All posts by Colin Anderson

Appeal to Ignorance, Charles Krauthammer, Equivocation, General discussion, Post hoc ergo propter

How many angels tend petunias on the head of a pin?

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Although I intended another installment of the Krugman challenge, I couldn’t resist when I saw Charles Krauthammer taking a page from the Tobacco industry to defend his cherished invasion of Iraq.
>The question posed — does the Iraq war increase or decrease the world supply of jihadists? — is itself an exercise in counting angels on the head of a pin. Any answer would require a complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, as well as construction of a complete alternate history of the world had the U.S. invasion of 2003 not happened.

Krauthammer gives us the standard spin control on the NIE (we should remember that that E stands for estimate)–that the question whether the invasion of Iraq increased the numbered of Jihadist can’t be answered. Krauthammer claims

>Any answer would require a complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, as well as construction of a complete alternate history of the world had the U.S. invasion of 2003 not happened.

But that simply is not true. We estimate the effects of all sorts of things based on complex calculations with estimates of factors that are difficult to “measure” precisely and the consideration of alternate scenarios. Most policy papers are rife with precisely these sorts of answers. This is akin to the Tobacco industry defense of cigarette smoking: Establish an unreasonable level of certainty required to answer the question and then criticize every argument that fails to reach that level of certainty. This might be a sub-type of the fallacy appeal to ignorance. Strictly speaking the appeal to ignorance should conclude that the NIE is false, but Krauthammer is in effect arguing that since we can’t know with certainty and precision, we can’t have any reason to believe one answer or the other.

>Ah, but those seers in the U.S. “intelligence community,” speaking through a leaked National Intelligence Estimate — the most famous previous NIE, mind you, concluded that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, slam-dunk — have peered deep into the hypothetical past and found the answer.

The argument seems to be even stronger if you can question the accuracy of your opponents other studies. Thus, people sometimes argue that scientists have changed their minds about what is healthy over time. And since they disagree with themselves we have no reason to believe that their current claims are justified. Unquestionably the intelligence community make mistakes–and in this case one that facilitated 20,000+ American casualties–but that is not an argument against these conclusions. It is a sort of ad hominem argument that calls into question the credibility of the arguers rather than the argument itself. Sometimes these sorts of arguments are justified, but it isn’t clear that because the intelligence community made a mistake about invading Iraq that we should reject all subsequent intelligence estimates. (And one wonders whether Krauthammer would make the same argument below when he agrees with part of the NIE).
>Everyone seems to have forgotten that Iraq was already an Islamist cause celebre and rallying cry long before 2003. When Osama bin Laden issued his declaration of war against America in 1998, his two principal justifications for the jihad that exploded upon us on Sept. 11, 2001, centered on Iraq: America’s alleged killing of more than 1 million Iraqis through the post-Gulf War sanctions and, even worse, the desecration of Islam’s holiest cities of Mecca and Medina by the garrisoning of infidel U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia (as post-Gulf War protection from the continuing threat of invasion by Hussein).

Here Krauthammer argues that the NIE is wrong that Iraq has become a cause celebre for Islamists because it already was one before 2003. This is equivocating. Where the NIE claims that Iraq is a cause celebre in the sense of bringing thousands of foreign fighters to attack American trooops in Iraq, Krauthammer reads cause celebre as reason to attack America. Iraq may have been a rallying point within the Islamist anti-American rhetoric prior to 2003, but it is only since the invasion that it has been a reason for thousands of foreign fighters to leave their homes to attack American troops.

>Moreover, does anyone imagine that had the jihadists in Iraq remained home they would now be tending petunias rather than plotting terror attacks?

But, Krauthammer ultimately likes part of the NIE–the part that says that we must defeat the Jihadists in Iraq after having attracted them there. This he think is the new justification for the continued presence of American troops in Iraq. After having created thousands of Jihadists who would otherwise be “growing petunias” at home, we must stay until we kill them or they might go home to grow petunias.

>It is clear that one of the reasons we have gone an astonishing five years without a second attack on the American homeland is that the most dedicated and virulent jihadists have gone to Iraq to fight us, as was said during World War I, “over there.”

