I am certainly not going to plant a halo on anyone's head, least of all Sadddam, bin Laden, or any government thug anywhere in the world. However, if we engage in torture and terrorising populations ourselves, then we lose moral authority, a very powerful element in the psychology of warfare.
The fact that the Bush gang could not produce an adequate report explaining 9/11 further undermines the notion that we are not the aggressors. Couple that with the multiple agendas for going to war in that part of the world -- oil, the population agenda (dose Muslims just havin' too many rug rats), and Israel -- and we no longer look like a free republic defending ourselves. We look like a neo-colonial power picking strategic targets and using the transparent figleaf "democracy" as our pretext.
You think the better course would have been to leave Saddam in place? Does it bother you about leaving mass and dangerous killers in place? It bothers me.
What? Not enough proof that islamic terrorists did it?
Couple that with the multiple agendas for going to war in that part of the world -- oil, the population agenda (dose Muslims just havin' too many rug rats), and Israel
Well, if it were about oil, at least in the way you are suggesting, we would have treated Saddam the way the UN and the Euro-appeasers did to keep it flowing.
The population agenda? We are trying to wipe out muslims here? That doesn't rate a rebuttal.
Israel? jeez, not that straw man again.
-- and we no longer look like a free republic defending ourselves. We look like a neo-colonial power picking strategic targets and using the transparent figleaf "democracy" as our pretext.
The democracy thing is a potential benefit, not the root purpose of our actions. And in war, your targets better damn well be "strategic". We simply don't have the wherewithal to take overt military action against every arab state assisting terrorists. I wish we did. So we have to pick and choose who to go after. Neo-colonial? Sorry, but I don't come from the school of thinking which believes pursuing the defense and self interests of your own country is neo-colonial. Do you honestly think the UN is interested or capable of fighting terrorism? Do you think they give a crap about Americans murdered by terrorists?