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View Full Version : How To: Convince a Pro-War Conservative




JordanL
11-26-2007, 06:17 PM
In another thread, someone asked how people would respond to a particularly long and flawed look at the Iraq war:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showpost.php?p=469291&postcount=1

It occurs to me that there is a very real disconnect between most RP supports (who tend to have been opposed to the war from the get-go), and the people we are trying to convince.

I was one of those people. I fully supported the war, I supported GW for reelection, I sneered at the protesters. And now, I will teach you how to convince those people that we should get out as soon as possible.

Below is a five point guide to arguing about the Iraq war. The key to converting these types is to play to what they really care about, (which I can understand because I used to be one). Here's the steps:

1. Reitterate that nobody likes Islamic extremism. Realistically, no one really likes any kind of extremism, but this is the "-ism" that seems most pressing, so it's the one you should re-emphasize. There is no reason to try and convert a voter AND educate them on culture at the same time. One battle at once please.

2. Draw allagories to points in our history in which we fought and won and idea war. The cold war is a GREAT example because we DID win it through economic and strategic might, not sheer force.

3. Emphasize that the point about who was wrong or right going in is moot, and that you are not saying one way or the other who was 'guilty'. Both sides ignore this one... debating the reason we got here is no way to argue about what we should do NOW, and telling someone that the mess we're in is their fault is a sure way to make sure they won't agree.

4. Draw on several aspects of American culture that also hit home with this crowd. Particularly American pride and inginuity. The goal is not to convince them that America has failed, but rather that we are misdirecting our efforts on a war instead of on our economy and our internal affairs.

5. Finally, concede that terrorism must be fought, but point out that the best way of stopping terroism, since it is an idea, is by choking it dry like we did the Soviet Union, which we can only do by being energy independent and having a strong economy, (which requires a strong currency and a balanced budget, which incidentally also requires us to come home).


Here is a post I made which employs all of these points:


To go over a cherry picked history allagory and claim that our actions in any given part of the world can be correlated to 'learning from mistakes' of previous wars is both false and simplistic, though not stupid. It's not difficult to see how someone would jump to that particular conclusion, especially considering that these are exactly the talking points that people have been parroting for years now.

The reality however is far different. In WW II we were not facing an ideology, we were facing a military complex. Despite what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity claim, fascism and modern day Islamic extremism are similar only in their submission to authority. Where that authority is derived from, and how it is retained is nothing like how fascism came to be in our past, or how fascism waged war on the rest of the world.

If Islamic extremists would set up a standing army and try to occupy Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, we would have an easy time 'learning from our mistakes' and taking the initiative to protect our interests and those of everyone around us.

But despite how much you may want to believe there is a concerted world wide effort to undermine western culture, there is only a perception of such an effort. This is not to say that undermining does not happen, but rather that it, in large part, does not happen in an organized way.

The problem is that there are millions of people who believe in the ideology of Islamic extremism, or at least believe in the flaws of American ideology. We are in the middle of a political war with apolitical consequences. This means that the causes, reasons and effects are all political in nature, and thus looking at them as a good vs. evil meme a la Nazi Germany actually deprives you of a clear view of the reality we live in.

However, even though it is a political problem, people, particularly extremists, express it in an apolitical way. Bombs, guns, threats, etc. This creates an easy, albeit flawed comparison to the Nazis.

It is especially telling that the end of your message talks about liberalism when the story began talking about history and virtuous truth. Ask yourself this: if such a virtuous truth is really as self-evident as you claim, how is it that you feel compelled to assault the political ramifications of your assertions as opposed to the real ones.

The war has cost closer to $3 trillion, (though not all of that cost comes in the form of taxes). if you want to talk about REAL cost, there is no comparison. We have gained so little for such a high cost in Iraq that I cannot think of an engangement that in hindsight is less attractive.

But no one should be faulted for hindsight per say. This is not to say that anyone is 'guilty' because they did or didn't 'support the war'. We are where we are and all we can do is decide where to go from here.

The reality is that, as you somewhat accurately described near the middle, Islam is in the middle of a war of ideas. To quote the Wakowski brothers, "ideas are bulletproof". No amount of money, or soldiers lost, or battles won, or dicatators deposed, will win a war of ideas.