Films, oversimplified cause, Suppressed Evidence

Subjunctive arguments

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The political media we try to analyze need not be limited to the op-ed pages of the major dailies. Last weekend I watched the Gitmo: The New Rules of War, a 2005 documentary by Swedish filmmakers Erik Gandini and Tariq Saleh. Now, I wouldn’t want to say that a documentary can be exhaustively or perhaps even adequately analyzed by logic alone. Nevertheless, there are clearly inferences made or suggested that can and should be judged by logic.

The narrator states in the opening minutes of the film “We have come here because we want to know what is really going on in Guantanamo.” They discover (apparently to their surprise) that hidden cameras are not going to be possible and that they are not going to gain access to Camp Delta.

Their second route for information–a Swedish citizen named Mehdi Ghezali, held for two years–frustrated their intentions by refusing to say virtually anything to the press or to the filmmakers (though he has since written a book in Swedish).

At this point, the film makes the entirely reasonable criticism that the prisoners in Guantanamo are neither afforded the protections of the Geneva Convention as prisoners of war nor afforded the civil rights protection of civilian prisoner. This, they point out, results from the American interest in interrogating these detainees for extended periods of time–something that would not be possible if they were accorded either of these status (4th declension? or statuses?”).

But such a position would not make for an interesting documentary. Instead, the filmmakers attempt to link the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo with the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. They suggest that the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib can be used to infer how prisoners are treated inside Camp Delta. Their case rests on the following claims:

  1. The change of the commandant at Camp Delta to General Miller, replacing Brig. General Rick Baccus–reputedly because he opposed the list of unconventional interrogation techniques. Baccus’ unwillingness to comment on these events, the filmmakers seem to suggest, is a result of some sort of pressure from the military.
  2. The memo that requests permission in October 2002 to use techniques such as forcing prisoners to stand naked, lengthen interrogation sessions (to 20 hours), take advantage of prisoner phobias. (They ignore the subsequent history of this issue–the techniques were at first approved by Secretary Rumsfeld and then approval was retracted for many after criticism of the policy by military lawyers.)
  3. The fact that the Major General Miller was later sent to Iraq in August 2002 to advise concerning interrogation techniques. (Though supposedly he presented the interrogation techniques from Guantano as an example of policy and indicated the difference in situations between Iraq (as an occupied territory) and Guantanamo).
  4. “Some say these methods originated in Guantanamo, but we just haven’t seen the pictures.” (The scene immediately following this quote, contains accusations that rap music, Fleetwood mac, and sex are used to crack prisoners at Guantanamo.)

Even granting the truth of all of these claims, this argument can at best only weakly suggest anything about how detainees were treated in Guantanamo. (I am certainly not denying that human rights abuse were or are committed in Camp Delta (there are documented and prosecuted cases) only that the evidence used by these filmmakers to suggest that it is likely that it is ocurring is not adequate. In each case, the filmmakers fail to appeal to any direct evidence of the treatment in Guantanamo, and they ignore the more detailed investigations of three major comissions (e.g. Schlesinger Commission).

The argument,such as it is, commits several fallacies I think–ignoring evidence, appeal to questionable authorities, and oversimplified cause. The abuses photographed at Abu Ghraib seem to have arisen in part because of peculiarities of the local situation (lack of adequate resources for example). Although there are undoubtedly similarities in interrogation techniques, the inference that the filmmakers want us to make seems inadequately justified by the argument presented.

Sometimes filmmakers claim that they are merely documenting the facts and leave it up to the viewer to make the inferences. This seems to me (in the abstract at least) either disingenuous or naive. Although the filmmakers prefer to couch their assertions in the subjunctive rather than the indicative mood, this doesn’t really allow them to escape–they must still show that the conclusions are rendered more likely than not by their evidence. Many viewers will probably find the film “biased” which may or may not be a failing in a documentary film. The problems, however, run deeper than this. The filmmakers fail to make the argument needed to persuade the viewer of the plausiblity of their subjunctive speculation.

Argument Analysis, General discussion, Op-Eds and other opinions, Paul Krugman

Play along at home (Krugman on vacation edition)

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Well Paul Krugman chose to duck our challenge by taking a vacation: We’ll be waiting when he re-surfaces.

In place of the Krugman challenge today, I went trolling for silly op-ed pieces. Fortunately, Townhall.com is a one stop shop for silly op-ed pieces on the right.

