US Airstrike in Pakistan

[gcol]

Philcandless:

 

"While it may border on tautological to say that Westerners value other Westerners, it is a dubious step to take that and conclude, based on simple language and cultural identification, that we value the life of a Western stranger more than a non-Western one".

 

Morally dubious, very. In reality, it is plain 'tribal loyalty', that old thing your country demands of you when it wants you to put your body where the enemy's bullets are. Perhaps we may consider ouselves truly civilised when our tribe is truly all of humanity.

[philcandless]

In reality, it is plain 'tribal loyalty'...

 

In reality, this 'tribal loyalty' nonsense is pop sociology. The "well, that makes some sense" alternative to genuine observation and inference doesn't fly in any of the hard sciences, why should it fly here? Think about how much pseudoscientific garbage starts off with "in reality, it boils down to this...blah, blah, blah...sweeping generalizations follow." Then ask yourself what value is there in making them in the Politics forums?

[gcol]

In reality, this 'tribal loyalty' nonsense is pop sociology. The "well, that makes some sense" alternative to genuine observation and inference doesn't fly in any of the hard sciences, why should it fly here? Think about how much pseudoscientific garbage starts off with "in reality, it boils down to this...blah, blah, blah...sweeping generalizations follow." Then ask yourself what value is there in making them in the Politics forums?

 

Ouch:D But.... Pop sociology, pseudoscientific garbage, sweeping generalisations? Which of these has not formed part of the typical politician's armoury? and how many politicians would not use tribal loyalty as a vote-catcher? That is real politics, the politics of the stump.

[philcandless]

Ouch:D But.... Pop sociology, pseudoscientific garbage, sweeping generalisations? Which of these has not formed part of the typical politician's armoury?

 

Here's an interesting quote:

 

Popkin and Dimock observe that respondents with low levels of political knowledge tend to see political scandal as much more serious than those with higher levels of political knowledge and understanding.[/b'] They use attribution theory and, in particular, the notion of the “fundamental attribution error” to explain why this might be so. Attribution research has shown that people tend to interpret the behavior of others as indicative of character, while tending to attribute their own behavior to circumstances.In other words, if a Member of Parliament writes a bounced check it is because he or she is untrustworthy; if I write a bounced check it is because I was so busy that I forgot to first make sure I had sufficient funds.

 

Sturgis, Allum, Science in society: re-evaluating the deficit model of

public attitudes, Public Understand. Sci. 13 (2004) 55–74.

 

Emphasis mine, of course. My point is that that cynicism such as yours, attached to a question of society and or politics as well, is demonstrably correlated with an uninformed opinion and unfounded preconceptions of your targets' character. That you make sweeping generalizations--about politicians, Westerners, and God knows what else--without providing a respectable empirical foundation for them-- is consistent with that finding.

[gcol]

Philcandless:

 

There is a fine line between cynicism and scepticism. I will gladly be labelled a sceptic. As for cynic, which means "one fond of finding fault or taking a mean view of life", have you not made that slur based upon rather scanty evidence? Or perhaps as my ol' granpappy may have said in his tribal vernacular, "have you looked in the mirror lately, my old sunshine?"

 

The paper you quote is rather lengthy so of course you have been selective. That allows me the same privilege. So the very next sentence:

 

"Furthermore, because we also tend to overestimate the reasonableness of our own actions, we also overestimate the probability that others would do the same as us".

 

I cannot imagine myself ever overestimating the reasonableness of your actions. (That was sarcasm, add it to the list). But as the first line of the next paragraph has it "This, of course, is entering the realms of post hoc speculation......."

 

My conclusion, based purely on speculation of course, is that cynicism, scepticism, sarcasm, and here is another, irony, are effective cleansing agents when a bovine fundament has soiled itself.

[philcandless]

Philcandless:

 

There is a fine line between cynicism and scepticism.

 

I'm not sure what that means' date=' but I know that a skeptical claim is not characterized by an expression of belief in the subject's substance. Claiming something called "tribal loyalty" exists, last I checked, amounts to expressing such a belief.

 

I will gladly be labelled a sceptic. As for cynic, which means "one fond of finding fault or taking a mean view of life", have you not made that slur based upon rather scanty evidence?

 

I find it based on the value judgement you arrived at concerning politicians, which does amount to finding fault and taking a mean view of life.

 

The paper you quote is rather lengthy so of course you have been selective.

 

Which would be another example of a "fundamental attribution error," which is only more pronounced when considered against your later misrepresentation of Sturgis and Allum's findings.

[john5746]

Consider what happens when our enemy chooses to reside amongst us...

 

Define our and us. Is this just your silly "tribal" belief?

[philcandless]

Define our and us. Is this just your silly "tribal" belief?

 

Nope, it's the enemy's.

[gcol]

Philcandless

 

You seem particularly interested in my use of the phrase "tribal loyalty". It appears to be used often in relation to indigenous, nomadic, tribal cultures, and perhaps surprisingly often at the moment when discussing Islamic history. It crops up so often I am surprised you have some difficulty with it. Naturally, with this quote I have been selective, but it is in a political context:

 

"Without a degree of 'certainty and tribal loyalty', there can be little coherence or conviction in politics."

