Marble Composition

What Happened to My Stool?!?!

I'm a fan of a guy named Ed Kilgore. He's come under some criticism from folks on the Left, but he's a Democrat and he's from Georgia, so I'm willing to listen. He's got some really cool digs here as well. (Heck, I'm in for the logo alone, but I'm simple, so...) He's also a contributor over at the brand, spanking new TMPCafe, and while discussing "Where's the Outrage on Iraq", he clears the bases with this one:

The second factor is simultaneously obvious and often ignored. It is best described by the following (faulty) syllogism:

Some Arabs came over here and killed a lot of Americans. Bush went over there and killed a lot more Arabs. Since then, no Arabs have come over here and killed Americans. Thus, Bush's invasion of Iraq is responsible for our safety since 9/11.

I don't know about you, but in conversations with non-political people during the 2004 campaign, I heard some version of this "Bush must be doing something right" argument repeated over and over again. And in my experience, telling people they are falling prey to the post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) logical fallacy is not a terribly effective rebuttal.

Republicans understood this dynamic, which is why the Bush-Cheney campaign did not dwell on back-and-forth arguments about the original rationales for the war, or respond to John Kerry's pointed criticisms of the administration's success in fighting terrorism. Their whole message was that George W. Bush's characteristic resolve and decisiveness had intimidated terrorists into inaction, making him the Indispensible Man in the war on terror.

If I'm right, Americans will finally reassess Bush's leadership in this arena when it becomes obvious he hasn't given us much safety, or when the costs of stabilizing Iraq become truly intolerable. And in the white-hot GOP competition to succeed Bush in 2008, it will be interesting to see if some candidate or faction of the party decides to re-open the intra-Republican argument about foreign policy and national security, thus sawing off one leg in the stool supporting Bush up until now.

Sawed-off is one way to describe our erstwhile president, and I personally think Ed will be spot on with his little prediction. It seems to me that the press is getting a little more aggressive with our current administration, but we're only getting a whiff of that so far. I predict that given the mess George W. Bush has made over the last five years, the time spent between Nov. 3rd, 2006 and Jan. 21st, 2009 will be very painful for him and anyone else that's fallen in with him and his bankrupt lot. Here's to Ed and Fuzzy being right.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 6/07/2005 05:22:00 PM