Just had a very long, discouraging talk with a good friend

[UCFGavin]

He was trying to convince me of most of the typical arguments for staying in Iraq (offensive on terrorism, protect our freedoms, Iran will take over, etc). This is the one issue that I feel so strongly about that I cannot compromise on. I voted for W in the last election and I originally bought the lies about the war. Every time I watch tv and see that more soldiers died, i feel partly responsible. Not because I'm a policy maker, but because I feel like if I would have been on the right side to begin with, that maybe there would have been enough like minded people that would have shown their anti-war sentiment before the invasion.

to help with this feeling, i donated another $50 to the campaign. ron paul has to get elected.

i know i've been rambling, but i just wanted to get that out there that people are going to run into road blocks. there are going to be people that think what we're doing is the right thing. please don't let it get you down. stick to your guns and one day our soldiers will again be with their loved ones.

[Santana28]

its okay. i get the same feeling every time i call home and as soon as i tell them i'm supporting Ron Paul they start spouting off about how awesome Hillary Clinton is :(

People that dont like to think, don't like to think.

Ever read Verbal Judo? Its a good book.

[Lord Xar]

its okay. i get the same feeling every time i call home and as soon as i tell them i'm supporting Ron Paul they start spouting off about how awesome Hillary Clinton is :(

People that dont like to think, don't like to think.

Ever read Verbal Judo? Its a good book.

I dont get all that... I mean, do you ask "why" they woudl support hillary? And that she infact supports the war and WILL go into iran - with video to prove it.... AND that she will try her damdest to give amnesty......

[Santana28]

I dont get all that... I mean, do you ask "why" they woudl support hillary? And that she infact supports the war and WILL go into iran - with video to prove it.... AND that she will try her damdest to give amnesty......

i honestly dont get it either. not that i get much time to see or talk to my family, but they are people who will simply shut you down and refuse to even discuss things they dont feel like thinking about...

so far from what i've heard them tell me:
Hillary is best because she is a woman
Hillary is best because she's not George Bush
Hillary is best because Bill Clinton ruled

and thats as far as the conversation goes.

Like i said... people who dont want to think.... dont want to think. Blech.

[john_anderson_ii]

I would be asking them what they think LCpls Medlicot and Ramirez, the latest two Marine casualties, would have to say to Hillary if they still had a voice to speak with. We're taking 18 or 19 year old kids here; Hillary and the rest are willing to spend their lives for what purpose again?

[Thunderbolt]

...

[richard1984]

its okay. i get the same feeling every time i call home and as soon as i tell them i'm supporting Ron Paul they start spouting off about how awesome Hillary Clinton is :(

People that dont like to think, don't like to think.

Ever read Verbal Judo? Its a good book.

I'm sorry. My parents like Ron Paul, but they're so busy with work and so passive about politics these days that it doesn't matter. They say it's too early to be worrying about anything (and that I need to stop being "obsessed" with Ron Paul and do my homework :mad: ). Of course, that just means they will wait for the Republican nominee to be chosen for them and then vote for him.... What a copout!

"It's too early" my dad says. Of course I tell him that we can't let the media decide for us, but it's like it doesn't penetrate. (I think that he's brainwashed by neocon talk radio.)

But yeah...how can ANYONE support Hillary?!?! I really, honestly don't get it.

[Akus]

He was trying to convince me of most of the typical arguments for staying in Iraq (offensive on terrorism, protect our freedoms, Iran will take over, etc). This is the one issue that I feel so strongly about that I cannot compromise on. I voted for W in the last election and I originally bought the lies about the war. Every time I watch tv and see that more soldiers died, i feel partly responsible. Not because I'm a policy maker, but because I feel like if I would have been on the right side to begin with, that maybe there would have been enough like minded people that would have shown their anti-war sentiment before the invasion.

to help with this feeling, i donated another $50 to the campaign. ron paul has to get elected.

i know i've been rambling, but i just wanted to get that out there that people are going to run into road blocks. there are going to be people that think what we're doing is the right thing. please don't let it get you down. stick to your guns and one day our soldiers will again be with their loved ones.Gavin, does your friend actually speak his own words, or is he merely regurgitating the same tired beat to death GOP queue cards?

I think if he supports the Iraq war, but actually presents the arguements of his own, at least you can logically reason with him. Tell him of that $8 billion that went lost in Iraq and ask him if he thinks Iraqis took it to buy their kids some icecream and coloring books, or it was spent for something else, like, oh I don't know, IEDs.
Tell him of how soldiers are treated like shit and when they're courtmartialed for not prancing in front of a potential terrorist, their commander in chief doesn't defend them.
Tell him of the waste, bullshit, lies about "his own people" that Saddam used WMDs against.

