He Is The Better Rhetor
Shock & Awe/Build & Heal:
Past and Future Fact in Iraq
As best as I can understand it, the case for war against Iraq rests primarily on what Aristotle—these old Greeks, they understood things—called the argument of future fact, or the possibility that a thing might occur in the future based on events that have happened in the past.
So we are preparing to decimate Iraq based on the possibility that the Iraqi government might in the future provide Al Qaeda or other terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has been a bad actor in the past, this argument goes, and it is likely they will continue to be a bad actor in the future. Indeed, they will likely try to kill all of us, hence we should get them first. That is basically the administration’s argument: The U.S. should invade Iraq on the basis of what they might do to us—and to Israel—in the future. The events in the past on which we base these future possibilities are fuzzy and riddled with contradictions, but never mind. The very possibility that Iraq might do something bad is proof enough.
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But here’s the thing. The argument of “future fact” is one you make when the outcome of a path is not certain, and when you are not sure how things will turn out. In such cases, you argue on the basis of the probable, on what’s most likely to happen, given the situation. You strive for the correct and prudent course, even when the outcomes are unclear.
But if we go this way, commit to war, then some things become inevitablly and inescapably certain: Appalling numbers of people will die, and a great many of these dead will be children.
In the Manichean world of President Cowpoke and his starry-eyed neocon superheroes, there are only two choices. Us or Them.
We’re Good. They’re Evil. And, if a huge number of children have to die, well it isn’t our fault. That’s just the way the world works.