Wrong to be right, right to be wrong, redux
By Thoreau
Greenwald has a post up about the fact that those of us who were right for 8 years are still considered “not serious”, even when information comes out vindicating us (like, say, a former Homeland Security Secretary saying that terror alerts were based on politics rather than serious intelligence). The basic charge seems to be that although we were right, we were merely guessing the worst based on blind, partisan hatred.
Let’s start by taking the charge at face value: If the basic assertion is that you could get it right for 8 years simply by guessing the worst, what does that say about the Bush administration? What does that say about its defenders? If the “serious people” were consistently less accurate than a stereotypical Democratic Underground poster whose magic 8 ball always says “Chimpy will do evil!” then perhaps the allegedly “serious” people should hang their heads in shame, you know?
Second, while no doubt some of the people who consistently got it right were simply partisans, some of us actually had reasons for our views. What were some good reasons? Well, in no particular order:
1) They kept killing the Number 3 guy in Al Qaeda. When they first started getting these guys in late 2001 it seemed like a good idea, but surely by 2003 or 2004 there was reason to be suspicious. By spring of 2005, even on Hit and Run (certainly a blog with a good share of hawkish commenters) there were commenters comparing the latest Al Qaeda Number 3 to a Spinal Tap drummer. At some point, it became clear that they had no idea what they were actually doing.
2) Some of the other guys that they got weren’t too impressive either. I mean, yeah, a few of the cells that they claimed to bust had some scary stories, but did anybody seriously think that one dude was going to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch or whatever? Seriously? The Flight 93 hijackers, disciplined men with months of preparation, were foiled by ordinary citizens who’d had less than an hour to process intel obtained via cellphone (better than the CIA’s record, btw) and now we’re supposed to quake in our boots at idiots whose main goal was to steal cash from Al Qaeda?
3) Despite the number of Number 3 guys being killed, they would continue to periodically say “We have information indicating that someone somewhere might try to attack something with some unspecified means at some time.” Um, yeah, we figured that out on Sept. 11. When, pray tell, did you figure this out? Freakin yesterday? Too bad this info is COMPLETELY FREAKING USELESS! The whole idea of a National Mood Ring is so 70’s. (And as Jim has noted, Jimmy Carter was far more libertarian than the Bushies.) And if the latest Al Qaeda Number 3 guy was so pivotal to their operations, why are we being told to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting?
4) You can suffocate yourself if you do too good of a job with the duct tape and plastic sheeting. Unless Tom Ridge was trying to get Bill to kill himself, that particular warning message made absolutely no sense.
5) Speaking of things that made absolutely no sense, let’s talk about the case offered before the war. We were supposed to believe that a highly self-interested secular dictator would help religious nuts with a WMD attack while knowing full well that he’s #1 on the shit list? The only way that sort of attack would make any sense for Saddam is if he knew he was about to die or lose power any minute now and….HOLY SHIT YOU JUST TOLD HIM HE’S ABOUT TO DIE OR LOSE POWER ANY MINUTE NOW! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?!?!?!
6) They never did find those WMD. Colin Powell assured us in February of 2003 that he had a map with the location and the security codes to get into the bunker, not to mention the name of the guard at the gate and tips on how to sweet-talk him. We all assumed that if they knew this much there’d be satellites and surveillance planes over that spot 24/7, not to mention a deep cover team nearby with binoculars and sniper rifles, just to be sure nothing got moved. But then, lo and behold, they don’t find the WMD.
7) The case offered after the war didn’t make any more sense than the case offered before the war. “This was never about WMD. This was always about democracy.” Um, dude, you just told us this was about WMD. You even had Colin Powell on TV lying his ass off to assure moderates and liberals that even “the good one” stands by the WMD claims. (Note to Powell: Fuck you.) And now, after looking in Putin’s eyes and seeing he’s the sort of man you could spend the rest of your life with (I hope you at least made him buy you dinner before giving it up), you’re telling us that you give a flying fuck about democracy? Next you’ll be telling us that you got another Al Qaeda Number 3 and expect us to believe that this one actually is the real…..shit, you just killed another one of them, didn’t you?
8) Worst of all, they set the tone early on with the Padilla case. Say what you will about the treatment of foreigners captured on foreign soil, make all the excuses you want, and perform all the legal gymnastics you can, but Jose Padilla is a US citizen who was captured on US soil, and they decided to torture him and hold him without trial. In 2002. This wasn’t something that the ACLU had to sue to find out years later. They freaking admitted this one (well, at least the detention without trial part) in 2002. They got on TV and said “Yep, if we want to hold a US citizen forever without trial, we can damn well do it! And you can’t stop us!” That was my breaking point. Once I figured that one out, it was a lot easier to suspect the worst in everything that followed.
So, I just gave 8 perfectly logical reasons why a person might have suspected the worst, reasons that had nothing to do with partisan bias and everything to do with simple bullshit detection.
Comment by Kevin Carson —
August 24, 2009 @ 4:26 am
You’d think the Al Qaeda apparatchiks would have become leery of moving into that vacated No. 3 spot, after a while. It’s like being the guy in the red shirt in an Enterprise landing party.
Comment by Doug T —
August 24, 2009 @ 8:59 am
Chief of Martyrdom Operations sounds like a pretty appealing position, and the benefits are great. But it turns out to be a lot more hands on and less MBA-style than job applicants usually realize.
Comment by Picador —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:29 am
Stop being so shrill, dude.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:44 am
There are three constitutional offices defined in the al Qaeda Charter: Mastermind, Vice-Mastermind, and Keeper of the GPS Beacon.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:49 am
I would have been righter, and faster, if I were actually the kneejerk partisan I’m often accused of being.
I would have immediately realized there were no WMDs.
I would have, like Atrios, responded “That’s the stupidest fucking idea I’ve ever heard in my life!” when the notion of invading Iraq was first raised, instead of spending a month or two trying to give both sides a fair hearing.
Both of the worst failures I’ve made in thinking about politics in the past decade can be traced to my determination not to see things through the lens of a partisan Democrat.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:57 am
It must be tempting for those who turn out to be wrong, and who’ve long been dismissing those who turned out to be right as blind partisans, to acknowledge their error, especially when the reason they were wrong was an adherence to a principle or point of view which is central to their own political understanding and self-image.
Utterly, wholly, and completely off-topic, I look forward to UO’s coverage of the newly-released CIA IG report, the White House’s removal of the CIA from the high-value detainee interrogation business, and the happenings down at Justice.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:37 am
I always thought they would have found SOMETHING in Iraq, or at least planted some “WMDs” if nothing else.
Anyway, Obama is a pussy and a sell-out of he doesn’t prosecute people for mock executions and using power drills. And I don’t mean some low-level grunt, I mean prosecuting powerful people.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:47 am
I just assumed they’d find a warehouse full of stale, 1991-vintage chlorine shells and try to sell that as vindicating their charges about WMDs. There must have been some powerful push-back from the weapons inspectors and intelligence apparatus.
Comment by Kolohe —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:53 am
I would be curious to see as to what exactly the HIG actually is first.
