Country Boy brings you a new category. Every Monday he will present the MTCW Idiot of the week. Feel free to submit nominations.
This week’s winner goes to Dan Schreiber from Champaign, Illinois. Schreiber writes this absurd comment in a letter to the Editor of the Champaign News Gazette: "Soldiers are certainly entitled to their opinions. But their personal experiences are no substitute for informed analysis. What is needed in soldiers and citizens alike is the ability to differentiate news from propaganda and data from spin."
Now, I have posted the whole letter below so no one can accuse me for taking the contents out of contex. This is from the Monday, July 2, News Gazette:
John Foreman makes a curious argument for a newspaper publisher "that critics of the Iraq war are 'perhaps' naive," because they form their opinions from news instead of from individual soldiers on the ground.
And yet many of the opinions he shares from soldiers are simply Republican talking points. For instance, one soldier believes Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, which is just a way to spin the fact that terrorists followed us in after our invasion.
Another soldier believes Iran is the primary cause of terrorism in Iraq. This is no more true than believing Saddam was responsible for 9/11 or that he was an imminent threat to drop nuclear bombs on the United States, which many soldiers also believed.
Soldiers are certainly entitled to their opinions. But their personal experiences are no substitute for informed analysis. What is needed in soldiers and citizens alike is the ability to differentiate news from propaganda and data from spin.
After all, if naive war critics had been listened to in the first place, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now in.
Informed analysis? Who to make a better informed annalysis than Soldiers who deal with the situation everyday? If what Soldiers are saying end up being republican talking points then what does that say about the democrat party?
I wonder if Mr Schreiber gets his informed analysis about his health from Doctors? or what about legal analysis? probably from a lawyer...wouldn't you think. I mean surely Doctors and lawyers are entitled to their opinions on such matters but their personal expieriences are no substitute for informed analysis by journalist and news media...riiiiight.
Dan Schreiber, you are the MTCW Idiot of the week.
One last note, If politicians and naive war critics would have listened to military leaders in the first place when they asked for more troops and would have let the Soldiers fight the war instead of doing everything to obstruct their efforts, the situation in Iraq would probably be a lot better off now.
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2 comments:
you are dead right.
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Country Boy, personal experience does not trump informed analysis. Personal experience may tell you the world is flat, but informed analysis says otherwise. A doctor who claims he can bend spoons with his mind is not more believable because he is a doctor.
A single army medic in Iraq (the one who I was quoting) who presents no evidence to back up his claim is in no better position to know whether Iran is the primary cause of terrorism in Iraq than an informed citizen who keeps up with the news. Iran as the cause of problems in Iraq is laughably false propaganda by those who got us into this mess, trying to double down with an invasion of Iran. As I said, a solider is entitled to his or her opinion, but that opinion is no more valid than anyone else’s if the soldier’s personal experience does not produce actual data to support that opinion.
As I also mentioned, most soldiers believed that they were punishing Saddam for his role in 9/11 and that Iraq was an imminent threat to the US. These opinions are no more true or valid just because it was soldiers who believed them.
For the record, if “politicians” had listened to the military in the first place, we would not have gone into Iraq at all. Truly informed analysis at the time showed that Iraq was not a major terrorism threat and played no role in 9/11, nor supported Al Queda, and that invading the country would lead to a protracted and nasty occupation. It wasn’t
”politicians” who got us into this, but the Republican chickenhawks in the administration, and they abandoned the Powell Doctrine in doing so. What the “naïve” war critics did was try to prevent this fiasco from happening in the first place. Suggesting anything else is simply rewriting history to conform to your ideology.
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