Tell him that.

[AlexAmore]

Show them how Hillary Clinton committed election fraud for her Senate position. There is video tape evidence and everything...

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/06/hillary-implicated-in-largest-election.html

[McDermit]

same with my mom's boyfriend... Except instead of hilary, its obama

[FluffyUnbound]

He was trying to convince me of most of the typical arguments for staying in Iraq (offensive on terrorism, protect our freedoms, Iran will take over, etc). This is the one issue that I feel so strongly about that I cannot compromise on. I voted for W in the last election and I originally bought the lies about the war. Every time I watch tv and see that more soldiers died, i feel partly responsible. Not because I'm a policy maker, but because I feel like if I would have been on the right side to begin with, that maybe there would have been enough like minded people that would have shown their anti-war sentiment before the invasion.

to help with this feeling, i donated another $50 to the campaign. ron paul has to get elected.

i know i've been rambling, but i just wanted to get that out there that people are going to run into road blocks. there are going to be people that think what we're doing is the right thing. please don't let it get you down. stick to your guns and one day our soldiers will again be with their loved ones.

It gets progressively harder to convince the remaining rump supporters of the war to change their minds.

There's a phenomenon in investing, and in gambling, that's well known to psychologists and to statisticians. After suffering a loss on an investment or a bet, the rational thing to do is terminate your investment or walk away from the table. But many people don't perceive this. They think the right course of action is to continue betting, or to stick with the losing investment, to try to get their money back. This is the irrationality - the immaturity, really - motivating the person who says something like, "So many people have already died, we have to try to make it mean something," or "We can't afford to pull out now that we're there." It's a refusal to accept the loss to date emotionally - a refusal to consider the possibility that you were wrong. People like that will stand in place and continue to suffer losses until the last as long as there are soldiers' lives to spend.

[UCFGavin]

Gavin, does your friend actually speak his own words, or is he merely regurgitating the same tired beat to death GOP queue cards?

I think if he supports the Iraq war, but actually presents the arguements of his own, at least you can logically reason with him. Tell him of that $8 billion that went lost in Iraq and ask him if he thinks Iraqis took it to buy their kids some icecream and coloring books, or it was spent for something else, like, oh I don't know, IEDs.
Tell him of how soldiers are treated like shit and when they're courtmartialed for not prancing in front of a potential terrorist, their commander in chief doesn't defend them.
Tell him of the waste, bullshit, lies about "his own people" that Saddam used WMDs against.

Tell him that.

i try. he believes that we're fighting for the safety of our country. when i try to explain that our foreign policy of intervention makes us hate them more, he just brushes it off.

honestly...i think this one is just lost :( shame too, because hes a smart guy.

[Mister Grieves]

honestly...i think this one is just lost :( shame too, because hes a smart guy.

I've had similar discussions with people I know and something that I end up telling them is just to keep an open mind. It seems to break through with people better than just pushing real hard and they just push back. It's strange.

Just lay out the facts about Ron Paul. Let them retort. Use calm logic in closing and then just ask that they do you a favor and at least keep an open mind about Ron Paul. When you ask intelligent people to do that, it's amazing how much more receptive they are than if you just try to spoon feed them everything. There's a good chance they'll come around.

[angelatc]

"It's too early" my dad says. Of course I tell him that we can't let the media decide for us, but it's like it doesn't penetrate. (I think that he's brainwashed by neocon talk radio.)

.

Remember when you were a kid, and your parents told you that when you grew up you'd realize they were right about many things?

Trust me. It hardly ever happens. They're wrong about that, too.

[Johnnybags]

and sadly, its going into the proverbial sh*tter. Of course Helicopter Ben will inflate til gas is 10.00 a gallon but I suspect the discourse over the next few months will change and that apathetic voter will awaken. I have run into those types and after asking a simple question. Is the FED part of the US government, I can tell they have been spoonfed Ms Teen South Carolina Cheerios all their lives. Then I ask them if they know why their beer keeps going up and explain to them the hidden tax at which point they seem to be at least agitated enough to look into it on their own.