In place of my long-winded analysis, I invite you to see whether you can find the fallacies in these two pieces, while I keep scouring the web for the liberal version of such a site.

Why liberals love adultery

Are videotaped beheading covered by Geneva?

Argument Analysis, Good Arguments, Op-Eds and other opinions, Paul Krugman

Krugman Challenge Day 2 (I heart Krugman edition)

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Today we’ll take another stab at the logic of Paul Krugman’s column (Times Select). Once again, the Krugman Challenge is an attempt to examine whether Paul Krugman commits fewer egregious logical sins than some of his colleagues. We are looking strictly speaking for commission of traditional logical fallacies, though considering along the way how his arguments work and whether they are made adequately explicit.

Krugman offers an argument for universal health care on two grounds:

>If we had a universal system — Medicare for everyone — there would be no more horror stories like those reported by The Los Angeles Times. And we’d almost certainly spend less on health care than we do now.

The first of these grounds is his concern for the majority of the column. The story from the L.A. Times provides some details of cases where people have purchased individual insurance, become sick, and then found their insurance company revoking coverage for various technical reasons. Krugman cites only 1 case and then asserts:

>This trend helps explain something that has been puzzling me: why is the health insurance industry growing rapidly, even as it covers fewer Americans?

Of course, Krugman has only cited one anecdote with a reference to the LA Times article on Sunday.

The original article claims that these cancellations–or at least the complaints and lawsuits that issue from them–have been suffered by people with individual insurance plans (of which there are 2 million in California) rather than group plans.

So is there evidence of a “trend” that can explain (or help explain) the rapid growth of the health industry? Well that’s hard for me to judge based on the data before me, and I will have to leave that to someone with access to relevant data. But it seems reasonable to take, in this case, the evidence of a series of lawsuits including depositions that show (“But an employee said in a deposition last year that a special department considers as many as 1,500 cases for cancellation each week in California alone. A consumer lawyer who saw Blue Cross’ cancellation tally sheets described the department as a rescission factory,” and coupled with regulators interest in these practices to suggest the existence of a “trend” (even though none of this evidence is directly cited in the article, the reference to its source seems more than adequate).

Can this trend provide explanation of the growth of the industry? Krugman doesn’t give us any particulars. However, immediately after this he talks about the growth of the industry as measured by employment, dazzling the reader with a series of statistics whose relevance to the question seems tenuous.
>Health care is poised to become America’s largest industry. Employment in manufacturing, which once dominated the
economy, has fallen 18 percent since 2000, to 14.2 million.

To which he adds:

>Yet even as health care becomes the core of the American economy, our system of paying for health care remains sick, and is getting sicker.

The sickness of health care is reflected in the decline of employment based coverage forcing either people to remain uninsured or seeking individual insurance. This coupled with the trend of jettisoning costly coverage where possible results in a trend towards only the healthiest and wealthiest having good insurance.

We will leave his comparison of the inefficiency of private health providers and the efficiency of government systems for another time when he offers a fuller argument for it.

So, how should we assess his argument? Once again Krugman avoids any glaringly fallacious argumentation. His argument is under-developed, but not in an obviously flawed way. There is a little bit of fuzziness connecting the “trend” of revoking coverage and the claim that it “helps explain” the growth of the industry. We have no real sense of the magnitude of the effects of this trend, or whether there are better explanations for the growth (such as providing increased services (as evidenced by increased employment?) to increased markets?). But, if the companies are interested in jettisoning costs (in some cases illegitimately) we must assume with Krugman that they are doing this as a result of “market pressures.” And so it must have some effect on their profitabiliy.

Nevertheless, since Krugman’s conclusion is that a public health care system would avoid cases like the one’s reported in the LA Times and cost less money, the part of his argument supporting the first claim seems adequately defended. (These cases are caused by the profit motive. In a public system profit motive is absent. Therefore these cases wouldn’t occur.)

Seems we will be returning for Krugman Challenge, Day 3!

Argument Analysis, Op-Eds and other opinions, Paul Krugman

Krugman Challenge, Day 1

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We have often claimed that Krugman does not make the same sort of logical mistakes as our friends George Will, David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer do. Might be time to see whether that is in fact true. Today Krugman gives us this explanation (sorry not free access) of the Bush administration’s fascination with violating the Geneva Convention:

>So why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people? To show that it can. The central drive of the Bush administration — more fundamental than any particular policy — has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president’s power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it’s a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they’re asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary.

