The Bush "There Or Here" Fallacy and the War in Iraq
Today we wish to examine a fallacy, or error in reasoning, which
we have found springing up now and again in today's popular
discourse about the so-called War On Terror. This one comes
straight from the top -- well, not the VERY top -- but from
Washington D.C. You have heard the President say it on national
teevee, and so have we: "We either have to fight them [the
terrorists] over there [i.e. Iraq], or we have to fight them
over here [i.e. inside the U.S. border]."
Now we have chosen to examine this particular Bushism because,
here, Mr. Bush has offered quite the textbook example of what
informal logic-addicts call, a "false disjunction," or simply
the "either-or" fallacy. To commit this error in reasoning, you
only need to oversimplify a range of many options, reducing it
to a pretended range that limits them to two logically-possible
options only.
For instance, isn't possible that, if the U.S. pulled its troops
from Iraq, using many of them to assist with border patrol
duties, that we could avoid fighting "them" here by not letting
them in, and yet not fight them "there" either? Now, to be sure,
many will hasten to point out that they see this as impractical,
ill-advised (for whatever reason), etc. My only point remains
this: the option I have mentioned is logically possible. And I
could imagine quite a few others.
For instance, the U.S. could spend a handsome little sum on
policing our domestic internal affairs, and arrest all
terrorists before they can do any harm. We have already arrested
quite a few of them here without any fight whatever. One might
argue that bloodless arrests seem much better, not to mention a
good deal cheaper, than national invasions where the whole
countryside gets shot up.
Now, if the U.S. can act with pre-emptive success in Iraq (for
the president has suggested many times that it can), why can it
not do so also much closer to home? But if the U.S. cannot do so
on its home turf, why should anyone think they can do it in Iraq?
Remember, I do not mean to argue here against the U.S. presence
in Iraq, but only to critique one particular reason offered for
it by the president. He has, after all, listed quite a few
different reasons for the invasion, at different times -- which
may or may not be a good thing.
For today, then, let the reader take away this lesson in the
logic of popular discourse -- never reduce a range of many
possible options to two only, unless you prepare well enough to
show that the others do not represent truly logical options.
Otherwise, you will have committed the either-or fallacy.
This brief lesson in critical thinking has been brought to you
by Ophir Gold Corporation.