ARGH!!!
Last night I met a couple of friends (one was a former student) for dinner. We hadn't planned the dinner, but I was in town after meetings and just hangin out anyway. Relaxed and usually fun, the discussion turned suddenly very sour.
Note, the former student is planning to vote Obama, so we'd been talking about possible VP picks as we led into this very heated argument.
At some point, both of them indicated that they thought that invading Iraq was the right decision and that they supported Bush on that. In fact, they didn't even think that they'd change their mind even with all the new information we've had. "We had to take out this evil dictator who had killed his own people."
Now, I've heard this for ages and usually when I ask which other dictators -- North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, etc.. they'd like to take out-- people shut up, but these guys weren't having any of it. The frame of their worldview would NOT be dinged by mere logic.
Then I pointed out how this war and Afghanistan has 1) ground up our military and their families and 2) left us unable to respond to other crises like the Georgia-Russia issue. Their solution? "We can rebuild the army in one year through a draft."
I was like WTF? Are you seriously arguing that we need to draft people again, because our dumba** President got us into a huge mess? Yeah, they were. Note these guys are 36 and 45 and both overweight, so the likelihood that either of their dumba**es are gonna have to serve is pretty slight. But they would not even concede that 1) the army is hurting -- even though I pointed out how navy and airforce recruits are now being forced into the infantry to make up for recruiting losses and 2) that the people of this country would never support a reinstituted draft.
In fact, one argued that politicians of both parties have even called for a draft. NO serious politician is gonna stand up and argue for a draft.. and survive his election. In fact, great idea. Let's get John Sidney to do that. I think that would put the nail in his coffin.
Ok, so they argued that any American who would not serve the country in a war declared by the President is a traitor. I pointed out that even in training soldiers are taught to NOT obey an immoral command, but I guess regular citizens should buckle under and follow even a lying and immoral administration.
They argued that attacking Iran would be a great idea.. and if Russia doesn't pull back, we should go after them as well.
By this point, I was getting way too loud for a nice restaurant and was looking for a way to escape from the insanity. I left it at that, there was simply no way to keep from wanting to scream at them both.
Can someone give me resources to push on to them? Or maybe a bus to drive over them?? Thanks for listening to my rant.