Mark Twain is a great read, of course.
He would probably be as reflexively liebral now as he was then, but I wonder how we have felt since we did not exactly pick Iraq out of the hat for a target? We were after all taking over the Phillipines for openly stated iperialism. We are clearly not being imperialist in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and we ahve a track record since WWII of helping nations become democracies that we did not in the late 19th century.
Or would have Samuel gone to the extreme of many here and elsewhere in 2001 and cnodemn even attacking the Taliban?
Would he have agreed with Kerry in voting against Gulf War I, even though it was, according to Kerry these days, a war that passed the global test?
Would Mark Twain, like Kerry, disdain and disrespect the people in Iraq who lay down their lives for a chance of living free of the tyranny they have known for all of their lives?
As to Clemens' description of mob action, it seems to me that if you take out the 'war' arguemnt and put in a hate "GW Bush' argument, it is also a pretty fair description of how a mob gets fooled into trading rational thought for mob derangement.
Ed