Esp because the NSC, iirc, is officially chartered as a *coordinating* agency and has no executive authority per se. But per the linked article they will be overseeing this new unit.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:08 am
I’ll look at the CIA thing tonight or tomorrow. As to WMD, yeah, I’m also surprised they didn’t even find an empty aluminum tube and call it “WMD precursor” or something.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:19 am
I don’t want to jack this thread about the “Right to be wrong” Republicans onto anything else.
I’m confident there will be threads about the release of the never-to-be-released CIA IG report, Holder’s expected appointment of a special prosecutor, and the President’s decision to take interrogation of high-value detainees out of the CIA’s purview, over the next few days.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:23 am
Perhaps they were so certain of a quick victory and successful completion of the mission that they thought the public would forget the original justification for the war in the haze of victory parades and footage of happy children in the New Iraq, and didn’t bother to work up a credible cover story for the WMDs because they didn’t think it would be necessary.
As we’ve learned, these are deeply hubristic people – people so certain of, for instance, al Qaeda/Saddam links that they’d torture people until they “admitted” it, without concern that they were getting a false confession.
Comment by Ken Shultz —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:41 am
“This was never about WMD. This was always about democracy.”
Critics still struggle with this one. Let’s face it, the war’s critics, just generally speaking, have a hard time criticizing the democratization aspects of the war.
Despite the precedents of the British Empire and others, the election of Hamas in Gaza, despite the near complete dominance of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days), brought to dominance, mind you, by way of an election, despite the regime of Karzai, who only a few days ago threw a bone to the Islamists by prohibiting women from leaving their homes without their husbands, and made it okay for husbands to refuse their wives food if their wives refuse their husband’s sex… You know he thew that bone to the Islamists in Afghanistan for the sole purpose of appealing for their support in the upcoming election?
And let’s not forget the jingoism and stupidity America brought on itself by way of an election, could we have done much worse in reelecting George W. Bush for a second term? And all the pertinent details were out by the time we reelected him!
The point is that it’s true that what the Bush Administration and, and those who regurgitated the Administration’s propaganda said, about promoting Democracy as being THE most important justification for the war, that that was done more or less after the fact…
And the biggest problem with that wasn’t only that they used Democracy to justify the Iraq War after the fact. The biggest problem is that what Democracy the war has brought us has done little or nothing to improve the situation from an American security standpoint. In fact, much can be said about how it’s made our security situation worse.
You know, the problem with the Putin regime and Chavez wasn’t that they were UNpopular. To the contrary, a big part of the problem, from an American security standpoint, seems to have been that they were both quite popular, actually. The problem with American politics, just before the Bush Administration’s second term, wasn’t that President Bush was unpopular, to the contrary…
So, anyway, I think it’s right to suggest that the Bush Administration was wrong to say that Iraq was all about installing democracy from the get go. I think it’s especially telling, now that the Iraqis have voted in Iranian backed and financed Islamists as their elected government, that the only criticism I seem to hear from the Bush Administration’s cricics is that the democratic ideal wasn’t a very prominent concern until there didn’t seem to be much in the way of WMD.
But for some reason, the critics of the Iraq War don’t seem to want to talk about the failures of the democratic process itself. I suppose it’s possible that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Iraq War’s critics really do believe in spreading democracy as a just cause for the Iraq War? Because, again, the critics of the war only seem to want to criticize the Bush Administration for using that as a primary justification after no WMD was found, not for the results of democratization. …But justifications after the fact, that’s only the tip of the iceberg people! Politicians are always going to spout baloney after the fact! Faulting politicians for that is like faulting water for being wet. That’s what they are! Justifying things after the fact is what they do!
Who judges politicians, significant others, their doctor or their subordinates primarily by what they say? Personally, I’m much more interested in the results of what they’ve done.
Have any of you noticed that democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, so far, seem to have been an abysmal failure. Isn’t it possible, just possible, that using war to spread democracy is a rotten justification for war on its face? Isn’t it possible that democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world isn’t really the solution to America’s security problems?
Comment by Ceri B. —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:55 am
Daniel Davies’ Avoiding Projects Pursued By Morons 101 remains a classic in this genre. But “Let’s start by taking the charge at face value: If the basic assertion is that you could get it right for 8 years simply by guessing the worst, what does that say about the Bush administration? What does that say about its defenders?” is a very worthy addition to the ranks of stupidly basic things that are very important and need a lot of repeating.
One thing the conservative movement’s been really good at is manipulating the widespread American appreciation for even-handedness. Lots of us want to believe that “on the other hand” always, or nearly always, leads to something important to keep in mind. But it breaks down when one hand is in fact dripping toxic waste and has been possessed by an evil spirit who wants to star in a remake of the Hands of Dr. Orlac and the other hasn’t.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
August 24, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
By spring of 2005, even on Hit and Run (certainly a blog with a good share of hawkish commenters) there were commenters comparing the latest Al Qaeda Number 3 to a Spinal Tap drummer. At some point, it became clear that they had no idea what they were actually doing.
What do you mean by that? Of course they knew what they were doing. They were lying.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 24, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
Occam’s Razor says that they didn’t necessarily believe in an al Qaeda/Saddam connection, they just believed that getting somebody to admit to such a connection would be useful.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 24, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
Oh, good.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 24, 2009 @ 1:09 pm
The worst and most painful thing I learned since 2001 is that even as a libertarian with a merely jaundiced view of government, I still had orders of magnitude too much faith in the character of elected officials and the workability of large government operations.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
Ken Shultz,
I’ve had any trouble criticizing the democratization efforts of this war. I wouldn’t want to invade, conquer, and occupy a country to install sound urban planning, public transit, universal health care, and alternative energy projects, either, despite the fact that I support those things.
You can’t drive a nail with a hack saw. War is the wrong tool for the job of spreading democracy. It’s wasteful and counterproductive.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 1:30 pm
Never had any trouble, that is.
Comment by TallDave —
August 24, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
” War is the wrong tool for the job of spreading democracy.”
But…but…
Strategic MASTERSTROKE!!!!11!
*fap fap fap fap*
Comment by Thoreau —
August 24, 2009 @ 4:44 pm
Is the real TallDave still haunting these here intertubez?
I’d be just as happy never knowing for sure.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
Thoreau, yes, he is still over at H&R. Just today, actually.
Comment by Nathan Myers —
August 24, 2009 @ 5:20 pm
Eric the .5b:
It was precisely because you are “a libertarian with a merely jaundiced view of government” that you were taken in. Understanding why that follows is worth every effort, and the result will lead to deeper insight than can be expressed in a blog comment.
Hint: disconnect between ideology and real life leads to behaviors adaptive to neither.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 24, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
Nathan: you verge on tautology in your failure to actually express any idea that I didn’t say.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 5:57 pm
Sure he did.
You described your “jaundiced view of government” as merely inadequate protection from believing the Bushies.
When, in fact, the standard-issue libertarian “jaundiced view of government” actively contributed to how the Bushies were able to deceive you.
Nathan asks you to ponder how this worked. I concur.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 24, 2009 @ 6:15 pm
I find it fascinating how a stupid idea can be showcased to the full, majestic extent of its stupidity by picking the right venue.
“Please explain how your Godless, lib’rul beliefs lead to you embracing radical Islam. And is your wife still ‘falling down the stairs’?”
