It's been a while since I posted a diary of substance...but I figured "Why start now?"
I just had the following conversation with my friend, an avid Bush/Republican apologist (even though he considers himself a Conservative Libertarian), and I felt I needed to share. (His IM screen name changed to protect him from some of yous guys ;) ...and I changed my IM screen name, too because I was using my work screen name, so please don't try to IM 'spyral' because you won't get me.) Now, I'm not the best debater (I was stoned through most of my high school debabe class), but I think I got him on a few points, and what does he do? Answer them w/facts? No, no...he just ends the conversation. I kinda want to bang my head against the wall now...Why does that feel normal after talking w/a Republican?
Anyway, the point of sharing all this is to illustrate what I believe the problem with the way conservatives argue:
*They throw around allegations that were proven to be false.
*Add a little comment that adds nothing to the dialogue or has nothing to do w/the main topic.
*Leave when things aren't going their way.
Has anyone else had this experience?
Without further ado, here's our conversation...in all it's glory! (Seriously, my apologies for the grammar/spelling/etc. mistakes.) Oh, and take the poll...
spyral: condi's gonna testify
spyral: that should be interesting
[my conservative friend] yeah i heard
[my conservative friend] u have been keeping up on your drudge report haven't ya?
spyral: nope, i don't really consider drudge a good source...i'll go look now..
spyral: i read the letter....bush & cheney to meet w/commission, not under oath, or in public
[my conservative friend] thats cool
[my conservative friend] i am getting annoyed by this 9/11 comission
spyral: (I wouldn't expect them to go before the public)
spyral: how so?
[my conservative friend] the end result is going to be that we should have used premption
spyral: (but I would like to have them under oath)
[my conservative friend] same here and clinton also
spyral: yah
spyral: look, i won't hear you trying to blame clinton for all of this, though...
[my conservative friend] i'm won't
spyral: there is plenty to go around, and clinton paid more attention to terrorists than bush did pre-9/11....good :-)
[my conservative friend] see now u are doing the blame game
[my conservative friend] here's my problem
spyral: no no, i'm saying there's a lot to go around to both pres
[my conservative friend] everyone is saying we should have use premption to prevent emerging threats or possible threats
[my conservative friend] so i guess everyone wishes we would have had the bush docterine a few years ago thats what I am getting from this
[my conservative friend] now lets say we had gone to war with Afganistan in 98 or 01 even
[my conservative friend] the public would not have accepted that i think
[my conservative friend] unfortunately we got a big wake up call, i want to focus on prevention on the future, not finger pointing which is why i am pretty outraged by clarke
[my conservative friend] clarke is the smarty responsible for the y2k scare
spyral: sorry, i'm busy...let me read what you had to say
[my conservative friend] can u imagine if the first thing bush did after the election problems was go to war in Afganistan against the Taliban and Al Qadia, sure now we wish we had, but man it just would have been next to impossible to do
[my conservative friend] i mean he was only in office for 9 months
[my conservative friend] many people didn't even look at him as president until 9/11
spyral: ok...there is a difference between pre-emption as it deals w/terrorists cells vs. state-sponsored terrorists (which Saudi Arabia is one state that comes to mind that sponsors) For Clinton, prevention was the plan, he went after the cells, and was starting to get close to Osama...they did stop many attacks before tehy occurred...Bush & Co. didn't do much w/regards to terrorists, which I believe the 9/11 commission will report. I'm not going to speculate that 9/11 could have been prevented...that's (part of) the 9/11 commission's job
State-sponsored terrorism is, IMHO, a noble cause, but i think that we (the USA) would benefit by going after the cells (and, of course Osama & the other leaders) instead. I think by going into Afghanistan, routing out the taliban, but then leaving it alone to go after Saddam/Iraq was a huge mistake..the taliban is gaining control in afghanistan again, and we're getting attacked daily in iraq (and often in afghan, too.)
spyral: clarke handed rice a plan....he tried (w/Tenet) to get Bush & co. to pay attention to al Qeada & Osama...but they sat on thier hands...didn't act on the info
spyral: there was already an assassination order to kill Osama, signed by Clinton
spyral: bush could have gone after him
spyral: but he did not...for whatever reason
[my conservative friend] well u can also point out that tennet was clinton's cia director, clinton was offered bin laden by the sudanese 4 times and turned it down, etc. etc. Clarke to me is just one guy of probably many in the government that is saying if they had only listened to me
[my conservative friend] like i said i think the comission should focus on what we need to fix and improve, not who heard/did what when
[my conservative friend] this comisionn should not be political we can all agree that all parties messed up, the question now is how do we improve
spyral: just so you know, Clinton was not offfered Osama by the sudanese government directly, but through a person who owned/had interest in oil. because USA doens't negotiate w/self-appointed representatives from other countries we did not...now, I do know that they tried, after recieving the info that osama was in sudan, to try & negotiate w/the goverment itself, but the sudanese gov't refused.
I agree that the main focus should be what can we do to fix, but this is the 9/11 commission, and their purpose is also to find out what went wrong...after all, how can we fix something if we dont' know WHAT to fix? methinks you don't want to know who did or didn't do what, when...
[my conservative friend] got to get back to work ttyl
spyral: dammit...you best answer this! ;-)
spyral: ttyl
[my conservative friend] everyone messed up and everyone is guilty bottom line, if i were clinton i could give a damn i would have got that prick, but hindsight in all of this is 20/20 now
[my conservative friend] ttyl
spyral: lata