What a fun, light-hearted thread. I'll add my 2 cents.
To be an American is to believe in freedom, yes? Freedom is the greatest and most important thing in the world and most of us Americans take it for granted every day. Iraq was a brutal dictatorship. The country was ruled with an iron fist, and while that may have given the country structure (unlike the total chaos now), it certainly didn't allow for people to think and live freely.
Think about that for a minute, please. Think about what your life would be like if you couldn't do whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. Do any of us in America or Canada or Scotland (Robbie, sorry I don't know much about your government - you may be typing in shackles for all I know
) have any idea what it's like to have major restrictions put on our lives?
Think about it for a minute.
No matter what our reasons are/were for liberating Iraq, the most important thing is that maybe those millions of people will get a taste of what it's like to be free and they will learn to live together and prosper. That's the dream!! That's why all of us smug, arrogant bastards can sit around and type endless BS at each other all day. It's great, isn't it?!
I don't care what Bush's agenda is. I'm not naive enough to think it's all about people's freedom, but if that's even 1% the reason why he had our troops invade, that's good enough for me. Can you imagine living in Saddam's Iraq, or one of those horrible African tribes, or in communist China, or being sent off to Siberia for no particular reason?!! I can't!! But I try to think about it every now and then to ground myself and put things in perspective.
If the U.S. is ever taken over and I'm forced to live like the people of Iraq did, you better believe I'm gonna hope some country decides to attack and restore my freedom. I know what it's like to live free. Those poor people over there don't. Hopefully they'll get to find out. Even if it takes 1 or 10 or 100 years to make it happen, isn't it worth it?
The U.S. can't be the world police. I know that. You can love Bush or you can hate him. It doesn't really matter, does it? I know we would all like to think our opinions matter, but let's face it, they really don't count for much at all. But we get to have them and express them. That's pretty nice. The fact is that we're (the U.S.) in Iraq. It happened. Get over it. It may not be what you'd have done, but you don't get to decide. I know that sucks - human nature tends to gravitate towards selfishness. But I think that we should all be glad that millions of people are getting a shot at freedom.
Now can we all get back to getting along? Of course we can all sit here and call each other names and pretend we are authorities on global politics, but really, who are we fooling? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I don't know what level of knowledge any of you are functioning at, and I sure don't know what it's like to walk in any of your shoes. The one thing I do know is that we all know what it's like to live freely. Let's not take it for granted. Let's put our arrogant, selfish differences aside and have some fun talking A/V.
Ahhhhh screw it. I know more than all of you. Fight on!!