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
August 24, 2009 @ 6:15 pm
If you had looked through the lens of a partisan Democrat, joe, you might have been as enthusiastic about the war as Hillary Clinton.
Comment by John Markley —
August 24, 2009 @ 7:07 pm
“Ceri B.
Lots of us want to believe that “on the other hand” always, or nearly always, leads to something important to keep in mind. But it breaks down when one hand is in fact dripping toxic waste and has been possessed by an evil spirit who wants to star in a remake of the Hands of Dr. Orlac and the other hasn’t.”
I laughed my ass off at this when I got to the Orlac reference.
Eric the .5b,
My impression is that Nathan was attempting some form of the “government only fails because you won’t clap your hands and believe” argument that liberals sometimes trot out. Admittedly, it’s hard to be certain what, if anything, is being conveyed by someone using that kind of pretentious, condescending fortune cookie writing style.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 24, 2009 @ 7:59 pm
There’s a seed of a valid point regarding the potential for mischief when a person in power has a cynical view of government. If somebody says “Government functions as a racket to benefit the powerful and connected” then there are two possible responses:
1) SWEET!
2) Damn, better keep this thing in check.
I do think that the Bushies largely bought the cynical critique of government, rather than believing in its good. I even think that their assimilation of this critique probably made some of their rhetoric appeal to some libertarians: “Wow, they speak our language!”
That said, whatever things Eric may have underestimated at some point, I don’t think his libertarian views were the root cause. For starters, Eric never responded to the critique of government with “Sweet!”, AFAIK.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 8:17 pm
“If you had looked through the lens of a partisan Democrat, joe, you might have been as enthusiastic about the war as Hillary Clinton.
”
Or John Kerry. Or the Vice President. Or…
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 8:53 pm
Nah, HIllary Clinton was striving to be bipartisan, and to set herself apart from those mean partisan Democrats. I mean, seriously, this makes sense to you? It’s a demonstration of partisanship to give a president from the other party a force authorization, when your own base is passionately against it? Huhwuzza?
If I had looked through the lens of a partisan Democrat, I might seen through the crap as quickly as Howard Dean, Russ Feingold, Ted Kennedy, and other denizens of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 8:57 pm
All those Democrat hawks weren’t “real” Democrats. we all should have expected this answer.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 8:58 pm
Thoreau,
But there’s another dynamic to consider, one very close to Ceri B’s useful reminder:
This can apply to people with an inclination to always give people on both sides the benefit of the doubt (my problem). It can apply equally well to people with an inclination to always believe the worst of everyone on both sides.
I wonder how many “anti-government” conservatives nodded along when George Bush replied to a question about a global warming report issued by the EPA bay saying “I’ve read the report produced by the bureaucracy.”
Teh bureaucracy!
Comment by Thoreau —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:03 pm
On the subject of “partisan” Democrats and Hillary Clinton, I think we’re conflating “partisan” as in “biased against the other party” and partisan as in “adhering to stances typical of the party.” There were plenty of elected Democrats who supported the war, so thinking like a “typical” elected Democrat might well make one a war supporter. OTOH, being partisan in the sense of “biased against the other party” would make one a war opponent.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:04 pm
Another good example: my answer is blindingly obvious. Voting for Bush’s war, which was opposed by an overwhelming majority of Democrats in the country, was exactly the opposite of a partisan act. Democrats did so for the purpose of establishing their bipartisan credibility. Nobody seriously doubts this; it was oft-remarked by all sides at the time. Precisely the same people now deriding this observation were themselves hurling it as an accusation after the vote, during the 2004 election, and when Biden was selected as Obama’s running mate.
Nonetheless, because this answer, which nobody thinks is factually or logically incorrect, tends to reflect favorably on the Democrats, or on partisan Democrats in particular, the less-sharp minds wedded to the “pox on both houses” narrative declare that it can’t be true.
And this is how you manipulate libertarians.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:06 pm
Actually, Democrats in Congress voted against the AUMF by a 58%-42% margin. Yet this assertion that voting for the war was the “typical” Democratic position is quite common among libertarians.
There is a reason why this mistake is so frequent.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:08 pm
The Democratic Party was divided on the war. As it is with just about everything else (see: Health care). They’re not very organized.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:10 pm
Why are Democrats 1) from the minority of the caucus who 2) supported giving war powers to a Republican, 3) against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of their party, held out as the model of how not only Democrats acted, but how partisan Democrats acted?
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:11 pm
It would be interesting for someone to research, btw, why the Republican Party is so effectively organized and in lock-step. They’re always on the same page, always, whether in the minority or majority, repeating the same points (down to unpaid bloggers), driving home the same points again and again and again until it sticks and then passing exactly what they want, even if its by one vote.
Democrats do the exact opposite. Why?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:13 pm
Let’s pretend that’s true.
Why did you describe how one faction voted, and not the other, as typical of how partisan Democrats would behave?
Still pretending that that’s true: why did you single out the faction that voted with the Republicans as the partisans?
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
“Why are Democrats 1) from the minority of the caucus”
Yes, but they also happen to be the leaders democrats put out in front, though. Howard Dean didn’t win a single state outside Vermont, John Kerry and John Edwards did. Joe Biden was widely known, before he was Vice President, as a “serious” foreign policy voice for the Democratic Party. Dennis Kucinnuch, not so much!
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
Why stop there? I used to have a friend who was convinced that the “real” purpose of the Iraq war was to build a pipeline. (Yes, I know that was a kook theory for the “real” reason for the invasion of Afghanistan, and I even made the mistake of trying to point that detail out to her.)
She bought into crazy conspiracist theorizing about the US government’s Big Plan, stuff that would make the likes of Dean or Kucinich sound like Fox News anchors. Once she said America deserved 9/11, then refused to admit she’d said anything like that.
She was correct on a central point: the Iraq war was a horrible idea.
The fact she was entirely right on that point didn’t make her kookery or her uninformed arguments correct. It doesn’t mean the war was really about a pipeline or that the US was going to start rounding up all Arab men in its borders Real Soon Now.
It just meant she was right on the war.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
“Still pretending that that’s true: why did you single out the faction that voted with the Republicans as the partisans?”
I don’t. I’m saying a “partisan democrat” could have EITHER view on the war, since their party in 2004 was divided on it. Democrats are ALWAYS divided, or at least have a loud faction that doesn’t agree with the majority position.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:16 pm
Right – so the Democrats are against the war, and those who voted for it, well, they were really against it, but they did it to establish their bipartisan street cred. Oh yeah, and a 60-40 split means that libertarians somehow err when they say a “pox on both their houses”.
Um, OK.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
Quit dancing around your point and say what you think already.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
Because, unlike the kooky arguments made by the radicals, the arguments against the war made by partisan Democrats were…what’s the term?…objectively true.
There were no WMDs. There were no al Qaeda connections. Invading Iraq drew terrorists there. It pinned us down. It drew resources away from the fight against al Qaeda (see Tora Bora). Sectarian violence broke out in Iraq. Global terrorism increased. The war produced more terrorists than it killed. Americans were stuck occupying the country for years. It cost hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives.
The partisan Democrats weren’t just right about the big question, “War: yes or no.” They were right about the details.
