Category Archives: Straw Man

Ad Hominem Abusive, General discussion, Politicians, Straw Man, Weak Analogy

What is a war anyway?

Michael Chertoff, Homeland security czar (that’s not what they call him, but they might as well), today writes an op-ed directed against some recent remarks of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor. Brzezinksi has claimed that we’re not involved in a “war” on terrorism; terrorism is a method, not a group or a state or a thing (like drugs). Brzezinski argues that we have failed in the war on terror precisely because we have approached it as an actual (and not a metaphorical) war. Rather than working to prevent terrorism, capture terrorists, and do the other things that will prevent more terrorism (like, and this is just a suggestion, capturing bin Laden), we have incorrectly militarized what is primarily a political issue. Of course war is politics by other means, but Brzezinski’s argument is that we can’t achieve a military victory against a non-military enemy. And, more than that, the enemy in this instance yearns for the authenticity and legitimization that only we can provide (by calling it a military war).

Leave it to Chertoff–the one who lamented the possibility of “clean-skin” (i.e., white) terrorists–to misunderstand Brezezinski’s point. He writes:

>Brzezinski stated the obvious in describing terrorism as a tactic, not an enemy [“Terrorized by ‘War on Terror,’ Outlook, March 25]. But this misses the point. We are at war with a global movement and ideology whose members seek to advance totalitarian aims through terrorism. Brzezinski is deeply mistaken to mock the notion that we are at war and to suggest that we should adopt “more muted reactions” to acts of terrorism.

Right–He doesn’t see the threat. Now bring up Iran:

>The impulse to minimize the threat we face is eerily reminiscent of the way America’s leaders played down the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary fanaticism in the late 1970s. That naive approach ultimately foundered on the kidnapping of our diplomats in Tehran.

We were not and are not at war with Iran. So that wasn’t a war either. Analogies only work if things can be compared. Sure, no serious person doubts that terrorists will do violent and awful things if they get a chance. This doesn’t, however, make it a war. And furthermore, calling what they do a war doesn’t change what they do. It only changes what we do. And what we’ve done so far has been an abysmal failure.

Contradictions, Formal Fallacies, George Will, Straw Man

Equal rights

There’s a lot to complain about in this confused George Will op-ed. One could point out the limbaughesque caricature of “liberals”:

>Liberals, dolled up in love beads and bell-bottom trousers, have had another bright idea, one as fresh as other 1970s fads. Sens. Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer and Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, high-octane liberals all, have asked Congress to improve the Constitution by adding the Women’s Equality Amendment, which, like the Equal Rights Amendment before it, says: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

But I’d rather focus my attention on the following blaring confusion. Since Will can never be bothered to examine any of his opponents’ actual reasons for their views, he just makes them up. So he wonders why someone would need an equal rights amendment when the courts–you heard that right–found them to be a consequence of the 14th Amendment:

>March 1972 was a year after the Supreme Court cited the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment when invalidating a law that involved discrimination on the basis of sex. And March 1972 was 10 months before the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade.

I’ve lost count of how many columns Will has written undermining that very principle of constitutional interpretation. And he finds the very principle of such litigation–i.e., the kind of litigation that clarifies the proper interpretation of the laws–odious:

>If Kennedy and like-minded legislators think that the condition of American women needs improvements, they should try to legislate them. Instead, they prefer to hope that liberal judges will regard the ERA’s language as a license to legislate. But, then, support for the amendment testifies to the supporters’ lack of confidence in their ability to persuade people to support such policies.

And someone might point out that a constitutional amendment is a form of legislation.

George Will, Straw Man

De ira

This passage is not without a little irony:

>The politics of disdain — e.g., Howard Dean’s judgment that Republicans are “brain dead” and “a lot of them never made an honest living in their lives” — derails politics by defining opponents as beyond the reach of reason. The anger directed at Bush today, like that directed at Clinton during his presidency, luxuriates in its own vehemence.

In the first place, we expected the man with the argument (and perhaps that could be his nickname) would not confuse what someone is saying with how he or she says it. One sees this too often, in my estimation. People (of all political stripes) use the terms “bash” or “slam” to describe any kind of disagreement, no matter what the foundation. And so Joe Klein, for instance, cannot distinguish Eric Alterman’s criticism from “personal attacks.” O’Reilly and many of his colleagues portray any criticism as “vicious” and “personal.”

George Will ought to know better. But he doesn’t, he writes (from earlier in the piece):

>There are the tantrums — sometimes both theatrical and perfunctory — of talking heads on television or commentators writing in vitriol (Paul Krugman’s incessant contempt, Ann Coulter’s equally constant loathing).

