A Second Hand Conjecture

You can predict the future. Really, you can. Maybe not next week’s lottery numbers, but some things are as amenable to prognostication “as the flowers is in May.” You just need to read the signs.

Some signs are easily evident, while others take a bit more deciphering. One evident sign occurs when someone wants to pre-emptively sink an argument, or support for an argument that they fear they cannot counter. An effective method for accomplishing this task (albeit a logical fallacy) is to “poison the well.” Essentially, you dare your opponent to make the argument that you fear most, all the while undermining it with conjecture and distortions. Lies make a frequent appearance, as does ad hominem (another logical fallacy). If your opponent does make the feared argument afterwards, he does so at a disadvantage since you have pre-emptively discredited him and his argument.

Poisoning-the-well (PTW) attacks are a sign that the speaker and/or argument against whom the attacks are directed have something useful to say, something that the attacker fears will torpedo their own position. The predictable part is that the low drone of the PTW attacks will be dwarfed by the hysteria and full-frontal force of the harangue delivered once the feared argument is made. The feared speaker’s reputation and credibility will be directly challenged, most likely be recalling the PTW attacks and using them as evidence of the speaker’s unreliability. Very little, if any, time will be spent evaluating the speaker’s points on their merits. All that pre-emptive poison will be sloshed about quite liberally in order to kill whatever credibility survived the initial onslaught.

A concrete example is in how Gen. Petraeus is being received by those in opposition to the war in Iraq, and particularly how his upcoming appearance before Congress is being attacked now. Bear in mind that the September 15 “deadline” is nothing more than the date by which Petreaus must make his report to Congress, a date that the President has requested Congress to wait for before making any decisions about Iraq. Instead, Democrats have been calling for troop withdrawals, declaring the war “lost” and agitating against the “surge” strategy based upon incomplete information. Contrary to the intent of the September deadline, it has become a date certain for a change in strategy, regardless of what Petraeus reports.

While many congressional Democrats have been quite active in trying to undermine Petraeus’ mission (you know, the one that he was confirmed by the Senate to lead), the media and others have slowly been trying to discredit his planned address to Congress in September. Here the PTW arguments are embarrassingly obvious. Many war opponents are practically daring Petraeus to say that any progress has been made in Iraq and that the surge is producing results on the ground. On consecutive days, for example, Big Tent Democrat had this to say:

So what should Democrats do now? Let me be frank -the events of the last days on the Levin-Reed Amendment was about pressuring Godot Republicans to break with Bush’s Iraq Debacle. After the talk of how Sens. Warner, Lugar, Voinovich, etc. were breaking with Bush’s Iraq Debacle it was of course proven to be an absolute crock. These Republicans will never break with Bush’s Iraq Debacle.

Some believe that September will be the moment, after General Petraeus speaks. This is delusion. What do folks think Petraeus is going to say? Petraeus will STIFFEN Republican resolve, not weaken it.

And:

Does anyone believe that a proud soldier like Petraeus will provide a sense that he can’t succeed? Of course he will not. Heck, if he would, would you really want him to be leading the forces? Unlike Glenn [Greenwald], I am not as skeptical of Petraeus’ intentions; I just realize he is human and the commander of the operation is not going to be the one to declare his operation a failure.

In other words, any mention of progress in Iraq is mere puffery and not to be trusted. This despite the fact that reports of the “Anbar Awakening“, the turn-around in Baqubah (including some political success), and increased security in Baghdad would seem to indicate that Petraeus will have some actual good news to deliver (if, in fact, these preliminary results hold). But thanks to attacks such as that from BTD, the well has been poisoned, and any “good news” from Petraeus will be dismissed with an “I told you so” from the poisoners.

The PTW attacks are not just limited to the substance of Petreaus’ impending report. The General himself is also being attacked, most recently for having the temerity to be interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, a reliable Republican pundit if ever there was one. The Greenwald piece cited by BTD above actually pulls double duty in this regard, by both ridiculing the message and lampooning the messenger:

The “interview” consisted of Hewitt making one adoring, pro-war statement after the next, masquerading as questions, with Petraeus eagerly agreeing and then “elaborating” with the standard White House talking points. There is obviously no need to “wait until September” to know what Gen. Petraeus is going to say. It’s all right there in the very first “questions” and answers from the Hewitt interview … It sounds like the Surge sure is working, we are winning, Al Qaeda is on the run, The Terrorists are being killed, and Freedom is on the March. But while we are making progress, there is still work ahead to be done in order to achieve Victory, so we must stay longer.

Despite the Mandate Orthodoxy that Gen. Petraeus be treated as the Objective, Unassailably Credible Oracle for how we are doing in Iraq and whether we are winning, his track record of quite dubious claims over the last several years about the war strongly negates that view. It ought to go without saying that no military commander — particularly in the midst of a disastrous four-year war — is entitled to blind faith and to be placed above being questioned. It is not only proper, but critically necessary, to subject happy war claims from the military to great scrutiny.

In general, military commanders do not typically pronounce their own strategies to have failed; quite the opposite. The need for skepticism here is particularly acute given that there are plenty of Generals with equally impressive military pedigrees who disagree vigorously with Petraeus. War supporters — who are attempting now to make criticisms of Petraeus off-limits — long disputed the claims and views of Generals Casey and Abaziad, often quite vigorously, even insultingly. The statements about war from military commanders ought to be subjected to every bit as much scrutiny and skepticism as anyone else’s.

But Petraeus in particular has demonstrated that his statements merit particularly potent scrutiny. So many of the misleading government claims over the past several years about The Great Victory we are Achieving in Iraq have been based upon optimistic claims from Petraeus that turned out to be highly questionable, to put it generously.

