Stardate 20030729.0109

(On Screen): And the debate continues. The updated version of my outline has now been loaded about 11,000 times as I write this, in part because Glenn Reynolds was kind enough to link it, and now today because one of the contributors to the NRO Corner blog has linked to it.

Most response to it has been positive, but there have been exceptions. A couple of those which disagree were noteworthy. First, Patrick Schaefer writes:

This childlike outline is definitely one of the more embarrassing, illogical, naive, and racist attempts to give a rational explanation for the US's illegal invasion of a sovereign country. The outline starts out by criticizing Middle Eastern countries for their "collective failure as nations" without any recognition of the US and UK's historical role in that failure. Historical roles such as creating all these ME states in the 1940s and '50s (yes, the West did just draw lines in the sand), and supporting/using monarchies and dictators to stabilize the region so the West could extract oil--just to name a couple. This failure to even mention the abused history of the region is then compounded by a obviously racist observation that Arab and Muslim culture makes little or no contribution to the world. What! What world is this is he refering to? Quite possibilty it must be the world as seen through the closed mind of someone who thinks US culture is equal to the world. I certainly would not call a region that is the home to the three largest religions in the world (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) as "making little or no cultural contribution." Far from it--most of the world's culture is based on contributions from this region--whether it be in religion as previously stated or from the areas of art, science, geography, and history. This person has such a weak historical background that he has no idea the computer he was using would not have been possible without Arab contributions in the field of mathematics. The weak logic then continues in the second part of the outline where the various rationales for war are laid out. This person doesn't even agree with the Bush administration's attempts at a case for war, since Weapons of Mass Destruction aren't mentioned (sorry Miguel, meta-argument or not everyone has to give a actual reason for invasion, not a meta-physical one). Instead the points given by the writer had a lot more to do with Muslim cultural and economic envy of the US. So, the writer is basically stating that the reason al-Quada, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad are all so against the US is because they're envious of the US culture? That notion goes beyond ridiculous and enters the world of fantasy. Instead of these fanciful points, how about considering the fact that there isn't a single strong democratic country in the region. That there isn't single country in the region which hasn't been abused by foreign forces for many, many years. That many of the people in the region blame the West for supporting dicators, sucking their natural resources dry, polluting their country, pitting them against each other, and generally manipulating an entire region to satisfy the West's hunger for stability and oil. My final criticism comes from the brief and limited way in which the writer considered other non-military solutions to the problem. The writer said that attempting an international criminal justice solution to the problem had been tried in the 1990s and 1980s and that such a method did not work, because the Arab world viewed it as cowardly. What is he talking about? Surely he's not suggesting that the 1980s and 1990s were a time period in which the US supported a robust international court which indicted and prosecuted global terrorism--such a thing has never been supported by the US. The 1980s started out with a major revolution in the region, Iran, because the people of that country were sick and tired of the dictator imposed on them by the US. This revolution exposed all the evils of a regime which had been supported by the US for the past 25 years--is that what the writer meant by international justice? Or did the writer mean the international justice given to the region by the arms-trading Reagan administration, who violated US and international law by negiotating with terrorists to gain political advantage through the release of US hostages. Or perhaps the writer meant the international justice given to the region by the CIA's many, many covert operations in Lebanon. The only solution to global terrorism is not a weak outline which attempts to justify illegal actions--the only solution is the creation of a system of international justice that promises fairness and decency to everyone, not just those countries with the biggest guns and the most money.

(Paragraphing, or the lack thereof, is as it was mailed to me.)

As best I can determine, the argument here is: 1. It's really all our fault. 2. The problem can be solved and the terrorist threat totally abated if the US ratified the ICC treaty.

Meanwhile, Dan wrote:

Interesting that you leave out most of the major reasons for every situation you write about...

Obviously, you don't think your arguments stack up well against reality. And they don't.

A poor, pathetic paranoid's dream world, lead by the blind, justifying everything you know is wrong with cheap rhetorical tricks to impress the unthinking masses...

One thing I will give your masters: they aren't quite as egomaniacal as their mentor: they only ask for a New American CENTURY, as opposed to a Thousand Year Reich.

Just remember: they have no real NEED for you...

Nor do they understand people, military power, or freedom. Enjoy your Brave New World while you can, and just remember, it is all your own doing.

Meanwhile, Matt Yglesias and his readers are dissecting me here. The question of the hour doesn't seem to be the actual argument I made; they're more concerned with attempting to figure out which diagnosis of brain damage and/or mental illness best explains my having written it.

All of which brings me to this article I ran into a couple of days ago. Nathan Newman opposed the war, and on April 10, the day after Baghdad fell, wrote a long post attempting to analyze just why it was that the anti-war movement had so badly failed in making any impact on the national political debate.

