On our way back from dinner last night, we happened to catch a bit of The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio. Guest Bill Mitchell was speaking; he's a veteran and the father of Mike Mitchell, a soldier killed in Iraq. Bill is also affiliated with Gold Star Families for Peace, a group of military families vocally opposing the current war in Iraq.

These are military people, folks. They are veterans, members of the armed forces, and family members of those tied to the military. They are people who fully support the military, deeply feel the importance of serving their country in a military capacity, and understand the occasional necessity of war. They're not mealy-mouthed hippies or cause-heads chiming in on the latest popular cause. They're not ignorant of the costs (in resources and lives) of war.

And they are protesting BushCo's stupid fucking wrongheaded campaign in Iraq.

This should serve as an example to both polarized sides of this issue. Warmongers: it is possible to support the military, and concede the occasional need for war, while still pointing out how utterly wrong Bush has been in this particular war. Peaceniks: it is possible to protest this fucked-up, wrongheaded war, but still understand why war is sometimes necessary.

There's common ground here — folks like the Gold Star Families for Peace are proof of that. Let's all try to meet in the sane, sensible middle for once; let's focus on the incorrect (and internationally illegal) usage of our military forces in this instance, without undermining the purpose and effectiveness of our military forces themselves.

After all, supporting our troops is not the same thing as supporting this bullshit war.

You pointed how all sides can be wrong but your own side. Hmmmmmm.

What was our "side," Gren? Pointing out how two extreme views can be wrongheaded in this situation, that there's some common ground between the two polarized extremes, and that we'd all be better off in the sane and sensible middle ground? Quite frankly, we don't think there is anything wrong with that "side."

What do we think that middle ground looks like? Well, we don't think that war is always wrong, and we don't think that we should eradicate our military. We also don't think that war is the best solution quite as often as some people seem to think it is. We take a more rational, moderate approach. Of course there could certainly be other rational ways to approach this issue, and versions of the middle ground other than the one that we support. We're always keen to hear those rational suggestions.

If you're referring to our oh-so-subtly suggested opinion that this particular war is wrong, hey — sure, we could be wrong. We don't think we are, or else we wouldn't hold that point of view, but it is a possibility. However, we're pretty darn right that you can protest this war while not protesting war itself — which is just what we said. If that's "our side" then we're not sure that we can see how that can be wrong, since it is empirically true.

It is a fallacy of logic to assume that extreme views are inherently wrong and centrist views are inherently right, if that is in fact what you're saying. Your follow-up post indicates a willingness to accept the possibility your view on this particular war is wrong and that was missing in the original post.

Terms like 'moderate' are relative in definition, not finite nor concrete, and one man's 'moderate' is the next man's 'extreme', especially in politics. Joe Lieberman is a liberal relative to George Bush, but a conservative relative to John Kerry.

Even the term 'rational' has relative, variable definitions when applied to politics.

Sometimes none of the positions on the table are right; other times all are 'right' and are a matter of personal preference or opinion. This is one reason why a democracy holds elections, of course. Some ideas are abhorrent and wrong empirically, regardless of how many people hold them -creationism is an example -and will (hopefully, ideally) be rejected regardless of popularity. Conflicting ideas held by large numbers of people (such as anti or pro Bush, anti or pro war on terrorism) might have merits on both sides, and so elections deliver the ultimate say-so.

It is necessary to analyze popular ideas and differentiate between empirical fact and political opinion. Sometimes, the same people who derogate religionists for assuming their beliefs are de facto 'right' simply because they hold them will commit the exact same offense with their own political beliefs.

A willingness to accept the possibility that our view on this particular war is wrong was "missing" from our original post?

Come on, Gren...be realistic. Everything we write on our site is comprised of our opinions, unless we're specifically backing it up with some form of research, statistics, or other evidence. You're not going to find too many blogs out there that aren't representative of their authors' points of view.

It would eat the fuck out of our host's storage capacity and our monthly bandwidth, not to mention our time and our writing style, if we had to carefully and explicitly explain in every post that we are writing our opinions, "which might be wrong." Why would anyone expect us to? After all, it's our blog — take it as read that all of our musings and Rants are our opinions.

