Here's Cheney's response to questions about the failed strategy in Iraq.
Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs. You've got to deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we've made major progress, we've still got a lot of work to do. There are a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet. There's more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.Do you see my problem? Is he saying that we can't stop killing Iraqis and destroying their country because that's what the terrorists want? Is he saying that once he and Bush make a bonehead mistake they can't reverse course because they've got to show those terrorists just how pigheaded they can be?
But the biggest problem we face right now is the danger that the United States will validate the terrorist strategy, that, in fact, what will happen here with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, with the pressures from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task --
Is there a rational argument in there that I'm missing?
Someone else seems to have a problem with Cheney Logic ....
13 comments :
I'm happy to let John Stewart's comments stand for me on this one. I just wanted to point out that, around 7:50 in the video, a shot of what I'm just about sure is Maher Arar appears at the lower right. Looks like Blitzer asked Cheney about the case, and Cheney ducked it.
Looks like I read this just in time -- YouTube yanked the video over copyright issues.
Is there a rational argument in there that I'm missing?
Relax, you're not missing anything. Well, not anything rational. What you're missing is that rationality is irrelevant to international power politics. In that realm, you have to do what works, not what makes rational sense. That's the mistake that all liberals make when they poke their noses into the international arena: they think they can induce rationality in the foe simply by being rational themselves, and human nature doesn't work that way.
Is he saying that we can't stop killing Iraqis and destroying their country because that's what the terrorists want? Is he saying that once he and Bush make a bonehead mistake they can't reverse course because they've got to show those terrorists just how pigheaded they can be?
None of the above. First of all, most of the Iraqis who have died, have died at the hands (and bombs, bullets, mines, IEDs, etc.) of other Iraqis. Second, he's saying that we can't cut and run from Iraq because no matter what you liberals tell yourselves and each other about the real reason for it, everyone else on the planet will see it as a victory for the terrorists. Terrorists are simpleminded entities that "reason" using a simpleminded system: behavior which is punished is avoided, while behavior which is rewarded is reinforced. (Why an evolutionary scientist wouldn't understand this, and be able to reason out its consequences, is beyond me.)
Retreat by us is a reward for them, and will reinforce the behavior that led to the reward -- ie, more terrorism. Victory by us is a punishment for them, and will dissuade terrorism. Yes, it really is as simple as that.
Wolfwalker says,
That's the mistake that all liberals make when they poke their noses into the international arena: they think they can induce rationality in the foe simply by being rational themselves, and human nature doesn't work that way.
So the alternative is to assume that your foes are irrational and copy their behavior? Well, I'll give you one thing, that certainly explains why neo-cons are irrational.
Retreat by us is a reward for them, and will reinforce the behavior that led to the reward -- ie, more terrorism. Victory by us is a punishment for them, and will dissuade terrorism. Yes, it really is as simple as that.
Wait a minute. You're trying to trick us. That has the outward appearance of being a rational (but stupid) argument. But we all know that you neo-cons intend to behave irrationally just like the terrorists you think you're trying to emulate.
You're trying to trick me but I'm not falling for it.
So the alternative is to assume that your foes are irrational and copy their behavior?
Not entirely. A third alternative is to mirror your foes' irrational behavior back at them, but in a strictly controlled and focused way. That is what I think Bush wanted to do with the Iraq invasion.
If you think the idea of "focused and controlled irrationality" is itself irrational, well, it is. Sometimes the only rational response to an irrational situation is irrational behavior. And humans are inherently irrational creatures. Look at you, for example: you know by harsh experience that you can't reason with religious fundamentalists about evolution, but you think you can reason with them about terrorism. How is that belief rational?
Wait a minute. You're trying to trick us.
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps I'm trying to trick you into continuing to think in your old ways, and trusting your own inherent irrationality to keep you from seeing that those old ways don't work. We Sith Lords are masters of misdirection, you know...
wolfwalker wrote: "everyone else on the planet will see it as a victory for the terrorists"
The terrorists got their victory the moment we insanely attacked Iraq. Getting out would be a victory for us over the insanity of a Bush/Cheney administration.
So Wolfwalker, if I understand you correctly, "terrorists are simpleminded entities that 'reason' using a simpleminded system" but they are also irrational and can only be beaten with irrationality.
If you accurately reflect the current administration's thinking, it's no wonder the war in Iraq is going so well.
If you're someone who assumes that violence is always irrational, then yes, that's exactly right. The terrorists are simpleminded -- enough so that they believe death is preferable to life, that mass murder is a glorious thing, that religious differences are worth killing for, that violence is the first choice for getting one's own way, and that attempting to avoid fighting is a sign of weakness.
On my scale of values (and I assume yours as well), most of those beliefs are indeed irrational. Unfortunately, I see no rational way to convince the terrorists of that. But as long as they hold those beliefs, they're a threat to me and to the people I hold dear. Eliminating the terrorists by means of controlled violence -- controlled irrationality, in other words -- is the only rational course of action I can find.
