Your Opinion is Stupid
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Sitting around the television watching the news in a group of people, it is inevitable that some kind of update about the war is going to pop up. Like clockwork, someone has to make a comment that ends up being particularly annoying to another person. It is a comment that sends shockwaves throughout the very nerves of the opposing party. It's the same type of comment that's been echoed from that particular "side" since before the war even started. It takes all of your strength to just bite your tongue and let them think what they think.
But they're wrong! Our opinion was right from the start! Tossing and turning in bed at night... why didn't you tell the other person that they were wrong?! Do you really think that your own comment, which is similarly echoed from a source on your "side", is going to change that person's view on the spot? If only I had a little military experience then I could destroy their opinion! Oh I could cite experiences from a video game war simulation... but sadly I don't think we had the technology to pull off a successful protoss reaver drop on Baghdad.
The war is a weird thing where no one wants to ever be proved wrong and rational thought falls by the wayside in defending your original opinion. I think the media has taught us that there are only two schools of thought and every single person fits into one of these categories. There are conservatives who give complete confidence to the president and believe that he has never lied or made a mistake and that the war is going wonderfully. And there are the liberals who think that the war was a complete mistake from the start and think that the president intentionally lied and that's reason enough to pull out the troops.
For nearly 3 years we have had the same thing pounded into our heads over and over again from either side.
The Iraq war according to a kookoo bananas conservative:
Late one night, early in the year 2003 a light shone upon the president. The voice of God boomed down and the president heard the plan of the Lord. He was to invade Iraq, liberate it's people from an oppressive government, seize the chemical and biological weapons, and set up a democratic state in the Middle East.
This was a brilliant plan. As the soldiers marched towards Baghdad they left hospitals, schools, and 500-megawatt generating stations in their footprints. The people came out of their homes to kiss the feet of the soldiers and thank them for the safe feeling they get from having tanks drive down their streets.
It turns out that France and Russia were in Saddam's back pocket and every single person in those countries were on Saddam's payroll in the oil-for-food scandal. Saddam wasn't harboring al-Qaeda like you are led to believe, however, terrorists were given free passage through the country under Saddam's rule. To have your head petted by Saddam was considered the highest honor. In fact they Saddam gave them all Ninja motor bikes to go raise hell with in the suburbs of Baghdad. Oh those kooky terrorists.
Oh and the torture. Oh the torture! Don't you sometimes just want to go over to your neighbor's house and tie them up with duct tape and hold hot coals to their feet until they tell you who's dog has been crapping in your yard? This is the only language that terrorists understand and it has to be done to get information. We don't even know the countless number of attacks that have been thwarted because of torture. Torture is great. Everyone should probably use it on their kids.
Ok so we haven't found weapons of mass destruction yet, but we know they are out there for sure. After all, those reports that say otherwise were written by dirty liberals that read the LA Times and they can't be trusted. And the president said so and we know he is a man of integrity. Word has it OJ is out there looking for the real weapons of mass destruction.
Plus the president also listed about 50 bazillion reasons other than illegal weapons for engaging in the war. It is foolish and wrong to only focus on one thing.
The president's plan is clear. "Stay the course." Three small words. How can you go wrong with that?
The Iraq war according to a dirty flaming liberal:
Late one night, early in the year 2003 a light shone upon Mr Bush. It was Karl Rove shining a flashlight in Mr Bush's eyes as he slept. Using a megaphone, President Cheney told Hitler Bush his plan for Iraq and taking out the oil to give to Halliburton.
Bush said 16 words in the State of the Union address that were a completely made up lie. He told us there were weapons hidden but now we know that he was lying because he obviously knew that there weren't. He also said that Saddam was directly responsible for the towers going down and that obviously is wrong.
Now Halliburton has all of Iraq's oil and we are losing more and more soldiers every day. It is getting far worse too. The people of Iraq don't have any power, the children are growing up in fear and hate, and there is no place safe in the entire country because it has become a haven for terrorists. Everyone was better off with Saddam as the president. OH OH and I almost forgot DID YOU SEE the picture of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand? We are so evil.
The only recourse is to pull all of our troops out of the country. The most important thing we need to do is to mindlessly focus on the original lies made by the president. The entire war was based on a lie that Hitler Bush told us and now we should leave. The people of Iraq can take care of themselves. After that we need to pull down all of our pants and spank each other on the bottom for being so evil. And while we are doing that, all of the people with elite intelligence will move to France where people aren't so narrow-minded.
And I can't believe we used torture. We are no better than the terrorists for all of the torture we do. Can you believe our soldiers have actually forced other HUMAN BEINGS to stand for 4 hours in a row without a bottled water break? I mean come on. Just ask yourself. Would you like to be tortured? I don't think so. Obviously Hitler Bush is evil because of his torture policies and secret prisons in Europe. We have never ever gotten any evidence of bad guy plans from torture so we need to stop it.
People are dying. If we leave the war now all of the insurgent attack will stop immediately because they are only targeting our troops who are using civilians as body shields. Plus if we pull out now the entire world will respect us and give us gifts like wine and ice cream. That is the ultimate goal.
If we don't act now, Bush will never stop this war. He won't stop until he has taken over the world and has all of the oil. He is inherently evil and we need to stop his empirical policies before we all die from corporate greed.
It's amazing that neighbors, friends, and co-workers can take the same list of facts and come up with completely differing viewpoints. I just hope everything turns out well and I will continue to bite my tongue and roll my eyes whenever I hear anything like either of the above.
posted by Ghengis @ 12:23 AM,
