Tuesday, September 19, 2006
On Empiricism and the Upcoming November Elections
It strikes me that this is not a sensible place for the House Leader to go when it comes to trying to win elections -- though I will acknowledge I am not in her corner.
I am, however, a big fan of empirical evidence. And the empirical evidence would suggest that we have been a whole lot safer since September 12, 2001, than we were before September 11, 2001. It really is quite simple: in the period when we treated terrorism as a matter for law enforcement, and our laws precluded intelligence sharing across government agencies, we created the circumstances which allowed the 9/11 terrorists to operate inside the US and execute the 9/11 act of war. Since we altered our policies to treat terrorists as an adversary in war, and unlawful combatants at that, and we went "over there" in order to take the war to our opponents, there has been no successful attack on our country. Those are the facts as of this writing. So for Pelosi to choose to criticize US policy at the moment as ineffective seems to me simply to be silly. It makes her look, well, wrong to most of the country which certainly understands the facts.
8 Comments:
By 
Assistant Village Idiot, at
Tue Sep 19, 07:49:00 PM:
George Bush clarifies. They can only see that as "divisive."
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Sep 19, 08:44:00 PM:
Naturally. Anyone who doesn't do or say what they want is 'divisive,' as opposed to the actual dissidents who do everything they can to stir up opposition and outright hostility to the Administration.
By Unknown, at
Tue Sep 19, 10:14:00 PM:
Empiricism has changed since the last time I looked. It's quite rare that an absence of evidence proves anything whatever. Remember that eight years elapsed between the first and the second terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Five years after the first attack would it have been true that we had become safer?
To the contrary I think that it's undeterminable based on available evidence whether we're safer or not.
By 
, at
Tue Sep 19, 10:45:00 PM:
Your premise:
If US policy is effective, then we are safe.
This does not imply that if US policy is not effective, then we are in danger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent
That, and what Dave said: you are trying to appeal to the scientific method in a fundamentally unsound way. The only inference that can be drawn from the lack of terrorist attacks during GWB's presidency is that his policies have not, so far, directly caused the US to be attacked. That's it. In particular, there is no evidence to support the statement that GWB has kept us safe.
OTOH, there is plenty of evidence to support the statement that he has substantially enlarged the power of the executive while encroaching on the privacy of Americans via the PATRIOT act and its ilk, with little to no judicial oversight.
By , at
Wed Sep 20, 01:30:00 AM:
Phriz --
Your statement doesn't make sense, and is provably wrong:
1. GWB implemented many of the specific recs of the 9/11 Commission, including information sharing among the CIA and FBI (getting rid of the Gorelick Wall).
This makes us demonstrably safer by eliminating the political barriers to finding terrorists on US soil.
2. GWB unleashed the NSA on Al Qaeda comms, even when it came into the US, regardless of how much Libs howled. This demonstrably makes us safer by impeding the enemy's ability to communicate and control it's agents.
3. GWB went after financial transfers that financed terrorism, to trace and identify Muslims intent on terror. This makes us safer.
All done with the purpose to make Americans safer by making Al Qaeda's operations much harder.
Yes this can be abused. So can your discount card at Borders, or the Supermarket, or software from Microsoft. Not to mention data collection agencies like Equifax. They have far more direct control over vast amounts of information about you, than GWB.
Get real. The rise of computer technology and the ability to capture data cheaply means that EVERYONE is going to be collecting data on you. Private entities, non-profits, AOL, Google, anyone. It will happen. It's already happened.
Moaning about GWB is like bemoaning red-light cameras on street corners when the real issue is non-stop distributed surveillance by millions of people with video cameras on their cell phones. Or your MySpace page not being so private as you thought.
By , at
Wed Sep 20, 10:50:00 AM:
Anon: sorry, but no.
There may well be reasons to believe that GWB's policies have made us safer. For instance, if there existed foiled terrorist attacks whose existence the administration has not made public, then that would be one such reason.
Merely the lack of terrorist attacks is not a reason to believe we are safer. Just because we are in a period where there are no attacks, this *does not* mean that anything you, I, or the administration has done has caused this lack. Correlation *does not* imply causation.
Sharing information between the CIA and the FBI is probably a good idea. Even the NSA's domestic spying program, were I convinced it possessed the appropriate judicial oversight, probably has its place. And monitoring international money transfers sounds like something that you would want to do regardless of whether or not a terrorist was attacking you. The problem that many liberals, including myself, have with GWB's approach is his blatant disregard for the rule of law when implementing these programs. Why didn't he just ask congress for the appropriate power? It reinforces the perception that many people have of power-mad King George.
Also, you raise important issues regarding the loss of privacy of the individual in the information age. Perhaps some of these things need legislative remedies, perhaps not. However, the conclusion you attempt to draw from this is completely specious: just because there has been some erosion of privacy already, does not mean we should be complacent when this problem is compounded by the government! Indeed, taking for granted that sensitive personal information is in the hands of the government is the first step toward accepting a police state.
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Sep 20, 02:32:00 PM:
Phrizz- the policies in place have led to the death or capture of virtually the entire operational, military leadership of Al Qaeda. All their field generals, from KSM, to Atef, to Zarqawi. They were their operational leaders. In addition, their communicatios leader, Zubaydah, was captured, disrupting both signalling and money movement.
The policies put in place on 9/12 enabled this. Their have been no domestic attacks since.
It's not that hard Phrizz. They weren't caught before. They were caught after. And quiet on the homefront since. Hmmm.
By , at
Wed Sep 20, 02:58:00 PM:
CP: *now* you are citing evidence that GWB's policies have been effective when you say "the policies in place have led to the death or capture ..."
Fine. But that is not what your post said.
But then, when you say "And quiet on the homefront since. Hmmm," you still don't seem to understand that you aren't showing anything, but merely inviting the reader to commit a classic logical fallacy. If you note that GWB's policies have coincided with an abscence of attacks, the only inference you may draw is that it is *possible* that his policies have prevented attacks.
You want to get with all the fuzzy thinking, fine. But don't invoke "empiricism" in the title of your post, making it sound like you did something scientific, and then give me this patronizing "it's not that hard" BS - people like you doing this kind of thing give science a bad name.
Like so many conservatives, I've noted that you enjoy criticizing liberals for how they think. Well, if you're spouting arguments like this, you should take a hard look at your the logical consistency of your own arguments before criticizing others.
