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July 17, 2006
Confused Americans for Truth - A Father's Lament
Today I received the following comment on my article about the infamous sniper photo on the New York Times web site.
Your support for the soldiers is fake, Bruce.
I have a son in the infantry in Iraq. This picure is not endangering him.
Those giving Bush encouragement to continue this war ARE the ones endangering him. (That's YOU I'm talking about, Bruce.)
Rich
It's important to realize here that Rich is not making a rational argument. He believes the soldiers would be safest if we pulled out immediately. I believe the soldiers would be safest if people stopped giving the insurgents the impression that should they kill enough Americans we'll lose heart and go home. Both opinions rely on common sense rather than science: we cannot conduct an experiment where we force all liberals to stop talking for three weeks and see if it results in a reduction in the deployment of Improvised Explosive Devices. So that's not the irrational part.
What's irrational is his conclusion that if I disagree with him I must be insincere rather than merely wrong-headed. ("Your support of the troops is fake.") Even worse is the attempt to justify the whole thing by claiming to have a son in Iraq. Now do not misunderstand my use of the word claiming. I'm not arguing that Rich doesn't have a son in Iraq: I'm arguing that it has no bearing on his argument.
See, logic works the same no matter who uses it, but emotion requires a context. When someone is trying to stamp out reason using emotion, they build the required context by discussing who they are. If you are not in their situation, then you don't have the right emotions, so you are not allowed to speak on the subject. Goodbye reason, hello Cindy Sheehan.
So, if Rich wants to talk rationally about the war in Iraq, he is more than welcome to do so here. But to talk rationally, you have to use arguments that make equal sense whether they come from a father, a widow, a child, or a gray tabby cat.
That's a very important rule.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Mon 9:11 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Confused Americans for Truth | Tags: blogging comments conservative Iraq skepticism War on Terror
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