From: "The Hansard Society"

 

I can use this illustrate that tribal loyalty is an important factor in the "science of politics" (deliberate sceptical oxymoron).

 

I am beginning to wonder two things:

 

1. Any opinion or discussion point is unreasonable if it is contrary to yours.

 

2. You get extreme pleasure from argument for the sake of argument. I am broad minded, that's o.k., but best not do it by the window with a strong light behind you.

[philcandless]

Philcandless

 

You seem particularly interested in my use of the phrase "tribal loyalty".

 

I'm actually more interested in your description of politicians than that' date=' but okay.

 

It appears to be used often in relation to indigenous, nomadic, tribal cultures, and perhaps surprisingly often at the moment when discussing Islamic history. It crops up so often I am surprised you have some difficulty with it.

 

With all due respect, "tribal loyalty" is a term with transient coinage. It does not refer to a persistent concept in social sciences and quite frankly its qualitatively and quantitatively meaningless. If you're looking for a term to describe the tendency of a population to stick to some defined social norm, you're not going to find it. That's largely because sociological models, like those in any other science, are highly conditional and often built from scratch. So I am definitely surprised to hear you've run across the term in such a global context.

 

"Without a degree of 'certainty and tribal loyalty', there can be little coherence or conviction in politics."

From: "The Hansard Society"

 

So you respond to a body of research with dicta from an opinion piece on political plogging? [1].

[gcol]

I suppose, at 63, I am an old fogey. But it does mean I've been around while a few politicians have come and gone. If their actions over the years have left me a touch sceptical and cynical, that's just the way it is. I make no apologies. The list of truly moral and ethical politicians is, I would guess, considerably shorter than the other kind.

 

Tribal loyalty: Using just those terms, Google came up with 840,000 hits.

adding political, sociological, and even biblical, in various combinations still yielded at least 80,000. It does seem to be well established in common usage.

Coming back to Iraq, in a roundabout way, I wonder if its significance in ethnic and religious differences has been overlooked by politicians?

[philcandless]

I suppose, at 63, I am an old fogey. But it does mean I've been around while a few politicians have come and gone.

 

That's well and good, but hardly relevant. David Gergen is 64, and he manages to present political events and personalities without sweeping, summary value judgements. Perhaps that has something to do with his lengthy experience in high public service; for some reason I don't think your experience transcends his.

 

If their actions over the years have left me a touch sceptical and cynical, that's just the way it is. I make no apologies. The list of truly moral and ethical politicians is, I would guess, considerably shorter than the other kind.

 

I don't ask you to apologize. I'm simply pointing out that your comments may reflect attribution error.

 

Tribal loyalty: Using just those terms, Google came up with 840,000 hits.

 

Google scholar returns 244, compared to 171,000 hits for tribal and 221,000 for loyalty. Of the 244, 177 returned when narrowed to the "social science, arts and humanities" category. Of the 177, 161 were referenced with political (only 29 with "political science"), 43 and 37 for "sociology" and "sociological" respectively, and 37 and 70 for "psychology" and "psychological" respectively. Compare that with 4530 hits for "social norm", 1490 when "network" is added in, and 244 when "network" and "relational" are finally composed.

 

It seems you've found evidence that "tribal loyalty" is better as a catch phrase with dubious definition rather than persistance.

 

Coming back to Iraq, in a roundabout way, I wonder if its significance in ethnic and religious differences has been overlooked by politicians?

 

Tu quoque. I'm sure the "politicians" would disagree that they've overlooked the ethnic and religious dimensions in Iraq. In fact, it begs the question...what do you know about it? There is an entire field of study devoted to Iraqi ethnography and cultural evolution, and Iraq has been both a geographic parameter in variation and base model or a number of studies on ethnic and religious conflict, resistance and rebellion, and network theory application to community and inter-community architecture.

[gcol]

Vale, Valete

 

I retire from fatigue.

 

A parting shot: When you have run out of masochistic patsies willing to engage in your sadistic pedantry, how will you "get your rocks off"? ( another coloqial populist phrase which of course you will not understand).

[Jim]

As an aside, I do not feel vindicated that we may have actually killed some top operatives of the enemy. We've gotten to the point where we view a failed military operation as an indictment of the decision to apply force. For example, I do not think Carter should have been held responsible just because dust got in some helecopter engines and destroyed his bid to free the hostages in Iran. If Carter was advised that the effort had a certain chance of success, then he made the right decision even if it did blow up in his face.

 

Gulf War I and the beginning of this war may have given us an unrealistic expectation of what it means to fight a war. Sen. Kerry kept talking about a "plan" as if any plan survives the first engagement. The phrases SNAFU and FUBAR are military terms for a reason.

 

We will have friendly fire. We will kill women and children. We will even have situations which devolve into a Lord of the Flies situation where seemingly good soldiers abuse those under their charge. This is nothing new in war and if the war is worth fighting we have to accept this will happen even as we do all that we can do minimize needless suffering and abuse.