BTW, you do your friend an injustice. Her take on the War for Oil line was crude, but ultimately, it was a War for Oil.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
I’ll give an example of the Republicans borderline creepy like-mindeness and ability to hammer the same point over and over:
I visit car blogs a lot, I’m a bit of an auto enthusiast. Well, over at Autoblog, they had a post up about how Cash for Clunkers ran out of money in two weeks even though the $1 billion was supposed to last until November.
Every single Republican on there started saying “Haha! They don’t even know how much money to spend on cash for clunkers, wait until they run health care!” Every. Single. One. Repeated that, verbatim.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:22 pm
And, it wasn’t even a political blog!
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:27 pm
Voting with the other party and voting against the other party’s position are equally partisan?
Voting to grant a president from the other party war powers is equally partisan as voting against that power?
That doesn’t make any sense. Do you really think Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Dick Gephardt were being just as partisan as Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, and Nancy Pelosi?
You don’t actually think that’s true, do you? You can reason better than that. Why are you insisting on this implausible, irrational, false point? That’s not a rhetorical question. I want you to think about what it is that’s making you look at the actions of war opponents, and look at the actions of those Democrats who voted with the Republicans, and declare that they both represented partisanship.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:27 pm
Wow, really? Care to offer any proof on that? I’ll even take extra-insightful hypothesizing.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
You made up the part in italics, apparently because my actual argument is unassailable.
As for the rest – yes. Voting for the AUMF was a way for Democrats to establish their bipartisan cred for the 2002 elections, and for the 2004 presidential election. Bob Shrum has described, and apologized for, how he insisted that John Edwards vote for the AUMF in order to be a viable candidate in a general election. You know this. Eric knows this. Single-celled organisms that dwell on the ocean floor and produce energy by metabolizing sulfur emissions from volcanic vents know this.
And yet here you are, feeling – and I stress the word “feeling” – the need to insist that this is not true, because to acknowledge this fact would make it harder to argue something you want very much to believe about the Democrats.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:33 pm
Sorry, joe, John Kerry is a liberal Democrat. He’s not Ben Nelson or Blanche Lincoln. Same with Biden. Same with Clinton. They all voted for the war.
You wouldn’t really describe Kerry as a blue-dog moderate, would you? He is, the vast majority of the time, a partisan democrat who votes the party line (if there is one).
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:33 pm
No. I’ve made this point over and over again, and it just gets dismissed.
So, I’m going to try this way, and see what happens. You – not you, TAO, but you plural – are smart enough to figure it out.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:37 pm
There was a “Democratic wing” of Team Blue…but Team Blue was not divided. Reds bitched and moaned about how libertarians wouldn’t support the war, and I got metric tons of shit for being a rare libertarian who supported the war for a couple of years…but libertarian ideas lead to support of the war.
Seriously. Your guys are in power. You have nothing better to do then poke the anthills of the fringes? You have no message other than your frustration that people aren’t falling at
yourTeam Blue’s feet and shoutingyourits praises?I’m very sorry.
Nope. The entirety of my support for the war was built on very un-libertarian positions predicated on fear. While folks like Jim were giving excellent analysis as to why Iraq wasn’t a credible threat and even Clinton’s sanctions and bombings weren’t necessary to protect the US, absurd spectres like that of Iraq arming terrorists convinced me that there were just, you know, exceptions to my non-interventionist, non-imperialist views. I bought into the idea that, hey, we’re all in this together and so the administration was competent, had our best interests in mind, and was doing its best.
That was my error – that I gave Team Red and the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt, not that in a more sensible frame of mind I would have doubted them.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:37 pm
Why are you talking about liberals? The subject of this discussion is Partisan Democrats.
He is indeed. The Iraq AUMF vote was quite out of character for him. He usually votes much closer to Russ Feingold than Blanche Lincoln.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
And, if partisan democrats were so adamantly against the war, why did Howard Dean only win Vermont? Why did all those partisan democrats who bother to vote in a Democratic primary vote for John Kerry? If the war was that important to them, Dean should have been nominated. Or, I don’t know, the 2004 Democratic Platform could have at least said something against the war? But it didn’t.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:47 pm
Not that rare. Most of the staff at Reason supported the war initially. I’d say you were in the majority among libertarians. Certainly, there was never the overwhelming opposition to the war among rank-and-file libertarians that there was among rank-and-file Democrats.
Whether it was actually libertarian arguments that lead, say, Glenn Reynolds, Tim Cavanaugh, Matt Welch, et al to support the war, or whether they were just libertarians who were swayed by conservative arguments, I can’t really say. Nonetheless, there were an awful lot of “Libertarian Case for the War” articles written by self-described libertarians, making their case in the language of anti-government, pro-liberty ideology, written between 2002 and 2005 or so. Did you know that Saddam Hussein was a socialist who believed in big government? That he didn’t value individual liberty? That Iraqis deserved freedom, too? Don’t tell me that this isn’t a libertarian argument, because it was almost identical to what Ayn Rand used to argue about the nations behind the Iron Curtain.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
Who ever said that Democrats weren’t divided? They certainly were. One faction pursued a bipartisan policy articulated by Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt – stand with Bush on security and foreign policy in order to remain politically viable – while another, larger faction did not pursue bipartisanship, but acted in a very partisan manner, voting to deny the Republican president his war power and voting contrary to how all but 2 Republicans in Washington voted.
The Democrats certainly were divided, between the partisans and the war supporters.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
“while another, larger faction did not pursue bipartisanship, ”
Which is why this large faction nominated Howard Dean for President in 2004. QED!
Oh, wait…
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
John Kerry was running against the war by 2004, calling his vote for it a mistake. He had to, since candidates who didn’t renounce their AUMF vote – like Lieberman – weren’t politically viable in a Democratic primary.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:56 pm
By some partisan Blues, yes – and most libertarians, despite your attempt to imply otherwise. Kudos to both groups; I wish I’d been one of the latter from the start.
Other partisan Blues (as opposed to non-partisan Blues?) disagreed. After all, we’d had a Blue president who’d spent quite a bit of effort bulding up the idea of Iraq as a great WMD-building threat to America. No matter how you try to minimize them, it wasn’t all due to Hillary Clinton and Dick Gephardt eating bad fish the night before and making the wrong vote.
Funny, you were just saying Blues had voted based on things they thought were “true”. Now you’re saying the vote was simply one group trying to further the goals of Team Blue and the other…something else?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:56 pm
Best to wait for your question to be answered before deciding it’s unanswerable.
That one was actually quite easy.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:57 pm
“John Kerry was running against the war by 2004, calling his vote for it a mistake. ”
While also calling for more troops.
” He had to, since candidates who didn’t renounce their AUMF vote – like Lieberman – weren’t politically viable in a Democratic primary.”
John Edwards says “hi”. He came in second place and go the VP nod, he never apologized until 2007.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
Being against the war….while wanting to escalate it. God, Kerry was a horrible candidate!
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
What argument was that, joe? this should be good.
anyway, Ayn Rand =/= all or even most libertarians, I’d wager. And Rand was overwhelmingly anti-interventionist, including Vietnam.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
I’m not implying otherwise, I’m outright stating otherwise. Were you even reading Hit & Run in the summer and autumn of 2002? Because I was.
