Michael, you're nothing if not consistent: consistently extreme, hyperbolic, morally outraged without a good sense of morals. No one in his right mind or right conscience would promote the horrors you list. They are to be avoided virtually at all costs. Yet, the realities of the world literally force people to endure this suffering, and participate in its creation, toward the end of averting much worse of the same kind.
Humans are flawed, and I would present George W. Bush as exhibit number one on that account. He made a tragically flawed, monumently poor decision to invade Iraq for reasons retrospect clearly dissolves. The invasion was a mistake. The horrors of war were unleashed for no good reason. I went along with the tide that trusted the administration with this terrible decision, for lack of understanding. One does the best he can with what he knows. The responsibility for this mess lies squarely with the president, who is notoriously in denial. In my opinion, oft-repeated, he was at least negligent in his duties, if not reckless. History will judge him harshly, as contemporary journalists have begun to do. Yet, you take criticism of the man and his administration to the point of lunacy in your unbridled condemnation and overt hatred. Though shrouded, your virulence stems from reasons far deeper than the trivial caricatures you present as argument. In a sense: physician, heal thyself.
Your cynical outrage, what you see (and revel in) as a clearcut chance to be grandly self-righteous, aggravates the situation. Your concern, to me, is not genuine as to those that suffer but instrumental to your chance to "moralize" with a vengeance, a vengeance I suspect (but of course can't know) that goes back to the nightmare your people suffered during the last great war. Thus, your cynicism, to me, is emotionally based and utilitarian in nature: you like to bitch as if you're God's saving (indeed, avenging) angel, when in fact you throw flames on the fire by your very acts of hate. You see matters in black and white, much like Bush. In doing so, you distort reality and impinge on the truth.
That truth is not as simple as you would like it to be. Granted that the invasion should never have occurred, we nonethless have to face, realistically, the situation now confronting us. Much lies on our future course. As an example, I have been on a one-man campaign tilting at windmills in this club to divine the right thing to do going forward. Regardless of prologue, the task we now have is to leave Iraq in the best position we can and extricate ourselves as quickly and deftly as possible, for among other reasons to fight the overall struggle with violent, radical Islam more intelligently and effectively. To that end, in my view, as I've stated ad nauseam, there are limited avenues of action. The two I deem rational are an embrace of the Iraq Study Group proposals, which is preferable to my mind, or a last chance to buy more time for the Iraqi government to take control and actually function as an effective government by a "surge" of troops. While I think this latter course is up against much greater odds, almost prohibitively so, I will "support" that decision until silence exacerbates the situation. We really don't know what will come about, and our speculation is idle until we have some hard facts to work with.
