Okay, now you're just making stuff up
By Cori Dauber
An oped in the Times today by a Harvard sociologist who is quite unimpressed with the inaugural. He sees it as the natural culmination of an argument trajectory that is deeply flawed.
His argument:
The stratagem began immediately after 9/11 with the president's claims that the terrorist attacks were a deliberate assault on America's freedom. The next stage of the argument came after no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, thus eliminating the reason for the war, and it took the form of a bogus syllogism: all terrorists are tyrants who hate freedom. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who hates freedom. Therefore Saddam Hussein is a terrorist whose downfall was a victory in the war against terrorism.
Wow. That is a bad syllogism. It's also such a complete caricature of anything the adminstration actually argued it's hard to know where to begin.
First, of course, is that arguments about both the relationship between Saddam and terrorism, and the relationship between Saddam and the oppression of his people were made from the very beginning of the debate over whether or not to go to war against Iraq. I'd date serious administration efforts on that score from the September 12, 2002 speech the president made to the UN. Both those arguments are made prominently in that speech. I'm stunned by the determination of opponents of the war to continue stating as historical fact that there was no justification for the war put forth other than WMDs until it became clear that there were no WMDs. It's just so easy to prove that's incorrect, and so easy to argue that WMDs were the primary justification for the war instead.
Do I even need to point out that while it should be self-evident that not all terrorists are in fact tyrants, all the jihadists do in fact support the construction of a form of government that most people (certainly Americans) would in fact consider tyrannical? Every time they've gotten control of a piece of territory they've imposed Taliban-like rules.
What do you call the elimination of freedom of speech, worship, assembly, movement, any rights (and I mean any rights) for women and gays? Because it ain't a republic.
The author continues:
When this bogus syllogism began to lose public appeal, it was shored up with another flawed argument that was repeated during the campaign: tyranny breeds terrorism. Freedom is opposed to tyranny. Therefore the promotion of freedom is the best means of fighting terrorism.
Well, it was a campaign, so arguments get truncated. But that isn't something the campaign just made up one day: there's plenty of support for that one in the academic literature on terrorism. When governments permit no political discourse, no liberties, provide no outlet for dissent, then the mosque becomes the only outlet for dissent, and the mosques can quickly become radicalized, or at least become the place where radical thought centers, since there's no other place for it.
I mean, I hate to burst your bubble, but take a look at the passports and the bios of the terrorists. It's not, if we go by the highest profile bad actors, poverty that they share as a common biographical factor. We're talking about wealthy (often well educated) and middle and upper middle class guys here. But the ideologists come from Egypt. The actors often come from Saudi. The rank and file come from countries even less free.
The Europeans are immigrants from the same countries. If they aren't first generation, they're from immigrant communities that are notably unassimilated.
So . . . where's the argument here?
He proceeds to this nonsequiter:
The administration's notion of freedom has been especially convenient, and its promotion of it especially cynical. In the first place, there is no evidence to support, and no good reason to believe, that Al Qaeda's attack on America was primarily motivated by a hatred of freedom. Osama bin Laden is clearly no lover of freedom, but this is an irrelevance. The attack on America was motivated by religious and cultural fanaticism.
Yes, and what is that fanaticism about? It is about a hatred both for the way we live (which is a manifestation of our freedom, a wild, uncontrolled pluralism in everything, in thought and deed, in belief, confessional status, in dress and behavior, in the way women act and speak and work and move, all of it), and the fact that we do not live in compliance with the precepts laid out in the Koran -- which is interpreted by al Queda to be a wholistic way of life.
The one thing you can say about al Queda is that they clearly acknowledge no separation between church and state. It's likely they barely understand the concept. So saying "they hate freedom" may be a poor sloganistic way of expressing what al Queda hates -- but it is surely not inaccurate.
I love this:
Second, while it may be implicitly true that all terrorists are tyrants, it does not follow that all tyrants are terrorists. The United States, of all nations, should know this. Over the past century it has supported a succession of tyrannical states with murderous records of oppression against their own people, none of which were terrorist states - Argentina and Brazil under military rule, Augusto Pinochet's Chile, South Africa under apartheid, to list but a few. Today, one of America's closest allies in the fight against tyranny is tyrannical Pakistan, and one of its biggest trading partners is the authoritarian Communist regime of China.
