Greg Benedicto, '08

The recipe for a straw man is quite simple: Invent a fictitious person or group of persons, supply them with an easily refutable argument, and then refute it....

Never mind that no one said these things; the power of the straw man argument resides in its obliqueness.

“Some in our own country claim retreat from Iraq would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone,” Vice President Dick Cheney told a gathering of US veterans recently at a convention in Reno, Nevada. “A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be ... a ruinous blow to the future security of the United States.”

On the surface, this statement seems straightforward enough. Declaring that an immediate withdrawal from Iraq would somehow “satisfy” the terrorists of the world is a ridiculously simple-minded approach to a very complex situation. It’s utter bollocks, really, and the people saying these things should be brought forth to explain themselves or apologize for wasting everyone’s time.

One little problem there: These people don’t exist.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer’s (NY) response to Cheney’s statement would seem to eliminate the Democrats as possible suspects: “We… want to fight a very strong war on terror. No one has talked about appeasement.”

It’s not like the Vice President of the United States is just making this stuff up. After all, someone who has risen to such heights of power and responsibility in our government would be obligated to tell us the truth, right?

Cheney and the Bush administration have continually failed to live up to such ideals. Cheney’s statements are just the latest example of GOP bigwigs using ‘straw man’ arguments—rhetoric designed to mislead voters and misrepresent the opinions of political opponents.

Compare Cheney’s statement to a recent quote from Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman: “A lot of the people who say we need to withdraw from Iraq say we’ll be safer, and I don’t think that’s accurate.”

Then there’s our Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who asks, “With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”

But who exactly is Rumsfeld talking about? Does anyone really believe that appeasement is the answer?

The recipe for a straw man is quite simple: Invent a fictitious person or group of persons, supply them with an easily refutable argument, and then refute it. The very non-specific nature of Cheney’s opposition, “some in our own country,” leaves interpretation up to the listener. Of course, devout Republican voters are likely to assume that Cheney is talking about the Democrats, who are generally opposed to the War in Iraq. Never mind that no one said these things; the power of the straw man argument resides in its obliqueness.

Americans have a dangerous tendency to take things at face value. We want to believe that the people in power are always looking out for our best interests, and so we tend to gloss over the hazy areas in their arguments and focus on the ideas they want to sell us. But if we want good government, we need to become active listeners.

The next time you hear President Bush describe what “some people” are saying, try to figure out who these people are. If the president is unwilling to identify them, and if you cannot find the source of their statements, it’s reasonable to assume that these people do not exist.

Just throw them on the pile with the others. And next time, consider the source.