[Hildy]

"We cannot simply walk away from Iraq without repercussions. In that sense, Iraq is decidedly not Vietnam."

The three million innocent human beings murdered when we walked away from Vietnam might quibble with that statement. Except they can't. They're dead.

It's simply incomprehensible to me that there are actually people who don't understand what would happen if we were to pull out of Iraq right now. The inhumanity of it is breathtaking.

[JasonC]

You are right, it is breathtaking. There are at least two kinds of critters involved. One lot simply delude themselves with HappyThought (tm). Those are the ones carrying the placards that say "Heathcare not warfare" and the like. Evil only exists if it is thrust under their noses, and then whoever brings it to their attention is probably the real culprit. If instead we all just thought HappyThought and CARED, we'd all get along.

They don't think about the murdered millions. They couldn't sleep if they did. They can't think about them because their own past decisions and positions and efforts materially abetted the murderers, and interfered with those trying to stop them. If they admitted this to themselves, when they looked in the mirror every morning they would be physically sick. So they block it out with a bigger dose of HappyThought, they earnestly CARE a little more deeply (much more deeply than the cynics they know must surround them), and it passes.

The second lot know what happens. They just really don't care. Other people, especially if far enough away or different enough, just aren't of moral concern. Some of these are scared as all get-out and just want to appease baddies in the hope they will go away. Murder somebody else, but not my son, above all not me.

Some are worse still, know what happens, but long for power and influence so strongly, they will do anything and I mean anything, to secure them. If that means exploiting a demagogic opening and blaming some current office holder for things that aren't their fault, no problem. If it means encouraging HappyThought, that is easy to manufacture, whatever the market wants.

Some of this type tell themselves they will do more good once they have power, whatever they do to get there. And others just really, really don't care. They'd physically kill for office if it didn't get them arrested, but it is personal advancement sought cynically, they are after. And some are radical enough they positively want capitalist pigs like us to get their come-uppence. To them the only thing wrong with killing fields is who is getting killed.

Numerically, the legions of HappyThought are overwhelmingly dominant. The other types are overrepresented in the actual pols, and in opinion leaders manipulating it all.

And yes, it is breaktaking. I call it moral squalor. We've been wallowing in it, as a country, since the 1970s. Some of the parts of the world we find ourselves fighting in, have lived in that atmosphere for literally centuries, and it is why outright murderous bastards run those parts of the world.