This nicely illustrates some of the problems of interpreting and logical analysis. If we were to represent the text as an argument, we might say:

1. The central drive of the administration is eliminating all limits on president’s power.

2. The Geneva Convention is a limit on the president’s power.

3. Therefore, the administration wants to show that it can ignore the Geneva Convention.

It is a valid inference (if 1 and 2 are true, then 3 must be true) represented like that. Yet when we re-read the original passage something seems amiss.

Krugman takes for granted the conclusion as the initial fact and hence we are dealing with an explanation rather than an argument. (The difference between an argument and an explanation can generally be identified by asking the question whether the premises provide reason to believe the conclusion is true, or whether the “premises” answer the question “why the conclusion is true?”)

But then we must ask whether there is reason to believe that this explanation is the “best explanation.” And here we would expect some argument.

But Krugman doesn’t give it to us, instead he admits that this rests on his belief that

>”torture appeals to the president precisely because it’s a violation of both law and tradition.”

He doesn’t give any reason for this. He should. (But not to give an argument for one’s premises is not a a violation of the rules of logic. All arguments begin from premises that are unjustified within the argument. But one should be willing (and able) to provide justification of the premises when requested).

But the problem is that it is not a terribly persuasive explanation. And Krugman surely realizes that it is a controversial. He is, in effect, claiming that President Bush and Vice President Cheney are motivated primarily by a lust to expand the president’s power and that their policies on torture are motivated primarily by this lust.

There are, it seems to me, plenty of other more plausible explanations. For example, nothing more is needed than the claim that they don’t care about constraints, coupled with a claim about their rejection of the evidence that torture does not produce reliable intelligence is adequate to explain their motivations.

Of course, Krugman could reply that he has rejected this explanation by presenting the evidence that torture cannot provide reliable intelligence (as an argument from authority):

>Is torture a necessary evil in a post-9/11 world? No. People with actual knowledge of intelligence work tell us that reality isn’t like TV dramas, in which the good guys have to torture the bad guy to find out where he planted the ticking time bomb.

>What torture produces in practice is misinformation, as its victims, desperate to end the pain, tell interrogators whatever they want to hear. Thus Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi — who ABC News says was subjected to both the cold cell and water boarding — told his questioners that Saddam Hussein’s regime had trained members of Al Qaeda in the use of biochemical weapons. This “confession” became a key part of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq — but it was pure invention.

But, for this to be an argument against the proposed explanation (mine above), we would need to believe that the Bush Administration listens to the relevant “authorities.” Recent history suggests that they do not. There seems to be good reason to believe that the Bush administration really really does believe that torturing suspects will make America safer, just as they seem to have believed that invading Iraq would make America safer.
Once again, it is important that this is a failure at the level not of logic (validity) but of truth (soundness). I may not find his argument sound, but I don’t think he commits any fallacies.

General discussion, John Tierney, Maureen Dowd

How to avoid Nonsequitur

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When I taught Logic for the first time years back I was tempted to spend very little time on the section in Patrick Hurley’s Introduction to Logic that deals with distinguishing argumentative from non-argumentative texts. In this chapter, students learn the ability to distinguish texts that contain inferences from texts that lack them. Examples of the latter include

  • Illustrations: "Great presidents are made not born. So, Roosevelt became the great leader he was only after much development.
  • Statements of belief: "The most difficult problem facing this country, I believe, is economic inequality."
  • Report: Median wages in real dollars have remained stagnant over the last twenty years, while the proportion of income earned by the top 5% of households has increased. This is an increase in economic inequality.
  • Explanations: Economic inequality has increased because median wages have remained stagnant while the proportion of income earned by the top 5% of households has increased.

