Obama and Rhetorical Devices

Labeling something is a useful method we all use to communicate ideas. That's fine as long as the label is accurate and is not being used as a rhetorical device to delegitimize an argument and shortcircuit any debate.

Obama and his camp are using labels for precisely the latter reasons. When Obama says "the politics of fear," what he really means is he does not want an honest debate on the national security dangers facing our country. Using a method that is both supremely cowardly and incredibly disingenuous, he wants to forestall debate and delegitimize criticism of his weaknesses on national security. It is an outrage given that the issue is one of existential importance to our nation. The artifice he is using needs to be pointed out and condemed, publicly and loudly.

Securing our nation is the single most basic duty of our federal government. To do that, we need to come to a consensus on the likely threats to our nation and how to combat them. Bush today, speaking at the Knesset, said that talking to genocidal mad men is naively dangerous and gave the single best historical example, talking to Hitler in the 1930's instead of confronting him. We know from the historical record that had France and England done the latter, WWII would likely not have occurred - at the cost of 60 million lives and a European economy in the tank for decades.

As soon as Obama heard the word he appeasment in Bush's speech, Obama raised his hand and said "that's me." That is an analogy I've pointed out on this blog ad infinitum. Obama wants to engage the Iranian theocracy and has promised to do so without precondition within the first year of his presidency. There is precious little to distinguish the Iranian theocracy, in its genocidal madness, expansionism and threat to the world from Hitler in 1938. So taking a look at the hierarchy of argument posted below, when the sum of Obama's response is to label Bush's argument the "politics of fear," and "dishonest, divisive attacks," where does that put the craven and disinguous Obama on the hierarchy of argument below? He doesn't even make it up to the level of "contradiction" it would seem.



Gateway Pundit has an exceptional post on how Obama's national security arguments quite literally are founded on this rhetorical device of calling any discussion of the threats facing us "the politics of fear." And he notes the origins of the rhetorical device - a Marxist device to minimize the threat posed by the Soviet Union - quoting from a NY Sun article:

. . . The phrase, "politics of fear," reemerged from the dustbin of anti-anti-communism on far left Web sites like Alternet in late 2002. In the Cold War, it was employed to deride public school air raid drills, the House's un-American Activities Committee, and Ronald Reagan's anti-red campaigns. Since the end of the Cold War, the phrase has been resurrected by politicians and pundits alike to say the electorate ought to fear the people trying to scare us, not these terrorists and tyrants they keep going on about.

In 2004, the British state broadcasting arm, the BBC, aired a three-part documentary called the "Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear." According to this film, the threat of Al Qaeda and radical Islam was a foil for a broader neoconservative power grab. The two radical movements are equivalent, relying on one another to scare the good and decent majorities of Europe and America.

Mr. Obama would never say anything this strident. Part of his appeal is that at his best he transcends partisanship. But the "politics of fear" signals the left's own scary narrative about the Bush years, namely that our government was taken over by neoconservatives briefly to launch the Iraq war.

This is the chord Mr. Obama strikes when he boasts of his opposition to a non-binding resolution supporting efforts already underway to counter Iran's proxies in Iraq. Mr. Obama has attacked Mrs. Clinton for voting for the Iran resolution sponsored by Senators Kyl and Lieberman, implying that the legislation would give Mr. Bush the authority to invade Persia. His Web site says Mr. Obama "believes that it was reckless for Congress to give George Bush any justification to extend the Iraq War or to attack Iran. Obama also introduced a resolution in the Senate declaring that no act of Congress — including Kyl-Lieberman — gives the Bush administration authorization to attack Iran." . . .

Read the entire article.

Update: To paraphrase someone I overheard yesterday, Obama is turning this on its head. The politics of fear are what the Salafists did on 9-11 and 7-7. The politics of democracy require free and open debate. He wants no debate and for the voters to fear Republicans more than they fear our enemies.

Update 2: Related question at Hot Air - why did Obama jump to the bait like a hungry catfish when the word appeasement was mentioned but no appeaser identified:



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This Is Not The Politics Of Fear

Any use by the right of the image of 9-11 or bin Laden - or any discussion of the terrorist threat - is decried as an unfair attack by the left. Wanting to keep the spotlight off their own fatal weaknesses, they label these issues as the "politics of fear." If that is the "politics of fear," I wonder then, how should we label the type of politics we see evinced in the latest DNC ad?

Howard Dean is running an ad taking McCain's statement that we could stay in Iraq for 100 years and running it wholly out of context. That is simply the banal intellectual dishonesty that we have come to expect from today's Democrats. But the ad below also contains footage of an al Qaeda suicide bomb and footage of our soldiers in 2004 being attacked by a road side bomb. The footage does not show if our soldiers were injured, but given that they were on a foot patrol and given their reaction to the blast, it certainly gives that perception. It is precisely what one would expect to see in an al Qaeda propaganda film - and given its nature, it may well have originated from precisely that source.



We are in a war. Our Democrats have tied their hopes, their dreams, and their very perception of America on labeling that war a defeat. That such an attitude is acceptable is evidence of the decayed and degraded state of the left who, in their Marxian world view, see America as evil.

Their use of footage of an al Qaeda suicide bombing is particularly ironic. This is precisely the type of image that would bring an immediate charge of "politics of fear" were the right to use that same footage to explain why we absolutely must succeed in Iraq. But the left feels free to use it to make an argument that we should just give up. Its not only an intellectual double standard, it is craven and immoral.

But exponentially worse is using footage of our troops being bombed. That is so far beyond the pale, so repugnant, so unpatriotic, and so enamored of defeat as to be abhorent. It shows a complete lack of any respect for our soldiers and their families. Only a person bereft of any principles and recognizing no value greater than achieving partisan political gain could be so twisted as to find such footage acceptable for any reason, let alone an ad advocating that we surrender to the craven bastards who set off that bomb.

So I ask again, if any mention of terrorism is the politics of fear, than what is using footage of successful al Qaeda suicide attacks and footage of our soldiers being bombed while on a foot patrol in Iraq? The politics of treason, perhaps?

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