Originally Posted by Willravel

I'm in the SF Bay Area echo chamber, so I mostly hear progressive views on the wars (namely that they're wrong and we need to stop getting involved in other countries' civil wars and concentrate on fixing things here). I can't really speak for elsewhere.

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Casting an eye up and down this thread, I begin to wonder why people get so defensive when it's pointed out that they value white lives more than brown lives? Hmmm. A little close to home, maybe?

The civilian death toll is, in my humble view, the single most reprehensible part of this thing. And there are lots of reprehensible parts of it. The causalness with which it's treated in the press is nothing short of disturbing.

Obviously not every one of those was killed by Coalition forces. Many of them were certainly victims of civil warfare that became possible then the Coalition knocked out the only thing stabilizing Iraq, the heavy hand of Saddam Hussein. He was a bad dude, to be sure, and it's also bad without him around.

This is the lesson we really should have learned a LONG LONG time ago about armed conflict in the Middle East: even when you win, you lose.

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Except for tonight, the president rarely mentions, even in passing, anything that would indicate that the USA is involved in military action. In the political shell game, the diversions have served their masters well. Since the new administration, the focus on anything regarding Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. have been all but intentionally swept under the rug. The body-counts, demands to bring the troops home, vigils, and focusing on the likes of Cindy Sheehan (who?) have all but vanished. Gitmo???