President Bush, like a radio tower broadcast, is only a mouthpiece for a certain set of distilled talking points that are short enough to fit on a bumper.
Fight em over there, so we don't have to fight them here.
Support the Troops.
Remember 9/11.
W.
It's a Child. Not a Choice.
Protect Life.
God Bless America.
I could go on and on. And I am sure I could also cite a number of liberal and Democratic slogans that appear on bumpers across the land. The difference is: we don't try to govern simply within the confines of the words on the bumper. They do. They do not think outside the words. They do not think about consequences.
They find their bumper sticker sentiments comforting. I mean, we all want to protect life. We all want God, or whatever flying spaghetti monster we believe in, to bless America. We all want to remember and honor those fallen on 9/11. We all support the troops. We all want to be able to fight them over there and not here at home. Yes, all of these pat phrases, these minimalistic expressions of feeling, sound good.
Sadly, however, such pleasant bumper sticker "thinking" doesn't hold up to even the most elementary of logical tests. Let's take the President's oft repeated statement in the State of the Union that we must fight them in Iraq rather than here. It's a flagrant example of what is known in classical logic as a the Fallacy of the False Dilemma, or the Either/Or Fallacy. In other words, this pat phrase -- "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" -- is a carefully framed artificial construction designed to spoil any actual consideration of our real situation. It not only reduces everything to two very specific, very questionable choices (as Jeffrey Feldman would say, this is the "framing" move), one of which is clearly more desirable (this is "stacking the deck"), it slyly yet irrationally defines these two choices as mutually exclusive: it assumes without any reason that to pick one is to negate the other.
Of course, the real world is much different. And here is where this pleasant emotional phrase further falls apart logically. Why would "fighting them over there" in any way, shape or form logically prevent terrorists from fighting us here? By what logical mechanism would this occur? Unless one assumes there is only one terrorist in the whole world (an assumption perhaps shared by those of you who constantly write "terrorist" for the plural "terrorists"), then keeping some terrorists occupied in one place in no way prevents their friends from mischief elsewhere.
I understand that we have provided terrorists with wonderful training grounds and a wonderful opportunity to create disaster in Iraq, and that they seem all too happy to do so. But there is no particular logical reason why this would in any way make it impossible for them to ALSO attack us here. If we are safe now, it is of course because of good intelligence and security work at all levels of government or because they haven't really tried, perhaps both.
That is why pleasant bumper sticker forumlations never work as actual governmental policy or foreign policy. It may sound nice. It may feel good. But it does nothing to actually protect us from the evil that terrorists want to do to us. It does nothing to solve the problem of terrorism. Indeed, it enflames it.
For example, to say that we are going to fight them there so we don't fight them here reveals quite explicitly that we value American lives and property far more than Iraqi or Afghani lives and property. If I were an Iraqi, or a Middle Easterner, I wouldn't be very happy about this kind of talk. It's like...'it's OK for the Americans to bring violence into our communities in order to keep their own people safe.'
I would think that this would create more terrorists for the future. Anger has a way of changing people's outlook. I have become much more liberal than I ever was in college due to my anger over Bush. So consider how angry the Iraqis must be. Last year alone, at least 35,000 Iraqis were killed. That is something like 200,000 Americans dead, if we relatively compare the American and Iraqi populations. In one year. And in the Iraqi mind, those deaths would not have have happened without our military being there. Life hasn't exactly improved in terms of security for Iraqis...which is another one of the big lies about this war...bringin' security to the Iraqi people.
This is just one example of where the bumper sticker slogans in the bumper sticker foreign policy in the bumper sticker presidency not only fails to address the reality of the situation, but aggravates it.
America no longer needs bumper stickers. We are a diverse and complex nation with diverse and complex problems. We are ill served by an ideology that refuses to think beyond the pleasant confines of a slogan on a bumper sticker.
Comments are closed on this story.