Ah, yes, that fierce partisan, Bill Clinton.
First, you dodged the question. I wouldn’t want to answer my question if I were arguing your side, either, but I wanted to point this out.
Second, I did NOT say “Blues had voted based on things they thought were true.” Here’s what I actually wrote:
I made no comment whatsoever on people voting for what they thought was true, nor did I ascribe this to “Blues” generally. I stated that the argument partisan Democrats made – that is, Democrats who voted with their party, and opposed to adopting the position of the other party – made arguments that have been proven to be true.
Third, “trying to further the objectives of Team Blue” is – quite deliberately I’m sure, because you do this a lot – so vague as to be meaningless, since it can describe both partisan and bipartisan behavior. I’m sure many of the Democrats who acted in a bipartisan manner – accepting the Bush administration’s assertions, acceding to their vision of foreign policy, voting for the AUMF – did so because they thought being bipartisan, rather than partisan, could help forestall Democratic losses.
You’re simply trying to redefine the term “partisan” to eliminate 1) supporting your party’s position instead of acceding to the other party’s or seeking a middle ground, and 2) voting the way the members of your party want them to.
Parties pursue their interests through bipartisanship (or multipartisanship) all the time. Think about parties in a parliamentary democracy that join a governing coalition with their electoral opponents.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
So was Howard Dean, by 2004. Yet another reason why partisan, anti-war Democrats didn’t choose him over Kerry. Had you forgotten?
He didn’t apologize, but he made the “Knowing what I know now, I would have voted against the AUMF” statement, unlike Lieberman. Again, had you forgotten?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
Again, Howard Dean.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
right, so were back to “Democrats who voted for the war are not real Democrats”.
How did I see this coming from two miles away?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
Heck, there were people in Congress who voted against the AUMF who, ahem, “wanted to escalate it” – defined as supporting a larger troop presence to secure the country – in 2004, even as they continued to consider the war a mistake.
Comment by BDB —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
“So was Howard Dean, by 2004. ”
I’m actually surprised, I thought Dean was for withdrawing troops. It’s still a stupid position–being against a war while promising to escalate it, and seemed typically Kerry-esque.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:20 pm
The one I JUST DESCRIBED, in the very comment you quoted from.
Eh, I’d call it at about 50/50. Regardless, Any Rand’s political philosophy is certainly a libertarian ideology, even though there is diversity among libertarians.
Wow. What an ignoramus.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:22 pm
really, joe? I want Rand quotes that lend support to your argument that she would support the position you outlined.
I want quotes that prove what an “ignoramus” I am.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:22 pm
No, dumbfuck. They are not partisan Democrats. They’re very real.
Democrats who pursue bipartisanship are just as “real” as their partisan brethren.
Are you really this stupid, or are you playing for effect?
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
Anyway, this, before you move the goalposts, is the argument you attributed to Ayn Rand:
So, point to me the quotes, book, chapter and line where Ayn Rand made the argument that because Socialistan was a totalitarian nation, the United States should invade it.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:26 pm
you apparently don’t know what partisan means:
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:26 pm
BDB,
You have to think back to 2004. The insurgency was still quite small – at least at the beginning of the campaign, when the candidates staked out their positions – and the possibility of chaos and sectarian violence and al Qaedists filling the power vacuum we’d created were things to avoid, not yet things to respond to.
It wasn’t even a question of “escalating the war,” but of keeping a piece that was threatening to unravel.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:30 pm
How does it feel to want?
I’m going to go back to my original question, which you’ve been working so hard to try to deflect the thread from: how did so many of you manage to misremember so many things about Democrats and the war vote, and all in the same direction? How did you come to believe that the minority of Democrats who bucked their party and voted with the undivided Republicans were acting in a partisan manner, when such behavior is precisely the opposite of partisanship?
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:33 pm
Ah, I see – once someone called you on wholesale making up Rand’s positions, you withdraw to your other “point”, which is persisting in not knowing what partisanship means.
It’s our Mass Libertarian False Consciousness and Delusion Special. There, is that the answer you wanted?
State your argument plain: why DID we supposedly do the things you say we did?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:34 pm
Gotta love irony.
Yes, I can see how that conflicts so harshly with what I’ve been writing about partisan Democrats voting with their party, opposing the position of the other party, rejecting its ideas in a kneejerk fashion, seeking to deny them power, and not supporting their policy proposals.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:36 pm
Actually, what I want is for you to spend some time reflecting on how that Mass Libertarian False Consciousness and Delusion operates – particularly, how it leaves you vulnerable to manipulation by those who couch their arguments in anti-government or anti-partisan terms.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:37 pm
It doesn’t. As I suspected, this is a case of you slinging accusations and wanting us to work overtime to confirm your biases.
Got those Rand quotes yet?
60% does not a party-line make.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
Hmmmmmm…should I spend my evening hunting down Ayn Rand quotes to prove the widely-known point that she was a Cold War hawk, so that somebody with a demonstrated willingness to make absurd claims in order to defend libertarians’ honor can find ways to worm around them?
Ummm…pass.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:39 pm
She wasn’t a hawk. this is a lie on your part. I want you to find one – just one! – utterance of hers that supports your position.
Shouldn’t be that hard, joe.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:40 pm
In other words, in the time you’ve spent saying that it’s going to take your “evening”, you should have found something that supports such a “widely-known” point.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:40 pm
9:13 pm:
9:53 pm:
Ah, I see. Team Blue has always been divided – that first post must have been by a saboteur.
I’ll let you substantiate that bit on Reason staff, joe. Go for it.
She also used to argue that libertarians were dirty hippies. But it’s always fun to see you assert your authority on what does and does not qualify as libertarian.
…Yeah.
That’s just…well, it’s a very interesting take on what I said, joe.
Have a nice night.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:41 pm
Then why did the majority of the Reason staff (not the Nation staff, not the American Prospect staff) support invading Iraq?
I’m perfectly willing to entertain other ideas about why libertarians were so much more supportive of invading Iraq than Democrats, but absent compelling evidence otherwise, I’m going to continue to believe what people like Tim Cavanaugh have written – that they found the case for invading Iraq to be compelling based on libertarian principles.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:43 pm
How does it feel to want?
At this point, the fact that you’re getting red-faced because I won’t abandon my point in order to follow you down a rabbit hole is just plain fun.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:43 pm
Cite, please?
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:44 pm
In other words, joe, you categorically invented a “libertarian” argument for war and then falsely attributed it to Ayn Rand.
how does it feel to “want” some integrity?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
Ahhhhhh, I see. In the first comment, I was using the term to refer to Democratic party members’ beliefs, which were overwhelmingly against the war. In the second quote, I was referring to Democratic members of Congress, who split 58%-42% against the war, demonstrating a divide in political strategy and how they voted.
I can see how that could be misleading. I should have made myself clearer.
No, you go for it. There was a post up, I don’t recall when, in which each member of the Reason staff was quizzed about their opinion of the war. I think it was around the 2004 election. If you’re interested, you can search for it – but frankly, if you don’t know where the Reason staff stood on the question of invading Iraq, you really don’t need to be lecturing people about what libertarians did and did not believe.
