Warbloggers and Fallujah

Ok, the remark presumably overstates the influence of war-bloggers. But calling someone influential when they are ignored isn’t much of a slur, if it’s a slur at all. I don’t understand the animus that animates Henry’s post. Aren’t the policy makers, and those who work to elect and enable them, the appropriate target of his (and Atrios’s) ire?

Atrios’ comment is probably an abreaction to the remarkable swiftness with which the media picked up the recent fraud accusations against the Killian memos brought forward by CBS.

I can imagine Duncan’s frustration over the difference in impact between his ‘influential’ website and that of, say, Matt Drudge. It may have caused him to misplace the blame.

It is difficult to identify exactly what the causal role of the warbloggers is in influencing media coverage and getting out right-wing talking points; one would have to go and do some painstaking work picking up who said what and when. Clearly, though, the warbloggers did go crazy over the video (as did Drudge, I think). And clearly the story kept getting bigger and bigger and more aggrieved in the American media, until the story’s framing was roughly that this was an unprecedented attack deserving of an unprecedented response. It seems plausible that warbloggers played some role in that framing. (again, painstaking work necessary to work out what). And then the political decision was taken by the White House that “heads must roll” in Fallujah, in response to the media’s reporting of the incident.

It’s not exactly a solid causal chain, but it’s not implausible to claim that to some degree the fanatical responses of the warbloggers played a role in the decision to attack Fallujah, is it?

Nasi, while I’d agree that it’s not implausible to suggest that warbloggers had some role in framing the debate (Dan and I have written about bloggers and framing effects after all), Atrios seems to be (a) stating that they were the main parties responsible, and (b) not hedging his claim with any of the provisoes about causal fuzziness etc that you state here. It’s a far stronger claim that he’s making – and he doesn’t provide any evidence whatsoever to support it, or even any real argument. This is exactly the kind of stunt that Glenn Reynolds pulls all the time, and I don’t like it there. I don’t much like it when it’s someone on “my side” doing it either.

I’m inclined to write it off as not-totally-off-the-mark hyperbole and go with Rea’s version: Pro-war nationalist-chauvinist discourse in America has a causal relationship to events in Iraq. Warbloggers and related commenters are iconic of this community and more likely to read Atrios than non-blog-reading members of the pro-war nationalist-chauvinist community. It strikes me as a plausible interpretation given Atrios’ style. Whether it’s true or not, I won’t venture a guess.

What Rea said. Warbloggers = warmongers. Maybe it was a typo.

Another vote for Atrios. I think that it was a funny sort of deliberate hyperbole and, as said above, synechdoche. “Warbloggers and other equally stupid, angry people whose votes Bush desperately needs”.

Come on guys, there’s a double standard being applied here.

Yes there is, but you seem to be the one applying it. The clear implication of the Washington Post peice was that the attack on Fallujah and the subsequent climb-down were both done in opposition to the strong advice of the commanders on the ground and for domestic political reasons. In the case of the first it was a desire to throw some red meat. (Most of it Iraqi, some of it American) to Bush’s base of rabid warmongers. That’s not his entire base, but it is part of it, and the 101st Fighting Keyboarders represent it well. This is a serious accusation, and one that Atrios makes quite well. I don’t think he is exagerating much here at all, and even if he is I don’t see any reason that it puts him in the catagory of Instahack. Your point seems to be that for liberal commenters any hint of rhetoric instantly drops them into the LGF catagory. Do you deny the point of the WP article, which is that Bush lost the lives of American troops and made our situation in Iraq much worse because he thought that for domestic political reasons it was important to make the rubble bounce in Fallujah? If so take issue with that, not with Atrios pointing out that a lot of the people he was aiming this gesture at are on the web.

On a related topic, why does Atrios’s post make you question his qualifications to be a blogger rather than Bush’s to be president?

Henry: Yeah, I’d call it hyperbole if Insty-pundit did it. I’d probablly call it stupid as well, as I’ve noticed that Insty’s brain doesn’t work really well when “terrorism” or “9/11” is the topic…

But it’d still be hyperbole.

You probably should have stepped back and applied a “reasonable person” standard to Atrios’ post. No reasonable person is going to read that an assume the warbloggers are setting US military policy. Ergo, either Atrios is insane or he was using hyperbole (or something similiar).

I took it to mean that, basically, Bush felt he had to “look tough” when it came to a response (specifically to the gung-ho crowd) and chose a politically motivated response rather than one based on military or foreign policy reasons.