Here's another historical allagory for you. During the cold war, we had many short, "hot" engagements around the world... some more costly than others. But none of these engagements were the war of ideas itself, and to wit, it was an economic war that caused the internal collapse of the Soviet Union. The war of ideas was won from within, not without, and our troops served more as the soft word than the sharp stick.

In Nazi Germany we were fighting a war of survival in the most literal sense. Fascism, it is true, wages a war on ideas; but fascism as an idea only knows how to wage war by waging war, and that is one of it's greatest flaws.

What we are experiencing now with islam is an idea war, not a survival war, and just like the cold war, it will have real consequences and ramifications, such as terrorist attacks. That does not mean we sit and take them, but netiher does it mean we lose sight of the only way we can win this war: by creating a stronger country from within that cannot be cracked by rhetoric, oil prices and currecies.

Right now the war is a race between spending on Iraq and the loss of the dollar. It's how fast we can become energy independent (and not just by pumping our own oil... by looking for alternative sources as well). It's how fast we can repair our import/export market. It's how well we can restore secure borders. It's how much money we can save by forgoing the ultimately fruitless efforts of keeping troops in many other locations abroad.

Does it seem fair that much of Europe gets to sit back and let America foot the bill for their defense? That's what happens when we sit hundreds of thousands of troops over there.

You see, in a war of ideas, it is the group that can make their ideas work that will win out. I think we can both agree that the ideas of Islamic extremism don't "work", but they can have a fascade of working as long as we continue to support their efforts by refusing to make our own ideas work.

America is a strong country, and in a battle of wits between who can support themselves first, we have proven in WWII and the cold war that we are most capable. Getting out of Iraq is not isolationism, it's a tactically sound maneuver to play our strengths. Yes, we do have one of the most capable militaries in the world, but our greatest strength comes from the strategic threat of its use, not from its carelessly common use anywhere that we decide to.

Besides, if you look at the overarching goals for Iraq, we have either discounted or accomplished every single one of them. Saddam is gone, and the people there now have a chance at democracy. It doesn't matter whether or not we were morally justified in going in, because what we are discussing is how we are tactically justified in getting out.

Be careful not to confuse the two... if you were to ask yourself "should I get a new house", you would scarcely give any thought to why you moved into the location you were currently at. Instead you would weigh the pros and cons of staying versus leaving.

Similarly, the simple fact that the pros vastly outweigh the cons for getting out of Iraq says nothing about the reasons we went there or whether or not going there was a good or bad decision. It is only giving a verdict on whether leaving is a good or bad decision, and historically, economically and realistically speaking, it is a very good decision.

The goal is not to convince them to change their mind. The goal is to show them how they simply misunderstand how their mind is made up. You turn all of their reasons for staying into reasons for going not by arguing against them, but by using them instead.





If you have any questions or specific situations you'd like help with, post it here. Like I said, I was a big hawk as little as nine months ago, so I can definitely help you understand how to convince these people.

There's no reason we should look at these people as hopeless.

JordanL
11-26-2007, 06:30 PM
*bump*

spivey378
11-26-2007, 06:34 PM
get ron paul into office, save up a bunch of money, then you could get more wars so you can feel like g i joe. now is the time to get out of debt so we can kick some ass later on......


the machoism is what drives this mentality

JordanL
11-26-2007, 06:36 PM
get ron paul into office, save up a bunch of money, then you could get more wars so you can feel like g i joe. now is the time to get out of debt so we can kick some ass later on......


the machoism is what drives this mentality

And as long as you dismiss the people who think this way so flippantly, you will never get RP in office.

Reality's a bitch.

lucius
11-26-2007, 06:39 PM
We kicked ass, took names, time to 'just come home!'.

or educate:

Edward L. Bernays, nicknamed the Father of Spin, was the creator of modern propaganda. Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew, and applied Freud's work to the art of mass persuasion by blending advertising techniques with an understanding of human psychology. Bernays worked Walter Lippmann on the Committee on Public Information, otherwise known as the CPI. This government agency was created by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 for the purpose of mustering public support for World War One. The original propaganda campaign had three rules: (1) Stress emotion over logic, (2) Demonize the enemy, and (3) Promise a war that will make the world safe for democracy. Used for every U.S. conflict since including the invasion of Afghanistan & Iraq; all have followed CPI’s playbook to the letter—you think Americans would wake-up?

