During the era of the Bush administration, a range of political missteps was made, yet none of them was as egregious as the notorious war in Iraq. Having led to multiple losses and the development of a massive conflict between the U.S. and Iraqi governments, the war aggravated the political tensions and reinforced the sense of national insecurity within the U.S. A plethora of polarizing opinions on the war in Iraq have been voiced, yet the conflict of opinions is exemplified best by the disagreement between George Bush, Jr., the then President of the U.S., and David Koehler. Although Bush’s position is understandable given the atmosphere of fear observed in the U.S. at the time due to terrorist attacks, the position of Koehler is much more reasonable since it is devoid of the logical fallacies present in Bush’s ar2014gument.
When dissecting the argument that Bush and the supporters of the war in Iraq provided, one should address the presence of a false dilemma. Namely, the problem in Bush’s argument concerns the wrongful assumption that the United States are only presented with two solutions, namely, either facing the threat of terrorism, or start a war with Iraq (deLaplante, 2013). In reality, the U.S. had a plethora of other opportunities, which rendered Bush’s argument pointless. Likewise, the general idea behind Bush’s argumentation represented the fallacy of the argument from ignorance (deLaplante, 2013). In turn, Koehler’s assumptions did not have any major biases in them, which allowed his statements to seem much more reasonable and measured than those of Bush. Specifically, Koehler promoted the idea of liberating Iraq from the terrors of war. Therefore, Koehler’s line of reasoning appears to be much more sensible than that one of Bush.
Reference
deLaplante, D. (2013). What is a good argument? (Part I) [Video]. YouTube.