site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37126 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Following a single terrorist attack, the US invaded two countries that had nothing to do with it. You might have also heard of a minor skirmish called World War I.

Not at all similar, for what I think should be obvious reasons.

I don't see any obvious reasons, and anything I can think of seems pretty superficial.

We invaded Afghanistan because they were sheltering Osama Bin Laden. We invaded Iraq as a result of a whole chain of events that didn't even start with 9/11. You can call the reasons bad and I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but it's not true that we just arbitrarily decided to attack a country because of one "unrelated" terrorist attack. That's like saying we went to war with Japan because a couple of ships got sunk. (And in fact Pearl Harbor was really only the proximate cause of a war that had been inevitable for a number of years.)

World War I might have been triggered by a single assassination, but it was basically a couple of countries who'd been waiting for an excuse to go to war, and then a bunch of other countries dragged in by a complicated web of treaties.

It really isn't comparable to claiming that North Korea up and decided to invade South Korea because a North Korean expat attempted an assassination.

Thank you for writing this! This is basically exactly what I would have written if I had more motivation to write a response.

IIRC, the Taliban wasn't even particularly unreasonable, it's just that the US was in no mood to jump through the hoops of a bunch of mountain-dwelling goatherders.

I'm about 80% sure that 9/11 was one of the stated reasons for invading Iraq. If you want to say that, as in the case of WWI, it might have been the stated reason but it wasn't the real reason, than it is actually no different from NK stating they're invading SK over a terrorist attack. Like I said countries do this stuff all the time.

9/11 was a stated reason for invading Iraq, but only in an indirect way. 9/11 was treated as evidence that being reactive rather than proactive about terrorism risk was unacceptable, and from that premise even a small probability of Iraq developing serious functional WMDs was deemed to be unacceptable, because we couldn't afford to wait until "the smoking gun becomes a mushroom cloud", to quote the most memorable phrase.

But that's the stated reasons, and a vengeful public was not really listening closely.

"Neither Bush nor senior administration officials directly linked Iraq or its leader to the planning or execution of the 9/11 attacks. Yet a sizable majority of Americans believed that Hussein aided the terrorist attacks that took nearly 3,000 lives.

The same month that Congress approved the use of force resolution against Iraq, 66% of the public said that “Saddam Hussein helped the terrorists in the September 11th attacks”; just 21% said he was not involved in 9/11."

/11 was treated as evidence that being reactive rather than proactive about terrorism risk was unacceptable

To expand on this, and IIRC, accusations of Iraq supporting, training and equipping terrorists was part of the explicit justification for the invasion in addition to their purported WMD.

To be clear, my memory is that those accusations panned out to be 'mostly false' at best?

(not rhetorical, I actually don't remember the specifics! but that is certainly the impression that I get.)

My recollection is that they were indeed "mostly false", but it's been a long time. What makes it complicated is that once we toppled Saddam's government, neglected to replace it with anything orderly, and made little to no effort to prevent the Iraqi army's munitions stockpiles from being thoroughly looted, Iraq was subsequently completely inundated with terrorists and terrorism for the next decade-plus, so a rigorous argument would have to disentangle pre- and post-invasion terrorism.

Whatever Saddam's support for terrorism before the invasion, it seems to me that it was a rounding error compared to the amount of terrorism generated by the invasion and occupation.

We had already fought a war with Iraq in the 90s. When we invaded the second time, it was mostly about Iraq invading Kuwait, and claims about chemical weapons. Yeah, there was some talk also that Saddam sponsored terrorism, but the administration never tried to link him directly to 9/11 (though you probably did hear a lot of uninformed people making the connection at the time).

Yeah, there was some talk also that Saddam sponsored terrorism, but the administration never tried to link him directly to 9/11

So I decided to see what I can find on this, and maaan...:

MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.

MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization.

We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.

Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

...fuck Dick Chaney...

I suppose you're right, and I have to concede, but his "we don't know, but *wink**wink**nudge**nudge**wink**nudge**wink**nudge**wink*... anyway as I was saying we just don't know *wink*", sure makes me feel dirty about it.

Then again the conversation started with OP saying "why the North Koreans felt like they 'needed' to start the Korean War", so maybe the analogy still holds.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats