Criticism Begging Criticism
by tdaxp ~ June 6th, 2008
Curtis’ criticisms of John McCain (ses The Audacity of Faith in Opinion and The Audacity of Hope in Barack Obama for examples) are becoming increasingly strained.
The current round began when Curtis claimed to see a hidden contradiction in John McCain’s words. After numerous requests for citations (which first were to the derived source of an edited campaign video, and then the vague source of “It’s there in his own words, his own face, his own voice, his own PR moment.,” and finally to actual transcripts), Curtis produces a couple of in-context quotes where John McCain stated than the short wars in Iraq would be easy and the long war in Iraq is hard.
Obviously, the disinction between short wars (blitzkrieg, 3GW type affairs) and long wars (people’s wars, 4GW, etc) are well known to readers of this blog. Indeed, knowledge of the difference between take-down and take-over has been basic to the western war of war for several millenia.
So Curtis’s attack on McCain only works if one believes an even stranger attack: that McCain does not have basic background knowledge on how war works. Curtis’s words would not convince anyone who does not already believe. However, they are illustrative (I think) of the theological nature of Obama support… to paraphrase my friend Aaron, beliving in Obama doesn’t take any more faith than believing in the Resurrection.
June 6th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
For readers who don’t want to trudge through the several posts and lengthy comments surrounding this discussion, I’ll note:
That Dan is arguing about what McCain believes and/or believed (claiming they are the same) whereas I’m arguing about something quite different (the role of that rhetoric McCain has used in the public sphere.)
E.g., while the distinctions between 0GW-6GW, and “long wars” and “short wars”, may be well known to many readers of this blog, indeed for the sake of argument may be well known to John McCain, I would challenge Dan to make the same assertion about the general public to whom McCain was speaking when he made his cited comments.
Dan apparently believes that when McCain told the public that the war in Iraq would be easy, not long before the vote to authorize the President to do so, he was only speaking of the “short war” to take out Saddam Hussein. When John McCain said that some, unlike himself, misled the pubic by saying the war effort would be easy or simply didn’t know what they were voting for (thinking it would be easy), McCain was referring to the “long war.”
The oddness of Dan’s belief is, using Dan’s parsing of McCain’s beliefs, 1) in the fact that McCain’s purported reference to the “long war” in later comments was tied, by McCain, to the initial decision some years earlier to go to war in Iraq, including the vote authorizing GWB to do so, but 2) McCain’s earlier expressed certainty that the impending war effort in Iraq would be rather easy was a reference to the “short war”.
Did McCain know at the time that selling the decision to vote GWB the authorization to attack Iraq by referencing only the “short war”, and claiming it would be easy, would be fully understood by the public? I mean: that they would know about the “long war” that would follow? Or did he omit that part of his understanding (if indeed he knew the difference between the “short war” and the “long war”) when he went before the public to argue the case for going to war in Iraq?
These speculations are contingent upon Dan’s being right about McCain’s beliefs and understanding of war. The alternative, that McCain like most of the key players in the GWB administration never fully considered what would be required after the toppling of Saddam (what Dan calls “the short war”), would require other interpretations of McCain’s PR flip-flopping.
June 7th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Curtis,
Your oddly phrased comment easily collapses. While it takes the form of a third-person narrative, this sentence
Is both critical and deceptive. The lengthy war that followed in Iraq was largely the results of mistakes by the Bush administration. It need not have happened.
As I remarked before], it’s ironic that those who would earlier be so quick to harshly judge Bush for bungling an occupation now believe that his performance was as should be expected. But they can’t have it both ways.
On other points…
I have no idea what you need by “6GW.” I trust that you recognize that the distinction between short and long wars far preceeds both xGW and GMW, which makes your use of that jargon (and questioning whether McCain is familiar with it) bizarre.
Much of the rest of your comment is paristan and deceptive (and thus useless to me as well). In 2004 McCain was a maverick beloved by Democrats who was (supposedly) bolt from the Republican Party… but know we learn he (a Senator!) was part of the Administration. If you want to use rhetoric that loosely and uselessly, DailyKos would make a better home for your comment than this blog.
June 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Dan,
“6GW” was a mistake, should have been “5GW”. But in any case, the fact that you have repeatedly brought up Lind, GMW, etc., in this discussion spanning several posts, as if those topics were germane to the discussion, is the reason I included them in my comment. Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t become you. Likewise, the sentence I used began,
in which long/short wars are mentioned separately from xGW — indeed, are also blocked off with commas — so your latest attempt to act befuddled that I’d confute them –
collapses quite easily.