Students tend to find this section hard, I think. It requires a great deal of interpretive ability to precisely define many passages and the distinctions between them are sometimes hard to identify in practice. The same "content" can be expressed in both argumentative and non-argumentative forms. The difference is one of intention and connection between statements. I have come to see that time spent on these distinctions is extremely important for learning logical analysis. (A great exercise is to have the students express the same content in as many of the various categories as possible. For those without a copy of Hurley handy, the section distinguishes between: warnings, advice,statement of belief, loosely associated groups of statements, reports, expository passages, illustrations, explanations, and conditionals.) I bring this up to elaborate on J.’s comments here explaining some of the reasons that we tend to "pick on" certain columnists more than others. J. points out that these columnists argue for their claims, but often do so badly. This morning I gave the op-ed pages at WaPo and NYT a quick read and found that there was nothing to comment on. No arguments to analyze and no fallacies to uncover. And I thought it might be useful to explain this. Today, our friend George Will reports the argument of Thomas B. Edsall in a book titled Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power. Reporting another’s argument is a non-inferential "speech act." If we found a fallacy in Edsall’s argument we might explain it, but Will is safe from our analysis today. John Tierney follows suit with an exposition of the capitalist philanthropy a la Google and Whole Foods. Tierney doesn’t merely report another’s views and arguments as Will did. Instead he couples this reporting with statements of his own belief: >"It’s smart of Google’s founders to try using capitalist tools to save the planet; the market’s discipline should keep their philanthropy from backing too many lost causes. Still, whatever Google.org accomplishes, I’d bet that it will pale next to the social good accomplished by Google.com." I don’t know whether I agree with anything that is said there, but the crucial point is that there is no inferential content. Just a series of assertions of Tierney’s beliefs. Finally we cometo Maureen Dowd. In two years of scrutinzing the op-ed pages of the NYT we have never (I think) raked Dowd over the coals. Today’s column can illustrate why this is so. Once again, it is the lack of inference and argument. Dowd’s columns are generally combinations of statements of her beliefs and reporting with a few witticisms thrown in. >He has changed American culture, for sure. Bustling under Bill Clinton, the nation is now insecure about its moral force and military force. The president should take responsibility for the hash he’s made, instead of insisting every decision was correct, and come up with more astute cultural and military analyses. The “awakening” should be W.’s. Once again, I don’t know how much of her three claims here I agree with, but there sure isn’t an inference in sight.

Ad Hominem, George Will, Straw Man

Willful ad hominem

To add to J.’s discussion of Will’s straw liberal argument:

The absurdity of the argument becomes clearest to me in his final example:

>The current issue of the American Prospect, an impeccably progressive magazine, carries a full-page advertisement denouncing something responsible for “lies, deception, immorality, corruption, and widespread labor, human rights and environmental abuses”” and for having brought ”great hardship and despair to people and communities throughout the world.”

>What is this focus of evil in the modern world? North Korea? The Bush administration? Fox News Channel? No, it is Coca-Cola (number of servings to Americans of the company’s products each week: 2.5 billion).

So, a progressive magazine has an advertisement criticizing Coca-Cola for labor abuse, human rights abuse, and environmental abuse and Will’s response is to point out the number of coke’s served each week.

This staggers me. What possible relevance to the ad could the number of Cokes possess? Is anyone questioning whether Coke tastes good? Or that it sells well?

Will might respond that it shows the degree to which ordinary americans like the taste of coke and progressive magazines take advertisements from people who think Coca-Cola engages in various forms of injustice. True. But again, what possible relevance to the ad does that have? And, even if we read Will’s comment this way, does it even show that progressives are “out of touch” with americans? That a magazine takes an advertisement from someone criticizing Coca-Cola, suggests this as much as the NYT taking an advertisement from Firefox (1 billion Microsoft Explorers bought!) suggest that the NYT is out of touch with americans. The argument, even given the kindest possible interpretation is stunningly misleading.

But then it becomes clear. As pointed out yesterday. It isn’t responding to actual arguments that Will is interested in. He only wants to portray liberals as condescending and out of touch with regular Americans and the rest of the ideological caricature that substitutes for serious criticism of liberalism in the last 20 years.

Just as in the case of Wal-Mart, Will doesn’t have any interest in responding to the actual criticisms leveled against it, but instead he engages in quasi-populist demagoguery and ad hominem argument based on the caricature of liberals as snobs and elitist. Note the wonderful ad hominem swipe at John Kerry:

>Which vexes liberals such as John Kerry. (He and his helpmeet last shopped at Wal-Mart when?)

