[Sethomas]

I do agree that, among terrible regimes in the middle east, Iraq posed itself as the most viable and logical target. So, I agree with the three points to war that you posted as being good considerations to choose Iraq among a list of potential targets, or even first among eventual targets.

I didn't use the term imperialism because I think it's misleading. In some sense it's accurate, sure, but while many people want to think that America is trying to make a 51st State from Algeria to Afghanistan, I don't think that's what was intended nor pursued. Like I said, the idea that was told to me was that as many middle eastern countries as possible would reform themselves and not wait for an American invasion. We want them to play fair and by our rules. I don't know if that's really a spade, but if it is...

And no, I don't think that any aggression that could possibly be construed as "imperialist" automatically makes it wrong. What makes it wrong tactically is that it operates under zero understanding of Islamic culture, and what makes it wrong ethically is that it's going to have a murderous effect several fold worse than if we left them to their own devices. I've heard personal stories of Iraqi's family members just disappearing, and it's terrible. Absolutely. But I genuinely feel that Saddam was too emasculated to cause another genocide, so killing hundreds of thousands to save tens of thousands is not a very altruistic argument.

And like I said, I think that Saddam was too emasculated by 2003 to really be a destabilizing agent. To look at the state of the Iraqi national economy and how it was much EASIER to trample Iraq (remember the media going on and on about how the Republican Guard were going to be a huge hindrance?) than we actually believed it would be? Maybe economic sanctions actually worked in this sense.

What I told war hawks in 2003 was that it wasn't going to be hard to overthrow the regime, but that a Western occupation would never sit well with either a Sunni or a Shi'a population, let alone a heterogeneous nation of the two. You can argue for years about what's right or wrong, but if the right thing is impossible then what's the point?

I think there's something to be said for America's efforts to win them over with love--the hundreds of thousands of inoculations performed is one example--but when the average Iraqi family is more likely to know a civilian casualty than a polio victim, you can't blame them for harboring hostility that's not going to end any time soon.

When you factor in the fact that a strong American presence is going to turn the evil Westerner from an ideological image into a palpable force of daily life, it's like trying to smother the fires of terrorism with shreds of paper. If you don't give a damn about whether or not we're making a utilitarian moral measure of progress in the middle east, maybe you should consider how much more dangerous our lives our now. Madrid's train stations were bombed two weeks after I stopped using them and I had to wonder whether my friends were dead, so maybe I just have a tainted perspective on the Iraq war.