This post at My DD doesn’t shed light on Fallujah, but it contains a fascinating theory about why Rightie blogs seem so much more capable of generating a critical mass of jibber-jabber than do Leftie blogs.

As I mentioned above, I’m guessing that’s what Atrios was thinking about (but did not pause to explain) when he wrote his post.

Alan B – in my experience it’s often helpful to actually read posts before you respond to them. Anyone who could read what I wrote as condoning Bush’s policy is, in the kindest possible interpretation, not paying attention.

On the more serious responses – of course it’s hyperbole Morat – that’s my point. I don’t think that Atrios is a tin-foil hat person (but, not knowing what he was thinking, I didn’t want to discount entirely the possibility that he was sincerely stating the facts as he saw them). What I’m saying is that it’s only fair to apply the same standards of truth telling to Atrios (or indeed to me, or to anyone else on the left), as to Glenn Reynolds. If somebody on the right had made a similar-sounding argument about left-bloggers’ “responsibility” for whatever development in world politics you want to name, I would have felt pissed off – and that I had a right to be pissed off. The same standard should cut both ways. And I don’t think that the argument that “warblogger” is a valid stand-in for “tv watching rightwinger” cuts any ice. If you want to say “tv watching rightwinger,” you can say it. Atrios’ use of “warblogger” is a rhetorical move with pretty clear consequences – just as Reynolds’ effort to associate all sorts of unsavoury stuff with the “anti-war movement” was, some months ago.

Some may not agree with my general stance on this (I seem to recall Zizka arguing a couple of months ago that all was fair in attacking the right, more or less – maybe I’m mistaken). But if you think that it’s OK for Atrios to say this, and not OK for Glenn Reynolds, then you seem to be arguing that different standards of honesty and fair debate should apply to left and right. That’s political hackery as far as I’m concerned. Not that political hackery is always necessarily an inappropriate response – but it should be recognized up front for what it is.

I gotta say, speaking as a highly anti-Bush guy, that I continue to find this use of “warblogger” annoying, though it’s probably a lost usage battle.

For those of you not blogging or reading blogs at the time, people started “warblogging” on September 12th, 2001, and all it meant was blogging about subsequent events. Period. It indicated no particular politican stance or position, period. It indicated no policy preference. It indicated no specific advocacy. It indicated no belligerency, or Republicanism. It certainly didn’t indicate being “pro-war.”

It simply meant you weren’t one of the mass of then dominant tech-bloggers, or bloggers about HTML-writing. That’s all. (See for example, Matt Welch, whose blog is still “Warblog”; is Matt some sort of pro-war, pro-Bush, Republican hawkguy?)

It simply meant that you were blogging about politics and world affairs and news, not technical Internet or techie subjects (or any of the less prevalent other topics, such as cats). By standard definition, CT is a “warblog,” as is Atrios, Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and so on.

Nothing ever changed about this, save that a lot of people weren’t reading blogs in 2001-2, have joined us since, saw the coinage “warblogger,” assumed they knew what it meant when they didn’t (certainly there are many hawks who started as “warbloggers,” from the reasonable to the insane), and started using the term “warblogger” to mean “pro-war hawkblogger crazy person,” or somesuch, and here we are.

As I said, this is likely a lost usage battle, but I can sputter, for the record, as we go down.

Reynolds does it **all the time**, and he’s not going to stop. We object to his sticking thumbs in our eye because he’s sticking thumbs in OUR eye, not because of a Kantian law against thumbing. But our objections mean nothing to him; they’re for the sake of our friends and anyone who might happen to be making up their minds.

All I am willing to grant is that it is not permissible to **lower** the standard of play in order to win. But it is permissible to play according to the present standard.

To a certain degree, American voter **want** it’s leaders to be rough, tough, and mean. The toughness of a political campaign is taken as an indicator of the candidate’s capacity for defending the nation. I personally do not want a hawkish leader, but we need one who seems hawkish, and a mean campaign reassures people. I am **not** kidding.

I’ve been developing this for awhile, but Democrats, liberals, and the genteel left don’t accept conflict as a valid mode of relationship. Academic discourse is, by definition, **not** conflictual (except in devious, Byzantine, Mamluk-type ways), and academic civility is **not** a good model for conflict discourse.

It’s supply and demand. There have been times when there were too many hacks and not enough fair-minded, civil, above-the-battle types. But at the moment there’s an advocate (hack, player) shortage and an enormous referee surplus.

