You're making some assumptions about my thinking that just don't jive. First, I don't believe the US is fundamentally an imperialistic country. We show tendencies now and then but overall the ethos of this country still tends more towards compassion than greed for land.

We have however this nagging portion of our history stoked by the whole concept of Manifest Destiny that's tough to shake as far as our image to the rest of the world. That trait is part of the central programming in all humans and we always have to be vigilant to prevent it taking us over. No matter what the national mindset of the leaders and the citizenry was during the decision to invade Iraq there was certainly the same human imperialistic traits present in all of us that have existed in humans throughout history that saw fit to send armed warriors across a border. We could argue all day as to the relative proportions of that inclination compared to the humanitarian portions but to deny its existence is a head in the sand viewpoint.

My point was merely to show that there will be a reaction by people on all sides of the conflict to invading armies and that the extremely disruptive political discourse we've seen in our own borders from our latest incursion is indicative of what happens to all invaders. The severity though of that internal chaos seems to be proportional to the perceived ratio of blatant imperialistic greed to the more humanitarian element.

In other words, our involvement in Iraq is subject to interpretation as to the intent and yet it's caused bitter division politically here. Imagine that we went in with Hitler's message that we were out to purify the human race through our invasions or that our great power entitled us to rule the world. The divide in our nation would be incredibly bloody and intense and we wouldn't be simply debating.

I am by no means advocating a complete hands off policy in regard to aggression around the world. There are certainly lines that cannot be crossed. Use of nuclear weapons is one of those. A policy needs to be loud and public that any use will be responded to in kind with overwhelming devastation. Basically that policy needs to be used for any action that has global consequences such as environmental warfare, biological infestations, or wanton destruction or genocide that has no recognizable purpose other than pure blood lust and criminality. That last one is a tough call though and is easily abused as a justification to get your foot in the door to a place where more bad will come than good.

My appeal then is not for black and white go/no go rules but simply to look at intervention as the means of last resort and to fully understand the risks and huge sacrifices that have to be made to commit to it.

I also will always argue vehemently when someone assumes that some microcosmic action we took sometime in history created some global condition we see today. There is simply no way to quantify human behavior on that scale or to model historical outcomes. Our involvement in WWII cannot be proven to have caused Hitler's demise since we can never see the alternative evolution of events had we resisted entering the fray. Our dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan can't be evaluated as to their effectiveness in our global political evolution since we can't show how things would've gone without them.

These assumptions in our culture are mere rationalizations driven in some part because we live better knowing we did the right thing. Of course rationalizations can't become set unless there's some compelling logic to them but they remain hypothesis none the less. To state them as fact will always get a debate from me.

Art