 

History pivots on a dime and no military operation is guaranteed to succeed or fail. One of my favorite chapters of any history book starts as follows:

 

In the Bosnian town of Sarajevo on the morning of June 28, 1914, a chauffeur misunderstood his instructions, made the wrong turn, tried too late to correct his blunder, and so doing delivered his passengers to a point where a waiting assassin did not have to take aim to gun them down.

 

Two rounds from one piston and the world rocked. The crime was the small stone that, loosed, brings the avalanche. There followed four years of universal violence. Millions met untimely death. Many mistaken instructions, wrong turnings, and belated tries to redress error went into the making of World War I. The ambush of an Austrian couple was the precipitating event.. . .

 

So to begin. Seven young Serbian nationalists formed the murder mob. They were a carpenter, a printer, a teacher and four students. Five were under twenty; the elder of the other two was twenty-seven. This was their first and only venture together in crime. Their arrangements were so haphazard, their skill with weapons so little, that the plot should have failed.

 

S.L.A. Marshall, World War I.

 

One of many morals to the story: Even the worst planned military action using completely untrained "soliders" can succeed. Conversely, even the best planned military action using the best intelligence and the most well trained soldiers in the world can fail.

 

This war thus far has been fought with remarkable success, and in this case we were fortunate to have killed some of the bad guys. However, it wouldn't be an indictment of the policy if it had entirely failed.

[zyncod]

What would have been an indictment of policy, then? Blowing up a school? Blowing up a hundred schools? When does the bloodshed get to be too much?

[Jim]

What would have been an indictment of policy, then? Blowing up a school? Blowing up a hundred schools? When does the bloodshed get to be too much?

 

A war can be indicted on several grounds such as the absense of a compelling national interest or the inability or unwillingness to win. However, to get upset at our leaders just because Osama's #1 happened to skip a dinner is not an indictment of policy. It is an indication that this war, like all others, is bloody and unpredictable.

 

With respect to your question, I do not see how blowing up schools would indict the policy of fighting this war. Of course, if this is done intentionally there should be action taken against those responsible. If it happened unintentionally several times, our military would need to find out the cause and make sure it doesn't happen again.

 

To answer your second question, as to when does bloodshed get to be too much, I do not know. I do believe that once the U.S. engages its military, we need to make sure we prevail even if the cost is more than we've paid in this war thus far.

[aguy2]

To answer your second question' date=' as to when does bloodshed get to be too much, I do not know. [/quote']

 

Does anyone here happen to know the estimation of what Osama's terms would be?

 

aguy2

[Ophiolite]

because it'd be a shame if you were to compare a hypothetical Chinese attack on the US we know and love with American operations in the remote wasteland of Central Asia.

They aren't remote wastelands if you live there. And just for your education, that's South Asia, not Central Asia. Please feel free to say something ignorant in response.

[philcandless]

A parting shot: When you have run out of masochistic patsies willing to engage in your sadistic pedantry, how will you "get your rocks off"? ( another coloqial populist phrase which of course you will not understand).

 

I recommend you submit your services immediately to your nearest university brain and cognitive sciences department. Somebody there should be doing research into correspondence bias. At least there this hostility towards informed views you disagree with would serve some purpose.

[gcol]

Back at you, sir! if you hear a strange noise, it is me laughing. I fear I may continue for a week.

[john5746]

Google scholar returns 244' date=' compared to 171,000 hits for tribal and 221,000 for loyalty. Of the 244, 177 returned when narrowed to the "social science, arts and humanities" category. Of the 177, 161 were referenced with political (only 29 with "political science"), 43 and 37 for "sociology" and "sociological" respectively, and 37 and 70 for "psychology" and "psychological" respectively. Compare that with 4530 hits for "social norm", 1490 when "network" is added in, and 244 when "network" and "relational" are finally composed.

 

It seems you've found evidence that "tribal loyalty" is better as a catch phrase with dubious definition rather than persistance.

[/quote']

 

Actually, I got 13,200 hits on Google Scholar for Tribal Loyalty. Not only do you argue endlessly over semantics without making any real point, you are incorrect as well.

[philcandless]

Actually, I got 13,200 hits on Google Scholar for Tribal Loyalty.

 

Because you didn't put quotes around "tribal loyalty." Surely I should expect you'd know how to do that. I have no intentions of trading insults with you. I suggest you and bascule find something more constructive to do.

[john5746]

Because you didn't put quotes around "tribal loyalty." Surely I should expect you'd know how to do that. I have no intentions of trading insults with you. I suggest you and bascule find something more constructive to do.

 

OOPs! my bad. You were correct. whatever that means.

[philcandless]

OOPs! my bad. You were correct. whatever that means.

 

Gcol and I were discussing whether or not "tribal loyalty" is a meaningful term in the social sciences.

[Jim]

Does anyone here happen to know the estimation of what Osama's terms would be?

 

aguy2

 

I doubt Osama is in a position to offer terms.