America's "Either/Or" President

By: Troy Headrick

Imagine that President Bush sits down and gives the following televised interview:

You've talked a lot about this war on terrorism being a struggle of good versus evil. Do you still feel that way?

"Um... I sure do. In this war, there are evildoers and there are what I like to call good doers. Like I've said many times before this particular occasion - which is now - you're either on the side of evil or the side of good. If you're on the side of evil, we're going to smoke you out and get you running and then we're going to hit you."

I'm sure you've heard the saying, 'One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter'. How do you feel about that saying?

"Could you repeat the question?"

How do you feel about the saying, 'One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter'?

"Well a freedom fighter is a fighter for freedom and he'd have to be an American because Americans are for freedom. Terrorists are the evildoers and we know who they are."

So how would you define the word 'terrorist'?

"That's an easy one. I'd define a terrorist as an evildoer. A terrorist is someone who kills innocent people or scares innocent people."

Some American bombs have killed innocent civilians in Afghanistan and many innocent Afghanis are probably scared by the bombing. Does that mean America is acting as a terrorist, as your definition suggests?

To help President Bush avoid further embarrassment, we'll stop the imaginary interview here. The commander-in-chief, as anyone can see, is in trouble and not just because he's making the sort of verbal miscues we're so accustomed to seeing him make. He's also in trouble because he's painted himself into a corner by relying heavily on "either/or" thinking.

Bush's representation of the world as being wholly composed of either good guys or bad guys is overly simplistic, and we can guess that he's about to look very dumb as he attempts to answer the interviewer's last question, but it's his own fault. When he claims that there are only two types of people - heroes and villains - and then goes on to state that there is a clear line of demarcation between the two, he doesn't leave himself any room for maneuvering. The type of questions the interviewer chooses to ask suggests that she has acknowledged something Bush is oblivious to - that people and countries are never 100% good or 100% evil, and a person who represents them as such is being disingenuous or naïve or both. Of course, the president certainly doesn't help his cause any when he defines the complex term of "terrorist" in such a way that the "good guys" end up looking like "bad guys" once that definition is applied to the real world. The commander-in-chief's handlers should have done a better job preparing their man for this Q/A session. They perhaps should have started by explaining to him that the real world is a complex place. Black-or-white thinking doesn't cut it. There are many shades of gray that have to be considered.

Just to prove that I haven't created a "straw man" by misrepresenting the way the real President Bush thinks, I'd like to point out that America's man at the top has a history of reducing complicated issues to either/or choices. Do you remember these wonderful examples of presidential profundity? Either we ratify the Kyoto Protocol on global warming or we help our economy. Either we cut taxes or we continue to steal money from the American people by taxing them. Either we have a missile defense system or we leave ourselves vulnerable to attacks by rogue states. In this war on terrorism, countries are either with us or they're against us.

Let me say a little bit more here about the "Countries are either with us or they're against us" claim. Such a declaration ignores the basic reality of what's actually going on right now. Aren't there a significant number of nations (I'm thinking about countries with large Muslim populations right now, but there are others that fit into this category as well) that agree with the overall objective of eliminating the world of terrorism but disagree with the methods America is using to achieve that aim? So, Mr. President, where do such countries fit in your simplistic dichotomy? Aren't those places examples of nations that are both for and against America? And if the American people can't trust you to accurately portray what's actually going on in the present, how can they trust you when you make predictions about how your whole "crusade" is going to unfold?

By making either/or thinking acceptable (and perhaps even fashionable), Bush has done a number of disservices to the American people, including dumbing down the discourse about why the "911" attacks occurred in the first place and how the country should respond to them. Because the public looks to the chief executive to serve as a role model as well as policy maker, Bush's fallacious reasoning has encouraged ordinary Americans to think in overly simplistic terms too. For example, you hear lots of people making the following claim: "We either attack the Taliban and Osama bin Laden with our military or we let the terrorists win." I'm sorry, but are those the only two possible choices here? Isn't it also possible to attack him without using the military? Does "attack" always have to mean bombing? If we do attack him with the military, does that then guarantee a positive outcome?

Either/or arguments promote a vision of the world that is the stuff of comic books and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. It's perfectly fine for children to think like children, believing in fairy tales about "pure good" versus "pure evil" (where good always prevails), but one expects more out of the man in the White House.