Posted on 02/04/2003 4:41:12 PM PST by Barandth
Edited on 04/14/2004 10:05:49 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Then you don't understand the use of logical and logical fallacies. The author has used a series of straw man arguments.
Liberals are very prone to being sucked in by logical fallacies without apparently being aware of it. It must be how their brains are wired or something.
Bye bye, turd face!
My money says he is on a thread at DU claiming he just nailed the freepers with arguments they never saw or considered before as as of yet have not answered his questions. The other three DU'ers are giving him high fives.
After U.S. forces are mobilized to that theater after Iraq's defeat. Should be sometime this Summer or Fall.
Cuba's Fidel Castro,
When and if he ever gets the bright idea of developing weapons of mass destruction.
Sudan's genocidal slave-masters or Burma's murderous military junta -
Never. They don't have the projection of power capabilities to attack the U.S. now or in the foreseeable future.
Ah, the "but he's not the only bad guy" argument. Problem is, this is an argument for never fighting any wars, ever.
I mean, even Hitler wasn't the only bad guy in the world in the 1940s. The Japanese Emperor wasn't the only bad guy in the world. Mussolini wasn't the only bad guy in the world. The King of England wasn't the only bad guy in the world....(etc)
If overthrowing a dictator is sufficient reason for the United States to go to war, one must ask how many other holy crusades are in our future.
That's a separate question. The one before us is whether we should attack Iraq. Period. This "but then who's next?" question is irrelevant, and, most likely, a fallacious attempt to change the subject. I expected better of someone who works for Cato Institute.
The United States is supposed to be a constitutional republic. As such, the job of the U.S. military is to defend the vital security interests of the American people.
Ok, so then Mr. Cato must explain why he is so convinced that disarming and/or overthrowing Saddam is not a vital security interest of the American people. I think he's got an uphill climb. Anyway, he didn't even try, so let's just move on.
[Saddam's overthrow would trigger a democratic transformation in the Middle East, producing new regimes that would be far friendlier to both Israel and the United States.] That is a fantasy, not a realistic goal. It is highly improbable that overthrowing Saddam's regime and setting up a democratic successor in Iraq would lead to a surge of democracy in the region.
I may agree with him that the probability of this happening is low, but it's still higher than the probability of it happening if we Leave Saddam Alone. Anyway, he speaks here as if this "fantasy" is our primary, sole reason for attacking. It is not. It would certainly be a bonus, but the case for war does not rest on this pillar.
Overthrowing Saddam would weaken the terrorist threat and intimidate other regimes that might be tempted to cooperate with terrorists. A war with Iraq is likely to have the opposite effect. It would serve as a recruiting poster for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
That is a possibility. It has to be weighed against the alternate scenarios which could occur if we Leave Saddam Alone: for example, he develops WMDs, they mysteriously find their way to the hands of terrorists, there's an attack, many dead.
To boil it down to basics. Scenario A: we disarm Iraq and as a result (supposedly) this increases terrorist recruitment by, oh, 7%, but those extra 7% have a harder time getting their hands on WMDs. Scenario B: we Leave Saddam Alone and those 7% who Would Have Become Terrorists instead look at our actions, suddenly fall in love with the United States, move here, and go to work for Microsoft. But meanwhile Saddam's arsenal continues to build unchecked, and the terrorists who Already Exist have a mysterious sugar daddy to give them nasty stuff, and possibly thousands of dead Americans result.
It's a tradeoff, I know. The problem is, Mr. Cato examines only Scenario A under his myopic microscope, without even taking into account Scenario B.
In fact, this is a larger problem with his entire approach: take each reason to go to war individually, and pick it apart as if none of the others exist. Try this in your personal life: "Should you take that new job? Yes? Why? (1) It pays more money? But so does drug-dealing, are you gonna become a drug dealer? (2) You don't like your current job? But how do you know you'll like the new one better? (3) You want to move to a different state? But that state is worse than your current state in such-and-such respects (has a higher sales tax, worse weather, etc).. (4) It's a good opportunity? But you had a similar good opportunity in 1999 and didn't take it, so how can you justify doing so now? [etc...]" Silly exercise, and a waste of brainpower.
As far as intimidating other regimes is concerned, if the U.S. ouster of the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not show how perilous it is to harbor anti- American terrorists, it is not apparent how overthrowing the Iraqi government would convey that message with greater clarity.
