3.20.2006

Iraqtional Thinking

Dearest readers, those of you who have been paying attention will surely have noted that I enjoy poking fun at American ignorance, I like to pull poll numbers out of a hat (it is of course, a hat filled with the fruits of my rigorous research and study) and show you what the average American believes. Many of you will be surprised to learn that ignorance and unreason are not confined within the borders of America! I merely focus on Americans because they can and do back their ignorance up with the biggest, baddest, best-equipped army in the world.

Today though, I was reading the Globe and Mail and I came across some similar polls regarding the beliefs of the average Iraqi. To numbers in particular caught my eye.

1) Only 13% of Iraqis believe that it is no longer necessary to have US troops in their country. Not so surprising, there is clearly a lot of work left to be done in the so-called rebuilding. Now, let's say that ten percent of Iraqis are undecided on this issue. That means that 77% of Iraqis believe that it is still necessary to have US troops in their country.

Keep this in mind and think about the fact that --

2) 47% of Iraqis approve of the attacks that are being made on US troops by the insurgents.

So, let's be generous and suggest that the entire 13% of Iraqis who believe US troops are no longer necessary also approve of the attacks. That still leaves 34% of Iraqis. And the undecided ten percent, subtract them too. That means that 24% of Iraqis -- one in four -- believe BOTH 1) that the US troops MUST STAY in Iraq AND 2) that the ought to be attacked.

That is like believing both that the steak needs to cook a little longer AND that it will help the steak I pour ice into the barbeque. [In truth both of these statements are false, ice in a barbeque has never helped anyone or anything and steak is always already cooked enough -- so take it off right away.]

I'm not even trying to make a statement here on whether or not US troops should stay or whether or not their is an ethical defense for the insurgency, I'm just saying whatever you choose to believe, for god's sake, at least make the effort to keep your beliefs logically consistent!

George Bush should forget about the war on terror. Terror is the least of our problems, it's idiocy we should be worried about.

I, Matteus Von Mustard, hereby declare an all-out war against idiocy!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would be interested to know what the specific questions were that were asked of the Iraqis. Maybe the questions were vague or too open to interpretation. Hard to imagine it being "are US troops still needed" - yes, "should they be attacked" - yes.

12:03 p.m.  
Blogger Matthew Lie - Paehlke said...

yeah, you're totally right. but i looked at that and even giving a lot of wiggle room for benefit of the doubt, it still looks like people's beliefs are very conflicted. and yeah it was a longer survey. also, i can't imagine you can do a survey with any degree of accuracy in a place as chaotic as iraq

1:26 p.m.  

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