What's Going On In Iraq, part 2
My answer is still 'I don't know.' I'm still currently inclined to think that Iraq is a kind of political Rorschach test for most of us: pro-war folk tend to "see" success, anti-war folks tend to "see" failure. But I heard an interesting piece on NPR yesterday--they interviewed four people (a neo-con, a Jordanian journalist, a retired general or somesuch, and someone else), asking each to answer the question 'who's winning in Iraq?' I only listened once, but I'd summarize the answers as follows:
1. Nobody yet but it's a little more likely that we will...in about ten years.
2. Nobody.
3. They are.
4. Suicide bombers are the last weapon in their arsenal, so there's some reason for optimism.
I was a bit more pessimistic after the story than I was before it.
My answer is still 'I don't know.' I'm still currently inclined to think that Iraq is a kind of political Rorschach test for most of us: pro-war folk tend to "see" success, anti-war folks tend to "see" failure. But I heard an interesting piece on NPR yesterday--they interviewed four people (a neo-con, a Jordanian journalist, a retired general or somesuch, and someone else), asking each to answer the question 'who's winning in Iraq?' I only listened once, but I'd summarize the answers as follows:
1. Nobody yet but it's a little more likely that we will...in about ten years.
2. Nobody.
3. They are.
4. Suicide bombers are the last weapon in their arsenal, so there's some reason for optimism.
I was a bit more pessimistic after the story than I was before it.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:15 AM
4 Comments:
Totally agree about Afghanistan--another innocent slain by the Iraq war. So much opportunity down the drain.
Gosh, I'm such an ideologically-blinded idiot...
I'm so ashamed.
The stupid principle I was stupidly appealing to goes something like this:
If I have approximately equal reason to believe experts or eyewitnesses A and B, and they give conflicting reports, and those reports are all I have to go on, then I can't know who's right.
Your point seems to go roughly like this: "But here's what expert/eyewitness A says!!! How can you be so idiotic as to not listen to A???"
My claim to lack knowledge in this matter depends on no tricky or non-standard conception of knowledge. I find it odd that you would identify that as the source of disagreement.
Perhaps I'm under-informed, but I believe myself to be non-stupid.
Perhaps this is an appropriate place to give some dialectical advice. I hope you won't mind. If someone of apparently good will says "gee, I'm genuinely puzzled about X," it probably won't help your case much to say something tantamount to "anyone who is confused about this is an idiot."
Thanks for the links, however, and I do agree about the objective measures of success/failure that you cite--that is, I agree they are good indicators.
A,
I don't mind forcefulness, I mind self-righteous partisan blindness. I don't know that you have that affliction, but I'm starting to wonder...
You make good points on the one side of the argument. Thanks for that. You ignore, however, the evidence on the other side. Pardon my crankiness in the previous comment, but, given that I'd just been pointing out that partisans tend to look at only the arguments supporting their preferred conclusion, you might understand my irritation that you proceed to give the evidence only for your side and to suggest that only a dimwit would deny it.
The suggestion that I was using a non-standard sense of 'know' was particularly nonsensical.
There are some well-known measures that are less easily spun--MWH of electricity generated, etc.--and you do mention those, so I'm with you there. Such measures give people like you and me something objective to work with, and that's good. That way we don't have to rely completely on hearsay.
There are also eyewitnesses including ordinary Iraqis that concur with your conclusion.
What you fail to recognize--but what's crucial in this discussion--is that many experts and ordinary Iraqis deny the assertion that we are losing. That is, people far more knowledgeable than we are say that we are wrong. That can't just be dismissed by pounding on the table and sneering at them.
IMHO, the preponderance of evidence indicates that things are going badly in Iraq.
What I deny is that it is obvious that we are losing the war, and that only a fool would think otherwise.
Perhaps that's true, but I don't see it. Partisan blindness is the order of the day, and my suspicion is that it's driving the apparently unwarranted certainty I see on both sides of this debate.
p.s.: I wasn't taking personal offense at the comment. I don't really have the *get offended* gene. But it bugs me that everybody's so certain about what's going on over there--but they disagree about what it is.
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