to Burger King to serve as its nuclear physicist makes the point well. You may a plan, but the plan is doomed to fail. I understand, but I disagree. Unfortunately, the analogy has convinced the writer that he's right.
Which leads me to my point, how reasoning by analogy can cause self-deception, particularly in younger folks. One way it does it is insight feels good ... and coming up with a clever analogy feels good, too. And especially to young folks who are just getting used to the idea that this brain has five speeds, they like the idea of tearing around corners and putting the metal to the floor in the straightaways. (See, ain't I clever?)
But, but, but ...
Just because you've come up with a nice metaphor, or a nice analogy, don't make it necessarily so. It just means you've articulated your point well. Your point still needs to be assessed, and not necessarily by the terms for your analogy.
Here's an example over at Pandagon, which provides a fascinating case study in the "vision of the anointed". These folks have been / are excellent students and have learned their lessons well. And the result is they've got bad case of anointed vision, that is, as Thomas Sowell puts it, self-congratulation as the basis for social policy (or support of liberal policies / positions in this case).
In this post, one of the Pandagon hosts takes a National Review writer to task.
Burger King: Employing
Michael Graham has an argument about the plan to go to Iraq as it relates to the war on terror that's almost convincing at first glance. Since Iraq was supposed to be a strike against terrorism, it counts as a plan.
However, this is like saying that when I submitted my application to be a resident nuclear physicist at the Burger King down the street, I had a plan for employment. If reality worked that way, it would have gotten me employed, or at least had the chance to.
In actual reality, my plan no chance of succeeding whatsoever - in fact, the time necessary to draft and implement my application to Burger King not only had no chance whatsoever of actually getting me employed, but it actually detracted from time that I could have spent seriously looking for a position that could have used my skills. Regardless of what I say about how my plan was intended to gain employment, if the strategy's obvious outcome will not result in my gaining employment, it's not really a strategy to do that, now is it?
One can say Bush had a plan to invade Iraq, and didn't have a plan to deal with terrorism, because A had no chance of accomplishing B. You can't have a plan to do something that the plan can't do.
First of all, I can't resist picking on the phrase that starts the third paragraph, "In actual reality ..." Oh, actual reality. As opposed to fantastical reality. (A side note, actual is a faux ami in French, so translating that into French you'd have 'In present reality ...' which wouldn't be as bad.)
Second of all is the vividness and cleverness of the analogy. This is good stuff. Applying to Burger King to serve as its nuclear physicist makes the point well. You may a plan, but the plan is doomed to fail. I understand, but I disagree. Unfortunately, the analogy has convinced the writer that he's right.
Which leads me to my point, how reasoning by analogy can cause self-deception, particularly in younger folks. One way it does it is insight feels good ... and coming up with a clever analogy feels good, too. And especially to young folks who are just getting used to the idea that this brain has five speeds, they like the idea of tearing around corners and putting the metal to the floor in the straightaways. (See, ain't I clever?)
But, but, but ...
Just because you've come up with a nice metaphor, or a nice analogy, don't make it necessarily so. It just means you've articulated your point well. Your point still needs to be assessed, and not necessarily by the terms for your analogy.
Now, the interesting thing is that you manage to construct an argument totally around an assumption without ever providing and real way in which the assumption actually relates to the topic you're addressing. Why doesn't the analogy work? Who knows?
And I've found something out over the past couple of years - youth is almost always used as a surrogate for an actual argument. Your post lays out two problems with the analogy - I'm young, and analogies are bad. Neither of which addresses the point, but which does provide a nice bit of intellectual puffery.
(And the actual reality contrasts with the constructed reality in the previous paragraph, O Philosopher King.)
The problem is that while it's a very good analogy to describe how a plan that could never work is not worth spit, that's all you've got. You'd have to be stupid (whether by nature or because you're blinded by partisan hatred) to think that the analogy presented is parallel to what happened in Iraq. There's really nothing to discuss here. Going to Iraq now may or may not have been the best way to combat terror; it may or may not have been the best (I think that it was, but "best" is a strong word). However, the analogy is so blatantly far from the reality as to be beyond discussion.
It's like I gave you this analogy. If I go and drive my car because I want my ficus tree to produce yellow oranges, I shouldn't scream if someone calls me naive for doing so, and neither should you. There are words there, but there's no meaningful connection to reality to discuss.
The plan for Iraq was a plan to fight terrorism, and it's been working. Anyone with even a moderate connection to reality knows. It doesn't matter how much you've discussed it, you're claiming something on the level of claiming that Chirac was for invading Iraq or that not one anti-war protestor ever carried a sign with president bush's name where the "s" was spelled with a swastika. You can claim it, you can bring for arguments for it ad nauseum. That sitll doesn't mean that someone needs to bring up counter arguments, you just need medication.
There is such a thing as being beyond the pale, if you claim that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, you're beyond the pale. You've moved from human discussion, and you're gibbering like a money, if using English sounds to do it in. The appropriate thing to do is not answer you, but laugh at you. Well, that or pity you. But I doubt that many people are inclined to do that since you're probably not biologically stupid, just blinded by hatred, or caught up in the love of brotherhood with your fellow Bush Bashers. Or maybe you just do a lot of drugs, it doesn't really matter.
Anyhow, if you look again, Bill wasn't arguing with you, he was examining you and your argument as one would inspect the nervous system of a disected frog. There's no sense is spending a while proving that it's a dead frog which is pinned down and cut open on the disecting tray, anyone with eyes can see that.
it's also "metal to the floor" as in many cars, the gas pedal is made of metal. This is especially true of the cars 30-50 years ago during which this expression really got started.
You're right that when you see someone describing another's "youth", you also rarely see an argument. That's because it's a dismissal, not an argument. It's the same sort of response as "You're stupid" or "That's nonsense".