When she was arguing that, most libertarians were dirty hippies.
I’ve asserted no authority, merely made the obvious observation that Ayn Rand was a libertarian.
(Hey, TAO: did you notice that Eric just agreed with me about Ayn Rand’s Cold War hawkishness? That’s because her hawkish policy during the Cold War is widely known.)
Maybe TAO and Eric can work this out without me. Eric can prove to TAO that she was a Cold War hawk, and TAO can prove to Eric that she was a libertarian.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:53 pm
The only other libertarian to comment on the issue thinks you’re wrong, TAO.
How embarrassing for you – I know more about the political ideology you use to define yourself to the world than you do!
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 10:59 pm
Eric is wrong about this, too, but he didn’t make the assertion you did. Actually, what he did was point out that Ayn Rand does not represent all libertarians; nay, even “50 percent” of them.
Again, joe, it’s a “widely known” point, so substantiate it already. Man up and prove it.
Most were against it. There, now you go prove me wrong, since you don’t feel the need to back up your own lame lies.
Seriously, joe – integrity: get some.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:00 pm
No, I didn’t see that.
I should not have said Eric was wrong, because he said nothing agreeing with you on this point at all, did he?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:04 pm
Here you go, Eric.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125577.html
I count four pro-war respondents, three anti-war respondents, and two waffles.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
You know that we can read the previous comments in the thread, right?
That’s Eric agreeing with me about Ayn Rand’s Cold War politics.
No, you’re too cute. Look, I’ve already got you talking about manhood!
It’s been a little while since I got a savor a pre-buttal this sweet. You know, the fact that you’re such a dick to me really does make it more enjoyable to pwn you like this, even if it was just incidental to answering Eric.
I’ve got remember to set you up like that on purpose in the future, though, because I can clearly count on you to take the bait.
I’ve been at this game for while, TAO. Let me let you in on a little secret: writing things like that at the beginning and end of your comment doesn’t actually make you look any better when you’re getting your ass handed to you.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
Joe – I don’t believe that KMW (pro), Kerry Howley (opposed), Moynihan (pro) nor Weigel (pro) were at reason in 2003.
So, try again.
And since you seem like you are up to research, get some of those Rand quotes.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
joe, believe what you like, but so far you have:
- asserted that Rand was a Cold-War hawk, with no proof and
- Asserted that the reason staff, in 2003, “mostly supported” the Iraq War, a claim also lacking in proof.
Again: get some integrity.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:24 pm
OK, enough fun. Time to put this veal calf down.
What I wrote:
What TAO wrote:
PLAYBOY: What about force in foreign policy? You have said that any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany during World War II . . .
RAND: Certainly.
PLAYBOY: . . . And that any free nation today has the moral right—though not the duty—to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other “slave pen.” Correct?
RAND: Correct. A dictatorship—a country that violates the rights of its own citizens—is an outlaw and can claim no rights.
PLAYBOY: Would you actively advocate that the United States invade Cuba or the Soviet Union?
RAND: Not at present. I don’t think it’s necessary. I would advocate that which the Soviet Union fears above all else: economic boycott, I would advocate a blockade of Cuba and an economic boycott of Soviet Russia; and you would see both of those regimes collapse without the loss of a single American life.
Now, two things are going to happen. TAO is going to pretend I argued that Ayn Rand supported invading the Soviet Union in my quote; and he’s going to pretend the an economic blockade of Cuba and an enforced American boycott (enforced by the government on American citizens and corporations) isn’t “interventionist.”
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:26 pm
Do the other weasels make you sleep out in the open when you pull something like this? Or do they make you your king.
Just stop. That’s pathetic.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:30 pm
So, in other words, the “Libertarian case for invasion” “bolstered by Ayn Rand”, that you asserted existed, doesn’t exist.
Thanks, joe, you proved me correct.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:34 pm
What I wrote:
And, indeed, most of the staff at Reason were supporters of the war. As I’ve proven.
But let’s not allow the weasel to hide behind semantics (Did you mean “Most of the people who were on Reasons’s staff in 2003 supported the war? Or that most of the people on Reason’s staff supported the war in 2003?”)
I made an actual point – support for invading Iraq was fairly widespread among libertarians at the beginning of the war, much more so than among Democrats. I provided a snapshot, in which several prominent libertarians, including people who were on the Reason staff, were asked in 2006 about their opinions when the war began. A plurality supported the war. A majority of them either supported it, or were undecided.
As I said, there were numerous libertarian arguments for supporting the war, and many libertarians believed them. Demonstrating this by pointing to a group of libertarians chosen by Reason magazine – keep in mind, Reason was solidly against the war by 2006 – to reflect libertarian opinion makes that case nicely.
So, that’s 0/2, I’m afraid.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:36 pm
You mean the one that echoes Rand’s words in the Playboy interview?
Whatever will lessen the time it takes to cry yourself to sleep.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:37 pm
ha ha – joe, you know what you meant. I am not going to assist in your masturbatory fantasies any longer. You meant “2003 reason staff”, and you know it.
And you still cannot find those pro-interventionist Rand quotes. If anything, they are anti-trade, which I’d ding her on, but they aren’t “hawkish” by any means, unless you’re saying Clinton was a hawk.
Bye, joe. Go revel in your own intellectual mediocrity.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:38 pm
Another hint: asserting that you’ve been proven correct when the evidence proving the opposite has been provided on the very same thread doesn’t make people forget that that evidence is sitting there, in a comment they can just scroll up to.
It might make you feel a little better while you’re typing it, but it just looks a little sad to a reader.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 24, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
First, I didn’t, and I daresay I know what I meant better than you. Second, like I said, you’re waving your hand about a semantic point to deflect from the actual, substantive one – I stated that there was widespread support for the invasion among libertarians, wider than among Democrats, and I have proven that to be correct.
First, I just provided a quote in which Ayn Rand endorses a blockade – not even a boycott, a BLOCKADE – against Cuba, and you’re telling me that’s not hawkish.
Second, “unless you’re saying Clinton was a hawk” – WTF? OF COURSE CLINTON IS A HAWK!!! He supported the 1991 Gulf War, the Somalia mission, the Panama mission, the Afghan War, and Operation Iraqi Freedom; and it was his orders that began the Haiti mission, the Bosnia bombings, and the Kosovo War.
So, to sum up: Ayn Rand articulated exactly the argument I described as the libertarian argument for war, and a large number of libertarians initially supported invading Iraq, probably for the libertarian reasons Rand used to justify blockading Cuba.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
August 25, 2009 @ 12:00 am
No she did not.
No, they did not. though when I invoked the fact that you cited 2008 reasonistas for a 2003 war, you called that “semantics” and “weaselly”.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 12:15 am
The argument I attributed to Rand:
Rand, on the nations behind the Iron Curtain:
I fucking provided a link to the quotes from the libertarians Reason selected, and a plurality of them said they had supported the invasion. Did they suddenly – let me get the verb tense right here – cease to have supported invading Iraq in 2003 because the PROOF I provided (that is, their own statements that they supported it) was from 2006?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 12:17 am
Now that I’ve provided proof of my statements, would you care to back up your assertion that I am wrong to state that a large number of libertarians supported the war?
