[Urbane Guerrilla]

DanaC, at this point you amaze me. There is a bit of difficulty with those outside our borders being willing to believe the most remarkable tripe about the United States -- it's been true for decades. Remember what's been said about the CIA over the years? -- quite a... well, heap of trash talk and bizarrerie. There's really nothing to be done about this, though, as these opinions are based on inexperience. Ignorance, in a word: not a slam on you, just that you're not here on the ground.

I should think if "millions of your own citizens" were suffering "misery and grief" I should have noticed it. I haven't, and I am no Punxatawny Phil, hibernating. (America has more fun with marmots than any society I know.)

The war is not illegal. Not only has our Congress, both houses, authorized the Executive Branch to prosecute the Global War On Terror, of which Iraq and Afghanistan are theaters, but we're backed up by sixteen UN Resolutions anent Iraq. We were polite enough to seek a seventeenth, committing the UN to supporting the US to fix the Iraq problem, though this one Resolution out of seventeen did not pass -- to the UN's shame, but not atypical of the UN when it comes to dealing with "the argument of kings."

The infrastructure of Iraq was destroyed by three decades of Ba'ath Party neglect, not by US artillery nor planes. Had Saddam Hussein been absent from 1991, the repair and reconstruction of Iraq could have been ongoing since that time; unhappily, it was delayed eleven years. You will also recall that since 1991, British forces were a part of the enforcement of the No-Fly Zones over Iraqi Kurdistan and the Shi'ite provinces.

For the least humanitarian of actions, you need only read a comprehensive history of world communism -- the end effect, indeed the whole point of the thing, was oppression, wholesale, nearly psychotic -- oppression was communism's answer to every problem, when you get right down to it. Shoot all complainers: Lenin was power-crazy, Stalin a sociopath, and Mao, under more ordinary circumstances, would have been beheaded as a felon -- but to our sorrow, he was too lucky for justice. We went to South Vietnam because we didn't want to see this sort of thing continue its march. That's humanitarianism, and something the previously great colonial powers were incapable of doing.

DanaC, I am afraid you have been duped by the frenetic anti-Americans on every single point you've raised. It is a shame to be led around by a nose-ring in this humiliating manner. Your understanding of the world's doings doesn't exactly qualify you as a commentator.

I'm not here to steer you wrong.

Turning to Phil: Ronald Reagan described your kind of thinking rather well when he commented that liberals sure know a lot, but it's too bad that what they know ain't so. I can't be as ignorant as you need me to be, and it happens geology is rather a hobby of mine. The tale told in the rocks runs 4.5 thousand million years long, and rocks have no agenda; they just lie there. Something mighty cool to read, by the brilliant John McPhee, is his pentalogy Annals Of The Former World -- five books about rocks, and he makes the rocks sing. I recommend it, with raves, and am rereading it as we speak.

I'm not here to steer you wrong, either.

Bruce, actually I have evolved in understanding and sophistication since age ten -- I just haven't fallen for pseudosophistication. I recommend this happy course to you, out of esteem for your intelligence. Hell, I recommend such things to stupid people, too, but it's a mark of their stupidity how seldom they take me up. Dullards tend not to get me.

Now then, Ibram, in what particulars do you figure I disagree with Mr. Heinlein? I can't follow your reasoning yet.