General Petraeus thinks that Obama is leaving Afghanistan too soon.
After 10 years of rather conspicuous failure, Petraeus and the other generals and a few faithfully militant Republicans like John McCain claim that we are on the verge of success– just give me one more chance, honey. I know I’ve let you down over and over again, but this time I think it’s going to work.
Philosopher Karl Popper argued that a scientific theory (or any theory) could not be said to be true unless it was theoretically possible, in a rational sense, to prove that it was false. In other words, to “falsify” it. I wish there was a succinct, well-known term for this position. Maybe there is and I just don’t know it. But once you understand it, it makes perfect sense.
For example, someone tells you that he is underpaid. He deserves more money for the work he does. That’s his theory, his hypothesis. But is it possible that everyone deserves more money for the work they do? I think a rational person would think not. Next question: is there a single person in the world who does not feel he deserves more money for the work he does? No. So you can’t falsify the hypothesis here– you can’t reasonably believe that any person feels that he should not get paid more. So you respond, “don’t we all”. He hasn’t made his case.
So when the generals argue that the Afghanistan effort is on the verge of success, we could believe they might be right if you could make a sensible case for the idea that they might, if the evidence was convincing, believe that they were ever not on the verge of success. But it is clear that, short of a total annihilation, these generals will never admit that they lost this war. We know this because the generals have lied from the very beginning about how well they were doing, and the prospects of a conclusive victory. Now, some generals even argue that they shouldn’t even look for a conclusive victory: let’s just stay there forever.
That, of course, is not what they promised the American tax-payer when they initiated this war.
In certain criminal cases, fiber evidence is sometimes presented by an “expert” to prove the guilt of an individual. The question I always ask is, knowing what we now know about fiber experts, is it possible that this expert could have failed to find at least one match for any fiber in any suspect’s apartment?
Apparently not. Has one of these experts ever testified in court that they could not match any fibers from the body with any fibers found in the suspect’s apartment? I’ve never heard of it.
So if I had been a congressman back in, oh, 2005, and had been part of one of those hearings at which the generals explain what they are doing and why and how it will lead to success, I would have asked the generals to lay out for me a definition of “failure”, just so we would know what it looks like if it was ever staring us in the face. I would have written it down carefully, made it into a framed poster, and hung it on the wall in the hearing room, so that five, six, seven, ten years later, when the same general was arguing that the U.S. should continue to spend over $1 billion a week on this war, I could point to the poster and say, no, we failed, let’s admit it and move on.
Without a doubt– without the slightest doubt– people like John McCain would have objected. He would say, we didn’t define failure in the right way. I have a new definition. And it’s not what we have now. And we would know that the truth is that every last U.S. soldier could be killed and every last armament destroyed and he would still insist they could win if they would just do the same except more of it.
At least it would be more transparent what people like John McCain want to do, how they see the world, how they understand the purpose of government.