Last night on HomeLAN's IRC server, after discussing the election, I got into a debate which frankly made me so upset that I felt the need to sit at this desk and compose this soapbox entry.

These days, it seems that no one bases thier political views on anything more than emotional invective, ask for fact and they get defensive. The younger the person, the more pronounced and commonplace this practice is. All through this political season, I have gotten into a number of discussions with people of all sorts of political positon on the presidental candidates. I have discussed such wide ranging issues as Cyberterrorism, Iraq, the economy, healthcare, second amendment issues, and political finesse. More often than not, The people who choose to discuss this are never able to back up thier political positions with a single verifiable fact. Personal invective is NOT fact people, dont confuse the two. Invective is applied opinion. I dont care if you have an opinion I dont agree with. I can respect your opinion even if I dont agree with it. What I cannot respect is an agressively presented opinion without a shred of verifiable fact behind to support it.

Last night's discussion was exactly such a case in point. Oddly enough, it started over Contractors in iraq and thier role in the violence and terrorism taking place in urban areas. I have presented a small excerpt of the beginning of that conversation here, with some reorganization of comment order to provide for complete logical thought and names changed to protect the ignorant:

[09:33] [F_Guy] These contractors
[09:33] [F_Guy] you know....
[09:33] [F_Guy] they arent people who fix a drive way
[09:33] [F_Guy] they arent people who do sheetrock
[09:33] [F_Guy] Guess what?
[09:34] [F_Guy] They are mercenaries
[09:34] [Me] No, they arent.
[09:34] [F_Guy] Uh
[09:34] [F_Guy] Yes they are
[09:34] [Me] F_Guy, really, based on what?
[09:34] [F_Guy] Contrators is such a "broad" term
[09:34] [F_Guy] used by the Bush Adminsitration
[09:34] [F_Guy] uh...something I call fact.
[09:34] [HF|Oddball-Six-Actual] I am talking specifically about the networking engineers, security admins, support people, convoy drivers, transport people, etc.
[09:34] [F_Guy] yes sure there are those people
[09:35] [Me] Contractors which you define as mercenaries are security persons attached to protect the above.
[09:35] [F_Guy] but Contractors
[09:35] [F_Guy] also covers peopel who walk around with an M16, hunting down militants
[09:35] [F_Guy] ie: Mercenaries
[09:35] [F_Guy] ie: guns for hire
[09:35] [Me] Fact. Please provide.
[09:36] [F_Guy] http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/01/iraq.contractor/
[09:36] [Me] "Those jobs include the protection of personnel working for private companies and non-government organizations in Iraq"
[09:37] [Me] Id love to know where that is "hunting down militants"
[09:37] [Me] "The four men killed Wednesday were providing security for a convoy delivering U.S. government food."
[09:37] [Me] Yeah, thats REALLY combatative in nature.
[09:37] [F_Guy] guess what
[09:37] [F_Guy] providing protection
[09:37] [F_Guy] involves killing other peolpe
[09:37] [F_Guy] did you know that?
[09:37] [Me] No it doesnt.
[09:37] [F_Guy] It does.
[09:37] [F_Guy] Really.
[09:37] [Me] It means providing a deterrent force
[09:37] [F_Guy] In war, it does.
[09:37] [Me] and ONLY using lethal force when you have no choice.
[09:38] [Me] F_Guy, do you have a CCW? Do you work with any security companies?
[09:38] [Me] Have you ever been a part of an Iraq contract?
[09:38] [F_Guy] No
[09:38] [F_Guy] I havnt

I cut it off at this point because this is the only attempt in the entire 20-minute conversation to provide data on which to form an opinion. Beyond this point, we devolve into a discussion of the distinction of soldiers and contractors, and the qualifications and restrictions applicable to the latter. To be honest, there are several things that really irritated me last night:

1) If you have an opinion, thats great but provide something to support your opinion. If you arent willing to back it up, dont get into a discussion with me.

2) If you are going to provide a "fact" (in this case it was actually a journalistic analysis of contractors), then at least ensure that what you provides supports your position. When this link was posted last night, I broke out laughing when i realized what link referred to as I rememebred reading this article when it was published. How you can take an article detailing the presence of security personnel which are there to keep other contractors safe, the drive behind them, and the financial risk/reward and try and say it illustrates security contractors as "mercenaries" and "guns for hire" which "hunted down militants".

3) How the hell could you possibly be warped enough to be against the presence of security contractors in Iraq. There are so many US civilians working to provide infrastructure support in the reconstruction efforts, each of whom is threatened by the recent outbreak of radical muslim insurgencies that you cannot deny thier place in Iraq. They are there, taking on a dangerous job, to make sure that our civvies can help the Iraqi people get back on thier feet and get closer to sovereign self-sufficiency. Later, we got to discussion of whether or not they had a place in Iraq:

[09:50] [Me] I am sorry that you dont agree that they have a purpose in iraq but the simple fact of the matter is that armed security is neccessary to properly protect the unarmed contractors filling essential support positions.
[09:50] [F_Guy] I know they ahve a purpose in Iraq
[09:50] [F_Guy] I mean, they are there risking their life to earn a buck.

Certainly they are being well compensated for the risk they are taking to protect American civilians but the purpose of them being there is to PROTECT, not to hunt. To provide stability, not to incite disorder. With this radical a position, one would think that you support disbanding American police officers because they carry handguns and occasionally have to defend themselves with lethal force.

This discussion from last night is so illustratory of the types of invective based blather that all too many young people have. The bottom line is this: Make a position, stick with it, provide support for it, and I can respect it. Fall to do any of the above, and expose your ignorance and show invective for what it is.