Krakn: That comment was not totally unexpected. Of course anyone who deviates from your leader's glorious view of "democracy at the expense of freedom" needs to be locked up and left to rot.
M: Certainly wasn't unexpected to me. It was a very very common knee jerk reaction in my book.
K: Actually, I support the troops, in that I support removing them from Iraq.
M: Yes but isn't your support really simple minded. Don't you think that if we were just to pull out now we would further exacerbate a total disaster?
K: Troops that were sent there for a lack of a choice I fully support. Troops that signed up after the fact to go kill 'Raqis are scum of the Earth, and I've met more than a few of them.
M: A few examples do not establish a universal truth. Your dogmatic opinion that other people who have different opinions than you do must be scum is exactly the same irrational thinking you are protesting. Somebody wants you locked up to rot and you call others scum. I don't see a big difference. You are as filled with irrational contempt as they, no?
K: Our forces terrorize the region, killing dozens of Iraqis each day, sometimes for good reasons, often for small misunderstandings. I support life, the lives of our people, the lives of people in the Middle East.
M: What you call support others call treason. Your opinion has what to back it up as the greater opinion? Why should I assume you aren't just as full of hot air as they?
K: Whether or not they want to be, our troops are terrorists on foreign soil, forcing our beliefs on people who don't want it, flying the flag of a man who never fought anywhere, who has lived his life with a silver spoon in his mouth, and still can barely put a sentence together under pressure.
M: Emotional rhetoric is meaningless. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. What evidence and truth do you point to that establishes your truth as superior to theirs. I see here nothing but irrational feelings. What does the fact that Bush is an idiot have to do with the justness of the war in Iraq. A lot of Iraqis are happy Saddam is gone, no? How do you know that our intervention isn't going to be a good thing in the long run. You make all kinds of assumptions about things nobody can have any real idea about in certainty, no?
K: Everytime we uselessly kill Iraqis that are just trying to live their lives, we are no better than the enemy we claim to be winning this conflict against.
M: Are we talking about intentional or accidentally caused deaths or does that make a difference to you?
K: You see pictures of troops handing kids in Iraq candy bars and footballs, and you think we're doing the right thing. I see kids in our own country who don't get a worthwhile education, kids without a healthcare net, kids living in poverty while the rich thrive more than ever, kids who will never have a chance at a decent life because your president has given away 70% of this country to foreign interests to fund a war that he helped start.
M: One truth does not deny the other.
K: You fear the inevitable, while I just try to live each day as it comes. You think where we are now is somehow safer because we're fighting insurgents in Iraq. I'm still not sure how you got there, but it's not any less wrong because of that.
M: I guess you aren't any more wrong either.