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I was involved in a discussion the other day with a relative who turned out to be much more of a conservative than I had thought about the situation in the Middle East (Dude used to be a total hippie wannabe until his wife found Jesus and dragged him along for the ride) I didn't start the argument--he did--I guess he thought he was in safe territory and no one was going to argue with him.
His line was that Israel was being tough on Hezballah and that was a good thing because the only thing these people understood was strength and that George Bush was right to go into Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a menace who had to be stopped and the issue of whether he had WMD or not was irrelevant. My arguments about creating enemies through overly aggressive tactics and the rule of international law were falling on deaf ears. He had this little half smile on his face. I could hear him thinking "woolly headed liberal".
Then I found myself channeling Howard Dean (and a few other Democrats I've heard using this line). "Yes, If we want to win the war on terror, you have to be tough but you have to be smart too." (usually avoid borrowing talking points--I'm always afraid that someone's going to recognize them, but this one just slipped out)I then went through the litany of Bush foreign policy blunders from Bin Laden's escape at Tora Bora to the decision to turn from consolidating the Afghan victory to invading Iraq, to blowing off the international community, to failure to listen to people like Powell and Shinseki before the invasion of Iraq to the looting afterward to Abu Ghraib to the current civil war. At each step I said "Was that smart?" He'd hem and haw and usually admit that things could have been done better.
He tried to make the case that 9/11 forced everyone to view the world in a new way. At that point I brought in PNAC and the neocon dream of bringing about an era of pro-western "democratic" governments in the Middle East. "They've been planning this for over 20 years." I said, "Every single one of their predictions has been 100% wrong. You think liberals have no understanding of the real world. These people are living in fantasy land."
At that point my brother in law decided that he had to go check his luggage. He sort of stayed back in his room and only came out when there were enough people around to insure that the subject would not turn to politics--his mom would naturally want to keep it friendly. I'm going with the assumption that when the other side retreats, you've won the battle, so here I am proclaiming victory. Hopefully I made him think.
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