Are you saying that McCain’s judgment was impaired, that he trusted GWB to prosecute the war well when he should have known better given his own VAST experience and expertise not only in warfare but also in government?
The remainder of your comment, beginning with “Much of the rest of your comment…”, is partisan and deceptive and useless to me.
June 7th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
And then there was this, of course, in case you missed it.
June 7th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Curtis,
Thank you for your comments.
I assume your second comment was posted in error?
As to your first…
To paraphrase a friend of mine, don’t play dishonest. It doesn’t become you.
Your strangely worded sentence, which implied that xGW should be known to either McCain or the general public, should either be retracted or clarified. In contrast, I raised William Lind analogically, as you would reject the shoddy sort of attacks you’ve made against John McCain if they had been made to a non-political figure in your area of expertise, such as William Lind.
Creating a list somehow blocks them off?
Just retract your sentence or reword it. Don’t engage in undefensible insinuations and then pretend you didn’t.
No more than Thomas Friedman, or Hillary Clinton, the editorial staff of the New Republic, or any of the rest of the bipartisan coalition that supported the war and was justly surprised and shocked by the shoddy quality of Phase IV operations.
Regardless, to make this criticism, you have to retract your previous one. Keeping your complaings coherent is required to be intellectually honest, though I don’t suspect that you will actually follow through.
That’s too bad. The sooner you improve the qualty of your writing, the sooner you may convince someone who does not already support Obama.
June 8th, 2008 at 11:14 am
The second comment was not posted in error. You included a mention of xGW’s in your post, I included a mention of xGW’s in my comment — and then you called my inclusion bizarre. Especially odd is the fact that you thought I somehow confuted xGW with long/short wars, when in fact you included some xGW’s as examples of long/short wars. In any case neither you nor I know what McCain knows about either subject.
Use of the word “justly” in the phrase “justly surprised” is such a huge lie. Anyone contemplating war, or going into war, or authorizing another to go into war, should have a fundamental understanding of warfare, which includes not only an understanding of any given casus belli (which is the primary thought most gave to this particular decision, for some the only thought) but also ground conditions and relative strengths and weakness of the domestic side vs the foreign side, etc. Those you mentioned who put their faith in GWB’s war effort failed miserably. This is not to say that the fog of war does not happen, or chance (I am a great believer in the power of chance in warfare, for the good or the bad); but it does mean that their votes were poorly considered. Hillary Clinton didn’t even bother reading the Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before her vote. Etc.
June 8th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Therefore, you should retreact your original criticism of McCain.
Your criticism of McCain’s supposed flip-flops assumes a criticism of McCain’s ignorance of war. If you cannot demonstrate the latter, you cannot assert the former.
To be intellectually consistent, you must retract your criticism.
What do you mean by poorly considered?
And why?
June 8th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
No, Dan, my criticism remains. He said it would be easy, the victory quick; some years later, he basically says he always knew it would be long and tough while criticizing harshly those who did not.
The fact that you can parse his words in such a way, via the creation of an imaginary context and an assumption of what he really meant, that his flip-flopping becomes some straight-line consistency, does not prove he was not flip-flopping.
The fact is you are a partisan speaker with respect to McCain and have abandoned reason in favor of dogmatic support for him. Your own “straight talk” resembles his “straight talk” and I suppose I should not be surprised by this. (Indeed, I have gain much understanding while participating in this back-and-forth with you, so all is not lost.)
June 8th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Curits,
I note you ducked the two questions that concluded my last comment. If you’re going to proceed in this conversation, do so. But don’t avoid questions.
As to…
This does strike me as funny. An objective observer might say.
* Given McCain’s words, and the context Curtis believes they were said in, McCain’s words indicate a flip-flop.
* Given McCain’s words, and the context Dan believes they were said in, McCain’s words indicate a flip flop.
* Given McCain’s words, and no information about the context they were said in, one cannot say.
Thus, you need to demonstrate that the context you presume is right, or else abandon your claim and admit you cannot say.
Please demonstrate this assertion.
(After you answer my prior questions and respond to the first part of this comment, obviously.)
June 8th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
No, it is funny that you believe I am obligated to answer your questions while you are not obligated to respond to my comments in good faith. When you ask questions — which is frequent as anyone who has debated you has discovered — you are always seeking more ammo for a new spin of your own concoction rather than to come to some mutual understanding (however more distant that mutual understanding may be.) This is only true in some debates, on particular topics, I will concede.