Ignoratio Elenchi, Red Herring, Robert Samuelson

Samuelson, redux

Robert Samuelson argues that although judged by “objective” measures (i.e. tests) the U.S. lags many other countries in science and math education, we succeed through our “informal learning system.” This informal learning system redresses some of the failures of our high schools. Evidence for this claim is a study that shows older americans are less deficient in literacy and math than younger americans. Samuelson begins by pointing out this strange phenomenon in comparative international test scores.

>Today’s young Americans sometimes do well on these international tests, but U.S. rankings drop as students get older. Here’s a 2003 study of 15-year-olds in 39 countries: In math, 23 countries did better; in science, 18. Or consider a 2003 study of adults 16 to 65 in six advanced nations: Americans ranked fifth in both literacy and math.

Samuelson attributes this improvment to the “informal learning system.” A notion that is so broadly defined as to include presumably anything that might contribute to learning. Further, it isn’t clear why “community colleges et al.” are better described as “informal” than “formal.” Certainly “self-help” books fall into the informal category.

>The American learning system is more complex. It’s mostly post-high school and, aside from traditional colleges and universities, includes the following: community colleges; for-profit institutes and colleges; adult extension courses; online and computer-based courses; formal and informal job training; self-help books.

But the centerpiece he talks about in his column seems to be the formal parts of the “informal learning system” (community colleges and Univeristy of Phoenix’s internet courses are singled out) He seems to suggest that they have an large impact on the math and literacy scores of older americans. Whether this is true or not, Samuelson doesn’t provide any evidence. At this point his argument seems to be that there must be some explanation for the test scores cited above. The explanation cannot be formal learning system, therefore it must lie somewhere in the “non-formal” learning system. If this latter notion is defined broadly enough, then this seems to be a reasonable argument. But regretably in order to be a reasonable argument it must lack any real explanatory power. Samuelson is essentially claiming that the explanation for the learning that the test scores above suggest is that learning occurs somehow.

But all of this argument seems completely unconnected from the points that Samuelson draws at the conclusion. First of all he identifies two undoubted “virtues” of the american system:

>First, it provides second chances. It tries to teach people when they’re motivated to learn — which isn’t always when they’re in high school or starting college.

>[Second] The American learning system accommodates people’s ambitions and energies — when they emerge — and helps compensate for some of the defects of the school system.

As was pointed out by my colleague, a more natural inference than praising our “informal learning system” might be to demand improvement of these defects.

His conclusion involves a curious shift of topic–one smells herring.

>But the American learning system partially explains how a society of certified dummies consistently outperforms the test scores. Workers and companies develop new skills as the economy evolves. The knowledge that is favored (specialized and geared to specific jobs) often doesn’t show up on international comparisons that involve general reading and math skills.

But very little evidence has been given to show that the “informal learning system” should be credited with this, or that it does in fact “partially explain” our national success in “production.” Further, the phenomenon from which Samuelson starts is precisely the age connected change in scores on “international comparisons that involve reading and math skills.” Now , however, he has shifted the topic to the vocational skills that Americans acquire informally. The argument presupposes a connection between the two, which he here, in the last sentence (above), denies. Finally, there seem to be many other possible explanations for our “productivity advantage.” The connection between vocational learning acquired “informally” and increased productivity needs to be argued.

There may be more than some truth in Samuelson’s account of the “informal learning system.” But whether it is there would require tighter argument than we are given here. I’m not sure that his argument is entirely fallacious–perhaps it is better described as a little “loose.” If I were to identify fallacious tendencies they would lie somewhere between Ignoratio Elenchi and Red Herring. As an argument for the explanation of the disparity between our test scores and our productivity, it seems weak.

Ad Hominem, Ad hominem tu quoque, John Tierney

Et tu quoque Al Gore

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John Tierney, no friend of the global warming camp, discusses “carbon footprints” this morning in his “Times Select” column (sorry, no free access). Al Gore he says:

He advises you to change your light bulbs, insulate your home, and cut back on driving and air travel. If you must make a trip, he notes helpfully, “buses provide the cheapest and most energy-efficient transportation for long distances.”

