You see, for the analogy to be really accurate, you don't get to plug the current Iraq problems into a comfortable, stable, fear-free, and prosperous United States of America.

You have to plug problems Cole listed into an America that had been ruled by a totalitarian, murderous tyrant, where dissent was death and real elections a myth, where 3.3 million people had been put into mass graves, where 55,000 citizens had been annihilated by their government with lethal gas weapons, where electricity is reserved for a favored population, an entire segment of the citizenry consigned to second-class citizenship, Mexico had been invaded recently to take their oil fields, and an area the size of Texas had been deliberately ecologically destroyed. And there's lots more.

Maybe a war for freedom, however painful, might be worth it.

Of course, those who worship "stability" over freedom might see things differently.