Henry Farrell (Crooked Timber) is running, in response to my query about Westerners who defend the Iraqi insurgents, a query about people who “make egregious claims that a substantial section of those who opposed the war are, in fact, rooting for the other side.”
Falsely claiming that someone (or the majority of some group) is rooting for the bad guys in a war is indeed pretty egregious misbehavior. (Accurately claiming that, of course, is not egregious.) I haven’t followed the responses, so I can’t speak to their merits, but to the extent that they uncover and condemn such false claims, they are doing reasoned debate (and basic decency and fairness) a great service.
As to whether it is indeed accurate to say that a “substantial section of those who opposed the war” is rooting for the other side, I can’t speak helpfully to that, since “substantial” is pretty vague, and since I haven’t followed closely the range of public commentary on the subject. My tentative guess is that the percentages of Americans and Europeans who want America to lose in Iraq may be quite different, though I’m not sure. But whether the number is “substantial” in either place is hard to tell in any objective fashion.
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