And yet,

Fine advice, and it would be even better if he journeyed to his lectures exclusively on Greyhound. But he seems to prefer cars and planes. When you tally up his international travel to inspect melting glaciers and the domestic trips between his homes — one in Washington and another in Nashville, not to mention the family farm in rural Tennessee featured in the movie — you’re looking at a Godzilla-sized carbon footprint.

Tierney doesn’t draw the fallacious conclusion–that Al Gore’s position (we should reduce our carbon footprints) is false. Instead he seems to be suggesting the conclusion, which is not necessarily fallacious, that “Al Gore is a hypocrite.”

We should note that although this is not necessarily fallacious, it isn’t obvious that the evidence above provides good reason to believe that Al Gore is in fact a hypocrite. In fact, Al Gore–much to the chagrin of many environmentalists–has always favored various market solutions to carbon emissions:

Gore and David say they offset their energy usage by sponsoring reductions in greenhouse gases through alternative forms of power and energy conservation (like building wind farms and paying farmers to turn methane into electricity).

But, how does Tierney argue that this isn’t sufficient? By invoking the judgment of a more radical environmentalist position:

Quoting Gandhi — “Be the change you want to see in the world” — Komanoff says his fellow environmentalists should stop offering “get out of purgatory free” cards [carbon offsets] to the rich and instead insist that everyone personally reduce energy use.

So apparently, Gore’s position is not internally hypocritical, though Komanoff disagrees with it. Nonetheless, Tierney thinks that if you want to work to reduce carbon emissions you must accept Komanoff’s positions:

I’m not such a purist myself — I’d let the average person salve his conscience with a carbon indulgence. But I’d hold environmentalist preachers like Gore to higher standards, especially when they’re engaging in unnecessary energy use.

The tu quoque fallacy is an interesting one. If one is too explicit with the fallacy, it isn’t very effective. But subtle forms of it–like Tierney’s here–which assert hypocrisy and therefore suggest that the messenger and the message are somehow compromised are very effective. Most readers of Tierney’s column will probably conclude that because Al Gore is a hypocrite his arguments and prescriptions do not need to be taken seriously.

Charles Krauthammer, Equivocation

Rationalizing the ratio

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Often, as we’ve noted before, columnists eschew careful argument altogether preferring textbook rhetoric to assert and bolster a basic claim. Krauthammer’s column today fits this bill. “Disproportionate in What Moral Universe? rejects the claims that the Israeli response to the recent Hezbollah initiated conflict is “disproportionate.”

In just war theory it is a proportionality between the use of force and the end that is being achieved by the use of force (and not “tit for tat”). It’s not clear that Krauthammer has this notion in mind. He seems to equivocate on the notion of proportionality throughout his column. Generally he suggests that the Israeli response is not out of proportion to the Hezbollah attacks:

In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London Blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.

Israel’s response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut

But, the notion of proportionality should be sought between the end and the means:

On Wednesday CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas?

The end that the Israeli government offers is the safety of its citizens achieved by disarming/weakening Hezbollah and creating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Proportionality thus requires that the force used is in proportion to the effect desired. Another way of expressing this would be to say that the military means should be enough to effect this goal without causing additional destruction or damage. If they destroy more than is needed to effect the goal, then the case that their war is just will be undermined.

The claims of “disproportionate” response arise because it seems very likely that Israel is targeting sites outside of southern lebanon and with not obvious connections to Hezbollah (relief trucks, Lebanese military bases, UN observer posts, communication resources, infrastructure, etc.) In addition they are targeting areas where there is “support” for Hezbollah resulting in civilian casualties. The Israeli government would claim that Hezbollah is using civilian populations as “human shields.” (Salon has an interesting piece claiming that Hezbollah militants mistrust civilian populations here).

But while granting that the Israeli government has the right to respond to the attacks and eliminate the threat of future attacks by Hezbollah, critics are arguing that many of the targets are spurious for these goals. We can’t evaluate the truth of that claim here. But the burden of proof lies with the perpetrator of the acts and such proof is not provided by Krauthammer’s vague and unsupported claims about legimate targets and military necessities.

Nevertheless, whether this is true or not, Krauthammer does not address the real question of whether targeting Lebanese army bases and relief trucks is justified by the proportionality requirement. Instead he equivocates between two senses of proportionality, with an excessive rhetoric that would justify virtually any act of violence committed in the Israeli attack.