c'mon Michael, think

c'mon Michael, think

I have seen this same Michael Moore quote, from shortly after 9/11, a couple of times today (here's some more Moore):

"Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, D.C. and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!"

Moore's premise is that the 9/11 terrorists carried out the attack to "get back at Bush". He then points out that that actual targets were states that had voted against Bush.

Moore sees the contradiction, but apparently cannot bring himself to face the conclusions of his own logic.

Logical statements are inherently non-contradictory: if an argument starts from premises (statements that are held as true) and logically progresses to a conclusion, there can be no contradictions. If contradictions occur, it means that either the logical method followed is flawed, or the premises themselves are flawed.

Michael Moore's irrational hatred of George Bush blinds him to the obvious conclusion of his own conundrum. If the terrorists were indeed intending to target states that had voted for Bush as a way of "getting back" at him (for some imagined insult, which is not made clear in the context of the short quote, if at all), then they botched their target selection. This beggars belief, as the near-simultaneous hijackings of four separate airliners implies plenty of very careful planning.

The targets were the twin towers of the world trade center, the Pentagon, and the fourth target was either the White House or the Capitol building. The selection of these particular targets implies an entirely different motivation than "getting back at Bush".

Not just one but both big towers of the world trade center. That's the same building al Quaeda tried to destroy 8 years earlier with a big bomb in the underground parking garage. Their persistence in bringing down the world trade center obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with Bush, but world trade in general and american economic might in particular.

The pentagon, the center of the US military, and itself one of the world's biggest office buildings, was also a deliberately-selected target. It doesn't take Sun Tzu to figure out what al-Quaeda hoped to acheive there; and again, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Bush.

The fourth plane, which ended up in a field in Pennsylvania,was on a heading that would have taken it to either the White house or the Capitol building. Here, Bush may arguably have been a target, particularly if the fourth plane had been heading for the White House - but that presupposes that Bush is in fact inside the White House at the time of the attack. If Bush himself had been the target, the terrorists would have (a) timed the attack for a day when Bush was known to be in Washington, and thus likely to be in the White House and (b) prioritized the order of the attacks differently; by the time the fourth plane was making its attack run, the world trade center had already been hit and the element of surprise was lost.

One can conclude that the terrorists did not blunder about aimlessly in selecting their targets. Therefore the flow of logic in Moore's statement is sound; and yet, there is a contradiction, which Moore so helpfully points out. Fortunately, Moore's position is based on a single premise, and since his logic is sound but arrives at a contradiction, the premise must be incorrect.

The premise was that the 9/11 terrorists killed themselves and thousands of innocent people because they hated George W. Bush. Just under the surface of that premise is an idea so palpable, one can almost read Moore's very thoughts: "because I hate George Bush, everyone must hate George Bush, so anything really bad that happens must be because people hate George Bush".

But the choice of targets indicate that it is not Bush himself that the terrorists hated enough to give up their lives, but America itself.

Maybe Michael Wilson is right.