An example, your latest:
I provided full transcripts! Lol. But you began to intuit, or guess, or presume or assume a “short war” that McCain had somewhere in his mind when he said the victory would be quick once GWB was authorized to go to war and went to war, and a “long war” when he later said he knew at the time of the vote that the war would be long and tough. These are things you have added to the evidence that I presented; indeed, they are entirely your concoctions, nowhere to be found in those transcripts!
Another example:
When one uses the term “therefore”, usually it signifies agreement, especially in a case like this where the user delivers a normative assessment. If you agree that neither of us knows what McCain knows about either subject, then your whole experience-based defense of McCain falls flat and is shown to be the wishful thinking (a “too cleverness”) of a partisan.. But I suspect that that feature of the term “therefore”, that use of your rhetoric, is meaningless to you; the real point is the normative assessment which becomes a command. So it’s about winning the argument, indeed trying to force a win, not about coming to any sort of understanding (mutual or otherwise.)
Thus, I cannot take your exhortation (or is it a command?) that I respond to your questions seriously.
June 8th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Curits,
I’m sorry you’ve abandoned the give-and-take of discourse.
I look forward to resuming this conversation when you are prepared to answer questions when asked them. (It seems this may have to wait until your answer will not embarrass your position in anyway — that is, it will not provide “ammo” to someone who disagrees with you.)
June 8th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
The most recent comment, comprising of four words and beginning with “Lol,” has been deleted. It does not meet the quality standards of this blog, being neither useful to me nor including any complete sentences.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:55 am
As a frequent debate-in-person participant and a learned-from-experience-seldom online debate participant, and a friend who has known you for a long time, I empathize with those you engage on the blog. Perhaps since we can never tell when or if a Leinenkugel’s resides in your fist, and certain aspects of the discussion can’t be clarified with a quick interjection of “you mean X and not Y, right?”, it becomes difficult to keep you on task. I have seen you cue on someone’s misuse of a word when your own spelling, grammar and proofreading are often, in your own grinning words, “disastrous”. I’ve also seen you use throwaway statements and be significantly more dismissive of people’s ideas than I know you are in person.
I think Curtis was quick to jump on an internet meme that made the rounds on our side. I think the video itself does what FOX has made millions doing, condensing important topics into emotional one-offs. As an aspiring pragmatist v. an emotional first-responder, I know many of the clips from the video are out of context and cherry-picked for the viewers’ benefit. Therefore I will not make my decision for President based on clips like these, but instead by reading the candidates’ positions on their websites, and as time and budget allow, their books. “Our Plan for America” led me to vote for and financially support Kerry/Edwards in 2004 over “Financially Destroying Every Company and Baseball Team I Touch But Kerry Love Gays” by Bush/Rove.
We know that in 98% of cases, getting into the Senate requires finesse and competence and not simple rhetoric and irrational backlash against a competent and actually-capable-of-shooting-lightning-bolts Senate Minority Leader, and that obviously Mr. McCain to Mrs. Snowe thought of most aspects and implications of an invasion/system patch. Obviously many supporters on both sides and dozens of think-tanks, bloggers, PhDs and guys with soul patches and hemp sandals tried to foresee the implications of such an action and some could/did and some could not/didn’t. The beauty and rub of our system of governance is that the guy who understands PISSR and 4GW and FAQ and LRM and arrows that point to themselves is that he only gets one vote and the guy who says “Obama gon’ take my guns! John McCain’s as good as a liberal! I’m votin’ for Barr!” also gets one vote. The same could be true of the guy who has written a bestselling book on Amazon and spends many a Berry-Weiss fueled evening pondering the nuances of world affairs only gets one vote versus a guy who lives under the whim of a cruel slumlord and spends more time tightening bicycle chains than reading NRO or the Atlantic.
I think Curtis came to the argument unprepared, but I think you can be either unintentionally very lawyerly and dismissive, or too caught up in being on the perceived-to-you-correct side of the argument, and try to debate the debate rather than the subject. I assume Curtis’ final comment was profanity and the Eject button, but please keep in mind that those of us willing to debate you must be handled with the understanding that we’re here for a discussion, not abuse.