Since analogies are the coin of the day, here's an example:
Please respond to the following argument: Boy store monkey garage basketball basketball hall basketball hammer toy record girl shoe run walk sprint fall up down right left eat eat eat.
You can't give a counter-argument because that's not an argument, it's nonsense. It's gibberish. Now, let's make a closer analogy. Argue against this: goo goo gah goo eee! hee! goo?
Again, it's gibberish, of the sort said by a pre-verbal infant. If someone says, "Babies learn the phonemes of their native language by listening to them and trying to repeat just the phonemes; later they start learning semantics and putting the phonemes into words", it's not a counter-argument to the baby's argument, it's just an explanation for the phenomenon of the baby making various sounds.
Bill wasn't arguing against you, he was describing how you're apparently still in the stage where you learn to argue by putting forward random pieces of arguments; later comes the stage where you learn to connect them so that your arguments have something to do with analogy. Just like with a baby's speech, until you get more experience, it can be hard for the person learning how to argue to realize when they've done it right and when they haven't. Little children can get very indignant when people don't understand them and they think that they're pronouncing a word properly when in actuality they're so far wrong no one can figure out wha they're saying. Bill's trying to explain how you can be so convinced of something so utterly stupid. There's no reason for a person to waste his time arguing with you.
What is a "faux ami"? I don't know French, and while it looks like it means "fake friend", you're using it as if it's some sort of grammatical category.
My French spelling stinks since I only learned oral French in Peace Corps, but here's some examples: Librarie in French is bookstore, Bibliotheque is Library. Actuellement means presently in French, while actually is en realitie (ignore the lack of accents).
1. "The plan for Iraq was a plan to fight terrorism, and it's been working."
2. Iraq had something to do with terrorism.
But these are not givens. That is the entire argument presented by Jesse's analogy. If people blinded by GOP partisanship cannot discuss these 2 beliefs in any conversation, then there is no conversation to be had. These are the 2 primary beliefs that honest, open-minded people want to discuss, and that is what the Burker King analogy was focusing on.
An open, honest discussion about whether or not the Iraq War is working with efficiency to fight terrorism, and/or whether Iraq had any meanigful connection to terrorism IS the conversation that the liberals of America have been trying to have ever since the summer of 2002. But at every turn, the left is blockaded by having this discussion: first by charges of unpatriotism, then by the "supporting the troops" argument, then by changing the discussion to any slime about any challenger, and now, it seems, because we are too young or stupid.
Does ctl simply refuse to have an open, honest discussion about these 2 beliefs? Is ctl refuses, then it is undeniable that ctl is blinded by partisanship.
What I like is how the response so far largely boils down to, "I know you are, but what am I?"
You just can't have an honest discussion can you?
We can discuss the connection between Iraq and terrorism, but to declare them utterly separate, as Jesse did, is silly. My point in this post was a dissection of, "How can someone so smart say something so dumb?" I wrote it off to youth and a tendency to fall in love with his own thinking, especially clever analogies.
There's a difference between an open, honest discussion of the connection between the war on terror and the war in Iraq. As CTL says, there are debatable points. But that's not the subject of this entry.
If you want to discuss the connection (or lack thereof) of Iraq and terror, that's fine. We can do that. Why do you believe they are not connected?
I didn't give an argument against Jesse's analogy. I discussed his analogy, and Bill's response to it. I made some assertions related to it, for the purpose of explanation. None of that is argumentation.
They're not givens, they're merely obviously true. Here, let me demonstrate: Saddam Hussein openly funded some terrorism. This was one of the reasons we invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein is not funding this terrorism any more. QED.
Admittedly, you don't need to be stupid not to realize this, you could just be compeltely ignorant about the whole situation, I guess.
That is correct, there is no conversation to be had about whether or not Iraq had anything to do with terrorism. It did. Those who claim that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism can go argue with the flat earthers.
This is fine, but Jesse's analogy had nothing to do with it.
This half is simply false. No one but idiots and the catastrophically uninformed think that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism.
The problem is that you're conflating two different things: whether it was the best idea and whether it was an idea are two different concepts. There's a lot of good evidence for it being at least a very good idea with no better alternatives, but this is at least open to debate. That it was an idea is way past obvious.
When significant groups on the left are frequently rooting for America's failure, this is a pretty reasonable question. Most of my left-oriented friends consider "patriotism" to be a dirty word.
(Incidentally, as a Christian I've got at best only small attachment to patriotism as such.)
Yeah, it sure is inconvenient that "supporting the troops" does in fact require more than words. Of course, there are people on the left who call openly support those who kill our troops.
Is this a reference to something specific? Are you thinking of Richard Clarke?
No, you always were too stupid. It takes two sides to have a debate, and the complete lack of one side saying anything other than "prove your side" or its variants "there needs to be a debate about this" and "the debate is being silenced" is very telling. If someone actually had some concrete proposal for some course of action, we probably would have heard about it. As it was, there was an obvious course of action and a bunch of people who dislike George W Bush.
If you want a debate, take up a side for something. If there's no alternative, there's nothing to discuss. Until you start arguing for an alternate course of action, there won't be a debate for the same reason that no one debates eating food to sustain life. Unitl you've got a better idea, nothing we can say will matter, because we've got to do the same thing anyway. Once you come up with an alternate plan, we can actually consider it.
Of course I don't want to have an honest discussion about this. There's nothing to discuss. You're arguing something as blatantly wrong as claming that we're all writing in arabic, not English.
I only discuss things that are either hypothetical or related to reality.
Well, the problem comes down to this: people without common ground can't talk to each other. They and we (I?) have no common ground. Our perceptions of reality are so vastly different as to yield nothing to talk about.
Of course, each of us believes ourselves to be correct and the other side to be wrong, but that's just restating that we believe different things. When there's too little in common, all each group can do is point to the other and say, "you're crazy", which is sort of what's going on now. Well, except that the other side doesn't understand that.
I think that you're just being trolled. I mean, "a mistake that could have been avoided had the nation been allowed to have an honest, open debate in the summer/fall of 2002."
Maybe I should write a way to ignore posters into the comment software (similar to the ?exclude= syntax that they use over at The Volokh Conspiracy).
Sorry, I thought that your "I know you are but what am I" comment was more generally meant.
Not a very sophisticated logic because it simply opens the door to a number of questions:
- Given that many states fund or hide terrorists, was Iraq the most dangerous?
- Given that we have limited resources with which to fight terror, was Iraq the best place to spend them?
- What is the "opportunity cost" of sending the bulk of our military resources to Iraq, in terms of missed opportunities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc?
- What is the "opportunity cost" of spending our diplomatic capital arguing for an Iraq invasion? That is, did invading Iraq make it significantly harder to win cooperation in the War on Terror from other countries, be they Western allies like Spain, or Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia?
CTL's basic argument is that the wisdom of invading Iraq is self evident, and that terrorism has been reduced. Many intelligent and reasonably well-informed people strongly disagree, forcing CTL to conclude that they are stupid.
It's kind of sad.
OK, let's make a list of possible Iraq:911Terrorism connections. (Let's agree that we are talking about 911 terrorism. If we include all terrorist acts in the past 20 years, then the discussion will be ambiguous and will go into Oklahoma City, the Tamil Tigers, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, etc.etc.).
Possible Connections between 911Terrorism and Saddam:
1. Saddam's government had various contacts over the years with al-Queda members.
2. One known al-Queda member (one of the 1993 WTC bombers) was living in Baghdad.
What else?
Hey beetroot and Bill, don't you love how ctl thinks he "should write a way to ignore posters into the comment software." Stick your head in the sand, ctl, you'll be happy there.
Are these all Jesse's readers? [goes and googles for pandagon.] Yeah, they seem to be.
Interesting: it seems that they're exporting the particularly slow ones over here. I guess that that's typical of hostile cross-blog comment posting, though.
It's kind of funny, though, when someone doesn't grasp the concept of "I'm not arguing with you, I'm insulting you."
distortion:
"whether Iraq had any meanigful connection to terrorism" becomes "No one but idiots and the catastrophically uninformed think that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. "
strawman#1:
"When significant groups on the left are frequently rooting for America's failure..."
strawman#2:
"there are people on the left who call openly support those who kill our troops."
adhominem:
"No, you always were too stupid."
strawman#3:
"If you want a debate, take up a side for something."
It's fitting that CTL closes with the last redoubt of those whose argument is terminally ill; "let's talk about something else". In this case, its a tacit "you're right that our plan sucks, but can you do better?" We'll close this argument and get to our proposal as soon as you deal with our accusation that the Iraq war was dishonestly sold to the American people, has resulted in thousands of American and other human lives being lost unnecessarily and has been an unnecessary drain on this nation's economy and stature in the global community. Will you continue to support an administration which refuses to admit to this?
Crap, shouldn't have bothered with the previous post. This CTL joker is apparently a self-avowed troll (CTL is Center for Troll Liberation?) I guess wingnut arguments and wingnut insults meld together into a contiguous whole. They don't make much sense either way.
(Please spare me a huffy response, CTL. This is a simple, nonpartisan question.)
and yet, the original post is in response to
Try again.
Also, look up the definition of a straw man. It doesn't mean what you think it means. (hint: in order for something to be a straw man, it must be an exaggeration of a position. Would you like a link to Citizen Smash's interview of a peace protestor who calls for people to support those in Iraq attacking our troops?)
Also, look up the Ad Hominem fallacy. (hint: for it to be an ad hominem fallacy, the topic can't be one of the debaters; if that is the topic, characterizations of the arguer are appropriate to the argument.)
Oh, I nearly forgot, your accusation is utterly groundless. There, I dealt with it. Next?
That's easy, it's Bill's blog. I just comment here a lot.
Man, this is so funny. I've never witnessed a comment flood first hand before. Rooser04 was an improvement, though; his post wasn't utterly stupid.
Maybe in a few hours someone respectable will come along. Given the initial post, though, I don't expect it.
feeble, but consistent with the BushII handling of the nation. Go to your dictionary and look up the definition of both "strawman" and "ad hominem". The accusation still stands in the face of a "la-la-la fingers in ears" response.
The fact of the matter is, Baathist Iraq was not on friendly terms with either the Wahaabi organization al Qaeda or the Shiite fundamentalists running Iran. If you don't want to recognize the differences between Baathists, Wahaabis and other Sunnis, and Shiites, you can't discuss the Middle East and make sense.
Iraq had given some financial support to organizations that had committed acts of terrorism directed against Israel (although less support than those organizations got from good US allies like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan) but hadn't been involved in any act of terrorism directed against the US since at least 1993.
Of course, attacking Iraq diverted crucial military, diplomatic and economic resources away from any attempt to seek out and destry the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Now, what's your response to this? Do you even have a response on the merits? Or am I simply too young to be taken seriously?
No one yet asked what Iraq had to do with terrorism. This whole thing started with Jesse claiming that attacking Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. That ludicrous claim is what's been talked about so far.
"The fact of the matter is, Baathist Iraq was not on friendly terms with either the Wahaabi organization al Qaeda or the Shiite fundamentalists running Iran."
So what? Enemies cooperate all the time. The fact that they weren't exactly chums has absolutely no bearing on whether they were willing to work together against groups that they liked even less. Or do you think that the Nazis and the Japenese loved each other? Or the Soviets and the Russians? (I'm talking about WWII in both cases.)
"Iraq had given some financial support to organizations that had committed acts of terrorism directed against Israel."