Actually, I think it's pretty clear that backing down from Saddam now would reinforce any impression anyone might have that the U.S. is an easily-manipulated paper tiger, with (I might add) a soft underbelly of wimpy peaceniks in its midst ready to argue against any action whatsoever and in so doing act as de facto defense attorneys for foreign enemy tyrants.
And those dictators possessed nuclear, not just chemical and biological, weapons, whereas there is no credible evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
I assume Mr. Cato makes this statement on the basis of the classified intelligence briefings he's been given.
The pro-war faction has never explained why the United States cannot deter a garden-variety thug like Saddam Hussein.
Who is saying we "cannot"? Replace "cannot" with "would rather not".
We "deterred" Stalin and Mao because we had little choice in the matter. Stalin, for example, got nukes from American traitor spies. We didn't want him to have them, and we didn't say "it's no problem that Stalin has nukes, we'll just 'deter' him". It was a highly stressful 40 years that turned numerous smart people into basket cases and perhaps terrorized a generation or two. If we had had the chance to prevent Stalin from getting nukes from the get-go, wouldn't that have been worthwhile? Mr. Cato says "no, we'll just 'deter' him".
I can't agree.
Saddam and the other members of the Iraqi political elite know that threatening, much less attacking, the United States would be an act of suicide.
Thus increasing the temptation for them to use cut-outs and spin off quasi-"independent" little armies to peck at us, while keeping their hands semi-clean. After all, they know there are plenty of useful idiots like Mr. Cato in the US who will always be prepared to argue vehemently that, well, anyone who attacks us doesn't have any "provable" connection to Saddam.
Oh wait, Mr. Cato thought this was an argument for his side, didn't he? Sorry, I guess I stepped out of bounds there.
Young, useful idiots like the Sept. 11 terrorists may be suicidal, but rulers of countries almost never are.
Yes, that's why they goad and take advantage of the young, useful idiots. Which is what we're trying to prevent. I still don't understand why Mr. Cato thinks this line of argument helps his case....
Nor is it likely that Iraq would pass along chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaida. Evidence of a connection between Baghdad and al-Qaida is flimsy at best.
Why isn't it "likely"? And from what position of intelligence does he claim that evidence is "flimsy"? Also, these two sentence have little connection with each other. The "evidence" of Saddam - al Qaeda connection may be "flimsy" but that doesn't make it any less likely that Saddam will supply Al Qaeda (or some other group) in the future.
These two sentences placed in proximity to each other resemble an argument for something, but in fact are not.
Moreover, Saddam knows that he would be at the top of a very short list of suspects as the source of such a weapon if al-Qaida detonated one against an American target.
Wow, every other word out of this guy is "Saddam knows..."! What a mind-reader.
Anyway, I still have to think that if "Saddam knows" all the stuff that Mr. Cato insists he "knows", then he almost certainly also "knows" that if he gave al-Qaeda WMDs and they used them against the U.S., the usual gang would pop out of the woodwork and say that there's "no solid evidence" of a connection, that the "case" for a connection "hasn't been made", that there's "no smoking gun", and on and on.
Anything to prevent the United States from attacking Saddam. For some reason.
The only circumstance under which Saddam might pass a weapon to al-Qaida is if the United States invades Iraq because he would then have nothing to lose.
Here Mr. Cato goes way off the deep end. He proclaims, based on nothing but smoke and mirrors (hunches and complacence), that he knows the "only circumstance" under which Saddam would do such-and-such.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the world's greatest expert on the personality, motives, and actions of Saddam Hussein!
Well, he'd better be, because if we listened to this little column and took this guy's word for it, we're taking an awfully big risk that he's right about What Saddam Will Do.
If he's wrong, of course, the cost could be catastrophic. (But he can't be wrong, he's the Saddam expert! He knows everything Saddam will do, even before Saddam himself does!)
The only pertinent issue is whether Iraq poses a serious, imminent threat to the United States, thereby justifying pre-emptive war.
I agree.
The pro-war camp has utterly failed to make the case that Iraq poses such a threat.
I disagree. What can I say. I'm content to let Mr. Cato remain Nobly, Morally Unconvinced. I also suspect that he is being dishonest, because it's not clear that it's metaphysically possible to "make the case" to "convince" some people. It is fair to wonder whether anything short of a mushroom cloud over an American city could possibly "convince" some people.
The problem is, reality is more complicated than knee-jerk mentalities can fathom.
Then it would be GWB's fault because he did not protect the US.
Libs and their cohorts, either want to destroy this Country knowingly, OR unknowingly through utter stupidity and naivety.
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