Whatever you say about Krugman, he knows the difference between an argument and name calling, and it’s hardly proper to compare him, or any mainstream liberal talking-head, to the purposely theatrical Ann Coulter. As we have argued elsewhere, Krugman is one of the few liberal writers who argues for positions in the same fashion as Will. That is to say, he advances reasons to accept his position, or as is often the case, reasons to reject the conclusions of others. Krugman offers reasons for his contempt. To call it “incessant contempt” is to confuse the passion with which the conclusion drawn with its cogency.

The irony of Will’s lesson in civil discourse, however, consists in his consistent and well-documented failure to exemplify that in his own writing. How often, and this is a rhetorical question, has Will presented any opposition to his view as moronic?

Robert Samuelson, Straw Man

The two Gores

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The war on Al Gore is really the specialty of the Daily Howler, but with all deference to Bob Somerby, let me take a stab at it today. The old war on Gore involved the claim that he had a kind of pathological obsession with becoming President of the United States. On this theme, the New York Times’ Healy and Leibovich:

>For Mr. Gore, who calls himself a “recovering politician,” returning to Capitol Hill is akin to a recovering alcoholic returning to a neighborhood bar.

That gratuitous aside puts the whole idea of testifying before Congress back in the old light of Al Gore will do or say anything to become President. But that’s par for the course, and has been amply demonstrated by the above sources.

Luckily we still have Al Gore to kick around. And, like Charles Krauthammer, we can question his grip on reality. So in today’s Post Robert Samuelson writes:

>Global warming has gone Hollywood, literally and figuratively. The script is plain. As Gore says, solutions are at hand. We can switch to renewable fuels and embrace energy-saving technologies, once the dark forces of doubt are defeated. It’s smart and caring people against the stupid and selfish. Sooner or later, Americans will discover that this Hollywood version of global warming (largely mirrored in the media) is mostly make-believe.

And the rest of the op-ed is filled with claims about our extensive use of coal and its contribution to greenhouse gases and so forth. Kudos to Samuelson for not doubting the science of global warming like his colleague, George Will. But like George Will, Samuelson is guilty of confusing the Hollywood story on global warming–necessarily fantastical–with actual probable policy recommendations offered by experts. On any charitable interpretation of what Al Gore is saying, one can’t draw the conclusion that a magic wand will make the whole thing go away. But one can conclude, as has Gore, that there is a major obstacle to progress of any kind on the issue–the will to implement policies aimed at clean and renewable sources of energy.

This is where the new script meets the old one. Isn’t Al Gore some kind of political addict who thrives on the complexity of policy making (rather than simple-minded Texas bromides about the good and the evil)? At least Samuelson didn’t stick to that script.

George Will, Straw Man

Notional Enemies

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Like all Marines, I spent a lot of time at firing ranges. It turned out however that sometimes these ranges lacked even fake targets. As a result we had to wage a kind of fake and frustrating war on an elusive “notional enemy.” One encounter with an actual enemy, however, gave me a new appreciation for the notional one. George F. Will, WaPo wordsmith, baseball fan, and resident raconteur, has made career out of this tactic. Real enemies, like real arguments, are hard to defeat; better to confront the fake ones. Although we are wearying of Will’s consistently fallacious claims, his nauseous elitism and his neo-conservative soap-boxing, today Will leads off with a real gem: >By striking down the District of Columbia's extraordinarily strict gun control law, which essentially bans guns, a federal appeals court may have revived gun control as a political issue. Perhaps I’m uninformed, but I was unaware that gun control had ceased to be a political issue. To argue that gun control has lain “dormant” lo these many years and that this federal court has now awakened some gun-toting, right wing giant is simply ridiculous. Will (inexplicably) wants to warn the Dems to look out for the right-wing gun nut majority that is now building steam. There’s not really an argument to be had there, so Will simply manufactures a premise that supports his tale of woe. We’ve seen this before, with our Beloved Leader. In lieu of an actual enemy, I’ll construct one, defeat it, and claim victory. I. Am. Awesome. Will isn’t ready to relinquish the traditional form of his preferred fallacy just yet, however: >Erwin Chemerinsky, professor of law and political science at Duke University, argued in The Post last week that even if the Second Amendment is construed as creating an individual right to gun ownership, the D.C. law should still be constitutional because the city had a defensible intent (reducing violence) when it annihilated that right. Go through the link in Will’s piece to Dr. Chemerinsky’s article. It’s actually a very nuanced claim about exactly what types of rights are enumerated in the Constitution and what types of rights the federal courts seem to be implying in their recent gun-control cases. Yet, Will ignores the built-in limitations of the 9th Amendment and mischaracterizes this piece as espousing some sort of paternalistic theory of Constitutional hermeneutics to prove the willingness of left to trample the rights of the people in their rush to take away all our guns. Here’s the payoff: >If the Supreme Court reverses the appeals court's ruling and upholds the D.C. gun law, states and localities will be empowered to treat the Second Amendment as the D.C. law does: as a nullity. This will bring the gun control issue — and millions of gun owners — back to a roiling boil. That is not in the interest of the Democratic Party, which is supported by most ardent supporters of gun control. Oh, is that right? -pm

