Agreed. Just because they do something horrible that does not make it ok for us to do the same. What I meant was, if you turn on any channel but fox, there is much more time spent bashing the president and his ideas that there is bashing truly dangerous leaders or groups. There is more complaining about Bush than there is trying to concentrateon the future and how not to make mistakes going forward. I'm not blind, it's obvious the warin Iraq is in no way going as planned or it should. We (bi-partisan) should be focusing on how to fix this problem, not every little thing that went wrong.
Here's the thing, Puller.
The war in iraq was for 4 reasons. You choose which you want to use.
1) WMD
2) To free the iraqis
3) To spread democracy into middle east
4) To establish longterm viability of US interests in the region
#1 was the TV reason- got people scared, and all revved up. When that fell thru, #2 was the fallback reason we evolved into. Now, #3 is used as the bigger goal, how we're making the world a better place, etc.
in reality, we had Afghan war plans ready and troops/infrastructure moving into position before 9/11. We had Iraqi war plans ready as soon as we were established in Afghanistan. The US needs a foothold in these regions in order to remain dominant in the world. Imagine another 10 years, when these Iraqis, Saudis, and Syrians all get online, realize the value of the oil under their feet, convert to the Euro and shut the US out?
We'd be fucked. So, we give a series of shady reasons, we invade and establish US bases along exact same route as the future oil pipeline to the indian ocean, and the US essentially holds down the rest of the world an additional 25 years, until some new energy source arises.
It might be a lot to comprehend at once, but it will come to you in time.