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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Weren't those old and degraded? The article says as much.
The allegation was that Saddam had an active WMD program that would cause an acute danger to Americans - implicitly, I would say that the presumed threat wouldn't have even really included an active chemical weapons programme (chemical weapons always being the "odd man out" of the WMDs anyway, insofar as presumed effectiveness in causing mass destruction goes) - the implication was that it meant nukes or diseases, either used by Saddam or passed on to terrorists.
Nukes were definitely the much bigger concern; I bring up the chemical weapons stock discovery directly in response to the question in the OP of why we didn't discover any (we did, we just kept it under wraps).
I do think "we found 5000 chemical warheads" is more than enough for the politician who declared Victory six weeks into an eight-year war to also announce there were a whole bunch of WMDs just like we said there would be - but agreed it's nowhere near what we were promised.
The thing is, I remember hearing about these chemical weapons already in 00s, as indicated by this NBC story, for example. I think the Bush admin even used them as evidence that they weren't completely incorrect but dropped this argument fairly quickly since it was at the time evident to everyone that this was the equivalent of the police claiming some guy was running a huge Walter White style meth lab operation in the neighborhood and then doing a big raid and finding no trace of a meth lab but some evidence turning up the guy had grown a couple of weed plants in the closet when that was illegal and may have even traded it for beer with a friend a couple of times and saying this proves they were kinda right.
This. Several times this. WMD was a fake ass category invented as a piece of misinformation.
More options
Context Copy link
I honestly don't remember the Admin mentioning it at the time at all (and every American I bring this up to is surprised) but I could well be wrong, and also agree the reason it wasn't hammered on is because it was embarassing compared to what Americans were promised.
Yeah, as somebody who was arguing w/ pro-Iraq War conservatives at the time, they brought stuff like the above, but then backed off, when multiple people said basically, "so, we spent billions and sent thousands of American's to die for Saddam's leftovers he didn't get to using against Iran? You guys were talking about mushroom clouds over New York."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link