(1) Iraq was actively paying bounties for suicide bombers. (2) Israel is a US ally. (3) There's an extremely good bet that they had their hand in other pots, too.
"Of course, attacking Iraq diverted crucial military, diplomatic and economic resources away from any attempt to seek out and destry the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks."
Do you mean that we've have used an invasion force to hunt down Al Queda had we not attacked Iraq?
By the way, a person being young is not a reason not to take them seriously. It's merely an excuse for them when they say abominably stupid things.
Actually, it's consistent with your own groundless "Bush Lied" accusations. I figured that an assertion made without proof should be answered in kind.
I consider some of the posters writing here to have said incredibly stupid things on the level of what is a waste of time to take seriously. I therefor haven't, and have not explained why I consider it to be a waste of time.
Consequently my assertions of the stupidity of posts like Jesse's and teej's are unproved assertions, I merely put them out as explanation, not argument. It would be bizarre if they convinced anyone of their truth, since there was no real justification offered for them (well, I did give the 30 second proof that "invading Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism" is false — which was the contention which got this whole thread started — but other than that they remain unproved assertions).
Now, I assume that people like Jesse and Teej think the same thing of me; I assume that they think I'm an idiot with no connection to reality. Unfortunately, we both are so far disconnected that there is no common ground that we can discuss. Their assertions are on the same level to me as if I seriously claimed that all liberals drink the blood of children to keep themselves young; it just has nothing to do with reality. I assume that my own position (that Iraq had to do with terrorism, and was actually a good move — if perhaps not the best one — in the war on terror) strikes them as being as far from reality as would the claim that we're all writing in arabic, or that John Kerry is actually a pink hippopautamus and thus shouldn't be president because only simians should be president.
In short, I think that Jesse and Teej and rooser04 are so disconnected from reality that LSD could only bring them closer, and I assume that they think the same thing about me. I think that if we all agree to not respect each other and leave it at that, we'll all use our time better.
So, what do you say, guys?
There is not the slightest evidence that they did any thing more than give monetary support to the Palestinians, like the rest of the Arab world. There is no evidence WHATEVER of any Iraqi involvement in acts of terrorism directed at the US. And as to whether Israel is a US ally, that is obviously not true in the sense that it is true of, say France, with whom we have a formal treaty of alliance. When is the last time Israel inconvenienced itself to help the US? Are we really in a military alliance with Israel against the Palestinians, and if so, why?
There are a variety of expressions to indicate maximally depressing the accelerator pedal of an automobile; it's not like any particular one of them is the valid one and the rest are invalid.
The disposal of Rooser04 was a great example of this warped way of thinking. CTL's argument depends on ignoring the fact that Iraq was not a great state sponsor of terrorism. Iraq was one of the smaller players on the map. He/She ignores the fact that the invasion of Iraq has increased anti-American sentiment all over the Muslim world and has fueled fundamentalist Mulsims' recruitment drives to an unprecedented degree. Furthermore, by reacting to 9-11 with the invasion of a nation that had little or nothing to do with the attacks, Bush has reinforced Wahabi Mulsim's main premise - that the United States is an imperialist country that wants to invade their land, steal their resources, destroy their way of life, and destroy Islam. Not only that, in our rush for war with Iraq, we left Afghanistan to the warlords. This is further proof - for those people - that our country is fighting to steal resources - not help people.
All of these arguments are not true, but they amount to a very powerful wave of anti-American propaganda that will fuel more terrorists efforts, funding drives, and attacks in the future.
This is the main thrust of the majority of the left's opposition to the Iraq war. The war had a huge opportunity cost with little ROI. There is also no gaurantee that a free Iraq will cooperate with our requirements for cheap fuel - which is REALLY the reason we are over there. Botching the job in Afghanistan leaves that country open for many more years of sectarian violence, fundamentalism, and corruption. Afghanistan could have been the AEI's shining example that would start a Democratic Domino effect in the middle east. instead of working to make that happen, our hubris lead us to Iraq.
Many lefties also did not buy the WMD angle pushed into the public sphere by the bush administration.
The argument that Iraq had dangerous stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was propagandist malarkey. Yes, they may have had chemical or biological weapons, but those weapons have a very short shelf life, are only a little more effective than conventional weapons. In order to maintain active stockiples, an ongoing weapons system would have had to continueally replace the degrading materials. Our own intelligence before the war indicated that Saddam did not have an active chemical or biological program after the first Gulf War. David kay's report even proved that.(saying that the fact that Iraq could "ramp up" a an NBC weapons program is a specious, too )
The one threatening thing the administration talked about was the nuclear threat. I could have bought the administration's arguments about that if they had simply stuck to the facts. Instead they added the B.S. about Nigerian uranium ( why they never just said that Iraq was mining it's own yellowcake is beyond me. Iraq has uranium mines, after all. ), the aluminum tubes, the 45 minutes quip, the exaggeration of the Al Samoud Missile claims, etc.
But none of that stuff really matters since we had inspectors in iraq before the war started. Don't tell me, you are so Bushified - so wingnuttered - that you buy Bush's claim that Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in - don't you.
nice blog.
oh really?
You have to start somewhere. On the plus side, Libya suggests that we won't have to invade too many more countries.
When is the last time France inconvenienced itself to help the US?
De facto, yes (though not all of the Palestianians, just many of them). It's because they're terrorists, and we've declared a war on terrorism.
I'm rather curious, what country's government should we have toppled before Iraq's?
The argument is a catch-22 anyway. Libya - led by a terrorist sponsoring dictator - promises to allow inspections of his paltry WMD cpapbilities in order wo win concessions from the west. We trust that he will not sponsor anymore terrorists and we ignore the fact that he still brutalizes his people. Bechtel and Halliburton waltz into Libya - and everything is right in the world.