Your suggestion that we should overtly exhibit "a willingness to accept the possibility that our views could be wrong" in every post and comment is redundant and impractical. We've already explained that we don't know everything, and that we're always willing to hear intelligent comments from all points of view. And though we've been pretty harsh to commenters that don't present an intelligent argument against our views, we've never shot down someone for intelligently disagreeing with us.

That said, the point of this Rant wasn't to espouse our specific views about Iraq, it was about the nagging bullshit that if you don't support the war in Iraq, then you must be a hippy who doesn't support the troops in combat. That's what we were writing about, and that's the extreme viewpoint that we were saying is stupid. So, we never assumed "that extreme views are inherently wrong." We stated our views that the particular extreme views we were addressing are wrong, and we stand by that statement.

Perhaps at some point we will write more specifically about our views on Iraq, and if we do, we'd love to hear from any and all of our readers, whether they agree with us or not.

Grendel, why are you posting here? It seem you just want to argue. Glen Beck has a great Clearchannel site for bickering about the mundane.

"It is a fallacy of logic to assume that extreme views are inherently wrong and centrist views are inherently right, if that is in fact what you're saying."

Please note the qualification. If that is not what you were saying, forget about it. I won't apologize for seeking clarification.

Point noted on the difficulty qualifying every statement.

Saturn: I"ve no idea who you are and don't recall seeing you post in my breief time here, but suffice it to say I generally don't feel any responsibility for justifying what I post or why I post it to total strangers (to me). Furthermore, any casual review of the sum of my posts would reveal that very few of them are 'argumentative'. I direct the following to you specifically and not to the people of 2%, but what would be the value of a forum where eveyone agrees? That's not a forum, that's a cheerleading camp. I personally don't believe the 2% people are so shallow that they provided a forum for replies, but seek only the validation of reader affirmations.

Wow! Nice tete-a-tete Gren & 2%! It shows how even folk who agree in the essentials can hear each other saying something in a manner which one finds discomfiting.

You hashed it out. It's done (for now! LOL!) I love it.

I've just decided to post a lambast of MoveOn.org and all those folk, whom I generally support, that are calling Cindy Sheehan's idea for silent vigils 'gainst this war by a disingenous, irrelevant and propagandistic name: Vigils for Cindy Sheehan.

SHE is calling for Vigils for Life! if you gotta name it something. They certainly are NOT for her. Ugh!

I wrote it Tuesday but have hesitated cuz I felt like maybe I's bein' too picky 'bout their methodology. Now I'm sure that I am not.

Thanks guys.

It's all good. I still am fairly blind as to whom is who among 2% staff, but in my interactions with 'Tom' everything is cool and neither of us take it at all too seriously, least of all ourselves, lol.

I just hope I haven't earned my way on to some censorship list -on another thread here I was asked to supply additional info on pseudoscientific nonsense being offered by American universities, but when I hit 'post' I was caught by the anti-spam machine. Ruh roh!

Sorry about that, Gren. No censorship intended — our spam checker is set to moderate comments with a lot of links in them, is all.

Your comments have been approved, and we took your IP address off the "moderate" list. (If you end up back on it, just let us know, we'll take you off again!)

Oh man, that's funny! Here we are in the midst of telling you (and others) that intelligent disagreement with our views is perfectly okay, and you get hit by the spam filter. We can imagine what that might look like.

Appearances aside, your comment on the Harvard post included more hotlinks than we allow without moderation (since many spammers tend to load up their posts with links). Once an IP address triggers a moderation, that IP is added to the moderation list automatically, until we remove it (which we have done for your IP address, Grendel). You should be all set now.

As a note, we've been ratcheting up our spam protection lately due to an almost constant stream of garbage, so we expect a few more moderations than normal. Damn spammers.

Oh, I had absolutely no doubt that something like that had occurred and did not for a minute truly suspect censorship. S'all good!

Thx, Jeff & Tom, MBains.