Contributors

Sunday, February 18, 2018

The "We Do It Too" Fallacy

Now that Robert Mueller has released his indictment of Russian nationals and companies for hacking the 2016 election, some conservatives have come to the defense of Russia. "We do it too," they say.

Yes, we have done it in the past. And it has cost us dearly. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a direct outcome of CIA meddling in that country during the 1950s. Supporting Saddam in the 1980s backfired when he thought we gave him a green light to invade Kuwait, leading us into two wars. Our support for terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban during Russia's 1980s invasion of Afghanistan backfired when those same people turned against us in 2001.

Now we're the ones stuck in an eternal war in the desiccated mountains of Asia, and Russia is backing the Taliban (as well as North Korea, Iran, and Syria).

But, as former CIA Russia operations chief Steven Hall says, equating Russian and American activities “is like saying cops and bad guys are the same because they both have guns — the motivation matters.”

The United States has -- mostly -- tried to promote democracy and transparency with our actions. Our greatest failures have occurred when we let private concerns (mostly oil) interfere with our mission of democracy. We've promoted democracy with programs like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which were often the only source of real news that communist countries had during the cold war.

Russia doesn't have  free and fair elections -- Putin files fake criminal charges against credible opponents and prevents them from even running. So the United States can't do what Russia did to us.

Russia is attacking us to show their own people that freedom of speech and democracy are untenable and undesirable. The election of Donald Trump and the chaos, discord and corruption he sows are intended as much to weaken the United States as it is to prove to the Russian people that they're better off with a stable, autocratic dictator like Putin than whatever nutjob free and fair elections would put in power.

But saying that "we do it too" to excuse Russian attacks is tantamount to treason. It is condoning a foreign power's attempt to sabotage the basic exercise of our democracy.

Mueller's indictment didn't tell Donald Trump or his advisor anything they didn't already know. But Trump has declined to impose any new sanctions on the Russians, as required by a bill passed almost unanimously by Congress last year.

Why not?

Trump's actions sure do seem like a conspiracy: until last week he had constantly denied an attack had ever occurred, he has tried to cover up the attack by firing the FBI director and attempting to curtail the investigation, and he has refused to punish the foreigners behind the attack.

When Trump met with Russians in the Oval Office he said, “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

Sure does sound like an admission of guilt, doesn't it?

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