Of course, this implies that inspections and containment work - yet they did not work for Saddam Hussein. This implies that dictators can still rule their country free from human rights concerns. This also implies that we have no problem with double standards regarding state sponsors of terrorism and we have a very short memory.
I am glad all you right-wing imbeciles are bringing up Quaddafi's country.
Does the Revolutionary war count?
I think finishing the job in Afghanistan would have been more effective than toppling Saddam Hussein.
First, I'm male.
Second, what on earth passes for argumentation over at Pandagon? I never stated my argument for why invading Iraq was a good idea. Is the quality of discussion so low over there that you guys are just used to treating everything as an argument?
"The CTL guy is really interesting. He/She has this matchbook-intellectual snob quality that I find disturbing - yet compelling."
Thank you.
"The guy's thoughts are just so template driven and warped."
Template-driven? That's an odd accusation to throw at an intellectual position. All logical thinking is necessarily template-driven, since it must conform to logical templates. Why should template-driven thinking be an insult?
Now I'm really starting to wonder at the quality of discussion over at Pandagon — you guys use 'rational' as an insult! :-)
"Does the Revolutionary war count?"
(1) They were mostly just spiting England.
(2) Sure. Next time a French king in the succession of Louis XVI asks for our help, it's, like, so his.
The Taliban is still in charge of Afghanistan?
"Of course, this implies that inspections and containment work - yet they did not work for Saddam Hussein."
Please tell me that you're not trying to claim that inspections are either the answer to every problem or to no problems.
Libya is an example of progress, not perfection. Obviously we can't trust him fully, but so what? This is an improvement over how things were before he gave up his WMD aspirations.
Morever, we can only invade so many countries at once. Assuming that we continue along our current trajectory, we'll get to the rest soon enough. We've stopped the torture and killing in one country (and among the worst of them, as well). If the American people don't chicken out or turn selfish, we'll get to the rest, too.
No, but you did state that Iraq was a central fight in the war on terror - which implies that you think it was a good idea. I assumed you must have some reasons to think that it was a good idea - I simply put my reasons why t was a bad idea on the table.
"All logical thinking is necessarily template-driven"
Templates and rules are different things. Rules of logic do not dictate positions. They simply allow one to understand and evaluate the relative importance if different pieces of information. Logical rules are like algorithms or operators.
A template is more like a function or an object. A Republican template could dictate that - no matter what the evidence indicates - the invasion and occupation of iraq was a good idea. A Liberal template could be analoguous to the folks you refered to earlier that assume that all military action by our country is evil - as are the soldiers that participate in such action.
or you can hit my blog - and cuss me out for being an evil liberal here
No, I do not think that you have no connection with reality. You just do not look at the world in an objective manner. You are an ideologue. You do not want to change your mind about even the slightest thing because, if you do, you probably fear it will start an unraveling of all of your other precious ideas, exposing yourself to the fact that you are so utterly wrong about so many things. And on top of that you are probably so insecure that this realization would spell your emotional downfall. I, on the other hand, am not afraid to change my mind. I do believe it is a possibility that you can change my mind abouyt anything if you site facts to support your ideas. That is what liberals do - they are open minded and consider other ideas. But your posts above are not supported by facts or by intellectual honesty.
Just as an example, I have been anti-Iraq war since 2002 because I know about neocon history. But, you know what, I was pro-Iraq war for about 1 week after COlin Powell's speech to the UN because I have an open mind, and Powell played me like a fiddle. I woke up though. Why don't you wake up for just a few mintues? Have you ever admitted you were wrong? Do you see any good points about the anti-war argument?
Hmmm--put troops in Afghanistan before the end of Sptember 2001? Saved US civilians in the Ivory Coast?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,64015,00.html
Ctl--"De facto, yes (though not all of the Palestianians, just many of them). It's because they're terrorists, and we've declared a war on terrorism."
So, let me get this straight. We needed to worry about Iraq-sponsored terrorism because Iraq gave monetary support to anti-Israeli terrorists, and Israel is our ally.
And Israel is our ally because we're at war with terrorists, and Israel is threatened by terrorists.
Full circle!
You old guys just can't think logically!
Nice try, but for an argument to be circular it must conclude with its premises. In this case the central premise is that we've declared war on terror. This is not a conclusion from anything having to do with Iraq, this is a premise that we start out with (perhaps you disagree with it and think that some terrorism is good and only some other terrorism is bad, but then we need to back up and discuss which civilians should be killed in order to intimidate other people into political decisions, and which people shouldn't).
As a consequence of this policy, Iraq's terrorism matters because it is terrorism. End of argument. However, if we wish to elaborate: it is terrorism against Israel, who is an ally of ours (we have many common objectives, they're a fellow democracy under attack, and they're a major trading partner, to name a few reasons). This is not the only connection that Iraq has to terrorism. Odds are good that Iraq was indirectly involved in all sorts of other terrorist endeavors (see previous link). Even if it wasn't, it was a rogue nation with WMD aspirations and programs that it would never give up. This meant that their possible future collaboration with terrorists was also a threat not to be ignored.
(Incidentally, the reasons having to do with terrorism are only some of the reasons to have invaded Iraq. I've only been discussing those with you because that's what's been brought up so far.)
"No, but you did state that Iraq was a central fight in the war on terror... I assumed you must have some reasons to think that it was a good idea"
Indeed I do. But it's really funny to see people telling me what's wrong with those ideas without my ever having stated them. You talked about what I ignored, when I never indicated what I had considered.
Now, about templates:
So by "template", you mean "axiom", and what you're accusing me of is taking my conclusions as axioms.
This is again curious, because I never stated my reasons for believing that invading Iraq was a good idea. Without my having stated my argument, you have already concluded what it is — and isn't. You made assertions about what I've ignored.