And Atrios was right about both the warbloggers and Bush’s motives, though he did play a little too much to those shits’ self-importance.

Incidentally, I date the moment when civil discourse became impossible in US politics to the day when Newt Gingich replaced Robert Michel as House minority leader (soon to become Speaker). Gingrich’s extreme violations of the most minimal civility are too many to list, and he was very successful with that, and the people who replaced him were dumber than him but just as mean and vicious.

What zizka said. And maybe too in another way :

People are going to elect the big boss for 4 years. What if the like the idea of said future big boss getting all dirty to have his little reward? Humanization through dirty tricks?

Too, i don’t mind the desire for purity in itself, but what if it puts you systematically at disadvantage?

Or is the implied here that the dirty tricks in politics would somehow rub on to the actual policies?

I agree that dirty tricks in politics are wrong, wrong, wrong. Terrible academics and all that.

It’s wrong and not that important : in the end it’s the policies implemented that count in the lives of people. Political bickering is for wonks.

Not advocating lgf kind of bollocks, though, it’s self defeating. But maybe some impetus would be gained with less self critisizing virtue.

Atrios’s statement would be a slur or innuendo if it unfairly characterized the warbloggers’ position. From what I’ve read, the attack of Fallujah was fully congruent with their views.

I have a hard time working up moral outrage to what is obviously a rhetorical device. Really your outrage is basically, “Bad Atrios, you ascribe too much influence to warbloggers.”

I had this kind of argument a few days ago, responding to Stirling Newberry (who has wonderful things, but not this time) at “Blogging of the President”.

I said something like:

“In the ten days before Nov. 2, maybe even the last five days, the Republicans will release something terribly damaging to Kerry. How should we respond?

The rational, civil approach is to look at the evidence and the argument, get to the bottom of things, talk things over, and come to a judicious conclusion about the truth of the matter — somewhere between Nov. 3 and Armageddon. That way, we will know for sure that we are right, and not just political hacks.

The problem is that sudden revelations, true or false, win elections. If we conclusively prove on Nov. 3 that the republicans were wrong on the facts or even lying, it doesn’t make any difference. No do-over, no instant replay, **four more years of Bush.** It already happened once, more or less, in Florida 2000.

So when the dirt comes out on Oct 28 (let us say) we will deny it as adamantly and effectively as we can. Regardless.

There’s no possible revelation, true or otherwise, that could make Kerry a worse President than Bush at this point, but there are revelations that could lose the election.

The alternative is to sit around saying — “Well, maybe Kerry **did** torture cats when he was 11. Maybe he **did** have a homosexual encounter with a STASI agent in E. Berlin. Maybe he **did** cheat his way to a four-point average in 1963.

Because, after all, truth is more important than winning.

(Incidentally, there is a philosophical background to what I’m saying, but it’s mostly absent from analytic philosophy as taught in almost all schools today. Cf. my comments on a thread a few days ago).

So, it’s pretty much the case that the assault weapons ban got renewed because some lefty bloggers got excited about the video of the recent shooting rampage in the US that killed 15 mail workers.

I think I could endure this kind of stupid trash-talk…

It seems to me that Henry either (a) is making a mountain our of a molehill, or (b) has a bug up his butt. If there’s a third possibility, I’d like to hear it.

Everyone got the point. The objection is to the vehemence with which Henry attacks Atrios and his unwillingness to consider that Atrios may have simply been employing a rhetorical device. At worst, Atrios is guilty of rhetorical incompetence. Big deal.

“If weblogs had that much power in the world, I’d update D^2 Digest more regularly.”

Powerline had 1200 trackbacks in 9 hours. Perhaps if you were part of that integrated community, you would view it differently.

And I remember some of the Fallujah controversy, and the blogs very quickly got the information on who the contracters were, their histories, their faces. They were the first to “humanize” the incident.

Jane Galt has no doubt the memos were forged. Eugene Volokh is very careful, as usual, but is discussing libel law and shareholder lawsuits in regard to CBS. The blogs may not be a true power, but they are a significant tool of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

I would not pretend to read Henry’s mind, but I suspect a lot of people are still in shock as to how CBS and Dan Rather could become so seriously weakened in a mere 48-72 hours. And they are, make no mistake about it.

The mass voluntary and near universal abandonment of integrity by a group is very powerful, and can lead to Auschwitz. You can only reason with a lynch mob after firing a few bullets in the air to get their attention.

