No person or people has the right to weigh on a scale the death and suffering of thousands versus their beliefs about how the world should be. There are moral cases for war, and self defense of a nation of people is one them. You are not God, Tom, and only a God has the right to make the moral decisions you make with such devil-may-care ease. Since I don't think God exists, that means NOBODY has the right to which you arrogate. Yes, the world sucks sometimes, but the only way to make it better is to act in a way consistent with your principles and encourage others to do so as well- WITOUT using death, murder, suffering, maiming etc as an instrument of encouragement.

Davin L.

Go read your Constitution Davin...you'll find that if you are a citizen of the US of A your President, Congress and elected representatives act as God on Earth.

The same is true wherever you may wish to flee to. Each nation has set someone up as judge, jury and executioner.

You're letting your liberal idealism cloud over reality. Reality is nations attack and kill eachother's citizens all the time - and have throughout recorded human history. Righteous indignation and affixing the right to man's brutality upon imaginary deities won't help things.

Do you know how many people just died while I wrote this post? More than the casualty count of the entire Iraq war and Vietnam war combined.

Leading the people is a lousy job. You can't please everyone or even come close.

People will keep dying and killing eachother on Earth long after Bush and everyone alive today are long since dissolved to atomic constituents. The human span of intellect includes a vast range of development in which killing is part and parcel of their evolutionary growth process.

The sooner one discards futile idealisms for pragmatic realities - just as a leader must do - the sooner one can get about the business of reducing death and destruction in the manner Tom is trying to explain to you. You can't stop death and destruction, but you can try to keep it down to livable levels. Like a controlled burn to prevent firestorms - some death and destruction is par for the course.

It ain't pretty, it's far from ideal - but it IS real.

SDAI-Tech1