Positive Liberty

Look, it’s very simple. I think Kuznicki is wrong to automatically assume that our military is guilty of wrongdoing, on the basis of some clips brought to us from documents which we are not being allowed to see, and when we don’t know the surrounding facts. To leap into assumptions that our military is guilty of heinous acts is the sort of childish behavior that undermines the credibility of his side of the argument.

Reuters’ disgusting behavior is not the result of “one editorial decision,” it is a policy of moral relativism, which at times has verged into nothing short of hostility to the American cause. Their reports deserve to be treated with a great deal of skepticism, as a result. That doesn’t mean this story is untrue, it just means that we ought to wait until we have more facts.

There are contexts in which the statements quoted in the story could turn out not to be what they are purported to be. I’m saddened to think that someone with Kuznicki’s intelligence would immediately assume the military’s guilt on the basis of single sentences of quoted material. It shows, I think, a childish knee-jerk tendency to immediately assume we’re at fault.

Kuznicki likes to use the word “kidnap,” but in fact if these women are participating in terrorist activities, then they deserve to be captured and interrogated as co-conspirators, and if that causes their husbands to surrender, so much the better. Again, it’s sad that Kuznicki automatically assumes that these are poor innocent little wallflowers, dragged from their homes by the (necessarily evil) American forces and used as pawns in a cruel game of cat-and-mouse. We do not know that to be true, much as it might fit our preconceptions and stereotypes.

Now, again, if our troops are actually taking innocent family members off the streets and holding them as hostages, then that is not acceptable. But it is at least equally unacceptable to assume that the Americans are always in the wrong, which seems to be Dr. Kuznicki’s M.O.

Update: Dylan is a little more pissed off than I am, I’d say! But he does make a valid point that our primary concern should in almost everycircumstace be for the security of our troops first.

Update 2: Well, now, to be accurate, an ad hominem attack is when you assert that a person’s argument must be wrong because that person has a poor character. That is not the same as asserting that a person’s behavior is bad. The latter is the substance of my charge, and it sticks. Surely a man who uses language like “kidnap” is familiar with the use of passionate language.

Update 3: More here.

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