The world is filled with bad actors killing thousands of their wn people. Any decision to get rid of one of them MUST include a cost-benefit analysis. I think the COST (still climbing) of the Iraq invasion has WAY exceeded any purported benefit.

Anyway, on a year-to-year basis, more Iraqi’s are dying today (as a result of sectarian violence, crime, destroyed infrastructure, etc) than in the last several years Saddam was in power.

. . .

No, we do NOT.

First of all I am not responsible for someone else’s behavior or choices. There are any number of ways to respond to an oppressive government.

Second, there is no science of human behavior (psychology, sociology, etc) that is strong enough or rigorous enough to tell us why someone will happily blow up an airplane full of innocent people. Anyone who claims otherwise is exercising the same hubris that the Bush administration displayed by invading Iraq: claiming to know more than they really did; claiming more understanding than was actually possible.

Terrorists and their supporters come from ALL KINDS of backgrounds – educated and illiterate, rich and poor, democratic societies and oppressive ones. There is no common socioeconomic theme. A recent study in the UK found that support for terrorism has actually INCREASED recently among British Muslim women and college students.

Give me a break, we all know they weren’t Iraqis, but that isn’t the point is it?

Saddam was a bad actor killing and murdering thousands of Kurds and Shites. You should be glad he is gone.

I don’t see anything wrong with trying to democratize the Muslim world and as a woman, (are you a woman? you seem to have so many names that it hard to tell who you are) any woman though would want to see women live free lives and not be forced to marry, to wear perscribed clothing, and murdered if they don’t do what their male relatives tell them.

I hear you about the Saudi perptrators of September 11. – What, they weren’t Iraqi?! -

I think you nailed it with another kind of poverty: oppression. These terrorist may have been educated, but they were without opportunity. It’s still about powerlessness. Sadly, it wasn’t too difficult to channel their frustrations toward the US. We have ourselves to blame for that. Certainly, changing the internal government in Saudi Arabia is a daunting task. But we didn’t attack Saudi Arabia. We attacked Iraq with the ideal of changing their form of goverment. And this is emblematic of how we have behaved in the Middle East. Our ruling class is in bed with the Saudi ruling class. We use Israel because of our interest in Iran’s oil fields. We manipulate the entire region via our role as super bully in the UN.

How to effect change? It’s impossibleuntil we disengage. As long as we’re dependent on their resources and as long as our ruling class has a financial interest in oil production, we cannot assist in affecting cultural change over there. We can’t afford to isolate them or stop buying their products. We have no leverage points and no credibility. Even force isn’t working.

If tomorrow, we magically tranformed into an economy that had no use for petroleum products, we would walk away and let them all sort it out for themselves. The fact that we became dependent on a resource that we don’t have enough of within our own boundaries is not the responsibiity of those who have that resource. And it does not justify our policies of fomenting confict and toying with the lives of millions.

f’sticks. That was me.

It’s not a question of justification, it’s a question of detering people from firing rockets into civilian areas and trying to kill as many civilians as possible. Israel has no reason to attack Hizbollah except to defent itself. Hizbollah’s reaons for attacking Israel are the elimination of the Jewish State and to kill as many Jews as possible.Read their charter.

“We need to each pull back from the brink.”

Who is we, Nabobico? There already is a war going on. The Israelis need to defend themselves.

“Hezbollah will not be eleiminated (that much was proven this month)”

Nothing of the kind was proven. We don’t know what the future of Hizbollah will be. We don’t know if the truce will hold. If they take over the Lebanese government the situation will become a lot more complicated and a civil war in Lebanon is possible. If they don’t they will be disarmed. In any case Hizbollah will not remain the threat it has been.

“any more than Isreal will be pushed into the sea.”

This is certain.

” Refugees on both sides have legitimate claims. Lets recognise them, listen to them, and from that move forward. No one is ever one hundred percent guilty nor innocent.”

This is a separate issue which has nothing to do with Hizbollah.

August 13th, 2006 at 9:01 pm

“I posted the letter because I felt it pointed a humane direction that the discussions surrounding the very complicated issue of the mid east could take, and I think the spirit has been echoed by other posters here.”

In other words it’s wishful thinking but it sounded nice.

The first rule of critic: get the facts straight.