Hypothetically, say the enemy thinks that those who complain about emboldening the enemy are weak, stupid and cowardly. In fact they find it so ludicrous that it lowers their fear of facing us on the battlefield. The more Americans who complain about emboldening the enemy MAY give the enemy an increase in morale and cause more American and Iraqi deaths.
That makes sense. While we see things completely differently regarding harm coming to coalition forces, at least you are being consistent. The goal you have, similar to Der Trihs if I recall correctly, would be helped by your protesting.
Conversely, I don’t see how someone who does not agree with your goal of harm coming to coalition forces would not want to reevaluate their actions. Maybe they think if they don’t go through the mental recalculation they can’t hold themselves responsible for something they would view as unfortunate: harm coming to our own soldiers.
Good news. I just texted my henchman—you know, the one that was standing behind you holding a gun to your head forcing you to post in a thread asking you to assume a hypothetical even though you didn’t want to—and told him to leave. Look, he’s not there any more. Problem solved.
Okay. Tell me, would you then say that Bush is not responsible for any coalition forces deaths? Just because he sent troops to Iraq doesn’t mean that he should be responsible for other people’s choices to attack our soldiers, right? I can see how you might hold him responsible for deaths that might occur as a result of a direct order, like dropping a bomb, but according to your metric, not for the deaths of our soldiers being attacked.
Yes, thank you.
That’s a fair thing to put into your calculation. Though if we had proof that protest did indeed cause deaths and no proof that your protesting would end the war sooner, would that give you pause at all?
You only need to accept it for the purpose of answering it, which you did. Thank you.
Someone could have strong feelings about the war and yet be neutral on harm to the troops - I mean to say, the “either for/against” harm to the troops dichotomy you’re expressing is an excluded middle fallacy. That is, just because one doesn’t care about the troops doesn’t mean one actively wishes them harm, as you have said.
Or, someone *could *be against harm to your troops, but more against the war - so it becomes a “lesser of two evils” situation for them. I think, if anyone protested against the war, cared about the troops and agreed with your hypothetical, this is their most likely defence.
Rather than engage in a raft of fantasy thinking, as you suggest doing here, why not discontinue the attempt to ground this discussion in reality whatsoever. As you say, it’s been brought up many times before this. This iteration was clearly nothing more than an attempt to say “I told you so. This research proves it.” Drop any references to the study, and just go round the mulberry bush of right wing thinking one more time without it.
I’d rather not have a bunch of people take a look at this thread and walk away with the idea that there is any empirical support whatsoever for the idea that protests are related to US soldier’s deaths. Just because some unethical researchers and the moonie times, and now magellan01 and you, want to bypass the proper vetting of research findings does not mean that we have to put up with it here. The mission, after all, is still purported to be fighting ignorance.
I didn’t mean to exclude any middle. In fact, I think there are virtually countless flavors of the middle in this. First you have what people would consider pros and cons of their actions, the many nuanced positions, and the relative weight a person might give to each of the factors. My only point is that I don’t see how what would be new information would not enter into the calculation, pushing it—either greatly or slightly—toward protesting in a more responsible manner.
Even though I’ve said more then once that the research does not prove anything? Funny, you seem to be able to digest the words, yet stubbornly refuse to accept their meanings.
Given you’re passion in wanting to shut down this discussion, it seems that maybe you’re afraid of something. Maybe your afraid that you might have to take more responsibility for your actions. Maybe you fear that some other protesters might reassess their levels of responsibility and some of them might choose to not protest, making it more difficult for you to act as a mob and enjoy a degree of anonymity and avoid moral responsibility for your actions.
Whatever it is, you seem to want to make believe that the study was never done. And it is impossible that it might point to protests resulting in increased attacks, and deaths of our own soldiers. What are you so afraid of? You imply you want to fight ignorance. If so, isn’t new information a good thing. If I claimed that this study proved that—or anything—I could see your concern. But, I am stuck looking at your panicky and desperate attempts to take this off the table and seeiing some great irrational fear.
:dubious: Oh really? Tell me, are you of the opinion that these boards should make no mention of any study that has been peer reviewed? Even if the poster shares the information and does not accept it as proof of anything or ask others to? If so, please say so now so you’re principled position will be on record. So is that your position—yes or no?
Oh, and your bias is showing.
Dude, you started a thread called “have critics of the war caused more American deaths?” and then pointed to a study. Every time someone says “that study doesn’t say what you think it does” you say “you keep trying to pretend the study wasn’t done!” And now you want to deny that you’re trying to use the study as proof. Your argument has ONE THING backing up - that study, and you admit that it doesn’t prove anything at all. How are we even still having this discussion?
From my perspective, he already did that over a day ago. You are the one who refuses to recognize that he has dropped the study as a source of the discussion.
= = =
magellan01, as you may have noticed, I am willing to entertain this thread on the grounds that depsite the poor quality of the study that inspired it, I recognize that the hypothetical is something you wish to discuss.
However, your repeated efforts to tell other posters to go away if they do not follow your script is no more palatable than the efforts of some to engage in Nego majore debate. Knock it off and just ignore the posters who do not address your issue rather than continuing to engage them and ratcheting up the heat of the personal animosity.
