Rumsfeld's False Logic

Professor Juan Cole dissects the false logic of Donald Rumsfeld today which points out why the misadventure in Iraq has been such a dismal failure. A strategy or policy based on faulty logic is bound to fail.

Likewise the US military attacks launched this week around Ramadi are not random acts of violence (and it is shocking that the Secretary of Defense should compare such military operations to a civilian felony!) The US military said, by the way, that the operation had resulted in no Iraqi or US deaths. [Though a guerrilla roadside bomb killed a GI in the Ramadi area on Thursday.) The military sweeps are attempts to weaken the guerrilla movement that is blowing up US troops. It is about shaping the government and polity of Iraq. Human beings are hardwired to be far more interested in attempts to change leadership in society than in individual random crime. Who rules Iraq affects everyone in the world. That the US has a remarkably high annual murder rate is of moment mainly to the victims and to the neighborhoods affected. By the way, the US murder rate is per capita 4 times that of Britain, and the likely explanation for the difference is the easy availability of non-sporting firearms, including especially pistols. Since Rumsfeld wants more coverage of the 14,500 murders a year in the US, would he welcome practical steps to make it more like 3,500? The British are not intrinsically nobler than the Americans-- our highly violent society is a result of specific structural features of our society.

In logic, Rumsfeld's mistake is known as the "false analogy." He incorrectly likens military violence to individual crime, and then expresses astonishment that the two things are not covered the same way by the press. Rumsfeld has a long track record of indulging in this particular form of sloppy thinking. He has also in the past made a false analogy between guerrilla violence in Iraq and race riots in small towns in the United States. In the terms of American racial discourse, that particular meme has overtones of bigotry, since he appears to be attempting to code the Sunni Arab guerrillas as "Black." (Or maybe it is the other way around.) It is all propaganda. It is shameful in a democratic society for the Secretary of Defense to engage in such warped discourse. It is more shameful that almost no one calls him on it.

Those who say we must stay in Iraq because chaos will result when we leave are in a sense correct. When the US pulls out, and make no mistake the US will pull out, Iraq will erupt into civil and tribal warfare that will threaten the stability of the mid east and the worlds supply of oil. The problem is that if we stay it will anyway because if this administration has any plan at all it is based of Rumsfeld's false logic and will fail. Bush administration policy in Iraq has resulted in a situation where no desirable outcome is possible. Even a major mid course correction at this point would not change that, it's too late. That will be George W. Bush's legacy. It will be an even blacker legacy than that of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon because Vietnam really didn't matter while Iraq does.