"You do not want to change your mind about even the slightest thing because, if you do, you probably fear it will start an unraveling of all of your other precious ideas, exposing yourself to the fact that you are so utterly wrong about so many things. And on top of that you are probably so insecure that this realization would spell your emotional downfall... But your posts above are not supported by facts or by intellectual honesty."
Ah, flames. Fine, if you want to get into taunts, I'm up for it. At least it's more amusing than you pretending that items quoted from the democratic talking points ("had the nation been allowed to have an honest, open debate in the summer/fall of 2002"?) are either thoughts, or original.
So, I'll have to ask pardon since I'm a little rusty at this, but here goes:
You're so stupid, you wouldn't recognize an idea if it had a name tag on. You doubtless are ugly and fat, and try to make up for your insecurities in your weight by pretending that at least your intellect is above average. I imagine that you like the world "liberal" to describe yourself so much because your liberal is somewhat like "european" and they would find your unbearable body odor less offensive.
I imagine that your brother is also your father, and his incestuous relations with your mother are the reason that you can't think worth the paper your comments are written on. In fact, you probably just post on line in order to impress your mother so that she'll sleep with you, since you can't manage anything of greater skill.
If your posts are anything to go by, you will undoubtedly never reproduce in your life, as even prostitutes would prefer starvation to you.
Well, it's a demonstrably false premise--Orlando Bosch is alive and living comfortably in Florida.
You guys are using the near unanimous support for a "war" on those who attacked us on 9/11 to push for a war against entirely different people who didn't attack us at all. You do it dishonestly, by misleading people as to the connection between your targets and 9/11. Try forthrightly arguing to the American people that we need to go to war against the Palestinians in support of the Israelis, and see what happens.
Oh, and by the way, I'll give Israel credit for being a "democracy" the second they give Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza the right to vote in Israeli elections.
Can you come up with something a bit more creative than "your true colors", or are you really as dumb as my flame suggested? Come on, you must be able to do something well. Give it a try. You can't be bad at everything.
In what sense does the war not being over mean that it isn't going on?
"You guys are using the near unanimous support for a "war" on those who attacked us on 9/11 to push for a war against entirely different people who didn't attack us at all. You do it dishonestly..."
Did you somehow miss all of the speeches following 9/11 in which it was declared that we will no longer countenance terrorism?
And do you have any evidence that public support is high for ignoring all forms of terrorism except for Al Qaeda's terrorism against us? Please, I'd like to see the opinion polls which are overwhelmingly in favor of suicide bombers blowing up israeli children, or anyone else's children. Citations, please.
And when did I ever establish a connection between 9/11 and anyone?
Or would you like to start saying that you predicted millions of civillian casualties, a humanitarian disaster, massive sectarian bloodshed, a massive uprising of all arab nations against the US, and in general attributing all of the ridiculous stuff which didn't happen that some people arguing something similar to you have said at some point in the last 3 years?
<parody>If you want to talk about deceit, it's the peace protestors who LIED when you said that invading Iraq would cost millions of civilian lives. You guys LIED when you said that there'd be a humanitarian disaster. You dishonestly play on people's sympathy when you talk about disasters which never happened.</parody>
So, do you really want to play the game where we each defend everything that anyone on a side even vaguely like ours has said at some point?
And I really, really hope that you're not going to trot out the old canard of "Bush claimed Saddam was responsible for 9/11" if you only listen to what he said and then interpret it to mean that in contradiction to the plain meaning of the words. That dog won't hunt, so if you were going to drag it out of its grave, let it lie. If not, I apologize for doubting you.
I am really curious to know if you have any intellectual honesty whatsoever. Please, tell me that you are at least a little dismayed about the Iraq War. Or tell me you think it was over the line for Bush to make fun of the "missing" WMDs last night. Or tell me that Condi Rice lies through her teeth on multiple occassions. Or tell me that Cheney is the de facto president. I will be satisfied with anything for crying out loud.
(And please can you refrain from launching into my misuse of some technical definition or berating somebody for a typo.)
They're not israeli citizens, why should they vote in israeli elections?
Any number of people in this administration were complicit in terrorism in places like Central America in the 80's. How do you feel about prosecuting Elliot Abrams?
Oh, I'm sorry--we're at WAR with terrorism--it's not a law enforcement issue. We shouldn't try these guys--we should just catch them driving somewhere, and hit them with missiles!
Not to mention the origins of the Israeli state in terrorism (much of it directed at our allies the British), and the personal involvement of Israeli leaders like Sahron in such things.
War on terrorism--what a joke!
I am disgusted with Rumsfeld, Albright, Powell, Cohen, the whole lot of them, for not apologizing for not doing more to prevent 911. This commission is not there to find blame. It is there to find out how to prevent 911 from occurring again. Every question does not deserve pointing a finger elsewhere, as each testifier has done repeatedly even on seemingly arcane issues.
The only exception is Clarke, (a registered R who voted for Bush). For that, his credibility is unimpeachable without direct contradiction, which does not seem to be happening.
http://www.bushwatch.com/bushlies.htm
OK, troll, ante up.
"In short, I think that Jesse and Teej and rooser04 are so disconnected from reality that LSD could only bring them closer, and I assume that they think the same thing about me. I think that if we all agree to not respect each other and leave it at that, we'll all use our time better."
Sorry. OK, bush-whore-troll-be-atch, ante up.
I don't make fun of people for typos.
This entire discussion is a waste of time. Put simply, you're not good enough at understanding complex ideas to make talking with you worthwhile. I'm not talking about Iraq, you couldn't even understand my initial comments to Jesse (which are fairly simple in comparison to the reasons to go to war against a country).
But to answer your final question, while I don't subscribe to your paranoid fantasies, of course there are things that I dislike about what happened. Of course neither Bush nor his staff are perfect. Of course they made mistakes. Any rational person knew that this was going to be the case before we invaded Iraq. All human action is fraught with peril and prone to mistakes. Of course mistakes were made.
