How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego

I find myself wondering if most Americans are so removed from this war that they don't have any real connection to it. It's as if we have achieved a kind of national scotoma, as if this war was happening to some other nation, that it was some other distant event being reported on the national news every night, as if it were some kind of really long sports story about a couple of teams no one really cares about.

Tonight I am walking through Chelsea to the A train and I see the guys at Station Fourteen setting up their tree. The NYFD lost 333 firefighters on 9/11, scores more are now dying from working in the Pit in the days and weeks after. We have allowed George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld to completely screw up our nation's response to the 9/11 attacks. The war in Iraq is a national disgrace, yet we don't seem, as a nation, disturbed or disgraced by it.

I am walking with my camera in my hand listening in my headphones to James Baker of the Iraq Study Group declare that the conclusion of the report is that we can no longer stay the course. That there is great peril in continuing as we have these past four years, five years, whatever.

But where is our peril? I am nearly knocked over by a couple taking home their tree. and my eye is drawn across the street to the GAP store window.
Where I see that corporate America has finally (maybe I missed it before?) co-opted the symbol of America's anti-war movement.


Our senses, including our sense of justice, have become so dull that we cannot even feel the war. So when I ask "How can you ask someone to be the last to die... .?" America responses with "What you talking about?

Joe(maybe too running in the cold)Nation

Joe (Hits the Nail on the Head) Nation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1967316,00.html

Bush and Blair's Iraq press conference seen by the Guardian's humourist...but it's wry humour.

We are spending six billion a month to wage this mess. One Trillion to wage the war and another in other costs and not one penny worth the lives lost.

We no longer stay the course, we look for the way forward.

In ten years, I will meet you at the Iraq Invasion Memorial on the Washington Mall to read the last name.

Joe(Who's mother's child shall it be? said Death)Nation

Emotional Appeal
Type: Red Herring
Exposition:

An appeal to emotion is a type of argument which attempts to arouse the emotions of its audience in order to gain acceptance of its conclusion. Despite the example of Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek television series, emotion is not always out of place in logical thinking. However, there is no doubt that strong emotions can subvert rational thought, and playing upon emotions in an argument is often fallacious.

When are appeals to emotion appropriate, and when are they fallacious? No student would attempt to prove a mathematical theorem by playing upon the teacher's sympathy for the long hours of hard work put into it. Such an appeal would be obviously irrelevant, since either the proof is correct or it is flawed, despite the student's best efforts. In contrast, if the teacher attempts to motivate the student to work on proving the theorem by invoking the specter of a failing grade, this appeal to fear is not irrelevant.

So, one distinction between relevant and fallacious appeals to emotion is based on the distinction between arguments which aim to motivate us to action, and those which are intended to convince us to believe something. Appeals to emotion are always fallacious when intended to influence our beliefs, but they are sometimes reasonable when they aim to motivate us to act. The fact that we desire something to be true gives not the slightest reason to believe it, and the fact that we fear something being true is no reason to think it false; but the desire for something is often a good reason to pursue it, and fear of something else a good reason to flee.

Even when appeals to emotion aim at motivating us, there is still a way that they may fail to be rational, namely, when what we are being persuaded to do has insufficient connection with what is arousing our emotion. For instance, a familiar type of emotional appeal is the appeal to pity or sympathy, which is used by many charities. Photographs of crippled or hungry children are shown in order to arouse one's desire to help them, with the charity trying to motivate you to write a check. However, there may be little or no connection between your check and the poor children you wish to help. Certainly, your money will probably not help the specific children you see in such appeals. At best, it may go to help some similar children who need help. At worst, it may go into further fundraising efforts, and into the pockets of the people who work for the charity.

Nice red herring you have there Joe.

unless you've been rounded up and are residing in a re-education camp....

You're invited, McG, to come with us. We'll go in the Spring of 2017, the Memorial will be just about six months old by that time and, if we time it right, the cherry blossoms will be blooming all over the Mall. We'll have to decide whether or not to bring a jacket.

You can be in charge of making sure that the family of the last person named has been invited to join us.

Joe(then, I'm walking over to the Wall to visit some friends there.)Nation