Arguments I Love: The "Support Our Troops" Argument
and:
Kinsley on the Right's Associated Web of Sophistries

I've complained a lot about the "support our troops" argument. Stripped of its finer points, it goes like this:

Even if you don't support the war, you must support our troops. Supporting our troops means supporting the war. Therefore you must support the war.

Tarted up just a bit, it goes like this:

Even if you didn't support getting into the war, you must support our troops. Supporting our troops means supporting the war now that it's started. So you must support the war now that it's started.

This argument is a beautiful piece of sophistry for a couple of reasons.

First, because it equates supporting the troops with sending them to war--even if that war is unjustified or unnecessary.

Second, because it entails that we are obligated to support any war once it is started, no matter how misguided or disastrous.

As Kinsley puts it, this argument is "not war-specific." It has roughly the form:

For any x, if x is a war, then, once x is started, you must support x.

This is an extremely dangerous and irrational argument. If the patent absurdity of this argument isn't enough to allow you to see through it, you should at least be able to recognize that some wars, though begun, should not have been continued. But this argument entails that all citizens--including, e.g., the unfortunate citizens of the Third Reich--are always obligated to support a war once it has begun.

In today's Post, Michael Kinsley explores the complex web of sophistries that has grown up around this argument, including arguments about funding the troops. Republican talking-points go like this: if Democrats seriously think that this war is misguided, then they should de-fund it. If they don't, then they are hypocrites. If they do, they hate our troops. So they'd better fall in and start admitting that this war is a great idea.

As Kinsley points out, if they really expect us to accept all these arguments, they'd better hope that every war that this country ever starts from here on out is a good idea, as they seem to believe that we are obligated to support them all.

Er, unlike Kosovo, of course...

Of course in reality Republicans don't really accept the general principles they are committed to here. They rather want the public to support the war, and they flailed about until they found a vaguely plausible argument for the conclusion they already held. Two seconds' thought would demonstrate to them that this argument is fallacious. When a Democrat some day takes us into a war with which they disagree, they'll immediately drop this argument--as well they should. Well, of course, they actually should never have accepted it at all, of course.

But is a smidgen of intellectual honesty too much to ask for? Given that no advocates of these arguments will stick by them when the tables are turned, one might hope they'd admit this and quit using them now. But, of course, they won't. Honesty in general--and intellectual honesty in particular--is just not the forte of this group.