Don't Confuse Me With the Facts
Sadly, this kind of Popperian rigor is entirely absent when Coulson turns to the Iraq War. Coulson has decided that he simply will not allow critics to use the mounting violence in Iraq to falsify the pro-war point of view. In Coulson's non-Popperian world, the rising tide of violence really means nothing at all:
Hence, it is fatuous to argue that a current rise in terrorist recruitment proves that toppling Saddam was a bad idea. Efforts to create a free and democratic Iraq are ongoing — the war is still in progress.
Note that none of this is to say that freedom and democracy are sure (or even likely) to take root in Iraq. Critics are welcome to argue that we and freedom-loving Iraqis will ultimately lose there, and be worse off if we do. But can we please treat logic and common sense as non-combatants, and stop assaulting them with fallacious arguments such as the one described above?
Had Coulson taken a similar"don't confuse me with the facts" approach when writing Market Education, he would never have found a publisher. As always, Matt Barganier nails it:
Part of the argument for toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime was that a beachhead for freedom and democracy in a Muslim Middle Eastern nation would, in the long term, weaken militant Islamism and promote peace. It was never suggested that the process of trying to create that beachhead would itself make anyone safer — no more than it was suggested that Americans would be safer during our participation in WW II.
That is, what has actually happened since the war began doesn’t matter, because what war supporters said would happen could theoretically still happen – kind of; we may have to accept defeat in the scavenger hunt and cakewalk events – as long as we keep trying to make it happen. Plus watch Saving Private Ryan.