No Law Professor Left Behind

by digby

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers Guns and Money reads the wingnuts so you don’t have to and finds that they are just as idiotic as ever:

After pointing out that more Americans have died in the Iraq war than in 9/11, Althouse–quite remarkably at this late date–asks:

A key question — with an unknowable answer — is: How many Americans would have died in post-9/11 attacks if we had not chosen the path of fighting back?

Once again, I can’t help but blame the press for not making sure that anyone who says such a thing understands that they will be seen as a screaming moron. (Not that it would make much difference in this case.)

Lemieux answers correctly:

Well, the answer is indeed unknowable, but given that Iraq had no substantial connection to Anti-American terrorism and posed no security threat whatsoever to the United States, the overwhelmingly likely answer is “zero.” Whatever Iraq was, it wasn’t “fighting back” against the Islamic radicals who actually attacked New York.

I can only assume that it is some sort of racism that leads people like Althouse to basically conclude that all arabs are alike (or all “muslims” — but we know what they’re really talking about, don’t we?)

Even if you give this the very best face possible, you end up with the Kissingerian war criminal notion that it’s both useful and moral to “send a message” that we will “fight back” by invading a non-involved country and killing innocent people.

Either way, it may be the most absurd, illogical reasoning that’s ever been given for a war in this country — it certainly beats Vietnam, the Spanish-American war and the Mexican-American war for sheer absurdity. People actually believed that all America had to do was show its willingness to kill and its enemies would run screaming in fright and agree to never attack us again — as if it doesn’t matter who we killed or why.

It’s not all that surprising that a lot of silly people who write on the internet might believe this. The question for historians is going to be how schoolyard logic like this made its way into the highest reaches of the most powerful nation on earth.

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