I’m perfectly happy to agree that Atrios is employing a rhetorical device – but your faith that he’s at worst guilty of incompetence is more touching than convincing. He’s blaming warbloggers for something they’re not responsible for.

See, you can’t have it both ways. If Atrios is employing a rhetorical device, then he is not literally blaming the warbloggers for the Fallujah fiasco. I think most reasonable people would agree that Atrios is not literally blaming the warbloggers for Bush’s strategic military decisions. That’s why your fury is all out of proportion.

Your criticism only applies if Atrios is speaking literally, and we seem to agree that he is not. So what’s the real problem?

“If we’re critical of Glenn Reynolds et al. for playing fast and loose with language when he’s smearing the left, why should Atrios should have a free pass when he’s doing the same to bloggers on the right?”

Because the left and right are qualitively different in America. And because it appears that the last week Jane Galt, Volokh, Tacitus, von of Obsidian Wings, and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs put aside any differences and were working in a coordinated way to spread a smear.

What was painful to me is that the left appears surprised. Again.

bq. Mind you, I had always marked down McArdle and Volokh (along with Reynolds) as what you might call “Hanging Chad Republicans”

True – and indeed in some ways analogous. When Eugene Volokh “just assumes for the purpose of the legal analysis” that CBS is guilty as sin of touting forged documents, and then goes into detailed legal analysis over several posts of whether CBS is liable to get its license pulled, be sued for libel etc, it’s a rhetorical device, but one with a fairly transparent ideological slant.

Given the direness of political conditions in the US today, the main objection that I have to the kind of sloppiness that Henry objects to is that it dilutes the effectiveness of the message.

The fact that all you heavy hitters are rattling on about whether or not Atrios has committed a transgression is answer enough to the question. Clearly, he has muffed this one, or we would be talking about his point, rather than his language.

Unlike the ‘hanging chad Republicans’, Atrios never pretends to be a neutral party, but as a high profile voice of the left, we do expect him to be effective. In fact, in the absence of a Fox News, Drudge Report, Republican Majority, Christian Broadcasting Network, WSJ Editorial Page of the left, we expect him to be downright godlike.

Or was I thinking of Fafblog?

Whatever I said above was consistent with my belief that a.) the American Fallujah attack was, in fact, done for domestic American political consumption, and 2.) the warbloggers are pretty representative of the demographic that Bush was trying to keep happy. So what Atrios said, to me, was just a part-for-whole metaphor, and wrong only in exaggerating the warbloggers’ importance within the American Armageddon community.

My “torturing kittens” example slopped over from something else, related but not identical. On the “forged memos” question, I think that a certain proportion of the Democrats were far too quick to conclude that they were forgeries.

In context, I don’t think that we should do the Republicans’ work for them. It’s their job to make their case. Once they’ve made their case, cool. I’ve been very diffident about either affirming or denying the authenticity of the memos, which might lead one to believe that I have doubts. But I’m willing to let them do their job, confident that it will all come out in the wash. I certainly don’t think that people should stick their necks out too far affirming the documents either.

Anyway, the point of the torturing kittens example is that when it comes up on Oct 29 we should be advocates first and truth-tellers last. On October 29 I will not be thinking **at all** about whether Kerry tortured kittens or not.

That’s a responsibility of an advocate in a fast-moving adversarial system. Truth will take the back seat, and rightly so. Any other decision would be politically insane. (The exception would be a case in which it is actually thought that Kerry is, e.g., a Chinese agent or Armageddonist, and the accusation is genuinely significant to that extent. But I can’t imagine that happening this year. Since Bush almost is an Armageddonist, for one thing, that would be irrelevant.)

Frankly, I think that the intellectual purism I’ve been hearing all over the place all this time incapacitates people for active participation in a democracy. All democracies are two-party or multi-party systems which only function at all if the parties have advocates. It’s as if you should set down rules for salesmen which make it impossible to sell anything, or rules for lawyers which require them to stand up and say that their client is guilty once they become so convinced. It almost seems as if people are dreaming of a conflict-free Confucian or Platonic system within which wise rulers make decisions based on a peacefull consensus about Truth.

I have a clear and accurate perception of how vicious and dishonest American politics is and has been for a decade or more. I don’t think that everyone here really understands what’s been happening.)

