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November 20, 2005

Confused Americans for Truth - Sarcasm as a Substitute for Logic

by Ferdinand T Cat

I received an interesting comment on my earlier post about Democrats and Patriotism, and I thought it deserved special attention. I'm breaking it into two parts for reasons that will become clear shortly.

Haven't we already won the war in Iraq? Honestly, I don't get what the big problem is. Saddam is gone, the Iraqi's have a constitution, and they are about to have thier first real federal election. Isn't that enough to declare victory?

At this point, the comment could be construed as satire. The commenter could be mocking the left's failure to understand that an American pullout would make things much worse. The harmony is shattered by the next two sentences, which devolve it from satire to sarcasm.

If we stick around any longer, it can't be defined as a war so much as an occupation. Heck, that's what the majority of Iraqis themselves are calling it now anyway.

The sarcasm falls flat because the clinching argument-- that the Iraqis feel we're an occupation army-- is an example of the Appeal to Popularity fallacy. You may want to argue that a majority of the Iraqi people don't want us to leave, but that's irrelevant. If a majority of the Iraqi people believed the earth was flat, it would not make the Earth any less round.

The truth is, I want a stable capitalist democracy established in Iraq. I believe that if we pull that off, then it will end the idiotic arrangement that keeps the people of the world's most valuable real estate so poor. The Jews are rich because they have capitalism. We give capitalism to the Arabs, they get just as rich as the Jews, and the bottom dops out of the racial hatred market. End of story.

If someone has a better way of opposing terrorism, I'm willing to discuss it on a purely rational basis. Until then, my Occupation of Iraq Plan is the only game in town, and if it is not going well, what we need are solutions, not sarcasm.

  • If the occupation is not going well, the solution is to develop a better method for establishing capitalist democracy. It doesn't mean that we should give up.
  • If the Iraqi people do not support the occupation, the solution is to convince the Iraqi people that we're there to help. It doesn't mean that we should give up.
  • If too many soldiers are getting killed, we need better protection for soldiers. It does not mean that we should give up.
  • And if a majority of the human race believes the United States is doing the wrong thing, THEN OBVIOUSLY THE HUMAN RACE IS AN INFERIOR LIFE FORM!

In other words, it doesn't mean we should give up.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

Trackposted to 10ft2ft.com, Blue State Conservative, Cao's Blog, Don Surber, Is It Just Me?, NIF, Oblogatory Anecdotes, Peakah's Provocations, Real Teen, Right Wing Nation, Robinik.net, Soldier's Angel Holly Aho, , Basil's Blog, The Mudville Gazette, and a pretty girl on a boat named Mabel.

# At Sun 5:50 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (7) | More Confused Americans for Truth

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Comments

Outstanding post, not bad for a mere feline.

(I'm ducking now)

Jake


Posted by: Jake Jacobsen at November 20, 2005 9:31 PM

Mr. Jacobsen has an excellent blog, and I'm sure his rapidly-decreasing life expectancy will propel him to even greater heights of creativity while I track down his address.


Posted by: Ferdy [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 21, 2005 2:09 AM

*sigh*

While I appreciate your attempt, appeals to logic, or any other formal reasoning process, is no way to win an argument in today's political atmosphere. Emotionally charged lies! Now that's the way to win an argument in politics today!

Pointing out and refuting fallacies, such as the straw man lying memes of "No WMD!" and "Bush Lied us into the war!" with actualk, well, you know, FACTS does no good either.

It's all about who can shout loudest and who can be bullied into caving first.

(And we all know who that will be, don't we?)


Posted by: David at November 21, 2005 6:53 AM

I don't think there is any fallacy in saying that since most Iraqis think there is an occupation, the occupation is real. Since the system in Iraq can be determined an occupation or not based on how Iraqis feel about it, you can't seperate Iraqi opinion from the question at hand.

In other words, though an appeal to popularity on a question such as "is the current government democratic?" would be fallacious, it is proper when considering the question "is Iraq occupied?"
Indeed, it's more fallacious to consider our intuitive opinions on the matter. Occupation is all about a relationship. In this case, the relationship is between the US military and the Iraqi people.


Posted by: David Rossie at November 21, 2005 2:23 PM

If the difference between "occupation" and "liberation" is the way people feel about us, then those terms are irrelevant to any discussion about the best way to secure democracy in Iraq. Our problem is not to make people feel better, it's to make their lives better. It would not be the first time some painful effort was required to get a desired result.


Posted by: Ferdy [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 21, 2005 2:49 PM

Aren't Iraqis the best judges of the quality of their lives? Can they be miserable and have their lives improved? Not that I care either whether or not they like western-style democracy, but I wouldn't force it on them. A practical concern: democracy is dangerous in the hands of well-meaning humanitarians.... imgaine how dangerous it would be in the hands of vengence-minded zealots.


Posted by: David Rossie at November 21, 2005 6:24 PM

We're not talking about quality of life: we are talking about the purpose of the occupation.

Both democracy and tyranny are vulnerable to bad leadership. The purpose of a constitutional democracy is to place limits on the power of government that decrease the potential for abuse. Those limits are why the American revolution fared better than the French.


Posted by: Ferdy [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 21, 2005 8:22 PM

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

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