Notice the extra logical fallacy (the straw-man argument) that I bolded in Greenwald’s screed (the same false accusation that has been echoed here at ASHC), which is also intended to devalue anything that Petraeus has to say. Petraeus is not the commander of Iraq forces who wrote the book on counter-insurgency, but instead a “deity” who is treated to messianic status, and placed on high by anyone that actually wants to hear his evaluation of the surge. Lance and McQ both noted this type a savagery upon the person of Petraeus, and how anything the man says is automatically dismissed by the anti-war pundits regardless of the truth on the ground. This all just classic PTW tactics, designed to kill any potentially positive effects from Petraeus’ September address.

Indeed, the Hewitt interview sent quite a few anti-war types into a tizzy. Here’s Ron Beasley’s take:

To reach the rank of general you have to be part politician, it has always been that way. A good general is always a general first and a politician second. Those who had been generals first have over the last six years have been driven from the service by Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration. What we have left are men like General Petraeus. Not only a politician but a political hack. We know what he’s going to say in September because he said it all yesterday on wingnut radio, The Hugh Hewitt Show.

Similarly, the Carpetbagger Report found that Petraeus’ credibility is now beyond salvage:

And speaking of Petraeus, what should we expect from him come September? It’s probably best to lower expectations now. Petraeus’ credibility suffered a serious blow this week when he appeared on far-right activist Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, and stuck closely to the White House script.

The media has done its part as well to undermine Petraeus’ coming report. Jules Crittenden noted how the AP spun Harry’s all nighter into a dramatic momentum for losing as quickly as possible in Iraq:

****
AP analysis trips through looking glass:

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent Sat Jul 21, 12:15 PM ET

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans are growing increasingly nervous defending the war in Iraq, and Democrats more confident in their attempts to end it.

Apparently the special correspondent missed the outcome of last week’s sleepover.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, made that clear Friday when he dismissed any suggestion that it could be November before a verdict is possible on the effects of the administration’s current troop increase.

“September is the month we’re looking at,” he said unequivocally.

Contrary to some distortions, AP’s own reporting last week made it clear that goalpost has not been moved.
****

Powerline also weighs in on this theme:

****
But wait! The security situation in Iraq is not “deteriorating,” it is improving, by any statistical measure. But the AP is committed to the view that the “surge” is already a failure, having been fully in place for about a month:

American commander Gen. David Petraeus must report to Congress on progress in Iraq by September 15, and the absence of legislative progress will cast a heavy cloud over any attempt to paint a positive picture as the war faces growing opposition in the U.S.

***

The infusion of about 30,000 more American forces, completed last month, was President Bush’s attempt to calm the capital and provide “breathing space” to pass the legislation. But so far nothing of consequence has reached the floor of the parliament and violence has persisted.

The AP will, of course, do whatever it can to make sure that “any attempt to paint a positive picture of the war” fails, whether that positive picture is accurate or not.
****

Application of the media narrative here demands that Petraeus be marginalized as nothing more than a partisan hack, and that any “good news” he could possibly report be countered by “bad news” no matter how dubious the source. Therefore, before the September 15th report can be made, anything that could conceivably be reported by the General as evidence that the surge is working must already have a negative spin placed on it. In addition, any actions taken by those in opposition to the surge strategy must be shown in the best light possible. The stage is now set for the final conflict, with the words of Petraeus already deemed unreliable and drained of their efficacy, and the opposition to the surge and the war in general lionized. In this way, no matter what the General says in September, it will fall into the same old rubric of pro-Bush vs. anti-Bush, and the anti-Bush forces will be made to appear the sober, fact-based bunch.

Blackfive writer, Grim, discussed this phenomenon as part of a larger old media vs. new media post, specifically pointing out how the military is often portrayed as lapdogs of the Bush Administration:

Again, we don’t talk to Bush or administration figures. We talk to military officers, who are brother Americans and who have taken the same oaths to our Constitution that we have, at points in our lives, also sworn. I’ll give America’s military men a voice and a platform to talk directly to Americans anytime they want it. They are also citizens, and have every right to speak directly to me or to any other citizen they choose. Whether speaking in an official capacity of their office, or as a private citizen, they owe absolutely nothing to “the profession of journalism.”

But I notice that Mr. Silverstein’s attack is only one prong of a two-pronged attack on the US military coming this week from left-wing journalists. The other wing is an attack on General Petraeus, whose thoughts on the effectiveness of the Surge must be discredited by the Left for explicitly political purposes.

Grim rather offhandedly identifies the real problem in how we deal with the war — i.e. to the anti-war contingent the war in Iraq is a political fight between Bush and anti-Bush forces, while to the war supporters it is a knock-down, drag-out, bloody-knuckles struggle against radical Islamists who cannot, and must not, be appeased. The PTW rhetoric aimed at Petraeus is an extension of the political battle being waged by the Left against those whom they see as the real enemy: Bush and his Republican supplicants. Therefore, if Gen. Petraeus utters anything that is supportive of the policies advanced by their political opponents, he too must be savaged as a supplicant. For supporters of our military efforts in Iraq, the future for which they prepare is one where America and the West are safe from violent extremism. For the anti-war crowd, the future is never further than the next election.

Based on persistent PTW arguments advanced thus far, I would predict that when Petraeus delivers his speech to Congress on the ides of September (i) any good news he delivers will be dismissed as “administration talking points”; (ii) a surfeit of bad news, whether re-hashed, made up or genuine, will flood the air waves and print media; (iii) a Democratic hero and at least one “prominent Republican” will be nominated to carry the anti-Bush banner; and (iv) above all else, the surge will be deemed a failure.

Technorati Tags: war in Iraq, OIF, surge, Poisoning the well, logical fallacies, Petraeus, September 15, media bias, GWOT, media narrative

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