So many arguments arise because people are working from different assumptions. In fact, if you ever want to resolve a dispute, work backwards from the argument to the assumptions so you can figure out the real point of disagreement. Reconciling those is trickier but at least you'll be in the right place!
The Washington Post article on yesterday's DC protest finally made it clear to me where the dispute on the war is. Forget the containment is working, Bush is avenging his father, rhetoric. Underneath it all the antiwar protestors are making a different assumption. "We're burning a village to save it." "Shock and awe is no different than terrorism." The anti-war protestors are working from a different set of facts. In their version of the facts, we are attacking civilians in order to get the regime to surrender. In my version, we're limiting our attack to the military (and I have yet to see any "collateral damage" much less deliberate civilian attacks) and we're going out of our way to instruct the civilians on how to stay out of the way. If the facts were as the protestors said, I might agree with their conclusions.
Posted by Justene Adamec at March 23, 2003 07:10 AMAnd yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have
a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks
tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets
tragedy face to face, we have politics.
-- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, Root Crops and
Ground Cover
Cash Advance Loan http://www.cashadvance.be