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articulate guys.
Stewart is dead on with the emotional cudgel. I was a columnist back when the Iraq War first started. I have a good friend who was in the military, served in Bosnia, and he was absolutely full on pro-war. Well, I would say that Iraq was a bad idea in a column etc, and he would damn near flip out about it. And this was when it was going relatively well. I was talking about us being there for a years, if not decades, worrying about a possible civil war, concerned with privatizing the whole Iraqi economy and wondering if we could secure the country on the cheap and get out with few casualties. Very valid concerns as it turned out. Now many of us, if not most DUers, had these same concerns too, and for good reason and I am sure you can point out incidents in your life when people got all freaked out at your questions, but my friend, he would get all riled up.
He'd be spouting off about how he was in the military, and that I should consider what it would be like if one of the troops read my columns etc and how the US stood for freedom, integrity, yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, that's all fine, but those are emotional arguments. They had nothing to do with what I was concerned about. He never could answer what I was getting at, the best he could do when mad was remind me constantly that he was in the military and served in a difficult situation. And you know this guy is a close friend, but still it was tough to get past that emotional aspect of stuff and look at real problems on real issues. If we could moved past that BS then we could get somewhere, but you're always going to get some guy, especially a RWer, pissed off because somebody dared to assert that we need a viable plan to win a war. Because, let's be honest, waving a flag and tying a yellow ribbon don't do shoot for the troops and they don't win a war. They just appeal to emotion. Sounds good, but doesn't mean a thing.
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