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Had Enough for Now
10/28/2003
My list of blogs that I visit with strong rules against commenting thereon or bringing comments back to my own blog — because I haven't the time or the spare blood pressure — is growing. Steve just got his Absit Invidia page on it. There's just too much space between our views of the way the world actually is. Consider this post in which he links to a laudatory review of David Corn's book and then writes:
I don't think you have to be an enemy of this Administration to sincerely ask what's going on here. In fact, I think it's the patriot's responsibility to examine the facts and not just dismiss the mounting evidence of deception as "anti-Bush" or "anti-Conservative" bias.
The problem is that all of the particulars in this "mounting evidence of deception" are, in fact, instances anti-Bush or anti-Conservative propaganda. David Corn, who has been striving mightily to discard any pretense he had at reasonable analysis in order to swing with the heavies (e.g., Michael Moore) in the Lies and Deception category, is a perfect example. You can search this blog, or you can look elsewhere, but I've yet to see an important claim made by David Corn in the past few months that stands up to even minimal scrutiny — on everything from national defense to education.
Of course, some will say that it is my own bias that makes me take such an uncharitable view of Corn. All I can do is assert that it isn't and suggest that folks take up the more-specific arguments when they come around. But as for his book, who has the time to read a tome of lies and distortion when one knows going into it that any effort to debunk the claims will be dismissed by those who most need to hear it? There's just too much emotional investment in Corn and his ilk being right.
For an illustration of how that plays out, see the comments to this post on Absit Invidia. I suggested that Steve was wrong to declare, "None of the original justifications for aggressively attacking Iraq have been borne out." I then listed some rhetorical questions regarding those justifications that generated this response from Bil: "mmmm... Kool-Aid." (To another post Bil offered the jaw-dropping comment that the idea that an organized resistence effort is watching the American media to gauge our domestic temper is "ridiculous.")
Steve thereafter rejected all of my rhetorical implications without much by way of evidence, so I further responded with specific points and multiple links to information. Oh, and I made a short post clarifying two points. What does Steve react to? Why, the minor clarifications, of course.
Now, I've been going around in these circles with ideological enemies, neutral discussants, and even people whom I at one time considered friends (in the Internet sense of friendship) for months now. Based on this history, I can predict with confidence that not only will Steve let my specific points slide away into archive limbo, but he'll subsequently reassert the contested statements. This is just how these things have gone with the anti-Bush, anti-war people, and I don't have the time to bother with such "discourse."
All I have the time for, right now, is to acknowledge that, when pressed, these folks have laid out a strategy for Iraq that involves the United States putting forth a time table that we know cannot be followed only to have an excuse to back out and leave Iraq to the dogs (by way of the Europeans). This single aspect, in my book, renders the entire foreign policy of which it is a part insane. Not only is it morally repugnant, but it will quickly result in further attacks on our shores, and it will solidify the impression around the world that relatively insignificant pricks are all that are required to defeat "the great American army."
Well, I guess that, then, we'll have no reason not to dismantle that army and devote those funds to expanded benefits for the elderly. And those benefits programs wouldn't have to be designed to last, because the United States as currently constituted will not exist long enough for more than a handful if generations of old folks to come and go.
Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:45 PM EST
15 comments
Justin, I linked to a critical analysis, I specifically said I'd withhold judgment on the book until after I'd read it.
I answered each of your points and you responded. It's pointless to carry on an extended debate in the comments section.
I once asked you the question on this issue and you refused to answer. So I'll pose it again:
What was the imminent threat?
Lacking an imminent threat, there was no war of "pre-emption"
Steve @ 10/28/2003 02:11 PM EST
Steve,
You did not respond to the specific points (with links) that I made... unless you mean to say that you were prevented from doing so because the clock had run out on that thread.
As for "imminent," I've gone over this ad nauseum. There was no imminence. That's why the war was called "pre-emptive." The President never said it was imminent, if you mean to include this among your "mounting evidence of deception." If you mean to bring us back to the pre-war debate, then we're just back in an area of substantive disagreement about what is necessary in a post–September 11 world, an area in which this President decided contrary to your beliefs.
Justin Katz @ 10/28/2003 02:20 PM EST
I wasn't clear about my comment on the Iraqi resistance reading USA Today. What I should have spelled out was that I think they would be attacking regardless of what the American people are thinking. What is ridiculous would be a Saddam loyalist or a Saudi al Qaeda agent deciding against a coordinated suicide attack just because the New York Times said we were winning.
Bil @ 10/28/2003 04:19 PM EST
Again, Justin, if there was no imminent threat than pre-emption was unjustified.
Japan felt threatened by our oil embargo - are you prepared to accept that Pearl Harbor was pre-emptive rather than aggressive?
Steve @ 10/28/2003 05:49 PM EST
Which is it, Steve?
Lacking an imminent threat, there was no war of "pre-emption"
or
if there was no imminent threat than pre-emption was unjustifiedWas it not "pre-emption" or was "pre-emption" not justified? Either way, it seems to me, we're back to the pre-war argument, but still without any proof of deception on the part of the administration.
As for Japan, c'mon now. The two aren't comparable. We didn't feel threatened by an oil embargo from Iraq.