Well, let's try a little thought experiment. Let's schedule a debate, and invite a lot of voters. The first speaker stands up and makes a case for one position, laying out his explanation of why the problem happened, and then saying what he thinks needs to be done to solve it, and explaining why he thinks it will help. Then he sits down.

His opponent, on the left side of the stage, stands up, grins at the audience, and pulls his pants down and moons the first speaker. He then returns his pants to their customary position and returns to his seat. End of debate.

If the audience was not partisan ahead of time, which advocate is more likely to have convinced them?

The problem all along has been that the prime tactics adopted by those who opposed war were nearly ideal for simultaneously preaching to the choir and totally alienating the unconvinced center. If the audience at this debate had been a supporter of the left guy already, he'd still win. But if they're neutral before hand, they sure won't be after his performance.

Newman says:

The antiwar movement was a failure. Many of my left friends will point to the "success" of the large rallies organized, but what's the achievement? Tactical successes such as a few big rallies? Rallies are means, not achievements. Why should we praise tactics that coincided with AN INCREASE in support for uniltateral war? The February global rallies seemed to make a small untick in opposition but it was pretty ephemeral.

It has actually been rather difficult to discern any kind of coherent message from the left, given that their main message has been that they utterly despise President Bush and anyone who supports him in any way.

America's political center has been asking how we can remove the danger we face. One of the strongest leftist messages which has been coming through has been this: we shouldn't be trying to remove the danger, because we deserve what's happening to us. Rather than trying to avoid our just deserts, we should try to atone for our sins.

That is not a message which America's center finds acceptable, and oddly enough it hasn't been politically persuasive.

But there's something deeper going on. I think the post-modernist lit-crit left has redefined "success", and it's come back to trap them.

In many academic settings now, the true test of value of some assertion is no longer based on utility, or quality, or correctness, or even consistency. The value is viewed as being proportional to the sincerity with which it was created or embraced, especially if by someone who is not "majority" (read "white male").

That's why you have the almost ludicrous situation where everyone's opinions are supposed to be accepted and given credence solely because they're sincerely held by someone else. "Acceptance" and "sensitivity" are paramount, and any attempt to point out that a given opinion can be demonstrated empirically to be wrong is a form of censorship. After all, empirical reality is a myth; truth is socially constructed; and you're a boor for trying to crush the person's spirit by pointing out that their assertion can be directly disproved. Away to the sensitivity-training gulag with you!

Large rallies against the war were indeed organized. Lots of people who opposed the war showed up, and afterwards felt internal satisfaction at having participated. Within this new way of looking at things, that is a success, or it should have been.

I think that there may have been some sort of deep feeling that if only those demonstrating against the war could somehow adequately communicate how strongly they opposed the war, that this would be enough to convince the rest of us to give up the entire enterprise. If the validity of a point of view is entirely a function of the sincerity with which it is held, then if enough people are emphatic enough about their sincerity, they should prevail for that reason alone.

They've been cultivating their mental toolkit in a highly artificial academic environment, surrounded by a carefully-weeded political monoculture, where what they assert is automatically applauded. They aren't used to the fact that this isn't how things work outside the academic womb.

What was missing from the anti-war movement was any indication that they might need to try to make a cogent case for their point of view, and to present it in terms which would be persuasive to the majority of Americans who did not already agree with them. What was missing was any idea that the uncommitted political center isn't impressed by sincerity, and wants to actually hear an explanation of how a proposed course of action would remove the danger we face.

It still seems to be missing. Many on the left are still spending their time mooning those of us over here who've been advocating war. And it's becoming apparent that they are frustrated by the fact that it doesn't seem to be having any political impact.

They're also deeply worried because we advocates seem to be getting a lot more attention. For instance, in the Yglesias comment thread, Peter Jung says, "Den Beste is a raving psychotic, and it is alarming that someone of his ilk is allotted space on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal."

When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn't seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn't executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives. (This is sometimes referred to as "escalation of failure".)

Attempts by the leftists to show how emphatically they oppose war don't seem to be having any impact. Invective and ridicule has failed to discredit those of us who have been advocating war. (And that's puzzling, too. In college, denouncing someone as being "conservative" would instantly discredit them and silence them. Why hasn't that been working in the debate about the war?)

So they're turning up the intensity of the ridicule and invective. If they can somehow find the right magical ad hominem characterization for their opponents, the opponents will vanish and take their dangerous messages with them. (So if "conservative" doesn't work, maybe "psychotic" or "racist" will.)

By refusing to consider the idea that they might need to engage in cogent debate on the issues, including making attempts to present credible alternatives, they're taking themselves out of the game.