[ /Moderating ]
[steve martin]
Revenge on my enemies, they should all die like pigs in Hell!
Oh, and the crap about the kids.
[/sm]
The topic is a valid one, with or without the study. Proof of that is that it was discussed here well before the study was reported. Evidently it was also of enough interest for a study to be done. So, given that the issue was discussed here a year or so ago, and it comes up again now sparked by the study, what exactly do you find so surprising?
And let me ask you the same thing I asked Hentor: are you of the opinion that no study should be discussed on these boards until it has been peer reviewed?
magellan01, I don’t give two shits about whether you have this discussion. Frankly, I’m surprised that any time elapsed between the last time the board hosted this discussion and now. I’d love for you to carry on with it as long as anyone wants to continue to take it up with you.
What I’m concerned about is the misrepresentation of this study to suggest anything like you’ve been trying to suggest, regardless of whether tomndebb wants to try to help weave some tenuous chains of increasingly unlikely links as to how the operationalization of the predictor here might somehow actually measure what it is purported to measure.
I can’t work my way through your double-speak about whether this is a useful study or not, but in my opinion it is clear that you wish to retain it as some kind of evidence, since you haven’t yourself yet rejected it or even acknowledged that it doesn’t measure protests in the least. Do you continue to put it forth as evidence or do you reject it as flawed and invalid?
Here again are the authors’ own words describing their measure:
Bolding is mine. Why not measure the press coverage of the actual “statements or actions by other U.S. political figures” directly, rather than measuring the occasions that the Bush admininstration chose to publicize them?
Additionally, or alternatively, why not try to develop some index of actual protest activity somehow?
Just a few of the problems of using the strategy employed by the authors is that the construct becomes not protest activity, but occasions upon which the Bush administration chose to publicize their take on the issue. Furthermore, how often would such statement be limited to “We take note of the ‘statement or action’ by such and such.” Rather, wouldn’t they always couch such public comments in statements of resolve to persist despite “emboldening” comments? Wouldn’t statements of resolve be at least as likely as comments about other’s emboldening to influence the behavior of “the enemy”? There is no mechanism here for disentangling the two.
Please answer directly: Do you understand the nature of the flaws with this operationalization of the construct? Do you at least understand the argument I’ve laid out as to those flaws?
Will do. I thought I was doing that rather well given the reluctance of some to simply entertain a hypothetical or just leave it alone. Oh well…
Now, you’ll have to help me with your latin. I am not familiar with the phrase and Google was unhelpful.
Essentially, no. If it hasn’t been peer reviewed, it has no more value than someone’s opinion, and should be presented as no more than that. If one wants to put something forward as an opinion piece, that would be most appropriate. What is troubling is the attempt to pretend that this provides some empirical support for an opinion.
In general, I don’t think study results should be publicly released until peer review is completed. Here someone has disseminated the findings and given a statement about the quality of the study as likely to pass peer review. This is really shady and uncool. I hope that the authors were not actively involved in this process.
Peer review is not a magic process that ensures that everything about a study is beyond reproach, but it should be at least a necessary requirement to provide some check on the merits of the study.
I understand the problems you have with the study. And if someone were attempting to use it as proof of anything I would consider those problems flaws. I understand your argument completely. What I don’t understand is your reluctance to simply accept the study for what it is. And why you are so hell-bent on stating that it can in no way be considered as evidence that protests might in fact lead to increased attacks. You even state that there is “no mechanism for disentangling the two”. By which I take you to mean the protests causing the attacks or the administrations responses to the protests causing the attacks. So. you seem to be saying “well, okay it might be evidence” and “there is no way on earth this can be construed as evidence in any way”.
I will have to just point out that the I view the opening line of your last post as complete an utter bullshit. Your actions here have made that quite clear.
Why “essentially”? Is it “no” or not? You seem to want to have it both ways. And even if it has no more value than someone’s opinion, what’s the problem? We allow opinions, don’t we? How about if it was offered as possible support of an opinion, and acknowledged as such? I agree that such a study should not be used as proof of anything, but short of that, what is the problem?
He doesn’t like the conclusions, and is frantic to forestall any discussion of them. Because, as you noticed, he cares very deeply indeed if you have the discussion - he doesn’t want you to, so he will post over and over that this is worthless because it isn’t published. He’s hoping you will run out of patience and drop the discussion.
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, he’s also pointed out that the study’s worthless in that it doesn’t even measure protests, it measures statements by the administration about the protests. Which suggests to me an alternative hypothetical (and one that may actually have some support from the study): Have administration officials kvetching about outspoken critics of the war emboldened the enemy and caused American deaths?
So, it’s not proof, but it is evidence? What do you even mean? And you continue to impute “protests” even though I’ve on multiple occasions informed you that there’s no measure of protests. You continue to fail to understand the basic problems that prevent this study from being used in the way that you continue to want to use it.
No. What I was talking about was disentangling the Bush administration statements on other people’s “emboldening” versus the rhetoric that I suspect would likely accompany those statements (e.g. “Reid may want to embolden the enemy, but we will not cut and run.”)
I can guarantee you I’ve never said that this is evidence. There are a host of other problems with this study, but the very first start is the operationalization of constructs, and here that foundation is flawed.