[Sematary]

He was trying to convince me of most of the typical arguments for staying in Iraq (offensive on terrorism, protect our freedoms, Iran will take over, etc). This is the one issue that I feel so strongly about that I cannot compromise on. I voted for W in the last election and I originally bought the lies about the war. Every time I watch tv and see that more soldiers died, i feel partly responsible. Not because I'm a policy maker, but because I feel like if I would have been on the right side to begin with, that maybe there would have been enough like minded people that would have shown their anti-war sentiment before the invasion.

to help with this feeling, i donated another $50 to the campaign. ron paul has to get elected.

i know i've been rambling, but i just wanted to get that out there that people are going to run into road blocks. there are going to be people that think what we're doing is the right thing. please don't let it get you down. stick to your guns and one day our soldiers will again be with their loved ones.

I don't argue with people who are so brainwashed that they believe something good can come out of this war. If they are up for a REAL discussion, I will gladly give it to them and in many cases, you can wear them down to the point where they might actually take an honest look at the situation but don't count your chickens.

[dwdollar]

He was trying to convince me of most of the typical arguments for staying in Iraq (offensive on terrorism, protect our freedoms, Iran will take over, etc). This is the one issue that I feel so strongly about that I cannot compromise on. I voted for W in the last election and I originally bought the lies about the war. Every time I watch tv and see that more soldiers died, i feel partly responsible. Not because I'm a policy maker, but because I feel like if I would have been on the right side to begin with, that maybe there would have been enough like minded people that would have shown their anti-war sentiment before the invasion.

to help with this feeling, i donated another $50 to the campaign. ron paul has to get elected.

i know i've been rambling, but i just wanted to get that out there that people are going to run into road blocks. there are going to be people that think what we're doing is the right thing. please don't let it get you down. stick to your guns and one day our soldiers will again be with their loved ones.

I had a similiar talk/debate with some old friends back home over the summer. I could tell they were not as prowar as they once were, but they were still using those tired old talking points. I was working to push them over the line. I said this, "I don't understand, why we are trying to secure the borders of a country half way across the world when we can't even secure our own borders." There was no response to that and everyone was real quiet. I knew I had sunk their whole flotilla of arguments with one torpedo, and they did too. It was a good feeling.:)

[micahnelson]

Most democrats are against the war, but don't understand why. They just don't like bush. it makes them easier to convince, but they still hold on to the nanny state stuff that Ron Paul is against.

For conservatives I usually address these points.

- One of the authorizations for war from Congress cited UN Resolutions. Our US Military should not be used as a tool of the UN.
- Congress stopped short of declaring war. This is unconstitutional considering our level of military involvement.
- We simply can't afford the war financially.
- US Soldiers are trained to kill and break things, not to be police. We abuse their loyalty when we use them as Global Peacekeepers
- We should get out and let them deal with each other on their own, no one handed us OUR independence.
- One way of preventing 9/11 would have been to go around the world invading every country that might support terrorists. Another would have been to arm pilots and lock the cockpit doors. Which one of these seems more logical?

[max]

welsome to the matrix fellas...

i've been fighting this thing for 15 years.


Our hope lies not with the brainwashed sheep , but with the 100 milliion who dont vote because they instinctively sense that it really doesnt matter..


focus on the disenfranchised non voters. they may be ignorant, but at least their minds are a blank slate instead of brainwashed

[shadowhooch]

--MAYBE chaos will ensue and innocent people will be killed. But innocent people are being killed right now even though we are there. And innocent people were killed by Sadam before we were there. And innocent people are killed around the world everyday.

--MAYBE Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia would fight over the land. But if Iran is busy fighting other local countries, it wouldn't be concentrating on us right? Are we really that scared of Iran's capabilities when we were able to handle the Soviet superpower without ever firing a shot?

--MAYBE radicals would take over the country. But then we would have a very real and locatable target to strike instead of having our troops sit there as a magnet for attacks.

Who knows what will come of Iraq when we withdraw. Even if we "stabalize" the nation, how long will that last? And it will still be viewed as a "puppet" government of the US and incite more hatred.


But 4 things are CERTAIN.
1) We are running out of troops to keep up the war. Do you really want more extended stays or a draft?
2) The war on terror will never end as long as we keep our noses in their business over there. That is their main motivation for attacking the USA.
3) We cannot afford to continue fighting fiscally or economically. We are currently borrowing money from China to fund this war. Couldn't this money be better spent on defense and keeping terrorists out of the US? Everything we are fighting for (stability) will be lost if we don't take care of our own domestic issues.
4) If you bring our troops home, they will not be targeted and killed. We've lost nearly as many Americans in the Iraq war (3,500+) as we did in the WTC bombing. The terrorists will have a MUCH harder time targeting Americans if they had to cross an ocean to strike us.