Way to beat that straw man! Excellent job!
More:
Third, while the goal of promoting democracy is laudable, there is no evidence that free states are less likely to breed terrorists. Sadly, the very freedoms guaranteed under the rule of law are likely to shelter terrorists, especially within states making the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. Transitional democratic states, like Russia today, are more violent than the authoritarian ones they replaced.
Despite the (I'm sure unintentional) hilarity of choosing Russia as the paragon of a state in transition to democracy, there's a bit of an argument there. But it is likely not that democracies breed terrorists, but that they shelter them. The reason Europe has such a problem is that the promise of the liberties they provide made them an attractive sanctuary for men on the run from their own, harsher, homeland police and security services. And it is the undemocratic conditions in the unassimilated communities, what are in essence colonies inside urban areas, that some Western European countries have allowed to grow, that produce and breed terrorists in their midst. That and their prisons.
Does that mean that the democratic traditions of Western Europe breed terrorism and should be renounced?
Does that mean we should turn away from helping other countries make the transition?
It may mean, as I've argued before, that transitions need to be handled carefully. Free press first, civil society first, elections last.
This is good:
And even advanced democratic regimes have been known to breed terrorists, the best example being the United States itself. For more than half a century a terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, flourished in this country. According to the F.B.I., three of every four terrorist acts in the United States from 1980 to 2000 were committed by Americans.
Meaning what? that we are forever morally tainted no matter what else is a part of our history, that we can never speak of the power of freedom, of the need to free political prisoners, or the importance of a free press, anywhere else in the world?
Well, could be:
The president speaks eloquently and no doubt sincerely of freedom both abroad and at home. But it is plain for the world to see that there is a discrepancy between his words and his actions.
He claims that freedom must be chosen and defended by citizens, yet his administration is in the process of imposing democracy at the point of a gun in Iraq. At home, he seeks to "make our society more prosperous and just and equal," yet during his first term there has been a great redistribution of income from working people to the wealthy as well as declining real income and job security for many Americans. Furthermore, he has presided over the erosion of civil liberties stemming from the Patriot Act.
I love that part about democracy "at the point of a gun."
When is democracy not won at the point of a gun? Democracy was defended at the point of a gun during World War II, and imposed upon Germany and Japan that way at the end of those wars. Should we have stopped at the border of those countries and said, that's it, you wanted fascism, you got it?
We won our own democracy at the point of a gun, and defended it that way when we secured the Union. Should we have let the Confederacy go its way, lest democracy and an end to slavery have to be imposed at the point of a gun? Slavery, after all, was an indigenous cultural institution at the time, was it not?
Poll after poll shows how the majority of the Iraqi people feel, but as long as a few thousand, out of millions, are willing to slaughter at will in a sick and twisted strategy for gaining media attention, then our efforts to defend the many, and give those millions a chance at having their own voice for the first time in two generations, that's imposing democracy at the point of a gun.
How else will the voice of the Iraqi people, and not just the sickest and most twisted, and most evil among them be heard?
This argument just enrages me.
You bet your ass we're imposing democracy at the point of a gun. Because no society should be left to the hands of men willing to pack an ambulance with explosives in order to get close enough to a wedding party to blow it up.
Have civil liberties declined? The line between liberty and security is a zero sum game, but there's no perfect place for that line to be drawn; in time of war that line will inevitably be moved. And every time it has been, it's gone to the courts, and over and over again the administration has lost. How's that for the great erosion of civil liberties?
There's no internment, no Sedition Act, no evidence of a massive change in the way we live other than the pain in the ass lines at the airport -- which most people are greatful for, push come to shove.
I know, I know, some people have felt the pinch. Well, at the end of the day those people are having their day in court, and there is still no comparison to the way we live and the way people live in the countries that produce terrorists, and the idea that the president of the United States isn't a voice that matters in the spread of freedom and democracy is a fantasy.
The rest of the piece is given over to the assertion of an argument that there are two forms of freedom in this country, which is why other countries believe we're hypocritical speaking about freedom but the president can, essentially, wink and nod to his domestic supporters.
Interesting, but no sale on the mere assertion of something so nuanced. |
