Like Corso, he gets by more on charisma and chemistry then on actual analysis. I wish he would try harder to understand a topic like this before giving such a slanted opinion.
As you said, kindness is the best approach here. We have facts, history, statistics, and to a large degree, reason on our side of the whole mission discussion. When you have to argue those, things go poorly for folks trying to argue Howard's position.
As aggravating as Howard's clueless take on this topic may be, name-calling doesn't really help here.