right-wing outrage tactic #347

Straight outta the Beauchamp experience, righty bloggers go straight for the accusations of lying and treachery whenever a military source steps up with a story they don't like. Hilzoy posting over at AS has a good roundup of the fallout from Obama's debate statement, which referenced:

an Army captain, who was the head of a rifle platoon, supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24, because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition; they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

So because this has unpleasant connotations for the conduct of this wonderful war, the captain has to be destroyed. Hilzoy hits on an important aspect of the situation:

[C]onsider two things. First, the bloggers I quoted above are accusing this unnamed Captain of lying. It's not exactly clear why they think the Captain lied, or why he would go on lying to various TV networks, but that's what Curt, Rusty, and the gang seem to think. And why do they think this? For the most part*, they cite claims like this (from Ace): "Milbloggers say the platoon is the basic organic unit of the army, and troops are never picked out of a platoon to serve elsewhere", or this (from one of Steve Spruiell's correspondents): "units as small as platoons are not pulled apart like that." That is: claims that the sorts of things the Captain described never happen.

And as H says, such claims are generally problematic. ("I think that any claim of the form "X never, ever happens" are generally dubious when made about an organization as large as the US Army. They are especially dubious when made about the Army in wartime.") And so they emerge out of wish fulfillment and a desire to deny reality, more than an honest engagement with the issues. It's their same, basic reaction to Beauchamp: This couldn't happen. Blanket denial rather than actual research. And whether or not any specific instance plays out, this can never happen is hardly a mature standpoint from which to debate.