Justin Katz @ 10/28/2003 05:58 PM EST
If pre-emption=acting before threat is imminent, then Steve comment translates as "if there was no imminent threat, then acting before the threat was imminent was unjustified."
Mark Shea's "Why did they say they were absolutely certain?" meme is more convincing...
Joe Marier @ 10/28/2003 06:35 PM EST
Yes, of course I meant the use of the term was unjustified. i thought it was obvious but I apologize for the confusion.
Steve @ 10/28/2003 07:55 PM EST
No, Joe, acting before a threat is imminent is aggression. Acting in the face of an imminent threat is pre-emptive action.
Steve @ 10/28/2003 07:57 PM EST
I think you need to look up "preemptive." There is no requirement that the threat be imminent.
But again, we're back to the pre-war debate, which raises the question, Steve: did the President deceive us into war or did you just not like the reasons that he gave?
With this "imminence" nonsense, people who opposed the war (ostensibly) because, even by the President's own admission, the threat wasn't imminent are now claiming that they had been falsely told/convinced that the threat was imminent.
Justin Katz @ 10/28/2003 08:11 PM EST
Then Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was justified. Hell, Germany's invasion of Poland could be justifiable as well. There was no imminent threat but, hey, the Poles could have linked up with the Russians and destroyed Germany.
Now that you've justified pre-emption absent an imminent threat, India can attack Pakistan and North Korea has a legal right to invade South Korea.
Steve @ 10/29/2003 07:52 AM EST
I apologize for being so direct, Steve, but that's just foolish. Going by Catholic Just War Theory, which is about the most rigorous criterion that still allows for war under some circumstances, there are multiple factors that must be considered, so even lacking confidence in the immediacy of the threat leaves many other justifications that would have been valid in the case of Iraq but not in the situations that you list (e.g., the ease of victory).
I'm sorry, but your argument is facile claptrap. Even focusing on imminence, there is obviously a difference between the situation with Iraq and various "might someday" justifications. I've written on this before if you want to look for the argument. I'd go dig it up myself, but the statement that you've just made does little to convince me of your openness to argument.
At bottom, though, it is ridiculous to think that dictatorships and tyrannies would refrain from invasions were the U.S. to "set a good example." After all, whether or not they were justified, Japan and Germany did attack. That's a fact of history.
Justin Katz @ 10/29/2003 10:11 AM EST
>>Going by Catholic Just War Theory, which is about the most rigorous criterion that still allows for war under some circumstances, there are multiple factors that must be considered
Yes, the pope condemned the war on that basis. Funny you should bring it up.
>>Even focusing on imminence, there is obviously a difference between the situation with Iraq and various "might someday" justifications.
Might someday is EXACTLY the justification the adminstration used! Saddam has a WMD and nuke program and he MIGHT SOMEDAY hand them over to terrorists. He might, he may, he could, etc.
>>but the statement that you've just made does little to convince me of your openness to argument.>>
Wow....
Steve @ 10/29/2003 02:13 PM EST
Sorry to surprise you, Steve, but I'm not quite sure why you should be surprised. I've been saying throughout this entry that an endemic problem among those making the anti-Bush, anti-war argument is that they (you) don't address substantive points, but merely restate prior assertions. Whether a lack of openness is intentional or not, it is still the case.
Take your latest comment, in which you employ a strategy that has bugged me since college: you ignore a point made in context so as to take a tangent. Yes, the Pope condemned the war, although it represented a prudential declaration, nothing obligatory or infallible, but there is still significant discussion about his reasons for doing so. Leaving aside the particulars of that argument, it's plain that the Vatican made the case that all criterion of Just War Theory must be met previous to war, and the U.S. lacked one. My point above was not directed at the Iraq war's justness, but was that even if the U.S. did presume too much with a single criterion for Just War, there are other restrictions that would negate the justness of any given "might someday" argument.
As I argued here:
One can act in defense despite a lack of absolute knowledge that an attacker will, indeed, swing his sword a fourth time. On the other end, it would stretch the bounds of expectation to attack France (as gratifying as that might be) on the basis that it is working toward a "second superpower" Europe that might one day attack the United States. (Just War also covers this loophole through the "every other means" requirement.)
There are degrees of "might someday," both bearing on the likelihood and the distance in the future, that affect judgments pertaining to certainty and to exhausting all alternatives to war. In the case of Saddam Hussien, I would still maintain that the "might" was more akin to "almost certainly will" and the "someday" could be translated as "as soon as he can do so and can get away with it," which the Kay briefing suggests was, at most, a few months after the sanctions were lifted.
Justin Katz @ 10/29/2003 02:39 PM EST
The next day...
I want to offer a limited apology, Steve. I could have phrased the openness comment to better describe the impression that I was trying to convey.
The long and short of it is that the arguments against your statement about hostile nations' "legal right" to invade on our precedent seem so obvious that I have doubts that anybody who would make the statement would find arguments against it persuasive. The thrust of my rephrasing is the same, but it's much more limited in application.
Sorry for the too-broad insult.
Justin Katz @ 10/30/2003 07:27 AM EST
Justin, I responded here.
Steve @ 10/30/2003 09:57 AM EST