With anything at all, other than an emotional outburst?
You know, like I did?
Comment by The helpful but flustered camp counselor —
August 25, 2009 @ 12:22 am
Girls! Girls! You’re both pretty!
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 10:20 am
Ugh.
Late-night trainwreck.
Why do I have the urge to start hiding empty bottles before my parents get back?
Comment by Thoreau —
August 25, 2009 @ 10:24 am
On the Reason staff and libertarian views of the war:
We can analyze this and decide whether to count the views held in 2003 by those on the Reason staff in 2003, or ask the Reason staff some time later what they thought in hindsight, or ask those on staff in [insert year here] what they thought in 2003 irrespective of their current views, or whatever. It’s clear that there was a significant pro-war contingent among people who have written for Reason.
Likewise, there was a significant pro-war contingent among elected Democrats, a contingent whose size was disproportionate to the small number of pro-war Democrats.
I make this equivalence only because I suspect that part of what we’re seeing is elite opinion in both cases. An elected Democrat wants to be “serious”, just as a libertarian writer who wants access to interviews in DC and think-tanks and whatnot wants to be “serious.” In 2003, being “serious” by Washington standards meant supporting the Iraq War.
Now, in the case of Democrats we know that elite opinion was out of step with rank-and-file opinion. I don’t know how we can determine whether elite libertarian opinion was out of step with rank-and-file opinion, because libertarians are a small group that aren’t normally polled, and even the definition of who is a libertarian is a hotly debated item. We could look at bloggers, but I don’t know how representative they are. Certainly there was a strong contingent of libertarian hawks on the internet. Maybe the Libertarian Party did some internal polling, but given that the LP is….controversial among self-identified libertarians I don’t even know whether that would accurately gauge the incidence of pro-war opinion among people who subscribe to libertarian ideas.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 10:51 am
The “Orange Line Mafia” theory? Maybe.
Hit & Run had comments enabled in 2002, and I don’t recall the rank-and-file being noticeably less divided about the war than the Reason writers.
That might not be terribly representative, either.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 25, 2009 @ 10:55 am
I would say that readers of Reason are at least a more representative group than some other possibilities, but I don’t know that people who comment on the magazine’s blog are representative of the readership.
Comment by BDB —
August 25, 2009 @ 10:55 am
CATO opposed the war from the beginning, as did the LP, as did the Paleo Krewe over at LRC/Ron Paul Land/Anti-War.com
I don’t think libertarians were any less divided than Democrats.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 11:56 am
I think libertarians were quite divided BDB.
Perhaps more divided than Democrats, because there was a large anti-war majority of Democrats. I don’t know how large the anti-war majority of libertarians was, or even if it was a majority.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 25, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
You know, for a moment, there, I thought that you’d wandered back to Earth, and that I’d misremembered something.
Then I actually read the page at that link.
While your interpretation of those passages is of a piece with your argumentation in this thread, I’d be very interested to know how you justify that breakdown of responses. And I’ll even skip the piddling question of who was actually at Reason at any point in time – though I assume you’re skipping Kerry Howley, since you only count 9 of those 10 responses.
Comment by BDB —
August 25, 2009 @ 12:34 pm
And its worth remembering the commentators at H and R can be any number of things. TallDave and SIV say they’re libertarians, when its pretty clear they’re Republicans who like pot.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
Balko: waffle. “Suspicious of the Bush administration’s assessment” but “Like most people, my positions were based on the assumption that there were actually weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
Gillespie: Against.
Howley: waffle.
Mangu-Ward: For.
Moynihan: For.
Sullum: Against.
Walker: Against.
Weigel: For!
Welch: Waffle
Young: For!
Four fors. Three againsts. Three waffles.
My evidence is of a piece with my argument on the thread: irrefutable, even if that makes you feel bad.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Good, because EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was at Reason at some point or another. They were all at Reason – in fact, they were the Reason writing staff – in 2006.
My argument: there was widespread support for the invasion of Iraq among libertarians. My evidence: in a 2006 questionnaire, 40% of Reason writers reported that they’d supported the invasion, and another 30% said they weren’t against it.
You can attempt to spin their answers any way you want, but everyone can read the link.
Comment by dhex —
August 25, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
howley was a waffle?
Comment by dhex —
August 25, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
ooops hit return:
i.e. “I think it seems tragic and brutal and criminal, and very far away.” doesn’t seem like much of a stab at equivocation.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 25, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
Easy there, joe, I typoed “at the time”. Relax.
Balko? He said he was “in general opposed to the idea of attacking a country that had no discernible ties to the September 11 attacks”, and a moment’s google finds him back in January 2003 saying, “I oppose war with Iraq” on his own blog. (Hell, I argued with him rather a few times during the lead-up. Calling Balko waffly on the issue is just bizarre.)
Howley? Horror at the faraway war with absolutely no suggestion of support while she was a student abroad = waffley. …Mmkay.
Welch? Definitely waffled – the only one I’d call such. (Wait, didn’t you call him a war-supporter up above?…oh, well.)
I’d count that as 5 against, 4 for (including one delusional dead-ender), and one waffler who, to his credit, did at least note “most of the stuff I was worried about ended up coming true” on the war. As I said, I won’t hassle you about what non-Reason places those people were working before the war or how seriously I take Mangu-Ward, Moynihan, or Young as libertarians.
I’ll just note that it’s not exactly the pro-war Reasonite majority you tried to paint it as, above.
…Incidentally, I don’t suppose you actually have anything by Cavanaugh that substantiates your claim that he was a war-supporter?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 1:55 pm
Yes, she states quite clearly that she wasn’t paying attention during the debate whether to go to war, and didn’t have an opinion.
The question was about whether they supported invading Iraq at the time of the invasion. She didn’t have an opinion – she was doing other things, in a different part of the world.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 25, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
Dhex, it seems asinine, but let’s be charitable.
Joe, for the sake of argument, let’s say Howley didn’t have an opinion on the war. Is your bold thesis about most libertarians supporting the war thus, “In 2006, of 10 Reason staffers, 4 had supported the war, 4 had opposed the war, and two had waffled while expressing concern and horror at the war.”?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 2:06 pm
…and then says his opinion was based on the assumption that Saddam actually had WMDs. Waffle.
Uh, take another stab at that, chief. She says that the horror is how she feels when she looked at the war in 2006, when she was asked. She states quite clearly that she didn’t have an opinion one way or the other at the time.
Oh, for Christ’s sake! Why don’t you just declare them all opposed?
OK. Let’s assume for the sake of argument your count isn’t nonsense. Here’s what you wrote:
And here’s what I wrote:
Your point – support for the war among libertarians was rare – is completely wrong. My point – that you were wrong, and support for the war was common among libertarians – is correct, even if we use your screwy math.
There certainly wasn’t the overwhelming opposition to the war among libertarians that there was among Democrats.
And also, I misremembered Cavanaugh’s position.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 2:07 pm
Although, given that I was completely correct about the widespread support for the invasions among libertarians, I was right to be wrong about Cavanaugh.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
I’ve written my bold thesis – actually, a rebuttal of your bold thesis. I’ve even quoted it.
