"Stephen Harding" wrote in message
...
Gooneybird wrote:

(Snip)

Is it really our national function in life to sacrifice American lives in
order
to dish up free and democratic governments all over the world, sometimes to
people who don't even want it or wouldn't know what to do with it if they
had
it?

It could be a very positive national interest item to have one of the most
important of Arab Muslim nations a democracy. It could dramatically effect
the entire region for the better as far as our national interests go.

It could, and by the same token, it might become an endless morass from which we
would only be able to extricate ourselves at huge cost to our national
reputation, the respect we get as a nation from others, and the esteem in which
others hold us. You probably didn't notice it, but the one country I left out
of my list of potential targets was the one we should have learned something of
value from, but apparently didn't.....Viet Nam. We learned painful and
unpalatable lessons from that experience (which I, incidentally, completely
supported at the time), and I'm more than a little distressed to note that those
lessons seem to be disappearing behind the fog of political idealism.

If that's what Iraq was really about, we'd be wise to invest our money in
mortuary stocks because there's going to be an endless and ongoing supply of
business for them from our sacrificial lambs.

Possibly, but I don't think necessarily so. Jury is still out as to whether
resistance to anything American (let alone "Western") is stronger than the
benefits of democratic and free market government that takes some patience to
implement in the region.

I still think the whole exercise was worth a try.

I think the grieving families of the past and future casualties we've had and
will continue to have in Iraq might possibly think otherwise, particularly
those amongst them who never gave a rat's ass for the Iraqi people in the past,
if indeed they had even heard of Iraq at all.

Perhaps I need to remind you that our last major effort along those lines that
didn't involve Iraq resulted in our abandonment of our peacekeeping efforts in
Lebanon with nothing of value to show for the several hundred casualties we
sustained at the Beirut International Airport.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion.

George Z.