Arthur Silber has a thoughtful post on the debasement of the debate that is worthy of your time. Arthur views the War in Iraq through a different lens than I do, but he is correct in many of his assessments about the problems with the current discussion:
The state of intellectual debate about political/ethical isues, and related policy concerns, has been coarsening for a number of decades. But now, certain vices and failures of thinking have become very, very widespread, and almost everyone seems to engage in them. As a very good friend of mine described it recently in an email, these problems (which he calls “insanity” with considerable justification) have truly become a “pandemic.” And so they have. In the course of identifying several elements of what I consider the major flaws in most analysis and discussion of current events, I will offer a few examples related to the war with Iraq, which has unfortunately provided a number of especially virulent expressions of these problems.
You should go read the examples Arthur lists, pay attention to them, and make sure you are not engaging in these tactics. One interesting thing about the discussion Arthur provides is that all of his anecdotes are from an anti-war perspective, in that all of the examples of people engaging in fallacious thinking is from the pro-war perspective. Let me give an example:
I have not seen a better description of the causes and manifestations of the tribal mentality — and it perfectly captures, as just one example, why many supporters of the war will engage in the most complicated mental gymnastics to explain the growing questions about our intelligence regarding Iraq’s WMDs (whether one regarded that as crucial to supporting the war or not), when they condemned the same kinds of mental trickery when Democrats used them in defense of Bill Clinton. The message clearly is: “Bush is always right, at least on everything important and everything related to the war. How dare you question him in this manner? You must be a monster. Why, you must be a…a…a Saddamite!” And thus we see how the tribal mentality oozes out to include the Argument from Intimidation: if you dare even to ask certain questions, you must be profoundly morally deficient, at the very least — and you are certainly not a member of our gang. Once again, this tactic seeks to end the debate before it has even begun — and it seeks to avoid ever having to answer the questions that have arisen, even though the same people would be only too happy to raise identical questions if the president in question happened to be a Democrat (as most of them did, in fact).
What Arthur fails to acknowledge is that many of the people who are raising these accusations are so fiercely partisan, obnoxious, and vindictive that every question comes across as a personal attack on the individual and President Bush. Go read the comments boards on the left. Hell, read some of the things commenters say here. There is a significant portion of the Democrat left who is so violently and reflexively anti-Bush, that in manyinstances, particularly those when I would usually be sympathetic to the Democrat position, that I find myself defending Bush even when I disagree with him. This debases the debate (both the mindless and incessant accusations leveled at Bush, and my reflexive defense of Bush) just as much as anything else.
Another point- just because you were against the war does not make you a traitor or a Saddamite. It would be refreshing for people on the other side of the spectrum to remember that those in favor of the invasion of Iraq are not necessarily kncukle-dragging, mouth-breathing war-mongerers.
jaboobie
But the arguments become a lot less lively then. I tried this angle with a woman I work with and we just came to a draw when I said I think the War in Iraq will reduce resources for terrorists and provide a stabilizing force the Middle East so desperately needs. Her response was that we could have gotten the same result without war. I disagree.
Andrew Lazarus
OK, I’m one of those reflexively anti-Usurper Bush guys. But I notice that just about every liberal who supported the war is asking WHERE ARE THE WMDs? I respect these people, Berman, Marshall, Keller. I feel almost sorry for them as they realize that they’ve been defrauded. The two trucks that GWB specifically said were the evidence of WMD? Nope. The tubes? Nope. We knew where they were, between Baghdad and Tikrit? Nonsense. The Niger uranium? A lie from beginning to end. (Even the original Jessica Lynch story has all the authenticity of George Washington chopping the Cherry Tree.)
One of my neighbors knows Pres. Clinton from way back, and even before the 1992 election he told me that Clinton was a womanizer. So I didn’t believe him for a second on Monica. But really, ARE THESE EQUALLY IMPORTANT??
John Cole
Andrew- The question s to where the WMD are is a legitimate one- I want to know, damnit.
What pisses me off is the “Bush lied” shit.
Andrew Lazarus
But, John, why does it piss you off? What’s next from Bush: “It depends on what ‘uranium’ is.”?
I admit, Clinton lied about Monica (& Gennifer, Paula, Kathleen, & Socks). LBJ lied about the Gulf of Tonkin. JFK lied about his health and his mistresses.
EVEN crediting Bush with merely sharing the widespread inchoate belief that Saddam still possessed WMD, he and his subordinates added to this any number of specific claims, right up to those two rusting mystery trucks, AND EVERY SINGLE ONE HAS BEEN A RED HERRING.
To my mind, the interesting question is why the press has returned to the sort of disinterest and outright gullibility [special award: Judith Miller] that distinguished the pre-Vietnam years, not whether Bush is lying. That’s easy.
John Cole
Being wrong is not the same as lying.