From his 1928 book ‘Propaganda’: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systemically."

Goldwater Conservative
11-26-2007, 06:45 PM
We won the war, now we're just exporting socialism to Iraq. We can beat the terrorist threat by securing our borders and having a strong free market economy to bolster our national defense. They want us to spend ourselves into oblivion and have our troops overseas so they can sneak in and do their damage.

JordanL
11-26-2007, 06:46 PM
We won the war, now we're just exporting socialism to Iraq. We can beat the terrorist threat by securing our borders and having a strong free market economy to bolster our national defense. They want us to spend ourselves into oblivion and have our troops overseas so they can sneak in and do their damage.

An excellent, consise way of putting it. :)

FluxCapacitor
11-26-2007, 06:55 PM
Thanks, Jordan. Great post.

Indeed, we don't need to "argue" with anyone to convince them. We need to gently ask them to challenge their own assumptions.

All human beings are smart enough to understand the message. It's just a matter of asking the right questions that allow people to see the contradictions that underly their long-held assumptions. Once people start to rethink these assumptions, they will naturally become more open-minded.

scottabing
11-26-2007, 07:08 PM
If you have any questions or specific situations you'd like help with, post it here. Like I said, I was a big hawk as little as nine months ago, so I can definitely help you understand how to convince these people.

A question presented to me was "how would Ron Paul have handled WWII?"
I have not found enough information to extrapolate a good enough response.
People I speak with are afraid that Ron Paul would have let Nazi Germany take over the world.

For the sake of argument lets say that Ron Paul did not have a say in foreign policy prior to Pearl Harbor - this should allow for a response that gets to the essence of what people asking questions are looking for.

piotr1
11-26-2007, 07:10 PM
give him a copy of the dvd "Iraq for Sale"

JordanL
11-26-2007, 07:19 PM
A question presented to me was "how would Ron Paul have handled WWII?"
I have not found enough information to extrapolate a good enough response.
People I speak with are afraid that Ron Paul would have let Nazi Germany take over the world.

For the sake of argument lets say that Ron Paul did not have a say in foreign policy prior to Pearl Harbor - this should allow for a response that gets to the essence of what people asking questions are looking for.

Prior to Pearl Harbor I'm fairly certain RP would have done much of what FDR did foreign policy wise: support our "allies" through economic means, but not in a commital way. I do think he would have taken a more firm stance on who was right and who was wrong, and he might have lent some military support to England, but I doubt it would have been a force commitment.

After Pearl Harbor, he would have been out to flatten the Japanese and Germans, because he'd be walking around with a Constitutional mandate from Congress to do so.

I somewhat doubt that RP would have let our military fall into the disrepair it was prior to the attack. He believes very much in the "talk softly and carry a big stick" school of thought.

Goldwater Conservative
11-26-2007, 07:19 PM
A question presented to me was "how would Ron Paul have handled WWII?"
I have not found enough information to extrapolate a good enough response.
People I speak with are afraid that Ron Paul would have let Nazi Germany take over the world.

For the sake of argument lets say that Ron Paul did not have a say in foreign policy prior to Pearl Harbor - this should allow for a response that gets to the essence of what people asking questions are looking for.

According to a recent appearance on Fox Business Channel, he believes war against Japan was justified given Pearl Harbor and war against Germany justified given they declared war on us.

seapilot
11-26-2007, 07:33 PM
A question presented to me was "how would Ron Paul have handled WWII?"
I have not found enough information to extrapolate a good enough response.
People I speak with are afraid that Ron Paul would have let Nazi Germany take over the world.

For the sake of argument lets say that Ron Paul did not have a say in foreign policy prior to Pearl Harbor - this should allow for a response that gets to the essence of what people asking questions are looking for.

I heard in an interview this question asked of Ron Paul. He gave the classical answer, he said he would go to congress to declare war against japan.

The day after Nazi Germany declared war against USA, again Ron Paul would go to congress to declare war against nazi germany as per the US constitution. As for Korean war, Vietnam and now the Iraq war it would have been up to congress to declare war. A President Paul would never declare war , as he knows only congress has that responsibility.

lucius
11-26-2007, 08:05 PM
give him a copy of the dvd "Iraq for Sale"

This dvd is an absolute slam-dunk for Dr. Paul!

