[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Marichiko is straining much too hard to find an evil, any evil, in what is really a great good: removing the threat presented us by bigots and religious fanatics -- which threat is the greater if it is raised up in a non-democracy. Nondemocratic social orders are prone to wars, wars by proxy (terrorist movements, deniable with varying plausibility by the ruling circles) and extremism. Fomenting democracies in the midst of this cauldron of troubles is the best chance we have of making Islamoterrorism go extinct.

If Marichiko keeps straining like that, she risks losing an intestine.

I don't ever think of was as a 'great good'. At it's best, war is an unpleasant neccesity. Also, most countries which invaded other countries in the past 100 years did so to 'liberate' those countries. There are a lot of justifications, and most of them only seem to be believed inside the borders of the invading country.

Iraq is either a $200+ billion mistake based on faulty intelligence or the result of a conspiracy. The fact that we are attempting nation building is supposed to be a side issue to the real reason for the war.

The men and women who are making the sacrifices in Iraq today are doing so because they took and oath and trusted their leaders to use them as a last resort.

Will it be worth it? It will be while before we know. Was it a great good? If the entire Iraqi population could have voted for the invasion, would they have? We never gave them the chance to do so, and we will never know.

As for a great good, ask the parents of a dead child if the price was right.