Status check-- the Middle East

[mburbank]

I'll answer Blanco in more detail later;

Kev; I'd say the ends are an awfully long way off, and there's no way of knowing if they're far really far away or nonexistant at this point.

Also, if the 'ends' are democracy in the middle east, we have no way of knowing what that would look like. How about free democracies that hated us and everything we stand for passionately?

So I would have to say no, I don't think the ends, whatever they may be, do justify the means. That's my opinion.

Now, if by the ends one means a happy dappy free market trading partner that seels us cheap oil, buys our cultural exports and loves us... Well, that's a silly, simplistic argument. Why not say by exporting democracy in the way we have the edns we're looking for is a middle east that shits rainbows and ponies?