I often find writing papers that it’s hard to take generalized knowledge and translate it into credited, annotated quotations or citations. I know Delta/ComAir suffered a catastrophic system meltdown around Christmas of a few years ago, and that it was caused by an aged and oversubscribed computer system. So when I went to write a paper about it, it took the better part of an afternoon and Lexis/Nexis plus the Augie library to properly cite it. You have an impressive command of many of the issues that are making people stand up and get involved in politics, even when you ignore or refuse to acknowledge some points you don’t agree with. Just be careful that you don’t chase off the armchair debaters and dabblers/enthusiasts or you’ll find yourself with an empty bike shop and no one to shoot the shit with. We didn’t come to the debate to be sent off on a transcript scavenger hunt.
As an intellectual exercise, I’ve littered this post with things you’d likely jump on while ignoring the overall theme of my post. My thinking is that you’ve been reading up to this point, ready to attack on some of those points, while leaving the greater idea, that is, to play nice with your readers and friends, aside. I know that you’re honest enough to acknowledge it, at least to yourself, as well. We like to come and participate and now and again, we think “Got him!”. I’d just request you aren’t so frustrating and smug getting us around to thinking “nope, outmaneuvered again”
June 9th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Aaron,
It wasn’t profanity. But it was a pointer back to a point, and even it’s deletion was a “case in point.” And btw, the only reason I’m writing complete sentences now is that I want my comment commenting on your comment to reach your eyes before a quick censorship from the venerable tdaxp.
Incidentally, as far as coming to the debate well-armed goes, I didn’t instigate the debate but merely made a quick posting to my own blog which was not intended to be a thesis paper (as, indeed, most blog posts to blogs are not!) The observations or quicky post was pounced upon by the venerable tdaxp, and the debate was on.
Curiously absent from the entire debate is any evidence, citation, etc., that would support the opinion of the venerable tdaxp; rather, merely opinion, guessing, and standard partisan one-shots were offered. Being well-armed should not equate with being well-stubborn in opinion.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Curtis,
My second and third paragraphs come in support of your claim that while Mr. McCain may have had a nuanced statement/position with caveats both spoken and implied, the average voter isn’t going to come along with the assumptions. While Dan seems to be quite sure that McCain is talking about different aspects and memes of war (short v long, xGW v yGW) when he seems to adopt different positions, I don’t think that comes across to someone voting for/against him who may see it as inconsistency.
So Dan might be tempted to say “Obviously, McCain is speaking about aspect X in this clip, and obviously is talking about aspect Y in this conflicting clip” the populace might not see those as obvious.
I didn’t intend to imply that you weren’t informed, I just meant that it seems to me through the back and forth that Dan is quick to ask for significant citation while casually dismissing topics or points he doesn’t agree with. I think that comes from the fact that he is typically well-informed on most positions, specifically those he espouses
This debate self-selection is something I think we all do, I just caution Dan that he can go too far at times with it and that his blog is healthier with agreement and dissent than with standard-bearing and dismissal. When I say you came unprepared, I should maybe elaborate to say “you weren’t looking to get into a debate, and if you were, you weren’t looking to change the subject of the debate to the substance of each preceding argument each time the floor is given.” I felt in reading the lengthy back-and-forth that the substance wasn’t being argued so much as the argument was being argued, and I don’t feel that informs the participants or lurkers.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Aaron,
Lol, that is a prescient characterization and not one I was entirely conscious of experiencing at the time when writing some of my comments; so yes there was a kind of un-preparedness. The hope and the expectation (even if unrealistic) was always for some kind of forward movement, toward understanding or agreement or even revelation, even if those were never going to be achieved. Instead, there was static, constantly repeating loop: lots of loopiness, to be sure.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Aaron,
Many thanks for your kind words, and my sympathy for your life under your cruel slumlord.
I am a skeptical of claims I disagree with. I want to tear them down. That way, I know that those that stand are good beliefs I want for myself.
This blog has been very useful for that, as its socially more acceptably in blog-reality than in real-life to openly disagree with people when they make an assertion you disagree with.
That said, I think you are assuming that I am claiming more than I am claiming…
The title of this post is a pun on begging the question, which is what Curtis’ complaint does. To believe his attack on McCain, one needs to also accept another attack: that McCain is ignorant of war theory. Likewise, to praise McCain for sophisticated comments on the war, one needs to believe another praise: that McCain is familiar with war theory. If one is not willing to praise before praise or blame before blame, then one should be left with silence, neither praising nor criticizing McCain until one is sure if he is ignorant or knowledgeable of war theory.
So, was McCain’s statements examples of speaking of different aspects of war or an inconsistency? Until you can demonstrate McCain’s knowledge of war one way or the other, we are left with a simple answer: I don’t know.