David Brooks, False Dichotomy, Straw Man

Welcome Back

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For those with “edu” email accounts, the New York Times Select pages are now free. That means once again we can read David Brooks, a man who has been wrong about everything. It’s been a while. But maybe some will remember David Brooks‘ favorite logical trope: the false dichotomy. For Brooks, the false dichotomy results from a straw man. First, he caricatures the opposition viewpoint, then he sets up that caricature as the unacceptable alternative in a false dichotomy. So today he misreads Carl Levin’s speech yesterday in the Senate. Brooks says:

>The intelligence agencies paint a portrait of a society riven at its base with sectarian passion. They describe a society not of rational game theorists but of human beings beset by trauma — of Sunnis failing to acknowledge their minority status, of Shiites bent on winner-take-all domination, of self-perpetuating animosities, disintegrating bonds and a complex weave of conflicts.

The problem is that no one argues (and no one’s view can be taken to imply) that Iraqi society is composed of “rational game theorists.” And the falsity of that claim does not imply the somewhat orientalist notion that Iraqi society is “riven at its base with sectarian passion.” So not only does that claim infantalize the Iraqis, grossly mischaracterize Levin’s argument, but it also fails to take into account the obvious fact that sectiarian passions can take shape in the mind of rational game theorists.

category mistake, Jonah Goldberg, Straw Man

So yesterday

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Jonah Goldberg recently claimed to be interested in arguments–real arguments. But nope. You can’t really be interested in real arguments when the backdrop of your analysis is this:

>Maybe I’m remembering this wrong. But I could have sworn we spent the last seven years talking about how the Republican Party is the party of backward red states–where hate is a family value, fluffy animals are shot, and God is everyone’s co-pilot–and how the Democratic Party is the avant-garde of the peace-loving, Europe-copycatting blue states, where Christianity is a troubling “lifestyle choice,” animals are for hugging, and hate is never, ever a family value.

You’re remembering it wrong indeed. What’s weirder is the paragraph which follows the above:

>Admittedly, over time the red state-blue state thing was eclipsed by other cliches about how the GOP had been hijacked by “theocrats” or by K Street corporate lickspittles, warmongers, immigrant-haters, hurricane-ignoring nincompoops and, for a moment during the Mark Foley scandal, cybersex offenders. I can dredge up all the relevant quotes, but if you’ve been paying attention, I shouldn’t have to.

Cliches? Perhaps someone can remind Goldberg that facts are not cliches.

Academics, Straw Man

Intellectual liberals

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We’ll give Dinesh D’Souza a break today–and maybe tomorrow as well. But don’t worry, we’ll come back for him (in the meantime, he seems to be having trouble remembering his book’s thesis).

A colleague of mine sent me an article from the Chronicle Review where Russell Jacoby reviews some recent works by conservative writers and calls them “facile.” That’s not a difficult charge to substantiate in that he includes P.J.O’Rourke among conservative intellectuals (Note to conservatives–we think you can do better than Bill Kristol, the Kagans, George Will, David Brooks, Dinesh D’Souza and V.D. Hanson). If anyone knows of conservatives of intellectual heft please notify professor Jacoby.

We’d like to point out the spectacularly dumb version of the “liberal intellectual” he contrasts with the conservative one. While the conservative eschews the confines of academia for the think-tank, the liberal wraps himself in an impenetrable haze of verbosity. He writes:

>Several answers suggest themselves. Leftists largely inhabit the academy, and the professoriate does not prize elegant writing. On the contrary, it distrusts clear prose as superficial. Oddly, English and literature professors led the way. A trip to Paris, a bottle of wine, a Foucaultian appetizer, and a Derridaian main dish, and they became convinced that incomprehensibility equals profundity.

>Over the years the menu has changed, but the damage has been done. Leftist scholars continue to believe that clotted language confirms insight; to write well receives little regard. Consider the ringing conclusion of a recent manifesto of the radical intelligentsia, Eric Lott’s The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual: “If patriotism itself is rethought as ‘plural, serial, contextual and mobile,’ in Apparduari’s words, then postnationalist collectives of labor and desire might earn the devotion they deserve.” Lott — yes, an English professor — crafted that sentence.

