Dean's World

Actually clicking through the links I found a very good comment from Molly Ivins', which I pasted in below, and a very stupid comment from the person who skewered her at the end. One of the characteristics that makes Dean's World worth reading is the avoidance of labels like leftist or rights *when arguing about the facts and circumstances of the case*.

From Ms Ivins:

I am not "you liberals" or "you people on the left who always ..." My name is Molly Ivins, and I can speak for myself, thank you. I don't need Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove to tell me what I believe.

Setting up a straw man, calling it liberal and then knocking it down has become a favorite form of "argument" for those on the right. Make some ridiculous claim about what "liberals" think, and then demonstrate how silly it is. Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and many other right-wing ravers never seem to get tired of this old game. If I had a nickel for every idiotic thing I've ever heard those on the right claim "liberals" believe, I'd be richer than Bill Gates.

From Mr. Chrenkoff (Arthur?)

Too many on the left prefer to go on tolerating a wrong rather than to see it fixed by the right. And if you solve a problem, what are you going to hang around the right's neck?


Of course the right does the same thing, it's built into human nature. (this quote from John Tierney's op-ed today)

When experimental psychologists divide subjects into purely arbitrary groups - by the color of their eyes, their taste in art, the flip of a coin - the members of a group quickly become so hostile to the other group that they'll try to deny rewards to the outsiders even at a cost to themselves.

Here is the article, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/02/opinion/02tierney.html?hp
he has citations to the psych journals at the end.


Therefore, I would think that the following slight edit of Dean's original post actually makes a much stronger point:


Well. It's good to see that Molly Ivins is still too stupid to realize how many Iraqis Saddam murdered.

Just in case old Molly "I favor taking out mass-murderers unless there's a Republican in the White House" Ivins needs help, Saddam killed about a million and a half of his own people. Apparently reactionaries who've been "active in human rights for 30 years" can't do basic math.


Ms. Ivins may in fact be a reactionary leftist, and Mr. Chrenkoff a right-wing ideologue, for all I know, but that hardly seems the point. There were many good reasons NOT to invade Iraq (e.g. George H. W. Bush claimed he could see no exit strategy) but somehow downplaying the number of dead under Saddam cannot possibly lead to good policy prescriptions because it just misstates the numbers.

Triticale: absolutely not - the point I am making is in support of Mr. Chrenkoff's critique, and Dean's, that Ms Ivins appears to be ignoring basic math. In some sense, in "defending the liberal tradition", whether she is or isn't a reactionary leftist is irrelevant. Pointing out calmly that she is grossly understating the pre-invasion deaths, and resisting the urge to attribute the error to some label like reactionary or leftist seems a more powerful tactic. It seems to me that revisionist might be the word of choice in any case.

To answer your question about Germany would require knowing a lot more than I know, but the one thing I think is *really* important is the relation of after the fact numbers to before the fact reasoning. I think if you had asked Winston Churchill, for example, *before* engaging Germany, that he would have argued that it *was* worth it, even if it meant a certain number of troops needed to be engaged for that long.

See my comment under Dean's post above:

Saddam's Terrorist Links, and Tiresome Falsehoods

Link

Molly Ivans has been daft for a while now. Sorry to see that someone is still paying her for her misinformation.