BEing wrong is no justifcation for lying, which is why I am in favor of investigations.
But being wrong is not the same as lying.
JKC
I’ll agree with John on this much: being wrong is NOT the same as lying. Let’s have open, thourough investigations into this so we can find out what happened.
Andrew Lazarus
What Bush said BEFORE we invaded Iraq might be accidentally wrong, or might be lying. That is, Bush might have been relying in naive good faith on hopelessly skewed intelligence prepared by people who either wanted to or had been ordered to say that Saddam had WMD, in order to justify the upcoming war. (I except from this the Niger uranium story: only those desperate to believe it overlooked the fact intelligence agencies already disproved it. And I except from this the rumors of a Saddam-Osama connection, which were also false, and to the extent they relied on Al Qaeda operations in the Kurdish Autonomous no-mans-land, deliberate and cynical.)
Weak as this is (perhaps we owe an apology to those UN Inspectors and Old Europe governments who DIDN’T BELIEVE our statements that turned out to be “wrong”), no such excuse can be made for the WMDs “found” since the war. The cave with paint (remember that one?), Judith Miller watching an unidentified scientist pointing at patches of ground, the rusty trucks, all disseminated to the gullible media with the flair of a three-card monte operator.
platosearwax
I’ll give you this much, as cranky as you can be sometimes, you are at least a member of the right who is willing to discuss things in a rational manner.
Saying Bush lied and calling anti-warriors anti-Americans gets us nowhere nearer the truth.
Dean
Andrew,
AFTER the war was over, Howard Dean said that he wasn’t sure if Iraqis were better off w/o Saddam or not.
BEFORE the war, various human rights groups, and the UN, claimed that civilian casualties would be on the order of 500K.
BEFORE the war, you also had similar groups claiming that the children who died in Iraq were all the victims of sanction.
All of these, I think, have been shown to be false.
Were these people lying? Or were they wrong? What level of investigation would be justified for such groups?
You claim it’s a type III error, that people lied. You throw that about quite easily. Yet, you provide NO evidence that they KNEW IN ADVANCE that what they were saying was wrong, only post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments of “Since what they said wasn’t true, then they must have known it wasn’t true when they said it.”
Intel doesn’t work that way. You don’t KNOW anything—you have a preponderance of evidence. But that same evidence is being influenced by both enemy actions (Saddam’s efforts to hide what he was doing), and judgement calls. LOTS of judgement calls. What does the presence of this type of truck, at this location, mean? What does this phone conversation mean?
I suppose every acquittal must mean that the DA’s and the cops all manufactured the evidence.
Sorry, doesn’t work that way.
That’s why I, at least, get pissed when people keep repeating this “Dubya lied” routine.
Andrew Lazarus
Dean, people make mistakes and are wrong. All the time. (I think the verdict is still out on that specific Howard Dean quote.) But here are six arguments that I believe were offered in bad faith AT THE TIME THEY WERE MADE:
1. That Saddam was attempting to obtain enriched uranium for his nuclear program from Niger. Our professional intelligence agencies had recognized almost immediately that this was a totally bogus forgery, BEFORE we introduced it in “evidence”.
2. That Saddam’s emissary met WTC terrorist Mohammed Atta in Prague, which our intelligence agencies specifically investigated and discounted.
3. That the presence of Al Qaeda affiliates in “Iraq” implied a Saddam-Osama connection, which was false because Al Qaeda operated in a Kurdish region of Iraq off limits to Saddam’s security apparatus.
4. That US forces found chemical weapons in a cave, which I believe later turned out to be paint.
5. That “embedded” reporter Judith Miller was shown an anonymous, unverified “scientist” who pointed out various WMD sites from a considerable distance, not one of which was verified by expert examination.
6. That those two rusty trucks were CW labs, when British government scientists confirmed the Iraqi explanation that they were for hydrogen. (Didn’t Bush specifically announce this was the long-awaited WMD find?)
I don’t see these as innocent mistakes, which means I am disinclined to give GWB the benefit of the doubt in other instances.
FWIW, I also feel that the “children died because of sanctions” argument is not only inaccurate (children did die, but not because of sanctions) but dishonest. I ascribe this belief, however, to only the left-fringe of antiwar Americans, whom I also admit were over-represented in the movement’s leadership.
Dean
Andrew,
And on this, I disagree w/ you pretty much point-by-point.
1. Niger uranium info. It remains to be seen exactly when this information was vetted to be false. IIRC, it was unclear at the time it was presented, and Powell promptly (three days later?) said it was false and w/drew the info.
2. The Czechs say it happened, SOME in the US intel world say it didn’t. Why do the Czechs say it did?
3. Saddam-Osama links steadily proliferate, as we find evidence that there were talks long before 2000, medical treatment of al-Q leaders, etc. The links were hardly limited to Ansar-i-Islam (iirc).
4. How many reports have there been of “found” CW? How many have been official USG pronouncements? You cannot ascribe to the USG charges of lying, based on press jumping on rumors. I suppose you could, but then, you’ve lost the right to claim “lying.”
5. Is Judith Miller part of the USG? Are you going to claim as well that the Lynch-was-shot stuff was from CENTCOM?
6. No on the Bush thing. And whether SOME Brit scientists claim it to be H2 generators does not mean they were. (Think about this last one logically: WHY would you rely on a BIO process to generate H2, for arty balloons? Why not use Helium? Why not use chemical processes? What fermentation process would produce H2 in sufficient quantities, in sufficient time, to do this? Does anyone else take this approach?
At the risk of tripping Godwin’s Law, do you really think it at all possible that the Zyklon-B was for de-lousing and stopping cholera [which I’m sure it COULD do]??)
So, at the end of your six points, your Niger point comes closest to a lie. The rest are either press reports w/o benefit of USG pronouncements (which makes it hard to show that the USG lied, unless unnamed sources=USG), or are mixed (Czech vs US, again sources; purpose of those trailers), or an odd interpretation (Saddam-al-Q links).
And two (Saddam-al-Q, Prague meetings), at least, have nothing to do w/ WMD at all, so what that has to do w/ “Bush lied about WMD” is even more bizarre?
But frankly, Andrew, I doubt that much I (or others) say will sway your beliefs, which is what we’re really talking about. Dubya lied, in your opinion, and that’s all there is to it.
Andrew Lazarus
On Atta in Prague : http://slate.msn.com/id/2070410/
On the trailers : “U.S. forces found another trailer in northern Iraq that appeared to be a mobile biological weapons laboratory, Pentagon officials said Monday.” That’s a news report from 5/21/03, official enough?
On Saddam and Osama : I understand our interrogations of captured Al Qaeda members show that Osama REFUSED to work with Saddam. So they went to Baghdad for medical care? And you don’t address the Ansar al-Islam issue.
On Judith Miller : It was the US military that arranged the dog and pony show. (Well, maybe Chalabi arranged it and the US forces only provided the venue.) She was embedded with US forces.
On Niger : Last week, the Administration claimed that it had evidence that Saddam sought uranium from Somalia and the Congo (evidence that it won’t show us). How much credence do you have in this report? I have, as you have guessed, none.
And we haven’t even covered Bush’s economic promises.
Wouldn’t you say that for an honest man, Bush makes a lot of these incorrect predictions and claims?
Dean
WHICH US officials? Andrew, the use of unnamed sources, of which the term “US officials” is classic, is NOT official.
It’s like “US officials claim that the Aurora program will give the US a permanent lead in manned recon systems.” Sorry, that does NOT mean that there IS a project Aurora in existence.
And whatever Judith Miller saw and reported, she did not do so AS A PART OF THE USG.
Find a specific quote of Dubya saying “We have found WMD.” Show that we already knew that there was not WMD. Then you’ve shown he’s lied.
As for honesty, nice Dowd moment. I, for one, have never claimed Dubya was honest—he’s a politican for goodness sake. Expecting honesty from a politician is like expecting charity from a banker, or efficiency from an NGO.
But that does not mean that Dubya lied IN THIS CASE. And you’ve yet to show, even w/ your links and references that:
1. Dubya knew the information he had was false; and
2. Knowingly disseminated at the time AS A FALSEHOOD.
But like I said, Andrew, it’s pretty clear where you’re coming from. Rotsa ruck in reinforcing your beliefs, since I’m sure little will be said here to sway you from them.
Andrew Lazarus
Two morsels from a long list
Bush on the trailers: “And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on,” the president said. “But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.” He said they were WMD, and they aren’t.
Ari Fleischer on how committed we were: “The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it”
Ari Fleischer, 12/4/02
I have no doubt that you never cut the Clintons this kind of slack on their evasions.
Maybe after a few more bogus WMD discoveries are retracted (QUICK: A can of “Raid” at a Baghdad bazaar) you’ll recognize the systematic campaign of disinformation for what it is.
Dean
Andrew,
Congratulations on becoming a mind reader. You’ve NO IDEA my reactions on the Clinton administration when it came to foreign policy.
As for the WMD quotes. You don’t get the definition of lying, do you?
On your first quote, did Dubya KNOW that they WERE NOT WMD-related, when he made his statement? (The jury still being out on whether they are or not, but we’ll go along for sake of argument for now.)
On your second quote, the question of what Iraq did with its material remains to be seen. (Don’t gloat yet, or you may have quite a helping of crow.)
If you’re going to make that argument, where’s the genocide and bodies of the Kosovars? Some of us believed that there WAS a mass slaughter of Kosovars going on. You might wanna remember what President told us THAT?