The war in Iraq is not going well because the administration underestimated the irrationality of its foes -- both the ones in Iraq, and the ones here at home. No one in the administration or its supporters expected any of the Iraqis to be irrational enough to try to create a new totalitarian regime when they'd just gotten rid of one, or to throw away their newfound freedom in an orgy of sectarian infighting. And for certain-sure none of us expected the Western Left to be so irrational as to throw away everything it ever believed, and start arguing that the freeing of twenty-six million humans from a foul tyrant was a bad idea, while abandoning twenty-six million humans to guaranteed civil war and a genocide that would rival Rwanda was a good idea.
No one in the administration or its supporters expected any of the Iraqis to be irrational enough to try to create a new totalitarian regime when they'd just gotten rid of one, or to throw away their newfound freedom in an orgy of sectarian infighting.
In other words, the administration overlooked one of the most basic aspects of mid-east geopolitics: that the countries comprising it are not simply another America just waiting to be freed from it's own "foul tyrants" in order to become a prosperous Jeffersonian democracy. Anyone, and I mean anyone with even a perfunctory knowledge of Iraqi history could've predicted an outbreak of ethnic strife. Hell, it happened to British twice when they occupied it in the early 20th. century.
And for certain-sure none of us expected the Western Left to be so irrational as to throw away everything it ever believed, and start arguing that the freeing of twenty-six million humans from a foul tyrant was a bad idea, while abandoning twenty-six million humans to guaranteed civil war and a genocide that would rival Rwanda was a good idea.
OH PLEASE! Are you people still peddling that silly strawman that the left "thinks it was a bad idea" to remove Hussein from power? You're removing all context from the decision to topple Saddam (the context that is coming back to bite us in the ass as Iran spreads it's influence and Iraq continues to descend into civil war) and in the height of irony are accusing the "Western Left" of irrationality. It's your brand of Wilsonian claptrap that created this mess, it wasn't the "Western Left".
A scattering of violence here and there was to be expected, yes. 2000-lb truck bombs, religious-fanatical warlords commanding armies of thousands, and more than twenty thousand dead from purely sectarian violence was not. As far as I know, no one now living has seen anything like this.
In four years since the invasion, I haven't seen a single liberal of any note or stature say that removing Saddam was anything other than a mistake. I haven't seen a single liberal of any stature admit that there were valid reasons to remove Saddam. I haven't seen a single liberal of any stature offer any sensible ideas on how to improve the situation and end the violence. (Note that I do not consider "cut and run" a sensible idea.) You won't say the invasion was a good idea executed badly. You won't even consider the idea that it was probably the best of many bad alternatives at the time. All you do is snipe and snark, snark and snipe. And you insist on placing the worst possible interpretations on any and all actions taken by the administration.
If you were on this side of the argument, rather than that side, the positions were reversed, would you see any reason to listen to what you were saying?
The terrorists are simpleminded -- enough so that they believe death is preferable to life, that mass murder is a glorious thing, that religious differences are worth killing for, that violence is the first choice for getting one's own way, and that attempting to avoid fighting is a sign of weakness.
The US soldiers are simpleminded -- enough so that they're willing to risk their lives to go to a war zone, that they cheer on the indiscriminate bombing and shooting of civilians, that religious and political differences are worth killing for, that invading a country for trumped-up reasons is better than diplomacy, and that objecting to using patently false "intelligence" as a justification for war is a sign of irrationality.
The war in Iraq is not going well because the administration overestimated its own skills and underestimated its own tragic lack of understanding. The real irrationality is that thousands of dead on every side in Iraq has not changed the administration's mind about the iron-clad rightness of what it's doing.
The US soldiers are simpleminded
I suggest you never express such an idea around soldiers. After all, if they're as simpleminded and barbaric as you think they are, they won't think twice about killing you for saying it.
Of course, they aren't simpleminded, and everyone who knows anything about the modern military knows that. All officers and a majority of NCOs have a four-year degree. Many have the equivalent of master's degrees in their chosen specialties. In the advanced technical fields, PhD-equivalents are not particularly unusual. Doesn't sound like a bunch of simpletons to me.
In fact, the only thing that soldiers seem to have a lot of trouble understanding is the attitude of the civilians who have never served in the military and never been within five thousand miles of a battlefield, who get all their information from sources that are known to be untruthful and unreliable, and yet think they understand the military and the battlefield better than professional soldiers with several years of combat experience do.
I'm with them. I don't understand that either.
Ah, sweet wolfwalker, obviously I was not calling soldiers simpleminded -- I've been one myself, and I understand the job and respect what they do.
What I was pointing out was that your generalizations about terrorists and Iraqi insurgents reflect an uninformed and ignorant view. It's too easy to make broad generalizations about a big class of people, and it gets us nowhere -- it's certainly not something you want to base policy on, either, though you are suggesting just that.
And let me stop you in case you're going to claim that I'm siding with the terrorists or something like that. I disagree with your characterization of the enemy, and I necessarily come to different conclusions about what should be done about them. C'est tout.
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