The Straw Man and McBush Hypocrisy
Posted by: AZBlueMeanie:
Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI), is credited with the bipartisan entreaty that "politics stops at the water’s edge" in American foreign policy.
Of course, members of Congress and even former presidents of both political parties in recent decades have departed from Vandenberg’s entreaty.
Never before has a sitting president, the titular head of the United States government, while on an official state visit, before a session of the elected government of a sovereign state, inserted into a formal state speech a partisan political campaign attack meant for domestic political consumption.
Patrick Buchanan, the uber conservative political commentator for MSNBC (and frequent author on the presidency) commented that for a sitting president to make this kind of statement while abroad about the other party’s presumptive nominee, is unprecedented. I will take Pat at his word for historical context.
For President Bush to draw an historically false analogy by comparing the appeasement of Adolph Hitler by European governments in the Munich Agreement of 1938 (permitting German annexation of Chekoslovakia’s Sudetenland) with diplomacy and negotiation with Iran before the Israeli Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence was beyond the pale. Bush embarrassed Americans with his petty politicking.
Following is the offensive passage from the official White House transcript of Bush’s speech President Bush Addresses Members of the Knesset:
"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It’s natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
"Some seem to believe…" "Some people say…" Anytime you hear President Bush begin a sentence with this phrase, you can be certain that what follows is a Straw Man fallacy.
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:
- Person A has position X.
- Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
- Person B attacks position Y.
- Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. Fallacy: Straw Man
President Bush has utilized this dishonest and misleading rhetorical technique repeatedly throughout his administration, often to great effect when it is repeated by a servile media.
President Bush does not tell you, of course, that "some people" who want to engage in diplomacy and negotiation with Iran and other "state sponsors of terrorism" are none other than members of Bush’s own administration.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a speech to the American Academy of Diplomacy just the day before Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure – washingtonpost.com said that:
"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them," Gates said. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us.
* * *
"[M]y personal view would be we ought to look for ways outside of government to open up the channels and get more of a flow of people back and forth." Noting that "a fair number" of Iranians regularly visit the United States, he said, "We ought to increase the flow the other way . . . of Americans" visiting Iran."
Secretary Gates publicly favored engagement with Iran before taking his current job in late 2006. In 2004, he co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report titled "Iran: Time for a New Approach." Gates was also a member of the bipartisan 2006 Iraq Study Group, which advocated reaching out to Iran.
The Bush administration also considers Syria a state sponsor of terrorism. But Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice met with Syria’s foreign minister Walid al-Moallem in face-to-face talks at Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt on May 3, 2007. Rice Meets Syrian Foreign Minister – New York Times
Secretary Rice also has said “I am prepared to meet my counterpart or an Iranian representative at any time if Iran will suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities." Secretary Rice said the U.S. would hold direct talks with Iran if Tehran suspended its nuclear program. Rice: Direct Iran talks, with conditions – Iran- msnbc.com
The Bush administration previously negotiated an agreement with "state sponsor of terrorism" Libya, and is presently engaged in negotiations with the repressive regime of North Korea. The repressive regimes of Pakistan (home to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda) and Saudi Arabia (home to 15 of the 19 hijackers who attacked the U.S. on 9/11) are considered "allies" by the Bush administration.
It is rank hypocrisy to suggest that diplomacy and negotiation with these governments is tantamount to Nazi appeasement – it doesn’t even make sense – when the Bush administration itself is currently engaged in ongoing diplomacy and negotiation with these governments.