by Michael De Dora
* In its latest issue, Esquire published a feature article, by Tom Junod, critical of the Obama administration’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e., drones), among other military tactics.
* Days later, the New York Times ran a news analysis, by Scott Shane, citing a number of sources who applauded Obama’s replacement of broader bombing efforts with precise attacks carried out by drones.
* John Kaag and Sarah Kreps of the Times then attempted to make sense of these two pieces in this article. I suggest reading the entire thing.
* Last week, The Guardian published a story on Bradley Strawser, a politically liberal philosophy professor who not only defends the use of unmanned drones in warfare, but also makes the case that the use of drones is moral.
* However, it turns out Strawser was not entirely happy with how the article represented his views, so The Guardian gave him an opportunity to make the case for drones in his own words. Here’s what he had to say.
* A day later, Noel Sharkey wrote in the same publication that drones will lead to “sanitised factory of slaughter.”
* Meanwhile, in case you were wondering which country owns the most drones, The Guardian has you covered.
* Not to be left out of the debate, The Daily Beast also published an article, by counter-terrorism official Phillip Mudd, who explored the moral issues with drone use.
* And last, but not least, Murtaza Hussain penned a critical essay for Salon in which he called Strawser’s arguments both “odious and wrong.”
A nice selection of articles.
ReplyDeleteSee also, Glenn Greenwald's "Unrestrained Savagery" -- about the use of drone missiles to target people attending funerals.
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/07/unrestrained_savagery/
Thanks Tom. Here's another I just caught:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128710139185997.html
I'm sorry to see that there appears to be little
ReplyDeleteinterest in this thread -- it is an important
topic.
Strawser makes comments that are sure to inflame
and then evades his critics by proclaiming that
his analysis is free from judgments about policy.
It is as if, shortly after the JFK assassination,
someone were to praise the merits of the Mannlicher-
Carcano rifle, then express amazement that anyone
would interpret those remarks as an endorsement
of the Kennedy shooting. Surely Stawser must be
aware of the context in which he is making his
comments -- otherwise what he is saying is true
but trivial (we should use the most efficient
method to do something that is righteous to do).
I suspect that Strawser is not *that* naive.
Rather, he is playing a "double game" of spewing
out propaganda for his paymasters in the military
while insulating himself from criticism by hiding
behind a facade of abstract technical analysis
that purports to have no views on politics:
"Yes, Mrs. Kennedy (or may I call you "Jackie"?),
the Mannlicher-Carcano really is a swell rifle
with outstanding penetration at a distance. It's
great for getting rid of unwanted vermin. What?
You're offended? I can't imagine why! I'm just
talking about the technical aspects of a great
rifle."
Re: "Rather, he is playing a "double game" of spewing
ReplyDeleteout propaganda for his paymasters in the military
while insulating himself from criticism by hiding
behind a facade of abstract technical analysis
that purports to have no views on politics:"
What a wonderful way of avoiding the content of an argument: Fire out ad hominems.
Tom, why not present an ***argument*** in response to Strawser's. If your position is so clearly the right one to hold, it should not be that hard.
Eamon,
ReplyDeletewhat I wrote *was* my argument. My comment that Strawser is in the pay of the military is a fact of bias that should cause us to suspect his conclusions, not an ad hominem.
That Stawser is evasive can clearly be seen by his pathetic claim that the Guardian "misrepresented" his views, particularly in regard to the "no downside" comment: that comment was a direct quote of Strawser himself, not a misrepresentation.
As I wrote previously: if, as Strawser implausibly claims, he is not making any policy judgments, then what he is saying is trivial. We don't need a philosopher to discuss the merely technical aspects of a weapons system - get an engineer.
Beyond that, I cannot make a counter-argument because Strawser fails to make *his* argument. He merely implies approval of current policy in the manner I illustrated with the Mannlicher-Carcano example. It is difficult to make a detailed reply to a weasel argument.
"My comment that Strawser is in the pay of the military is a fact of bias that should cause us to suspect his conclusions, not an ad hominem."
ReplyDeleteThat is the very definition of an Ad Hominem Fallacy: focusing on a particular characteristic of a speaker (being in the pay of the military) in order to dismiss/discount an argument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Brian,
ReplyDeleteWell, "ad hominem" is Latin for "to the man" -- an appeal to prejudices regarding irrelevant personal characteristics of the presenter of an idea.
This is an unfair tactic, because what a person *is* is irrelevant to the idea that he or she is presenting. So, arguing against someone on the basis of "you should
question his conclusions because he's a German", is unfair because the point is irrelevant.
On the other hand, arguing against someone on the basis of "you should question his conclusions because he's taking money from Exxon" would be relevant if the topic were, say, global warming.
Pointing out relevant personal * biases* closely associated with a topic is different from pointing out a person's irrelevant and unchangeable personal characteristics. I would not even define noting bias as "ad hominem" if the bias were relevant to the topic.
But if you insist on calling notation of bias an "ad hominem" attack under Wiki's definition of "ad hominem circumstantial", please note that even Wiki observes that:
" Doug Walton has argued that ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, and that in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and
relevant to the issue...".
But more to the point, what particular *idea* of Strawser's do you wish I had addressed?
To my mind, he has presented none that he did not immediately withdraw -- by implausibly claiming that he had been misrepresented (by a direct quote), or subsequently qualify with so many caveats as to render the point trivial.
I must side with Tom here. The ad hominem is a fallacy only if one relies *solely* on character information to reject someone's claim. But clearly character, or connections, are absolutely relevant to establishing someone's credibility, as in the case under discussion. That said, one still needs to do the separate work of actually debunking the claims themselves.
Delete