Anyhow, I unfortunately don't have any more time to waste on this discussion, so I must say farewell. Live long and prosper.
Or do you want me to pick one or two that I noticed as being utter crap and just debunk them and then dismiss the whole site as probably being just more of the same?
By the way, if you like the site a lot, you should tell them that some of their links are dead. Dubious quotations just aren't supported much by dead links.
See...THAT'S a nonsensical analogy.
Bill said my argument wasn't valid...but offered NO reason why (and his lame explanation above doesn't work, sorry, kid). Rather than argue my point (that invading Iraq had no real chance of preventing or stopping terrorism, therefore claiming it was a plan to fight terrorism is errorneous), Bill simply went on to attack me.
If that's how you all operate around here, no wonder you all are utterly incapable of actually holding a debate without immediately undercutting positions as invalid because they don't agree with you while simultaneously showing off your ability to engage in intellectual puffery.
It's amazing how much Bill has said, how much you've said...and yet in your advanced age, you've managed solely to look like condescending jackasses.
Congratulations!
And I've truly had enough of this. If you all ever feel like having a debate without resorting to impugning irrelevant things ("You've got black hair, and everyone knows black hair arguments are bad!"), please come by. But this is just sad.
Scott said:
I think finishing the job in Afghanistan would have been more effective than toppling Saddam Hussein.
to which CYL replied:
The Taliban is still in charge of Afghanistan?
-
And, well, for a not insignificant portion of the country, the answer is, unfortunately, 'yes'.
According to this month's issue of Time, nearly a third of Aghanistan is indeed once again under Taliban control. The rural areas along the Pakistan border make up the bulk of this third.
It's worth noting that no large towns have been retaken.
It's equally noteworthy that the first thing the Taliban does when they recapture an area is kill everyone they can find who has cooperated with the Americans.
This tends to make the locals less likely to cooperate.
It also doesn't do wonders for our credibility with the Afghans as nation-builders.
The administration's stated policy is that we're doing nation-building with a light footprint so as not to rekindle memories of the oppressive Soviet occupation.
Meanwhile, Hamid Karzai never leaves the presidential residence for fear of assassination and has repeatedly asked for more troops to be sent to his country - largely because his own army is to weakened by desertion to be much of a factor.
So, without passing judgement one way or the other on the Iraq war, the unfortunate fact is there is much more work to be done in Afghanistran and we have been backsliding to a certain degree.
greedy, egocentric, resentful, angry, deceitful, insincere, incompetent, uncaring, partisan, cowardly, shifty, arrogant, manipulative.
It's so pathetic that somebody just like you is the Senate Majority Leader. I guess Assholes really do beget Assholes.
Bomb Afghanistan, slink away, wonder if the heroin-lords or religious fanatics will win the battle for the remaining rubble.
Net result, as you said, is just another reason not to trust the Gringos. You think they'd have learnt their lesson in the '80s. I wonder what the newly embittered Osama-successor of 2020 will do to us?
"It also doesn't do wonders for our credibility with the Afghans as nation-builders."
The thing is (and this is something that I disagree with), we never tried to be nation-builders in Afghanistan. We never invaded, we never had a significant number of US troops there, etc. We told the then-leaders of Afghanistan, "Turn over Al Qaeda or we'll destroy you." They said "no", so we helped the other major power group in Afghanistan (the Norther Alliance) destroy the then-leader of Afghanistan, and gave them a hand boot-strapping a national government. However, they were never under direct US control, there was no provisional US authority, we never had huge numbers of troops there.
I think that we should have helped them to build a nation, but unfortunately that was never one of our goals. So we can't lose credibility with the Afghans as nation builders because we never saught it in the first place. Essentially, you can't fail at what you didn't try. More's the pity that we didn't try.
However, I do understand that Afghanistan is one of the places apparently least suited to nation building; it has no real tradition of a strong centralized nation, and it's terrain is ideally suited to eating large armies. Modern technology ameliorates that someone, but as I gather, if ever a terrain were designed for local warlords, Afghanistan's is it. In short, I can easily see how someone could conclude that nation building in afghanistan would be a bad idea. I still think that we should have taken a more active role, though.
When you say "nearly a third of Afghanistan" is under taliban control, are you talking by population or area?
If you read Bill's post again, you'll notice that it's talking about you, not talking to you. (There's a little bit at the end which is in the second person, but it's fairly clearly the generalized second person; the post talks to the reader throughout.)
No one's been trying to argue with you here (I haven't followed the comments on your post on your blog), but if you look here, what's said about you is not argument, it's analysis.
Bill was discussing how you could be so wrong, not why your analogy doesn't apply.
As a even younger young'un than Jesse, I must say, el wrong-o. Mine rhymes, and furthermore, I guarantee that it's the only variant of the expression the Ninja Turtles used.
When you say "nearly a third of Afghanistan" is under taliban control, are you talking by population or area?
Territory. This figure is probably changing daily right now as both sides had planned offensives for the spring.
ctl: The thing is (and this is something that I disagree with), we never tried to be nation-builders in Afghanistan.
Fair enough. At some point a long term military intervention with the goal of creating a stable poltical climate that will result in a democracy (which is a stated goal this administration has there) starts to look and feel something akin to nation-building. In either case, the good-faith and trust of the locals is something that you need and can be hard to regain once its compromised.
CTL is a faith-based logician - i.e., he has faith in the public pronouncements of the Bush admin. Iraq funded terrorism ergo invading Iraq was good.
No, that's not the point CTL made. What he said was, "Iraq funded terrorism, ergo invading Iraq had something to do with combatting terrorism." He explicitly said that whether it was the best thing -- or even a good thing -- to do was open to discussion. But to argue that invading Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with combatting terrorism is silly.
The only exception is Clarke, (a registered R who voted for Bush). For that, his credibility is unimpeachable without direct contradiction, which does not seem to be happening.