This is what someone (I don’t remember who) called nut-picking. It’s the practice of trolling through the comments on a (usually liberal) blog in order to find someone who says something crazy that confirms the idea that all of the people on that blog are crazy. So Jacoby picks a sentence out of the context of an academic discussion for the same purposes. Someone out to remind him that audience matters. Second, since Jacoby seems to believe that academia is clotted with liberals, perhaps he could find one or two who write clearly, forcefully and intelligibly on matters of public concern:

>Remember that key fact Al Gore mentions in An Inconvenient Truth, that a statistically insignificant number of peer-reviewed scientific journals questioned the reality of global warming and the role of human activity in causing it, but over fifty percent of journalistic articles did? Well, that’s the kind of intellectual irresponsibility that actually endangers lives by passing along misinformation that is created by people with an obvious material interest in keeping our defenses down. It hides under the guise of “objectivity,” but that’s nonsense. Are there two sides to the debate over whether gravity exists as well?

That was impenetrable. Especially the part about gravity.

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

Wasn’t me

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Before the 2003 Iraq war–the one that’s still going on now–some argued (Here’s Molly Ivins–may she rest in peace–from 2003) that removing Saddam might lead to ethnic bloodletting on a massive scale (1991 Dick Cheney among them). How things change when the foot’s on the other shoe:

>Of all the accounts of the current situation, this is by far the most stupid. And the most pernicious. Did Britain “give” India the Hindu-Muslim war of 1947-48 that killed a million souls and ethnically cleansed 12 million more? The Jewish-Arab wars in Palestine? The tribal wars of post-colonial Uganda?

>We gave them a civil war? Why? Because we failed to prevent it? Do the police in America have on their hands the blood of the 16,000 murders they failed to prevent last year?

That’s not the accusation. The claim is we knew or should have known a civil war was the likely consequence of our willful ignorance of the realities of Iraqi political and ethnic realities and our Rumsfeldian strategy for giving them a free society–where people are free to live life and make mistakes. Knowing that such violence and bloodshed and chaos and destablization of the whole region was the likely consequence of our action, and doing it anyone, makes us morally responsible. Do we pull every trigger and cut off every head and blow up every Mosque? Nope. But that hardly means we’re not responsible for that happening.

Ad Hominem, David Brooks, Straw Man, Weak Analogy

Something borrowed

That’s the post. I borrowed almost all of this from someone with more time and a New York Times account to illustrate a point we’ve been trying to make in recent weeks. Most major pundits have been disastrously wrong about Iraq. Wrong in the sense of having held beliefs that (1) did not at the time correspond with reality; and (2) made predictions that did not turn out to be the case and never were likely to turn out to be the case; but most disturbingly, (3) rather than defend the cogency of their own positions they ridiculed those who didn’t have the nous or the spine to agree with them or see things their way. So two examples of the wisdom of David Brooks courtesy of Matthew Yglesias

>1. April 10 2004:

>Come on people, let’s get a grip.

>This week, Chicken Littles like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were ranting that Iraq is another Vietnam. Pundits and sages were spinning a whole series of mutually exclusive disaster scenarios: Civil war! A nationwide rebellion!

>January 25, 2007:

>Iraq is at the beginning of a civil war fought using the tactics of genocide, and it has all the conditions to get much worse. As a Newsweek correspondent, Christian Caryl, wrote recently from Baghdad, “What’s clear is that we’re far closer to the beginning of this cycle of violence than to its end.” As John Burns of The Times said on “Charlie Rose” last night, “Friends of mine who are Iraqis — Shiite, Sunni, Kurd — all foresee a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that would absolutely dwarf what we’re seeing now.”

In April 2004 Brooks attacks the people who suggested imminent disaster (and who were right about it) on the grounds that civil war and national rebellion are logically exclusive. As we have learned–they’re not; it’s possible for all of the Iraqis to fight each other and us at the same time.

>2. September 18, 2004:

>As we saw in El Salvador and as Iraqi insurgents understand, elections suck the oxygen from a rebel army. They refute the claim that violence is the best way to change things. Moreover, they produce democratic leaders who are much better equipped to win an insurgency war.

>January 25, 2007:

>The weakness of the Bush surge plan is that it relies on the Maliki government to somehow be above this vortex. But there are no impartial institutions in Iraq, ready to foster reconciliation. As ABC’s Jonathan Karl notes in The Weekly Standard, the Shiite finance ministries now close banks that may finance Sunni investments. The Saadrist health ministries dismiss Sunni doctors. The sectarian vortex is not fomented by extremists who are appendages to society. The vortex is through and through.

“As we saw in El Salvador. . . ” shows the distance Brooks’s mind had to travel to come up with an analogy. A bad one. El Salvador bears no significant resemblance to Iraq to ground such a comparison. Besides who was it who claimed that “violence is the best way to change things”? I can think of one person.