I think that my comparison of political actors to salemen, lawyers, and diplomats is exact, and people should think about it some. The responsibilities of advocates are not the responsibilities of referees. And I do not understand why people who basically accept the legitimacy of those kinds of advocates should reject similiar advocacy by particpants in democratic politics.

Perhaps this repeats something already said but…..my distinct recollection is that the attack on Fallujah was in direct response to George Bush’s intemperate desire to kick some ass after he saw the burnt bodies of the Blackwater contractors. The insurgents in Fallujah had been carefully studying the Blackhawk Down story and wanted to provoke the US to do something injudicious. I think GWB fell for it. The warbloggers were only along for the ride; this was GWB. What a fuckhead.

Nobody but Henry read Atrios as saying that warbloggers pushed a button and off the Marines went. On the facts, Atrios is plenty right: there is a Marine General, gone public, hinting that the President wanted to kick ass in light of the contractor’s desecration, with the futher implication that this was done for domestic political reasons. The original post here reads like a weak moment from Spinsanity, and this whole double standards thing is bogus. No misrepresentation, some hyperbole with a reasonable point behind it, even the qualification “pretty much,” used much like a teenager would say “like,” to point out that a metaphor is coming. So, to repeat, Atrios was right on the facts, unless you work really really hard to misread him and say he really really thinks that “warbloggers” have a red phone that Cheney picks up at the VP’s house.

Compare this to Reynolds, say, against Matthew Yglesias the other day. Yglesias: “gee this Beslan thing is crazy, awful, realistically, concessions might have helped, but you can’t do it now, but ratcheting up the violence will breed more situations like this.” Reynolds: “Leftists are appeasers. Never forget what we’re up against. Indeed.”

See the difference? Warbloggers did call for blood, as did their president. It was a nasty, stupid reaction, and it led to Iraqui civilians and American soldiers dying for nasty, stupid reasons.

Sorry, no comparison or double standards; looks instead like someone is itching to find a fellow traveler crossing the line. The last part of Atrios’ point made the obvious reading clear, btw. He says he’s angry that people were sent to die because the president wanted to be seen kicking some ass on television. There’s some evidence, out today, that that’s what’s happened. It pisses you off too.

So all Glenn Reynolds has to do from now on is to say “pretty much” in front of everything and he’s scot-free?

I’m not going to respond to any more of these comments – it doesn’t look to me as though it’s a very useful debate for either side.

Exit Henry stage right.

Sorry – should have made it clear – I’m not responding to any more of the comments saying that Atrios didn’t cast some sort of slur (since I’m not going to convince the skeptics, nor vice-versa). The other more general argument over whether or not bloggers should be partisan advocates is interesting – and I’ll probably work up a blog post on it in a day or two, once I get my thoughts straight.

David Neiwart has an especially good Reynoldsism up today, I see. Feel the ooze when you get to the “rather a lot” modifying “credibility.”

I try, Bob.

Isn’t Atrios just saying that Bush took his queues from the right wing mob? Isn’t that why Bush ordered “heads to roll” in Falluja?

I suspect that Henry is insufficiently informed about the viciousness of the American right and the degree to which Bush’s policy decisions are decided by the political imperative of keeping his demented “core constituency” on board.

I got all philosophical about, but I actually do not think that Atrios’ statement was factually misleading. I took the opportunity to argue some general points, as I did with the Moore movie, but in this case I think that Atrios’ statement was more accurate than Henry realizes.

“Did anyone ask Atrios to clarify?”

That’s a good point. I wouldn’t draw any hard and fast conclusions about atrios’ intent without pointing out the problematic words and asking if he would provide support for the claim or perhaps revise his terminology.

That said, I may be missing something, but I read the Post article and I don’t see anything that strongly suggests the attack on Falluja was primarily or substantially motivated by domestic (US) politics.

Since the beginning, US tactics in Iraq have been brutal, viscious, exactly the opposite of US doctrine about how to deal with the local population. Kicking down doors, trashing houses, dragging people off, torturing them is wrong in itself, and it also guarentees bitter, long term opposition. Thus, I’m not surprised that the local commander thought the Falluja operation was a bad idea. Yet it seems consistent with the entire US approach in Iraq. One might speculate as to why the US has operated in this manner. I won’t.

In my view, it is ethically problematic to claim, directly or by implication, that desecrating remains, public executions, etc justify or excuse different but no less legally condemnable actions by US troops or their allies. I disagree with those who express such claims, be they warbloggers or not.