The American ideals you cite are ideals I believe in as well. We were both raised that way, so that viewpoint comes to us naturally, from the cradle. To people who don't have this background, rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness can seem strange and possibly threatening. What's obvious to us can look like the erosion of order to people who haven't lived that way all their lives. In fact, without any experience in their exercise, nations have been known to descend back into tyranny because liberty is too much work, and requires constant vigilence.

The tyranical beliefs of radical Islam are onerous to most of those who live under them.

OK, so that would be Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia and a few other places, but it doesn't work with Iraq, which has been a secularized, though predominantly Muslim, nation. Are you defining Islam in general as "radical"?

I happen to think that tithing is an onerous practice, and yet many of my Christian neighbors practice it because they are threatened with Hell if they don't. This is a real threat if you believe in Hell. And yet, though they are threatened, they continue to belong to these groups, and are apparently pursuing happiness at liberty in spite of the threat. I don't understand it, and I believe it's emotional abuse, but that's my problem, not theirs. It certainly doesn't give me any basis for calling Christianity "radical", or even to judge the burden of Christians who tithe.

The abusive behavior of, say, the Saudis toward an entire gender is still unaddressed by the American "moral imperative", but they are our "friends" -- and also have more connection with the 9/11 atrocities by virtue of a simple poll of the perpetrators than has Iraq. So it appears to me that the morality you cite is relative, and that Justice has her thumb on the scales.

Until the connection is publicly and convincingly made that the former regime in Iraq actively planned, and participated in, the terrorism of 9/11, the justification for armed intervention on those grounds will continue to elude us.

The violations of the armistice that ended Gulf War I were to be determined and disciplined by international agreement, through the UN, or at least by the coalition that went to the defense of Kuwait in the first place. The United States together with several friends is not that coalition.

Whether one believes that two moral systems are equivalent depends a whole lot on the place where the judge stands. Al Qaeda thinks that we are Satan Come To Call. So obviously, to them, the answer is that our morality is far inferior to theirs. I disagree, but that's my belief system talking. My belief system means nothing to them. Their belief system is not embraced by all their co-religionists, but it's closer than what mine is, and more easily understood. Belief systems have no traction against each other. There has to be another moderator, and there are only two: the law and the sword.

Cultures are grounded in belief, but civilizations are founded on law. America, especially, is a nation of laws, for that is what enables us to absorb many cultures and moderate the differences between them without resorting (much, depending on who you are) to the sword. Are we above the laws we say we stand for, or not? Do we show we are respectful of law by following the rules, or do we only use them for cover? Are the rules of evidence only for children of lesser gods?

If adhering to the tools of democracy as well as its ideals makes it look to you like I'm divorced from reality, all righty then. But there's nothing PC about it. It's the hardnosed insistence that the King himself is not above the law. If that's "divorced from reality", perhaps we're closer to Empire that we thought.

Regards--
Mary Anne