Progress In Iraq Continues... - Page 3

andyfox · #21 10-18-2005, 01:18 AM

OK, you got me there. That's definitely superior to less simple and/or plain views.

I was thinking more of what passes for mainstream political views. The three biggest foreign policy debates in our country in my lifetime have been 1) the Cold War; 2) Vietnam; and 3) Iraq/War on Terror. The common knowledge and the "spin" given to us by our governments (both Democratic and Republican) have been a bunch of poppycock. Which is how it always is given that, as another poster pointed out, Caesar will never criticize Caesar. The bigger the issue, the bigger the incentive for the government to give us bigger whoppers.

I am a firm believer in I.F. Stone's dictum that every government official is a liar and nothing one says should be believed.

We are fighting for democracy in Vietnam. . .The terorists hate us for our freedom. . . The insurgency is in its last throes. . . There's a missile gap . . . All swallowed lock, stock and barrel by the public because the government said it was so. It takes the critics, the ankle biters, to show us otherwise.

andyfox · #22 10-18-2005, 01:22 AM

"Or is that somehow too 'simple' for you, Andy?"

Yes.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/200...D8DA80EO1.html

MMMMMM · #23 10-18-2005, 01:23 AM

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We are fighting for democracy in Vietnam. . .The terorists hate us for our freedom. . . The insurgency is in its last throes. . . There's a missile gap . . . All swallowed lock, stock and barrel by the public because the government said it was so. It takes the critics, the ankle biters, to show us otherwise.

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Ok, I see your point. But good things can be taken too far and for the wrong reasons too.

If the ankle-biters change their tune when and if Iraq succeeds, then they're on the ball and in the money. But if they don't (provided Iraq succeeds, which of course is yet in question), then theirs is a pathological condition.

MMMMMM · #24 10-18-2005, 01:27 AM

So, that will be investigated. Still you can't claim that no progres is being made in Iraq because the progress being made is broader than that part which may be in question. Therefore it shouldn't be too hard--or "simple"--for you to agree that some progress is being made in Iraq.

andyfox · #25 10-18-2005, 01:38 AM

You got me again--some progress is being made in Iraq.

Seems to me some conservatives are starting to have their doubts. I saw actor/comedian Larry Miller on Bill Maher's show the other night. He had been on a few times previously defending the invasion and the administration. He said now it seems to him that every day the commander tell the troops, "OK, now today we want you to ride up the streets until you're shot at." And the troops says "You mean you just want us to ride around in tanks until they shoot at us.?" And the commander replies, "Who said anything about tanks?"

Anyway, I hope things work out for the best for the Iraqi people and for our boys still over there. I'm not very confident in the ability of our administration to do so. But I hope I'm wrong.

andyfox · #26 10-18-2005, 01:49 AM

Just saw your Middle Path post on the other forum.

Home run. Not that I expected anything less.

Bravo.

And good night. I'm leaving further debate with you here to Sam H., whose posts in this thread show him to be far more qualified than I.

sam h · #27 10-18-2005, 01:51 AM

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Because they're more often correct than the more "sophisticated" liberal elite. It's quite odd, really. I think it has something to do with the fact that many otherwise intelligent people believe in things that "seem right" in theory--such as communism, postmodernism, multiculturalism--but just don't work in the real world.

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I think you have some misconceptions about academia in general, and political science in particular. There are very, very few political scientists who are communists. Similarly, post-modernism, kind of an amorphous concept anyway and not really a coherent belief system, does not have much of a foothold in political science, although that is not true of many other disciplines.

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In my opinion a midwestern dairy farmer is more likely to hold a realistic political view than is a professor of political science on one of the coasts.

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This baffles me. In political science you have a bunch of very intelligent people who have steeped themselves in the study of the actual empirical world. Further, they tend to take fairly seriously the problem of inference. What does it take to make a causal claim about social processes? What kind of evidence would you need?

In contrast, it seems likely that your average midwestern dairy farmer has very little clue about empirics beyond their immediate environs and a rather simplistic view about things like causality.

Are you positing some kind of innate "natural intelligence" that is only perverted by seriously studying the social world?

ACPlayer · #28 10-18-2005, 02:41 AM

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That everyone should mind their own damn business.

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Bravo.

Now how about practicing this and wish you had communicated that to Bush before he started meddling in others affairs (for reasons that shifted day to day, week to week).

MMMMMM · #29 10-18-2005, 07:34 AM

Thanks Andy. Believe it or not I went to sleep last night on a cheerful note after reading your last posts, because it seemed as if I had won two pots in a row. That's better than I've done all month. Now I wake up and sign on and find out it's three pots. So maybe the corner has been turned;-)

MMMMMM · #30 10-18-2005, 07:39 AM

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That everyone should mind their own damn business.

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Bravo.

Now how about practicing this and wish you had communicated that to Bush before he started meddling in others affairs (for reasons that shifted day to day, week to week).

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It doesn't apply there because Saddam's regime had no right in the first place to torture and murder hundreds of thousands of his own citizens and countrymen.

The correct principle is that you have the right to do whatever you wish as long as you are not transgressing on others' rights or liberties. Thus the religious right should shutup and stop pushing for certain laws, and the left should also (regarding certain other laws). But nobody has the right to be a tyrant such as Saddam was, and all free people have the right to fight against true tyranny.