Shame on Cheney for intimating that a Kerry victory is more likely to draw further terrorist attacks.
Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.
“It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States,” Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.
If Kerry were elected, Cheney said the nation risks falling back into a “pre-9/11 mind-set” that terrorist attacks are criminal acts that require a reactive approach. Instead, he said Bush’s offensive approach works to root out terrorists where they plan and train, and pressure countries that harbor terrorists.
One can argue for or against the reasoning — just as one can argue for or against the proposition that a vote for Bush is a vote to continue boosting terrorist group membership which argument has also been made. But while it seems a reasonable (if both inflammatory and debatable) argument, it’s probably not best made by either the presidential candidates or their veep candidates. It smacks too much of questioning your opponent’s patriotism, an appeal to emotion, arguing from authority.
Veeps are supposed to be the “attack dogs” in campaigns, but this seems a bit too low for my taste. And, to prove at least the former point:
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards issued a statement, saying, “Dick Cheney’s scare tactics crossed the line today, showing once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs. Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that.”
Edwards added that he and Kerry “will keep American safe, and we will not divide the American people to do it.”
On the bright side of all this? Eight weeks! W00t!
UPDATE: Michael Totten concurs. Again, the argument that Cheney uses to explain his assertion is certainly worth debating, but the implication is that, if Dubya is reelected, we’ll be safe from terrorism — and that if a terror attack does occur, it’s the fault of whomever is in the White House, while, in reality, it’s the fault of the attacker — attackers who have shown that “reason” has little basis for their attacks.
UPDATE: Taken in context — which means running the two paragraphs separated in the AP story above into the single paragraph given in the speech — it’s a lot less inflammatory (still debatable, but not the over-the-top excerpt as given). More in the comments.
At first glance, Cheney’s argument looks to me like the classic “appeal to fear” fallacy. This is essentially the same argument a bully makes when he says ‘give me your lunch money or I punch your lights out.’ In Cheney’s case, the argument appears to be ‘elect W. or the terrorists will punch your lights out.’ Is this what you mean by an appeal to emotion? I don’t really think this fits the argument clearly.
From your quotation, Cheney appears to suggest that republican anti-terror policy will be more pro-active than democratic anti-terror policy, and he then suggests that a more pro-active policy will be more effective in deterring or preventing further attacks. While there is a fear element in this argument, it isn’t irrelevant or artificially-introduced as it is in the bully’s argument.
I alos don’t agree that it’s an ad-hominem or an improper appeal to authority. As I summarrized it above, the argument is not clearly an attack on the democrats’ patriotism or character, and I don’t see that he’s appealing to any improper authority (as, e.g. if he justified his claims by appeal to Donald Trump or Martha Stewart). This is not to say that Cheney hasn’t committed ad-hominems or improper appeals to authority elsewhere, but I don’t see it in the quoted passage.
As I said, his analysis is certainly worth discussion in the campaign. To summarize it, though, as in the second paragraph quoted above, seems irresponsible.
I’ll note I have only the AP story, now properly linked, to go on. Unless it was seriously mangled, though, it seems to me that the summary results of Cheney’s analysis, as given, were improper — especially since the “danger” we’ll get hit again with a major terrorist attack does not seem as closely linked to who gets elected as the summary suggests.
Found a bit more in context — which context is broken up and lost by the above AP story, thus changing the meaning. The two paragraphs are actually a single sentence (or, at least, a single thought): the danger is not that, if we make the “wrong” choice on 2 Nov that we’ll get hit by a terrorist attack, but that, if we make the “wrong” choice and we get hit by a terrorist attack, we’ll react to it incorrectly (as a law-enforcement issue). That’s not a new argument, by any means, and is a lot less inflammatory to my eyes.
We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike — Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We’re now at that point where we’re making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we’ll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we’re not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.
It’s still, of course, a partisan position, and it’s still an analysis that’s open to debate. But it’s not a prediction that a vote for John Kerry will cause a terrorist attack, but that such a vote will lead to a wrong reaction in the event of a terrorist attack. And given previous warnings by the adminstration, it’s likely that an attack will occur, regardless of who’s in office.
To that extent, I withdraw my reaction.
(via QandO )
I’m confused…
Is he saying that we don’t need the PATRIOT Act, Ashcroft, Ridge, the DoJ, the FBI, or the DoHS?
Just wondering.
BTW, The way I read the paragraph is:
“Fear, fear, Fear, 911, vote for us and we’ll keep you safe, or vote for them and they’ll get you and your children killed”.
Actually, if one considers attacks by militant Islamicist groups to be war, as opposed to simply crimes, then all of those items would seem to be what is needed. Well, except for maybe Ashcroft, who’s too busy busting medical marijuana growers to be on the lookout for terrorists …
Actually, Ashcroft is to busy going after medical marijuana growers, women that have had third trimester D&C’s, withholding evidence in big cases, and making sure the world is safe for the entertainment industry to go after domestic terrorists.
That said, both tactics need to be used where effective/appropriate in the never ending, un-winnable war on terra.
I have no use for Ashcroft, certainly. And there are also certainly aspects of terrorist group activities that can and should be handled as law enforcement issues.