Analogy vs. argument
Kevin Drum has written a response to Peter Beinhart’s call for the Moderates to take hold of their party, especially in regards to the War on Terror (via The Corner). Unfortunately, Drum makes the all to common mistake of confusing historical analogy with argument. This renders his entire response a jumble of error that is going to leave his advice unheeded.
He makes the mistake boldly and without apology:
The basic post-9/11 position among conservatives is that the war on terror is the moral equivalent of the anti-fascist crusade of World War II and the anticommunist crusade of the Cold War. Since this is their core argument, let’s take a look at the historical comparisons.
Thanks for playing, but that’s not an argument, that’s an analogy. The basic post-9/11 position among conservatives is that the war on terror must be fought in order to avoid terrorist attacks on US soil (and, preferably, everywhere else). We can compare this to World War II and the Cold War, but to claim that comparison is the “core argument” is just silly. It is slightly less silly in context, because Beinhart’s argument was that Liberals need to get their act together, just like they did during the Cold War (which is a silly argument for another day). But only slightly less silly.
Drum proceeds to pick apart the metaphor of the War on Terror as WWII and the Cold War. But anyone can pick apart a metaphor. If there were no differences between the two halves of a metaphor, it wouldn’t be a metaphor, now would it?
The gaping irony of all of this is that the major difference Drum finds between the WoT and WWII and the Cold War is that we’ve been really good at the WoT, whereas we kind of sucked it up for a while in those first two conflicts. Ergo, liberals are less likely to support it, because it seems less dire. He points out the long run of successes our enemies had in previous wars, and then notes that
Subsequent to 9/11, virtually no Americans have died from terrorist acts. Rather, American deaths have been caused by our own war of choice in Iraq — a country that has turned out to possess no WMD and have virtually no serious connection to al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, crime has gone down, despite the fact that more people are in prison! Crazy, that. In other words, Drum argues, liberals won’t support the War on Terror until we start losing:
The crusades against fascism and communism won majority support only when it became absolutely clear that they were expansionist ideologies that posed a deep and ongoing threat to the security of the rest of the world.
But, of course, the only reason it does not “pose a deep or ongoing threat to the security of the rest of the world” is because we’re busy strangling Islamic terrorism in its crib–by demolishing its base of operations in Afghanistan, removing a potential ally in Saddam, and thoroughly distracting (and killing) them in Iraq.
Drum’s other arguments for why liberals don’t take the WoT seriously are similarly comical. It’s been so easy, we haven’t needed a draft or rationing! Republicans are using it as a wedge issue! (Surely, that never, ever happened in the Cold War! Worst of all, people have begun making fun of it on late night TV! That never, ever would have happened during the dire circumstances of WWII and the Cold War. Heaven forefend!
Drum argues that “someone has to persuade [liberals] that the danger is truly overwhelming.” The trouble is, it’s not overwhelming, not in the sense that Islamofascists are going to invade Belgium or set up a puppet government in Czechoslovakia. The danger is personal–people are worried that terrorists are going to ram planes into buildings again, or bomb a Toys R’ Us while they’re Christmas shopping, or float a nuke into New York Harbor. If 9-11 didn’t convince liberals of that danger, then I have no desire to persuade them. Apparently the only thing that will do the trick is a successful terrorist attack, which is just not worth it.
And the funny thing is, we don’t really need their help, anyway. That’s the beauty of crib-strangling.
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December 3rd, 2004 at 8:55 am
Czechoslovakia split into two countries YEARS ago.
December 3rd, 2004 at 5:34 pm
In a way, that’s my point.
December 3rd, 2004 at 9:26 pm
To say that the core “post-9/11 position among conservatives is that the war on terror must be fought in order to avoid terrorist attacks on US soil” is itself pretty silly, my man, because you’re drawing a meaningless, if not false distinction between the views of conservatives and liberals. Of course, the goal of the war on terror is to combat terrorism. With that both sides surely agree; it’s the means where opinions diverge. When the foreign action towards that end is obvious–like invading Afghanistan to take out the Taliban and bring bin Laden to justice–there has been little disagreement between the political poles (although it appears that the Left has put more of a premium on the latter than has the Right, at least for election purposes.)
I think Drum’s point is that in order to justify something like the pre-emptive doctrine vis a vis the invasion of Iraq the Left requires that the terrorists pose the sort of existential threat which the Nazis and Communists certainly did. Indeed, the Bush administration appears to have recognized this with their selling the Iraq invasion most forcefully upon the grounds of WMD and al Qaeda connections. Otherwise, we risk winding up on the short end of the cost-benefit stick by taking unjustified and careless actions.
Not that I disagree, personally, that terrorists with nuclear weapons constitute an existential threat, but that nexus hasn’t been shown to exist yet. In fact, the one positive to emerge from the Iraq invasion has been to demonstrate that they definitively did not pose such a threat, though again at what cost and against what alternatives.
As for your belief in crib-strangling, which is all you on the Right have left out of Iraq mess (and therefore it comes off more like chicken-choking), I think you’re giving it way too much emphasis as things stand. That we haven’t suffered a terrorist attack since 9/11 seems hardly traceable to the invasion in light of the fact that the world has seen a general increase in terrorist attacks. But whatever makes you feels good and safe, I guess, and right.
December 3rd, 2004 at 10:33 pm
Ah, the Left’s favorite game: historical revisionism for fun and politics.
First, the war in Afghanistan. There was actually quite a bit of resistance against the Afghanistan war from the far Left–Michael Moore, for example. Then, these people were welcomed back happily into the fold once the Democrats decided to oppose the Iraq War to please their base during the primary, even though their disingenuous reasons for opposition were hardly changed at all.
Second, the idea that the Iraq War was “mainly sold” based on WMD & Al Qaeda issues. That’s not true at all. I was there, I was arguing for it, and I’ve not changed my arguments at all. Neither has Bush. Have you read his speech to the United Nations in September of 2002? The case he laid out there was very clear: Saddam Hussein had refused to acquiesce to the demands made of him by the UN in exchange for the truce at the end of the first Gulf War. Ergo, the truce no longer stands, and the world must enforce its demands. Go read the speech.
December 4th, 2004 at 10:04 pm
Timothy,
The basis of Bush’s protest against Saddam’s violations of UN resolutions was that Saddam possessed WMD. Just as the South didn’t secede over “state’s rights”, Bush didn’t invade Iraq over Saddam’s refusal to adhere to some UN resolution. No, Bush invaded Iraqi because he thought Saddam possessed WMD, had operational ties to Al Qaeda, and the only way to prevent any damage from Saddam to the US was to invade and remove him. The UN resolutions in question dealth specifically with Saddam’s refusal to prove that he was clean. The substance mattered more than the process.
December 5th, 2004 at 10:05 am
So, if you look at the arguments Bush actually made, then clearly he was right. If you look at the arguments you wish to ascribe to Bush, then he wasn’t. How convenient.
December 6th, 2004 at 12:41 am
Timothy:
What was Powell’s presentation at the UN all about? You know, the one with all the diagrams and aerial photographs. Surely, it’s proper to ascribe that presentation to the president, although I have noticed that the buck rarely seems to come to rest on his desk. And if the administration didn’t acutally argue the link between Saddam and al Qaeda, it’s funny how poll’s prior to the invasion showed that a majority Americans believed not only in the link, but that Iraq was involved in 9/11 itself. Where’d they’d get this idea? Even Fox’s increased viewership can’t account for that.
December 6th, 2004 at 7:02 am
Nobody claimed that nobody ever made those arguments. But they were never the only arguments for the war, and they weren’t even the primary argument.