J Free
11-26-2007, 08:47 PM
Jordan - Great post.

I would just add two things. RP supporters have got to learn to distinguish neo-cons from hawks. A neocon - from their Trotskyite background - wants to create revolution/chaos everywhere in order to make the world a "better place". A hawk doesn't really care about furriners but does want to grind enemies into dust - both to get rid of the problem and to send a message to others "Don't mess with us" - and doesn't much care about "rules".

Find out who you are talking to. A neo-con will NEVER vote for RP. A hawk may. You just need to constantly talk about "mission creep", "exactly what is the definition of victory there", "US military is doing the work that Iraqis should be doing themselves", "chickenhawk pantywaist pencilnecks in DC getting our boys to do their dirty work so they can make a buck", etc. John McCain is a perfect example of a hawk - and his supporters are actually the most likely of the "frontrunner" group to join us. Likewise Duncan Hunter and Tancredo - and Fred Thompson's supporters (he plays a hawk on TV).

But if you are a typical RP supporter -- opposed to the war from the beginning -- your best bet is to shut up and listen. Don't open your mouth because you will sound like a Democrat surrender-monkey to that hawk and you'll do more harm than good. Just point to a couple of resources on the web.

Maybe someone should put together a business card sized links list of the half-dozen best "conversion" pieces.

The one that works for me is http://ronpaulcolorado.org/wordpress/2007/09/14/veterans-speak/ on my blog - but it needs some work to be more generally applicable.

cindy25
11-26-2007, 08:53 PM
convince pro-war conservatives using the other issues; abolition of the income tax, pro-life, pro-gun rights. different issues will appeal to different people.

with regard to WWII-if Ron Paul was president in 1941 Japan would never have been provoked into attacking Hawaii and the Philippines. they completely bypassed neutral Macao. and he would never have had a draft. FDR had his draft before the war (1940) compared to Canada and Australia who waited until 1943

sharedvoice
11-27-2007, 04:19 AM
Here is my take on the situation,

The term Anti-war pacifist is a term frequently used to ostracize the few having the courage to speak out and question the irrationality of our foreign policy. One that has not only bankrupted our nation, but also left 5,000 Americans troops killed, countless civilians dead, and many others wounded, based on some preconceived notion that we should be the "policemen" of the world!! Horseshit!

Generally, those who support disastrous "stay the course" foriegn policy lack the basic understanding and knowledge of what war is really like, why it occurs, and how it feels to have other people angry enough to kill you.

It has been almost 7 years now since my first combat deployment, which was to Afghanistan with the 15th MEU (SOC) 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and 4 years now since my last second visit to Iraq. Since then nothing has changed, things continue to get progressively worse because of our “unwelcomed” military involvement in the region.

For years now we have been meddling in the affairs of other nations, propping up puppet dictatorships, getting into the business of nation-building, and promoting welfare dependency around the world.

We need to stop playing welfare Santa Claus with the entire world!

There are plenty of reasons, more than ever, as to why we should be minding our own business here at home. -- economy, health care, crime, illegal immigration, poverty, even homeless war veterans out on the streets. This is an OUTRAGE!

In theory, "National Security" should address every one of these important issues, yet, we continue to fight a so-called “War on Terror” and continue to pay the consequences here at home...

A price so great, that has even undermined our Constitution and compromised individual freedom and liberty.

If you do not think what I am saying is true, I suggest you take a close look at this.


A) Corrupt the young: get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial; destroy their ruggedness.

B) Get control of all means of publicity. thereby:

Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance.
Destroy the people’s faith in their leaders by holding them up to contempt,ridicule and obliquity.
Always preach true democracy, but, seize’ power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible.
By encouraging government extravagance, destroy its credit,“produce fear of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.
Foment unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders and foster lenient and soft attitudes on the part of the government towards such disorders.
By specious argument, cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues of honesty,sobriety, continence, faith in the pledged word.


C) Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population helpless.

Sound familiar??? Google "Communist Rules for Revolution"

You may want to share the following links with your friends.

Why We Fight
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3405669348838274375

Zeitgeist: Part Three (Men Behind the Curtain)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__YFnUfYXZk

s/f