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The loss of life over the last three years must be weighed against the yearly butchery of Saddam Hussein — deaths that were not part of the struggle for a democratic future, but the annual carnage that consolidated a fascistic regime and had no end in sight.

As much as I admire VDH, I find this sentence obscene. It assumes something I reject totally: that the lives within a pathological, killer society are worth exactly the equivalent number of American lives.

If those people cannot save themselves, and simultaneously contribute to the continuing export of murder and mayhem, then their lives are worth no more than cockroaches, even the images of wide-eyed children suffering the consequences affects me less and less, as the endless Politically Correct games play out.
In short, I am not willing to continue losing sons, neighbors and friends for the sole purpose of "feeling good" about being right, without changing a thing.

"People get the government they deserve."--le Comte de Maistre

"As much as I admire VDH, I find this sentence obscene. It assumes something I reject totally: that the lives within a pathological, killer society are worth exactly the equivalent number of American lives."

Without going into the relative values of American versus Iraqi lives, I will point out that law and order wise, conditions in Iraq were much safer under Saddam than they are now.

Arab Muslim culture is a very primitive one compared to practically every other currently practiced today. Individuals have no sense of self. They are members of a tribe first, a religious sect second, a nation, a distant third.

They do not choose their own destiny as they belong to their father or their husband, and he in turn belongs to his chieftain or Mullah. As such they fulfill the tasks assigned to them and no more. Individual thought or rebellion is weeded out and punished. Life is lived on a smaller scale. There is no such thing as individual freedom or responsibility. Virtually everyone is a vassal to someone else and only the man at the top is truly free.

It used to be Saddam Hussein, now there will be a struggle to find out his successor but in the end, Islamic tribal culture will demand that there is one man rule once again. le Comte de Maistre was right, people do get the government they deserve. In Iraq's case, they want and deserve a brutal dictator. How else do you explain their behavior. A brutal dictator seems to be the only type of ruler that can maintain law and order in such a primitive society.

It will remain this way until Iraqi's give up Islamic tribal culture. In that respect, western music, movies, fashions, and businesses are probably more effective than troops. The troops aren't even attempting to make Iraqi's give up their religion.

1. In the 1960's, 1,000 Americans died in automobile collisions each week. We did not flee the American highways and roadways. When this war is three and one half years old, we will probably have about as many deaths of American soldiers in Iraq as we used to suffer from auto collisions in THREE WEEKS.

2. Each American death in combat or at the hands of "insurgent" murderers/cowards is precious. Nonetheless, let us not get carried away over what has been a VERY low casualty war.

3. Greater love no man hath than that he should lay down his life for a friend.

4. If you doubt there are friends among the Iraqis, re-read Valin's #21, the letter from the Iraqi mayor in which he thanks American soldiers from his town (Ninewa?? Ninevah???) that was the heart of darkness under Al Qaeda's Al-Zarqawi.