Assuming1 – Country …

Assuming

1 – Country A invades Country B.
2 – Country C drives Country A out of Country B.
3 – Country A signs a cease-fire agreement with Country C, contingent on certain conditions that must be met by Country A.
4 – Country A violates those conditions.
5 – Country C resumes hostilities.

Would the action represented by step 5 be considered:

A – As mentioned above, a resumption of hostilities started in step 2.
B – A new war in which Country C is making a pre-emptive strike.

If you answered A, you’d be right. And the fact is, you’d be right regardless of the time spent deciding on whether step 4 had actually occurred. For example, if it took 12 years (due to international foot-dragging) to come to the conclusion that the cease-fire agreement had been violated, you still couldn’t answer B.

Well, I guess you could if you were stridently anti-Bush, or the New York Times…or both. The Times, reporting on their CBS/New York Times poll, said, “But a majority remains opposed to a policy of pre-emptive attack like the one President Bush invoked in invading Iraq…”. However, the way the question is reported in the article suggests the Times was manipulating, not just the results, but the questions themselves.

Amid poll questions about the war with Iraq, the article says this:

And the nation has yet to embrace the tactical doctrine of pre-emption Mr. Bush advanced to justify the war in Iraq and, potentially, an invasion of Syria, North Korea or Iran. For example, 51 percent said the United States should not invade another nation unless it was attacked first.

First of all, the current hostilities with Iraq are the result of Iraq failing to comply with a cease-fire agreement and 18 UN resolutions. That cease-fire agreement was part of a war that was clearly backed by the international community. There was no pre-emption involved.

Further, the question imposes the belief that this war was pre-emptive on the respondent. The Times says the question was whether the United States should invade another nation pre-emptively. A “Yes” answer to this expands to, “Yes, this war was pre-emptive, and we should do it again”, while a “No” answer says, “Yes, this war was pre-emptive, and we should not do it again”. The premise of the question is false, but that one little word “another” no doubt flew by respondents, even those who didn’t think this was a pre-emptive attack. When we’re taking a poll, how many of us spend the time to carefully judge any hidden assumptions made by the question and just answer it quickly? Most, I’m sure. Thus the Times gets to proclaim a falsehood because it manipulated the question.

I really don’t like poll reporting. It’s simply the artificial generation of news, and the whims of people so easily change in these days of the 24-hour news cycle. But that doesn’t stop organizations like these from using them and manipulating them. Granted, most of the rest of the numbers look very good for Bush, making them difficult to downplay. But be careful when reading polling data and look for hidden assumptions. A single word can make the difference.

And I wish journalists would learn a little bit of very recent history on this whole Iraq situation. The whole “pre-emptive” kick they’re on doesn’t stand up in the face of it. Once again (and again, and again), history refutes liberal catch-phrases and assumptions.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!