This is laughable. Clarke has been contradicting himself. What he said this past week is in direct contradiction to what he said 18 months ago. Why would his credibility, then, be unimpeachable?
Steverino said:
This is laughable. Clarke has been contradicting himself. What he said this past week is in direct contradiction to what he said 18 months ago. Why would his credibility, then, be unimpeachable?
Interesting. Where did you hear this from?
As of Saturday, (see this story here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/26/clarke.flap/index.html) the stories I read had the GOP alleging that he had perjured himself and the Democrats saying he hadn't.
The actual testimony would answer the question one way or another would need to be declassified. As of Saturday, this still hasn't happened.
Until we get those document declassified, we're in the land of partisan spin-doctoring. I'm not saying the GOP doesn't have a point. Literally - I won't know until I can see the testimony they're talking about.
I'd guessed that we'd be waiting till sometime this week (at least) before we got a firm answer. Did it get declassified over the weekend somehow? If you've got a link to a news story, please post it.
Even withou the documents, Clarke is not in a very good position, Mark Steyn explains part of the reason why nicely. The guy jus thasn't been doing a good job of looking good.
Steyn does make some interesting points.
Interestingly, the White House just added some degree of validation to an aspect of Clark's story that they had previous implied never happened.
Quote from this mornings's Denver Post:
"The White House acknowledged Sunday that on the day after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush pressed his counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke to find out whether Iraq was involved....The conversation - which the White House suggested last week never took place - centers on perhaps the most volatile charge that Clarke has made public in recent days: that the Bush White House became fixated on Iraq and Saddam Hussein at the expense of focusing on al-Qaeda's role in the terrorism."
Link to full article:
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~11676~2048441,00.html
Not sure what this does to Clarke's credibility or Bush's credibility for that matter. Interesting PR strategy though. Usually, you want to avoid appearing to reverse yourself after you've started attacking the credibility of your accuser. That's a lesson Clinton learned over and over.
Here's basicaly what happened. When the accusations first came out, the White House said that they didn't recall whether the President was even in the situation room on 9/12/2001. Later, they recalled that he was, and said so.
This is what is referred to as "the white house reversing itself". This is ridiculous. If a man can't remember something and then does, this is called "remembering", not "reversing himself".
Anyhow, I don't think that it does much for Clarke's credibility; perhaps it retrieves it from almost certainly none to probably none. Color me skeptical, but tell-alls written by people who were fired in which they're the hero have a credibility problem before they get out the gate.
If it happened that way, it happened that way. In the court of public opinion, which matters at least a little in an election year, your average man on the street might have trouble buying that the whereabouts of the President on Sept 12 weren't carefully monitored and documented.
Anyhow, even if the Denver Post is usually a conservative paper, the byline reads:
(Also, this is a fairly direct quote of the 60 minutes piece, which was itself rather absurd in the way that they were portraying an uncertain statement followed by a correct as a 'reversal'. This spin didn't originate with the Post article, but the article was repeating it.) Anyhow, if you tell most people "At first he didn't remember, but then he went and checked and it turned out that he was in the room" was this deceitful? You can of course spin it that way, but then at least some of the men on the street might be willing to think that a President could recall something, say that he thinks it was such a way but isn't sure, then find out that his recollection of events several years ago was wrong.
But the man on the street might believe anything, and will actually believe everything, since it's not one man but many men and women. Some will believe that the President honestly recalled it as probably being different, found out, and stated what the records show, some will believe that he was lying constnatly inbetween murdering babies and turning their blood into oil in some dark satanic ritual. And everything inbetween, too.
In truth, I doubt very much that it will matter a dram one way or another. Are there many people who's opinion of Bush (and consequently how they interpret his actions) are not already formed?
ctl:
Anyhow, even if the Denver Post is usually a conservative paper, the byline reads:
By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times
--
the decision to make it the lead on the front page and to put the word "reversal" in the subhead were what struck me as odd about it.
ctl:
>But the man on the street might believe anything, and >will actually believe everything, since it's not one man >but many men and women.
Yea, verily. And some may not be on streets. They could be on footpaths or cul-de-sacs.
>Some will believe that the >President honestly recalled >it as probably being >different, found out, and stated >what the records show,
memory discrepancies have certainly gotten better presidents out of much worse gaffs.
As a former journalist/PR person - it's interesting to me in that you just shouldn't make those kinds of mistakes at their level. The message you want to put forth in a scandal is: "That person saying these silly things is drunk and disorderly and his/her allegations are the product of a sick mind." For a good example--see Clinton's initial response to Lewinsky (or any number of other scandals)
When you make these kind of statements and then you have to go back later and admit that you had some of your details wrong - it looks sloppy and it's just bad PR. That's scandal-management 101. These are mistakes you expect from city officials in Indianapolis, not from the Chief Executive.
>In truth, I doubt very much that it will matter a dram >one way or another.
And, yes - the Clarke thing is just political theater that really doesn't matter much.
Several of the "bomb-shells" that are attracting so much ink (al-Qaida not being a hot priority before 911, fixation with an Iraq/911 connection) were already out there months ago in Bob Woodward's "Bush at War". If you throw in the allegations in O'Neill's book - there's really nothing new that Clarke is saying.
And it looks like no one cares anyway.
Recent polls show that Bush's job approval is up. There was a dip in confidence about homeland security, but that hasn't changed how people say they'll vote. In fact, he's now leading in some polls. Three weeks ago he was behind.
So, basically, yeah, no one cares about Clarke.
>Are there many people who's opinion of Bush (and >consequently how they interpret his actions) are not >already formed?
Yeah. Swing-voters. The important minority who decide most elections. As the fluctuations in the poll numbers show, they do indeed change their minds. Although since Nader is running, they matter a whole lot less in this race.