And now, I’ve demonstrated by thesis to be correct, and yours to be wrong.
It was not rare to be a pro-war libertarian. You were incorrect to say that. I was relatively common. I was correct to say that.
Comment by dhex —
August 25, 2009 @ 2:25 pm
i still don’t see how you could count balko or howley’s stances as waffling, but who am i to argue with a democrat?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
Howley didn’t have a position! She states that she wasn’t paying attention at the time!
John Kerry opposed the war more strongly than that!
How is that not “waffle,” when you state that you weren’t paying attention and didn’t have a position?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 25, 2009 @ 2:34 pm
Somebody who thinks “You’re a Democrat” is a compelling argument.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 25, 2009 @ 2:40 pm
When you’re trying to describe “I oppose war with Iraq” as waffling, why not just declare them all war supporters?
I did, and it was. Libertarians argued a lot about it in the lead-up – , some gave the idea a chance before deciding, others fucked up and decided wrong – but well before the tanks started rolling, support was very rare.
It’s clear you’re misremembering a lot.
I was there. I was a pro-war libertarian. We were not a constituency among libertarians, we were tokens for the Reds.
Comment by dhex —
August 25, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
Somebody who thinks “You’re a Democrat” is a compelling argument.
hit me, hit me, screams the masochist.
no, says the sadist.
How is that not “waffle,” when you state that you weren’t paying attention and didn’t have a position?
because of her closer and because of the general tenor of her piece. she said she didn’t remember where she was. let’s go to the tape:
“I don’t remember where I was when the war started, or when the war turned one, or two, or three, or four. I was in college for the flashy beginning, in Burma for much of the following two years, where the war presented itself as a daily collage of gruesome black and white pictures in the junta’s state press. The quality of the print was so bad that many of the pictures just looked smudged. You had to look for the black spaces, and imagine blood.”
she’s describing her life at the time, somewhat overly poetically (for my tastes) as would befit someone getting an ma at iowa. but i think you are grossly misreading what she wrote for the sake of “winning” or whatever this particular exercise intends to do.
my recollection is similar to eric’s, in that pro war republicans were, by and large, just called names, with crypto-republican being the nicest of them.
in your defense, libertarianism/minarchism and related philosophies are most definitely a subset of a niche – as you folk are fond of reminding us when we stray too far from your beliefs and goals – so it may have slipped your attention at the time.
Comment by dhex —
August 25, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
pro war libertarians, pardon. yeesh today.
Comment by BDB —
August 25, 2009 @ 3:48 pm
“my recollection is similar to eric’s, in that pro war republicans were, by and large, just called names, with crypto-republican being the nicest of them.”
And in many cases “Crypto-Republican” is right. I.e., Glenn Reynolds. Sorry, he’s a pot-smoking Republican. Where do I draw the line, you ask? When you repeat the talking points of the RNC Blast Fax every day at you’re blog, it’s pretty damn obvious. An actual libertarian doesn’t do that.
Comment by BDB —
August 25, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
Or even just a Republican that is an atheist and wants to be able to fuck liberal chicks.
Comment by dhex —
August 25, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
And in many cases “Crypto-Republican” is right. I.e., Glenn Reynolds. Sorry, he’s a pot-smoking Republican.
i don’t know what reynold’s deal was, if it was simply being an early adopter with the blogging stuff or if he was less, well, blast-faxy as you put it. at some point long ago he was regarded with some degree of non-hatred, and then 9/11 changed everything and etc etc and so forth.
i have no idea if he actually participates in the cipher or engages in congress with the free mumia to end global warming crowd, mind you.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 25, 2009 @ 5:08 pm
Dhex, for a while after 9/11, Reynolds would argue libertarian ideas and take issue with Reds. I suspect it was a case of reader/funder capture when he just started saying nothing more and nothing less than the Team Red talking points he was fed.
Comment by BDB —
August 25, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
Anyone who says “9/11 changed everything” without being ironic should not be taken seriously about anything, ever. Period.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 25, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
Eh, I’ll give slack to the guy for saying it at the time – it was a pretty common sentiment. That he still says it now, though…
Comment by BDB —
August 25, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
“Eh, I’ll give slack to the guy for saying it at the time – it was a pretty common sentiment. That he still says it now, though…”
Well, yeah, 95% of the country had a big helping of “Teh Stupid” mixed with “FEAR” that lasted until about 2005. But if you hold onto it by 2006, you’re a tool. And now? For God’s sake, even Charles Johnson is (finally) coming down off the 9/11 fear jag.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 25, 2009 @ 5:36 pm
I think we’re vigorously agreeing, BDB.
Comment by dhex —
August 25, 2009 @ 7:16 pm
Dhex, for a while after 9/11, Reynolds would argue libertarian ideas and take issue with Reds. I suspect it was a case of reader/funder capture when he just started saying nothing more and nothing less than the Team Red talking points he was fed.
ahh, i had my timeline mixed up.
i don’t actually think it’s necessarily wrong to say “9/11 changed everything” in terms of capturing a certain mood/attitude. it definitely scrambled a lot of eggs across the board. proximity may be coloring my judgment somewhat on this, however.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 26, 2009 @ 8:58 am
TAO,
As fascinating as your anecdote is, I’m going to stick with the quantitative data.
BTW, I was “there,” too. I was a regular on Hit & Run in the months before the war.
dhex,
There’s nothing in Howley’s piece to suggest she had much of an opinion at all. The war was a far-away thing she didn’t understand. Find me a word of opposition in there – you can’t.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 26, 2009 @ 9:00 am
Oh, I see. So there weren’t actually pro-war libertarians, because libertarians who were pro-war WEREN’T REAL LIBERTARIANS.
I wonder, does that apply to the plurality of pro-war Reason writers?
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 26, 2009 @ 9:02 am
“The general tone and tenor of her piece.”
Her piece was written in 2006. Just about everybody felt opposed to the war in 2006, including many people who originally supported it or, like Howley, didn’t have a settled opinion at all when it began.
Comment by dhex —
August 26, 2009 @ 9:41 am
“Find me a word of opposition in there – you can’t.”
i suppose i could counter with “find a word of acceptance in there – you can’t” but hey, whatever works for you. i’m only the guy at the end of the sports bar, trying to finish his drink before his bus shows up.
you win, joe. you’re a winner. enjoy it, as you deserve it.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 26, 2009 @ 10:25 am
but that would be completely irrelevant, because I’m arguing that she waffled and didn’t take a position.
You’re right, dhex, I can’t find any language that contradicts my position. Good point.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
August 26, 2009 @ 10:26 am
I hope your little outburst about sports made you feel better, dhex.
I’d hate to think it was entirely pointless.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 26, 2009 @ 12:02 pm
Blame the guy who selected the evidence for that.
You have quantitative data?
Cool! Dish!
(Just to be clear, though, you’re not going to cite your own personal anecdotes about the H&R comments, or remarks by 10 people in 2006, as “quantitative data”, right?)
Comment by BDB —
August 26, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
Especially since a good chunk of H and R commenters are (*self-admitted*) Republicans!
Pingback by From Pine View Farm » New Entry in Blogroll —
August 29, 2009 @ 11:59 am
[...] suggest starting with this post. [...]