Curtis,
I enjoyed reading your recent metadiscursive comments. Feel free to resume the substance of conversation by answering the questions put to you (or, alternatively, by retracting your original claims) at any time.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Well, if you feel we must ascertain the scope and depth of a stranger’s knowledge who we will unlikely be able to question directly, then I challenge that you must ascertain the intent and motivation of Curtis in posting a link to the video.
Did he intend to open discourse to people familiar with warfare theory, or did he intend to open discourse with the blog-browsing general public? If you make a difficult requirement of this discourse, that one must get into the head of the public figure and reason out unknowns that may only be conjecturable based on published or recorded statements, then I don’t think it unreasonable that you provide documentation that Curtis intended one particular thing or another in his post.
A frequent debate tactic that I use is to pose some unanswerable or unlikely to be performed challenge to my competitor. Mike frequently experiences this while rock climbing with me. Mike posited that he’d claimed earlier a certain section of rock was climbable, while I claimed that it was not, at least at our skill level. Upon inspection from another angle, I see that he is probably right, so I reframe the discussion. I now say “Fine, you go climb it, and I’ll believe you,” knowing full well he cannot a.) climb it alone and b.) is too lazy to prove me wrong. In effect, I’ve won the debate.
In the case of Curtis v TDAXP, I might with cowardice and aplomb accuse you of using my tactics. I think you yourself may harbor some doubts about McCain’s rationality or intentions, and rather than argue the merits of the discussion, you’ve sent Curtis on a multi-hour multi-website multi-boring task of gathering transcripts from a compilation of video clips. Since Curtis is a reasonable guy with better things to do, he is unlikely to jump through your hoops, and in effect, you’ve won.
Determining whether McCain meant X or Y on a variety of statements would be the work of a biographer and I doubt Curtis is willing to put in the effort to document McCain’s motivations and scholarly/intellectual prowess, just to continue a debate I don’t believe either of you are entirely wrong on. Hence my ground-giving that Senators are intelligent and capable and don’t get where they are by accident. I would say that John McCain is well-versed in warfare theory. But I would also agree with Curtis’ intentions in posting, that he is capable of changing tune as political winds push.
For example, McCain was clearly on the side of intelligence and reason when he claimed the President was not allowed to break the law. Now that he must secure the vote of the paranoid and bigoted (the currently skeptical block of the Republican party) he is jumping aboard the pro-wiretapping, pro-telecom-amnesty, pro-strong-executive, irrationally-anti-Islam train. To debate me on this opinion, will you require that I document all divulgences of McCain’s theories of checks and balances and his thoughts on Constitutional law, perhaps requiring that I go into his service record and vet the credentials of his political science instructors at the Naval Academy. It is very likely I’d concede that I’m wrong on this topic, rather than do all that stuff. But winning the debate isn’t the point, having the discussion itself is. So I’m just saying don’t be so unreasonable in discussing with Curtis and he’s likely to come back, which I know you’d prefer to the alternative.
And finally, Curtis, I don’t think you need defending. I just got involved with this because I found the topic debatable myself. And I’m extremely entertained by TDAXP’s transition from “Obama will probably be a pretty good president” to “Obama will be a disaster of biblical proportion” and his sudden embrace of John McCain. Since he isn’t being paid to shill for the party like so many of his journalistic peers (aside from occasional pizza bribes) I’m finding his descent into pseudo-madness, i.e. McCain support, rather interesting.
And yes, that was a throwaway statement. I actually will celebrate the election of either candidate with beer and pizza, as has become traditional.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Aaron,
While politics and strategy interests me a great deal, discourse analysis bores me. (I just survived a semester of it… *shudder*). So I really don’t care about Curtis’ motivations in themselves.
You’re correct of course that I doubt my own ideas, and I am grateful for the work Cutis and others do in attempting to overturn them. This is true whether those opinions are posted on other blogs where I might read them, or on this blog as part of a give-and-take exchange.
Relatedly, two comments are being held for moderating pending Curtis’ resumption of this dialog [1]. (Obviously, all free to ignore give-and-take, and most other constraints of respectful dialog, on their own sitse.)
You misrepresent both my positions and McCain’s history, but as you previously mentioned adding things easy to “jump on” [2], I’ll assume these are meaningless distractions and not address them.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/06/criticism-begging-criticism.html#comment-83642
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/06/criticism-begging-criticism.html#comment-84226