"I have issued this challenge or similar ones (for example: what would YOU do about Saddam?) several times, and gotten the same deafening silence, or responses like Raoul's:

...With the UN dealing with Iraq, colonialism, imperialism and occupation would not be issues.

What should have happened was to have let the UN inspectors do their job and trust them.

If that wasn't satisfactory, Bush should have sent a commando kill Saddam.

Uh...okay. At least Raoul had the guts to step up with SOMETHING."

Yeah, *something*. Why the UN wouldn't have colonialism, imperialism and occupation as an issue, shines a bit of light on Raoul's shallowness of thought. And "commando kill Saddam" means Raoul as watched too many James Bond movies- or perhaps it's Rambo. Even if an assasination was successful, it wouldn't solve anything. It requires sending in men who will probably fail in their attempt, and if they manage to kill Saddam and this somehow causes the regime to collapse, then what? Aren't we suppose to be doing something which is effective against terrorists- wouldn't this simply provide a state in which the terrorist could take control. And if you have a shred of responsibility and you do something that does manage to destablize the regime, you would feel responsible of the possible deaths of hundreds of thousand citizens in the civil war which followed and in which could draw in all states bordering Iraq.

"Frankly, I'm getting to the point where I'm beginning to think that radical isolationism may be the way to go for America and its allies. May post on this further."

Well, I've always sort of been partial a degree of isolationism. And this would "work" by shifting some of our focus to the Space frontier. I see this as the only real solution and the solution we are stumbling towards- somewhat blindly.