Did the surge succeed? Or was there just a lot of ethnic cleansing in Iraq?
July 29th, 2008 at 09:57am Pat Cunningham
Juan Cole SUGGESTS that people who deem the surge in Iraq to have been successful might have fallen for a logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc: If event X comes after event Y, it is natural to suspect that Y caused X.
It’s like saying that once the baseball season starts, drownings increase. Therefore, baseball causes drownings.
Entry Filed under: ethnic cleansing, post hoc ergo propter hoc, War in Iraq
11 Comments Add your own
1. Menlo Bob | July 29th, 2008 at 10:39 am
So we’re in agreement that the situation in Iraq is better regardless of the cause? And what are we to make of that sage who said that he thinks were likely to get worse?
2. LD | July 29th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Great to see things are going better over there and something that may or may not have been The Surge, worked. So we can leave now, right?
3. Pat Cunningham | July 29th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Bob: And what are we to make of the sage who says the surge gave rise to the Anbar Awakening, when, in reality, the latter predated the former?
4. redrover | July 29th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
And what is “better” better than?
There are still 4 million Iraqis displaced internally and externally due to this criminal invasion and occupation.
There are, by some estimates, more than 650,000 Iraqis dead as a direct result of this evil war.
The word “better” has no place in the description of the aftermath of any war, much less a war as immoral and unjustified as the American invasion of Iraq.
Here is how a poet who survived an earlier war described what “better” means when referring to what comes after a war:
The End and the Beginning
After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won’t pick
themselves up, after all.
Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.
Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.
Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.
No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.
The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.
Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.
But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who’ll find all that
a little boring.
From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.
Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.
Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.
“The End and the Beginning” by Wislawa Szymborska from Poems New and Collected 1957-1997, tr. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanaugh (Harvest Books)
5. Menlo Bob | July 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I’m not sure who is making the claim that the surge preceded the Anbar awakening. I do know that President Bush was quite clear in noting it prior to the surge.
6. Pat Cunningham | July 29th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Bob: It was John McCain who got the chronology wrong. As the Associated Press reported:
“McCain told CBS News on July 22 that the additional troops sent to Iraq by President Bush led to “the Anbar awakening,” calling it “a matter of history.” Actually, the “awakening” - in which Sunnis turned against al-Qaida - began before Bush announced the so-called surge. His defense of the inaccurate statement, delivered in front of the cheese section at a supermarket, didn’t help.”
7. Pat Cunningham | July 29th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Rover: The poem reads like the lyrics of a Dylan song. All he has to do is put a tune to it.
8. redrover | July 29th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
There are several English translations of Szymborska’s Koniec i pocz?tek. This is my favorite. Even without music, it moves me every time I read it.
9. Menlo Bob | July 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
So what you’re saying is that McCain is a putz? Well on that we agree.
10. Millard Fillmore | July 30th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Of course, the opposite argument is also not true - that the surge is a failure just because we lack truly objective evidence to prove it was a success. This particular author may not be arguing this, but others are.
If you ask me, it’s really simple - our troops were called on to do a job, they did it honorably and made significant contributions toward helping a country take a step back from the brink.
11. Milton Waddams | July 30th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
A step back from the brink of what?
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