The point is that I don't think it really matters to you if time would have made things better or worse. You seem to want to avoid conflict regardless of the ultimate consequences. Am I wrong in my thinking?

Before the US decided go and oust this horrible dictator(that they helped with weapons) the world body was with us and our fight against terrorism. Even if it was just to get in our favor. Now we have Iran going nuclear, Iraq is in a civil war(regardless of what anyone says), and must the Gaza Strip even be mentioned? The area might not have been a utopia before but now it's just a terrorist haven.

I guess you'll support a strike on Iran?

"Regardless of the consequences"? You don't know what the consequences of avoiding conflict will be, yet assume they will be dire and dismiss the benefits of not being at war.

Conservatives increasingly remind me of little girls afraid that monsters are under the bed: "It's going to get me. I'm afraid. Do something."

It's good to see there's still someone out there defending the war.
This discussion made me so angry for so long that I had to walk away from it for a while. It's funny how people have just forgotten how we got here in the first place.


I was with the other 40% of the electorate that thought this should've never happened in the first place. Pretty much everything that we said would happen, has happened. Every mistake the administration could have possibly made along the way, was made. I watched it all in slow motion. I've been listening to "victory is right around the corner" for 4 years. I say this as someone who was in the Army for 7 years (not in Iraq), as someone with a brother who is, two years after filing his claim, getting his first disability check (the first of the rest of his life) from injuries sustained in Iraq. There's no reason for any able-bodied adult under the age of 50 who sees any benefit to staying in Iraq to still be in Philly talking about how it's a good idea.

It's about hegemony. There's no other reason for holding on to the british construct of iraq. One country is easier to control than three. You don't need true stability over there, you just need working pipelines.

But there will be on end to the violence there until americans are gone from there and replaced with a mostly arab force. The longer it goes on the better developed the insurgency becomes. Bomb Iran? and watch the entire region from Lebanon to Pakistan explode like ordnance strung out on det. cord.

Its not about stability or democracy and the neocons make no bones about it. They don't even make you read between the lines. Well before September 11th, well before "weapons of mass destruction" they were planning this. They don't even try to hide it. They still have all of their writings on their website.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/ir...t2000-1997.htm
Take a look around. Check the dates and the authors.

You are wrong, yes. Sometimes conflict is an appropriate and prudent course of action. You don't see anyone complaining about the U.S. going into Afghanistan. That was an appropriate use of military force, based on the actual threat posed and a balanced evaluation of the possible consequences. It's a shame that the administration decided to go into Iraq and leave Afghanistan hanging.

I haven't been complaining about it and was, as I recall, resigned to it when it happened. But Bush & Co. went about it with what has since been recognized as their typical bullheadedness, of which I thought/think, well, not much.

After 9/11, if you recall, the administration determined that Osama was in Afghanistan and demanded -- not asked -- that he be turned over. No country responds well to demands. Making demands is what you do if you don't want cooperation. So, in response to Bush's demands (whose tone pleased the angry American "street"), the Taliban responded that Osama was its "guest," thereby pleasing the defensive Islamic "street." They were talking past each other.

The administration should have done its asking and demanding in private. If Bush really wanted Osama without a fight, some deal might have been cut that would have given the Taliban political cover and (perhaps) have allowed the U.S. to snatch him. The world was with us then and the fuss would likely have died quickly.

But the U.S. was in a mood to bomb something and Bush rode that mood to (temporary) popularity.