I see from Matthew

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I see from Matthew Yglesias’ site that there is a notion being peddled by certain conservative columnists that the bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad is actually a sign that the bad guys are on the ropes. Now, that strikes me as a rather creative of interpretation of the event. To the extent that the form of attack is different — mass casualty terrorism versus isolated guerilla attacks on soldiers — I suspect it’s because the perpetrators are not the same people. But that’s just a supposition on my part.

However that may be, this new theory from the war-hawks suggests a broader question, a deeper problem.

I’m probably getting certain particulars of this wrong, but there’s a basic principle in scientific theory: an hypothesis, to be a real hypothesis, must be capable of disproof. In other words, for an hypothesis to be a valid basis for research, there must be some data which, if found to be true, would prove the hypothesis was false. Otherwise, there’s no way to test it.

Now, foreign policy is no science. But some looser version of this principle must apply here as well. To be a policy, as opposed to a theological position, there must be some potential results that would show the policy was not working. The proponents of the policy should be able to say ahead of time that if this or that result happens, the policy has failed.

The utility of requiring this would be that if the result of the invasion of Iraq is an Islamic theocracy, governed by Osama bin Laden, and purchasing nuclear weapons from Pakistan at bargain-basement prices, we’d have the hawks on record saying this was in fact not a positive development.

Now, we’ve already had the ‘flypaper‘ theory: that guerilla attacks against American troops are a good thing because we’re pulling ‘the terrorists’ out of the woodwork and attacking them on our own terms. And now we have what I guess we could call the ‘paradoxically positive mass-casualty terrorism event‘ theory: that mass-casualty terrorism events show the success of our policy since they are a sign ‘the terrorists’ are becoming desperate.

For my part, I don’t think either guerrilla attacks or mass-casualty terror attacks in themselves show the administration’s policy is a failure. This is a difficult business. But they also don’t strike me as positive developments.

So I think it’s time for the hawks to give us a few examples of events that would show that our policy was not working or at least facing setbacks. You know, just so we can put down some benchmarks, so we can know what we’re working with …

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