Your idea that we can change attitudes and fix everything with bombs and boots in other countries hasn't held water for decades and I'm at a complete loss in understanding how anyone in this day could think sticking our hand into the hornet's nest that is the middle east could result in anything other than a disaster.

Your own government doesn't even agree with you, anymore.

This isn't the cold war or a campaign in Europe. We're not fighting communism with an arms race and we're not liberating the oppressed from Nazi invasion. We're not even fighting a physical army.

Don't understand how this works? Here's a simple simulation.

Urbane, just out of interest, how long did you spend living amongst, *adopts a scary-movie-voice-over voice* The Undemocrats?

New video? Reported by CNN Somewhere?

I bet saddam's last thought on the gallows was 'dammned yanks..... that's the last time I trust them.....'

The Times' John Burns:
Wretchard points out:

Nine years, engaged in directly fighting Communist regimes -- particularly directly fighting the big one. Military service, and military living, is emphatically not a democracy, and there are lessons to be found there even for someone who doesn't care to look.

While I consider there is a place for totalitarian organizations as subsectors of a society -- its military services -- the totalitarian model is no way to run an entire society, a nation. Nations behave well, both inside and out, only if they are democracies, which term I am using rather loosely to include republics, and constitutional monarchies. The ones that aren't like that start wars promiscuously, oppress anyone they take a whim to, and make just about all the trouble in the world not caused by large hurricanes and quakes. Is this not so? Cast your mind back over the last couple of centuries and consider it.

And I sampled just enough of Kenya under Arap Moi to get a clear idea of just what kind of game he was running -- and I could see personally just what that did to people who had to live and work within range of him. What it did wasn't good, and it wasn't the kind of good government we can expect even from the most primitive sort of democracy. So it's not all just the Commies, conspicuous in evil as they were -- totalitarianism of any stripe is the problem. Democracy is the solution. The people who don't want the solution implemented are fascists, fuckups, and all-around nasty pieces of work, often sociopaths, definitely sinners. The people who don't object to implementing the solution, but don't want it done just today are weaklings, cowards, and fools who never clearly understood their own interests.

Those who spout about military force not succeeding in making democracy have been at pains not to understand the actual method: the military force is there to remove the coercive effects of the anti-democracy forces, which may be taken seriously if they are armed and organized. The antis will have the strategy of trying to terrorize the rest of the population into submitting to these as the government once again. Naturally, our countervailing strategy is to exhaust and wipe out the antis -- get them too dead to oppress, or too spiritually exhausted to stay that particular course. While this battling is going on, others-than-military are to establish the democratic institutions that will result in better, even downright good, governance. Some steps have been taken in this direction in Iraq, and the antidemocracy antihumans are still stubbornly duking it out, but this action also gives the pro-humans the opportunity to catch and destroy them.

There will always be those who complain this isn't getting done in Iraq -- but critics always count less than the man in the arena, and this should be ever kept in mind. The "insurgency" stays busy, but it still isn't getting traction outside its initial areas. In the end, it's doomed. It will take actively prosecuting it to end it, and there may yet be a more acute phase of civil war in Iraq -- but the end will be an Iraq that is a democracy, precisely because they remember that was what they didn't have under Saddam & Company.

Take a look at America's record on conflict. Promiscuity is not just the preserve of undemocratic countries.

Look which side we've fought on in every single conflict for the past hundred years, DanaC, and for a large portion of the hundred years before that: the side we Americans weigh in on is the side of the greater freedom against the lesser freedom. You have not, I believe, ever understood this.

Wars come from the undemocracies. History shows this. People who read history see this.

What?

That is because democracies have been around for the past 250 years and that is it. Even then, that statement is false.

Romans were a democracy and the tried to conquer the world.

America is a democracy and start shit with every dictator they don't like.

The most influential democracies in human history have started numerous wars, I think your logic is a bit off.

Urbane. Just because your interpretation of history does not match my interpretation of history, please don't make assumptions about what I read. Not everybody who reads history sees what you see.

Incidentally, I went looking at a site that lists every American conflict and found this little gem:

U.S.-Philippine War
1899-1902
Colonial War, War of Imperialism

I'd be interested in your take on this.

Thats the truest statement EVER! We all interpret information in a different way and most times to suit our own needs. No matter what side of this, or most any argument you are on, there is information that can be interpreted so that you see ehat you want to see. Whether or not their were valid reasons for getting involved in this war, they were not what we were told and that is wrong. Even if there was a "bigger picture" that we as citizens were not aware of.

This is actually the biggest reason why many conservatives defend the Iraqi war. The US "put down" the Philippine resistance by force and they think they can do that to the Iraqis.

And were we or were we not fighting the Empire of Spain in 1898-99? And what was their manner of governance? Avoid selective views if at all possible, DanaC, or you won't have the entire picture.

You think one halfhearted and latecomer example is going to disprove my basic thesis? Think again. Also take note of when the Philippines became an independent nation, and how it was done.

We gave the place back.

Ours is a singularly unimperialistic habit.

ANY history teacher will tell you that the US was extremely imperialistic way back when. That's the actual name of the unit for that era. US Imperialism.

We're returning to our habit.