[quote=larrylujack]No. You have gone beyond your stated reasons by quoting Bolton’s article, and marrying yourself to it in your thread, and therefore aligining yourself to Bolton and the neocon ideology, so you must answer for it.
I have no love for Obama, but I despise the neocons due to their abject failure in Iraq, etc.[/quote]
Larry, I was ASKED for an example of Obama’s lack of qualifications in foreign policy and because his obviously lack of knowledge in history. The Bolton article was a pretty good one that had specific historical and statement criticism of Obama. Whether or not Bolton had a hand in Iraq (which he actually says in his book that he didn’t have a whole lot of input in) is irrelevant. The criticism remains.
Unfortunately, the only answer for this out of many people is, well, he was a neocon so of course he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
That is a logical fallacy called ad hominem. It does nothing to answer the criticism.
Description of Ad Hominem
Translated from Latin to English, “Ad Hominem” means “against the man” or “against the person.”
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of “argument” has the following form:
Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A’s claim is false.
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
