And that, my friend, is the condescending part. I don't need this to be "pointed out" by you, or anyone else, thank you very much. Why, exactly, do you assume that I do? Think about it.
instead of only pointing out the potential benefits of this war as you do.
Big fat lie, right here. I most certainly do not "only" point out the potential benefits of this war. There are many potential drawbacks, and I am fully aware of that. Here's one potential drawback: a chemical or biological terrorist attack on mainland U.S. in retaliation, with thousands of lives lost. It's a possibility, and a very real one. I'm very apprehensive about it. Happy? I still think that war is necessary though. (Of course, you can't understand this part; if I support war, I simply must not be aware of any potential drawbacks whatsoever, and their existence needs to be endlessly "pointed out" to me, as if I am a child. The reason for this, of course, is that ONLY YOU have a brain. None of the rest of us do - how can we, if we disagree with you?)
[Yugoslavia history lesson deleted] Again, I'm not trying to change the subject,
Not trying to, perhaps, but you did.
just pointing out an example of how that war antagonized a potential ally, brought undesirable people into power, and still has the possibility of spilling over into Macedonia and elsewhere.
I disagreed with the Yugoslavia bombing too, for what it's worth. Happy?
The Iraq war has all those possibilities and is in a much more dangerous and critical area of the world.
I have no argument with this. Taking this and everything else into account, I still come out thinking that war is probably necessary. Ok?
Of course, you cannot conceive of that: someone who has thought about all the things you've thought about, and yet, come to a different conclusion. How can such a thing be possible? So, I'm sure you'll think of something that (you assume) I haven't "thought through", and then "point it out" to me. Looking forward to it....
I on the other hand don't see much reward in the best case: another Arab puppet dictactor or an experiment in controlled democracy instead of Saddam and his much hyped WMD programs. The worst case is that we will end up worse off with chaos leading to more terrorism and our withdrawal from the region. I gave some examples from history of bad war outcomes.
My examples don't apply directly (what you call changing the subject) because there are no direct analogies between those situations. I only use them to point out the various ways that strategies can fail in the long run. I agree that the administration has thought through tactical contingencies and has plans for them. But when a strategy fails (e.g. the Kurds decide they want a country, Iran decides to arm Shiites, Turkey turns fundamentalist, etc) we won't have military options.
The essential problem with war is that it greatly increases the chances of those outcomes because it gets people stirred up, opens old wounds, and creates opportunities for evil such as retribution against innocents which causes even more war. You call that an argument against all war but it's not. War is sometimes inevitable, we were attacked on 9/11 and went to war against the Islamic terrorists who attacked us. War against Iraq, even assuming there's a terrorist connection, is not inevitable.