: The question is the argument…Making the ____ argument…
Thomas Friedman considers the four reasons for war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason, and the stated reason. War is an argument of a certain sort. Before one may make that argument, at least in a democratic republic, one must persuade the republic’s citizens to go along.
Good rhetoric is any rhetoric that works (the moral problems of this assertion should be obvious). How do/should we define “works” in regard to President Bush’s argument for war? Friedman claims that winning the battle isn’t enough. We must also win the peace by building a stable, progressive Iraq. His claim is that this goal is now more difficult to achieve because Bush persuaded us to go to war for the stated reason: to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.
The problem here is political, certainly. But it is a political problem caused by poor rhetoric. As Friedman says:
But because the Bush team never dared to spell out the real reason for the war, and (wrongly) felt that it could never win public or world support for the right reasons and the moral reasons, it opted for the stated reason: the notion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to America. I argued before the war that Saddam posed no such threat to America, and had no links with Al Qaeda, and that we couldn’t take the nation to war “on the wings of a lie.” I argued that Mr. Bush should fight this war for the right reasons and the moral reasons. But he stuck with this W.M.D. argument for P.R. reasons.
The time to make the right and moral arguments was before the war. After-the-fact political arguments sound like cheap attempts at justification.
At last, a site that understands the elements of an argument. Now let’s see if I can construct a cogent argument.
Many today will advance the premise that Iraq did not have WMD and that the current administration lied about evidence of WMD in order to accelerate the injection of military force into Iraq.
This premise is invalid. What is fact is that no WMD stockpiles have yet been found. It will be months before any certain determination of stockpiled weaponery can be made.
However, it is my contention that stockpiled weapons are not necessarily the most viable threat.
What do we know for certain concerning Iraq as a threat to the United States and to it’s allies.
Iraq had at one time WMD. This is fact. Perhaps these weapons have been destroyed and perhaps they are merely hidden.
Iraq had, until our military intervention, the ability to produce chemical weapons, and biological weapons on any schedule the then government of Iraq deemed desirable. Though coalition forces have not found operating manufacturing plants, they have found dual use equipment, chemicals, and have in custody Iraqi’s that developed and implemented both chemical and biological weapons programs.
The former government of Iraq was in fact an enemy of the United States. To support this premise I will advance the Gulf War, and that since 1991, Iraqi military doctrine had been designed, and military units configured specifically to confront American forces.
The former government in Iraq did have ties to terrorist organizations. These ties are self evident. It has long been held that terrorist organizations enjoy a certain celebrity in anti-Israeli, anti-American Arab countries. Further, the Iraqi government ties to the Syrain government are well established. It has been long known that Syria has sponsered terrorist organizations based in Lebanon. It has been further established by Tel-Aviv over the last thirty years that Arab terrorist organizations do in fact cooperate/communicate with each other.
It does not take a great leap of faith to recognize the danger of a rogue Arab government that is anti-American, has the ability to produce WMD unchecked, and has connections to terror organizations. In this senario, stockpiles are not the threat. Small amounts delivered not to military units, but to rabidly anti-Israeli, anti-American terrorist cells are a very real threat.
Because of the above considerations, the current administration was justified in authorizing an invasion of Iraq.
Many will now say that warfare as an aggressor is immoral.
War is the ultimate act of violence intended to compel one’s enemy to do one’s will.
Clausewitz
War as a political instrument is supportable. The concept of “Peace in our lifetime”, kept world powers from acting against Germany in the 1930′s. The outcome of deferred aggression was disastrous. The events as they unfolded in the 1940′s should be enough for anyone possessing moral courage to affirm the actions taken against Iraq.
Nice try. Logic is not simply putting sentences together in order to advance an argument. There must be a base of facts used to support the argument. I will review your argument for where it falls short of these facts,
“Iraq had, until our military intervention, the ability to produce chemical weapons, and biological weapons on any schedule the then government of Iraq deemed desirable. Though coalition forces have not found operating manufacturing plants, they have found dual use equipment, chemicals, and have in custody Iraqi’s that developed and implemented both chemical and biological weapons programs.”
There is still not one piece of evidence that the Iraqi government had the ability to produce a weapons program at will. Long before the war it is true that they were trying to obtain many of the ingredients to produce weapons but this is a far cry for producing at will. Otherwise, there would be a significant industrial infrastructure still in place to produce these weapons. This would include final assembly depots and technical and support personal. The dual use argument is especially weak. If one finds eggs, flour, milk, and sugar in my kitchen you cannot conclude that I am in immediate danger of baking a cake. This argument is especially troubling to me as an engineer because it points to a lack of scientific knowledge in the general population. In fact this slippery slope can be applied to many institutions. A college lab would have many of the same equipment as a chemical weapons lab. This would include incubators, flask, and electronic measurement equipment. However, I would argue against sending the 101st airborne to invade midtown community college.
The final argument is based around the premise that they did not like us and “since 1991, Iraqi military doctrine had been designed, and military units configured specifically to confront American forces.” As an employee of the Department of the Navy I can tell you that many nations configure their forces around the abilities of there foes. China is developing cruise missiles to specifically sink aircraft carriers. No other nation operates carriers like the U.S. does and it is easy to conclude that these missiles are for U.S. carriers only. This does not mean that China will attack the U.S. Navy as soon as the weapon is developed. In fact it may never be used. The point of this is that this is what militaries do. The take a perceived threat, no matter how small, and develop methods and tactics to counter it. The B-2 stealth bomber is an excellent (and expensive) of this argument. Designed to evade soviet radar and drop nuclear weapons into the Russian heartland these bombers where a reaction to advancements in radar design. We did not however start the bombing of the U.S.S.R as soon as the B-2 was developed.