We need to act on what is certain instead of what might be. That was the same mistake with we "thought" Iraq had weapons of mass distruction.

[Richie]

It's just not worth arguing over with some people. This past week, one of my neo-con friends made a big ruckus over the anti-war, anti-Patriot Act statements on my MySpace. If you look at it from an educated person's view, I totally pwned this person in our little argument. THEN they started copping out and gave me a "lesson in manhood" which not only made absolutely no sense, it had nothing to do with the war or Patriot Act. Some people are just not going to learn until it's too late.

[cac1963]

I'm getting the same response from my next door neighbor. I gave him a CD a couple months ago and he looked at some of it. He says he really likes Paul but last night he asked for more information about how Paul would deal with the islamists, the ones that want to kill us. I asked him to consider why they want to kill us, and he stated the "because of our freedoms" line that's been spouted from TV news.

The very first thing that came to my mind was "man you've been sold a bill of goods..." but I just sat silent letting him explain his position because I'm not going to be the one to insult him like that.

I'm putting a couple more RP foreign policy clips on disc to give him, that hopefully will convince him of how much under the influence of propaganda he is. I'm considering getting him to view Zeitgeist ptIII, but not sure he'll view it with an open mind, and certainly don't want to link Paul to anything like that. But that's probably the best piece out there to show how much propaganda is flooding the media.

[SeanEdwards]

I'm getting the same response from my next door neighbor. I gave him a CD a couple months ago and he looked at some of it. He says he really likes Paul but last night he asked for more information about how Paul would deal with the islamists, the ones that want to kill us. I asked him to consider why they want to kill us, and he stated the "because of our freedoms" line that's been spouted from TV news.

The very first thing that came to my mind was "man you've been sold a bill of goods..." but I just sat silent letting him explain his position because I'm not going to be the one to insult him like that.

I'm putting a couple more RP foreign policy clips on disc to give him, that hopefully will convince him of how much under the influence of propaganda he is. I'm considering getting him to view Zeitgeist ptIII, but not sure he'll view it with an open mind, and certainly don't want to link Paul to anything like that. But that's probably the best piece out there to show how much propaganda is flooding the media.

Paul has proposed using Letters of Marque and Reprisal as a way of targeting people who really are a threat to the US. This is the Constitutional, limited form of war appropriate for responding to non-state threats.

Paul has also said that war against any state is the decision of Congress. If the Congress feels that declaring war on a state is the right response to a threat, then they should do it. What they should not do, is ignore their Constitutional duty, and hand over Caesar-like powers of warmaking to the executive branch.

[Gimme Some Truth]

- US Soldiers are trained to kill and break things, not to be police. We abuse their loyalty when we use them as Global Peacekeepers



BUT .. with Rudy as President you'd get a "Hybrid Army" who's sole purpose would be for "nation building"

Woohoo!

[theseus51]

I agree with the cognitive dissonance thing, it's hard to convince people of an opposing view, if they feel they have invested heavily into a bad position.

When talking to people about the war, I to give them "outs". If you just call them wrong, they get defensive. You have to say stuff like "I can see your point of view" and what not. One thing that worked with my friend, who thinks that they attack us cause we have the wrong religion, is "why don't they attack the Buddhists or Taoists or Hindus, who are much, much closer, and also of the "wrong religion"?

I also mentioned that the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and there was fighting, but when they left, Afghanistan didn't like go into Moscow and attack them. They left Russia alone. Like if we pulled out all our troops, do you think they would keep attacking us? Wouldn't they be afraid we'd come back?

[Johnnybags]

I agree with the cognitive dissonance thing, it's hard to convince people of an opposing view, if they feel they have invested heavily into a bad position.

When talking to people about the war, I to give them "outs". If you just call them wrong, they get defensive. You have to say stuff like "I can see your point of view" and what not. One thing that worked with my friend, who thinks that they attack us cause we have the wrong religion, is "why don't they attack the Buddhists or Taoists or Hindus, who are much, much closer, and also of the "wrong religion"?

I also mentioned that the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and there was fighting, but when they left, Afghanistan didn't like go into Moscow and attack them. They left Russia alone. Like if we pulled out all our troops, do you think they would keep attacking us? Wouldn't they be afraid we'd come back?


and when they tell you its because of our freedom its FOX News watchers. Its the economy stupid is the only thing that will pinch them out of dreamland, and warning them about those dangers first peaks interest, then lead into Rons other positions.