Give peace a chance...

Care to elaborate?

I'll elaborate after I get off wk tonite, but for starters, look up how many peope were killed in SE Asia AFTER the US pulled out.

Stay tuned: More elaborations to come........

though I'll remind you that the conditions existed for that slaugther in Viet Nam precisely because we had so thoroughly destabilized the country. The question is not whether we should pull out - it's why the hell do we keep going in?

You KNOW why we went into Vietnam … for the oil!
Ba-da-bum!

Interesting contrasts between Iraq and Vietnam:
1. We went into Vietnam for ideological reasons—no benefit to us. The arg against it was it was none of our business.
2. We went into Iraq for national security reasons— after 9-11, a crazy guy with a lot of oil claims he’s got WMD and he's going to use em. We confront him; he has no weapons, and WE get accused of going in for the oil(!) What would America be accused of if he DID have WMD, used them, and we did nothing?

In other words, national security is our business. But that’s just one mans opinion, I suppose.

We lost Vietnam, but we won the cold war. The war on terror is the next cold war, and I have no illusions that it will last decades. I believe winning in Iraq will make it shorter. This war does not end if we simply leave Iraq, but will extend it by emboldening our enemies.

The killing fields – sounds like you're suggesting that Vietnam was stable before we (and the French) went in. I'm not buying it – that the Khmer Rouge slaughtered all those innocent people and it was OUR fault. Are you saying the country would have remained more stable if we had stayed? How is that not hypocrisy?

But despots have to blame someone, I guess…

But about your orig point: notice I didn’t say, “peace kills more innocent people than war.” –that would TRULY be Orwellian. What I'm talking about is the silly notion NOT fighting, NOT confronting rogues and dictators, NOT supporting our military will bring about peace. It’s never worked before, why would it work now?

“War is not the answer” they say, but with a few exceptions: slavery, torture, rape rooms, holocaust, krystal nacht, human crematoriums, children’s prisons, gulags, Nazism, fascism, mass graves…

Thank God I have never seen any of these w my own eyes – I suppose I have war to thank for that. But if you were the recipient of any of this, would you be singing, ‘give peace a chance?’

The ones I can argue with, I will; if I don't, consider yourself uncontested.

"after 9-11, a crazy guy with a lot of oil claims he’s got WMD and he's going to use em." What does 9-11 have to do with it? And what do we do now about Iran, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan again? It's not like we have an unlimited military.

Khmer Rouge - you have probably looked into this more than I, but I believe had we stayed in, the net loss of life would have about the same; only more of our people and less Cambodians. Furthermore, maybe the only way to avoid that slaughter would be for us to still have a full force in Viet Nam to this day. Or maybe we were just "around the corner" from victory. In any event, we accomplished little good in Vietnam and spent an enormous amount of money and blood.

I see your point about confronting rogues, but what it has led to is we have taken over someone else's country so we can draw terrorists there from around the world. What did the Iraqui people do to deserve that evil?

Repeating this gets kind of droll, but you are polite and respectful, so I'll do it again; 9-11 has nothing to do w the crazy guy with the oil. The point IS for many years we could afford to ignore threats fr crazy guys w oil.

For decades the likes of Kadaffi, Ayatollah, Arafat, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, et.al. have threatened us. On occasion, they followed thru: Lebanon Marine Barracks, USS Cole, WTC ’93, US Africa embassies. Conservatives and liberals alike agreed that though these were bad, they weren’t worth going to war over.

Then 9-11 happened, and we finally figured it out: That we can’t blow these guys off anymore.

Enter Saddam ‘bad-timing’ Hussein. Here is one more clown who says he has WMD and will use them against the US or Israel if we don’t lift sanctions. We knew he had them in the past, we knew he used them against Kurds and Iranians, we knew he was working on rebuilding them. We knew he had a Ba'ath official looking to purchase something fr the Niger govt. (google “major exports from Niger” and ask yourself: do you think he was after the onions?).

The point is: before 9-11, we didn’t take threats seriously. After 9-11, we can’t afford not to, regardless of who’s doing the threatening.

By the way, are you saying that the Bush administration could have forseen the 9/11 attacks?

The idea of pre-emptive strikes gives me the creeps, and should give you the creeps too. If this is our standard then we shouldn't object if any two-bit country attacks us. After all, we demonstratably HAVE WMDs and have used them against an unarmed country. Why would another country be wrong to disallow Americans from travelling there, to attack our embassy, to try to shut down our bases?

I don't mind if other countries have WMDs. I DO mind if they have them, call me the Great Satan, Israel must die, etc.

Is weapons AND trash-talk.

This is great! You're getting it! But add to that 'history.'

If your neighbors have guns, you worry about the trash talkers with criminal records. Not the ones who just keep them responsibly for defense purposes.

Or are you concerned France might attack somebody?

But I take your point.