Letters to the Editor
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Utter Delusion From nabalzbbfr
nabalzbbfr:
Talk about fantastical thinking! I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of what you lefty visionaries forsee happening once we capitulate and leave the Middle East to its own devices.
No one here has advocating leaving the Middle East to its own devices. This is a classic strawman argument. It has nothing to do with what anyone here is advocating.
However, it does accord with the sort of either/or thinking that comes with the authoritarian mindset and low level integrative complexity--most notably:
• See solutions to geopolitical problems in either/or terms (win-lose).
and
• Construct stereotyped images of ingroup and outgroups.
Since we are arguing that "victory" is impossible, then by low-level logic, we must be advocating capitulation and leaving the Middle East to it's own devices. This is not just an isolated inference nbalzbbfr has drawn, however. It is part of a stereotyped image he has of who liberals are, and what and how they think. The stereotype is so strong, that he can't even hear real live liberals talking to him. He hears his own stereotype speaking instead. This is how this primative level of thinking sees things.
Furthermore, the notion that military force is the be all and end all also reflects low-level of integrative complexity:
• Argue in simplistic terms about geopolitical problems, only drawing conclusions from one relevant dimension.
as well as:
• Derive preferred solutions to geopolitical problems from an exclusive ingroup perspective.
and, of course:
• Be highly susceptible to the values, opinions, and strategies adopted by perceived ingroup authorities.
It's instructive to realize that all these manifestations of low level integrative complexity were implicitly present in nabalzbbfr's construction of a straw man argument. Traditionally, very little attention has been paid to analyzing fallacious reasoning beyond identifying it as such. Yet, it's quite clear that simply pointing out fallacies in reasoning has virtually no effect on rightwing arugments. We need some bigger guns--not necessarily to stop rightwingers from making such arguments (you might as well try to stop bullshit from smelling), but to more effectively discredit those arguments and prevent them from influencing others.
To continue...
Some kind of nirvana I expect, like you envisioned after the end of the cold war. We followed your advice, let our guard down and unsurprisingly 9/11 ensued.
This description is so utterly mistaken in so many different ways, one hardly knows where to begin. So let's start with something familiar: No one expected nirvana after the end of the Cold War--another straw man argument there.
Next, we note the influence of projection: It was, of course, the avid Cold Warriors who created the Taliban, first by arming the most extreme factions of the Mujahadeen, and then by abandoning Afghanistan once the Soviets left. It was not liberal utopians who created al Qaeda by ignoring what was happening, it was the Neocons.
As for "letting our guard down," it was the Clinton Administration that tried to refocus attention and funding on fightng terrorism. And they had to fight the GOP Congress every step of the way in doing so. Not only did they develop new programs, and allocate more money to existing ones, they initiated a bi-partisan security review, precisely to provide guidance in refocusing security policy to meet probable 21st Century threats. It was called the Hart-Rudman Commission, and one of the things that it warned about was the virtual certainty of a terrorist attack on the United States. Republican members of Congress wanted to introduce legislation based on the report as early as Spring of 2001, but the Bush Administration told them to hold off--they were going have Dick Cheney convene his own security task force, after his energy task force wound down.
This, on top of everything else we already know about how they ignored the warnings given by Richard Clarke and others, and even in the Presidential Daily Briefing, warning of an imminent al Qaeda attack. Furthermore, the Neocons security blueprint, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" makes no mention whatsoever of a terrorist threat against the American mainland. The only terrorist threat it mentions at all is that terrorists and paramilitaries could gain a presence in out space!
In short, every way you look at it, it was the Bush Administration and the Neocons who took a utopian view, ignoring the gathering threat of terrorism from the early post-Cold War period right up through 9/11. Blaming liberals for ignoring the threat is a collosal act of projection.
It's also false that liberal's advice was followed at the end of the Cold War. There was a reduction in military spending, to be sure. But that's only natural, since we were no longer facing a hostile superpower. However, we still had a military doctrine that could only be described as ludicrously paranoid: it called for being able to fight and win two simultaneous regional wars, without allies--something that America had never had to do in all its previous history, and something that America should not have even contemplated trying to do, since the absense of allies would be the surest sign that whatever war we were embarked on was fatally mistaken in one way or another.
The sufficiency of the Clinton military was proven by the military success in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which were accomplished quickly with minimal allied involvement. However, Bush ignored every single principle in the Powell Doctrine--most notably, the lack of a clear, publicly supported mission, and the lack of an exit strategy. (The two are intimately connected, since you exit once the mission is done.) In short, everything that Clinton could have been expected to do, he did, short of actually capturing bin Laden. He had prepared everything, both on the terrorist-fighting front, and in terms of military readiness. It was Bush and the neocons who failed, every step of the way.
I was going to continue but time, space, and energy all run short. I've said enough.
Enough!
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Several things
First off, Paul -- wow -- and a heartfelt thank you. Your analysis and persistance are both admirable. Thank you. I particularly emjoyed how you took what shooter and nanbob (whatever) wrote and identified each level/point.
Glenn, I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of sending a cut and paste of this post (without updates) to my local talk radio type -- with whom I have established an email relationship -- because it fits his mindset completely. I have been keeping up with his rhetoric and matching him as best I can through my tiny blog and through email. I refuse to call into his show for obvious reasons. Just to put the guy's thinking in context -- he believes that "American should kill all of its enemies" while castigating the mayor of our city (a Democrat) for "attacking retarded people" (which isn't accurate). I'm not kidding.