But I don't see that as a good excuse to keep something going that is costing us 10 billion a month and straining our military not to mention the cost to Iraq and Iraqis.

I know you may have missed this from my post yesterday, re pulling out from Saigon at Nam. It's ok, I know everyone cant read everything. I miss some linkings from post to post too. Here it is from my post on the 'Little Iraqi Madonna' yesterday, speaking about how some want not to face the realities of war but some of us do. And continue to…. Re: Mullen

” Mullen and I talk alot late at night about what a withdrawal from Iraq may presage, what slaughter of even more innocents might occur. We both remember the fall of Saigon intimately, people trying to throw their children over the walls of the embassy to save them, people trying to cling to the sled legs of the American helicopters in a desperate attempt to escape Saigon’s immanent bloodbath, but falling to their deaths instead….”

I hear you DLS, and I know you see too that the dove, as in a tale of eld, often cannot find a place to rest 'out in the world,' unless some make even a teeny ledge for her in the heart… all other things remaining the same.

THis is just my two cents worth.

dr.e

The invasion of Iraq turned out to be a monumental mistake. If it needed to be done, it should have been done with a REAL coalition- not the nominal one we went in there with.

Realism includes seeing the obvious, such as Hussein's not only threats to but attacks on his neighbors, and the vital interests of the developed world that are present in the area where he was making trouble, more than once. It's easier to cherish delusions, though, admittedly.

I know that I am responding to someone who believe his views have a God-like superiority. Kinda like the neocons, no? But the argument that the carnage that came after Saddam was taken out is fully justified because Saddam was taken out is simply pathetic.

Maybe you missed school the day the lesson was that Saddam was not a threat to anyone beyond his own people. Regrettably for them, the U.S. had no more business invading Iraq than it would have invading Iran, China or any number of other sovereign states run by totalitarian thugs for whom human rights are mere abstractions.

To not get involved in Panama means that you have had to support a policy of the U.S. evacuating its military forces while a hostile government harassed the military. To not get involved in Kuwait means that you have let Iraq keep ownership of Kuwait and been a bigger player in the Middle East. How do you think the Clinton Administration would have operated with a strong Iraq in Middle East?

I am shocked to know that you opposed the Grenada invasion. Have you no humanity, man!

The position I took about Viet Nam at the time and have taken about every U. S. military intervention since Viet Nam is that the U. S. military should only be used in the national interest narrowly construed. Consequently, I've opposed practically every used of force by the U. S. over the last 40 years.

Views of the situation in places like Congo and Dar Far need to be broadened a bit. Both are cases of civil war in which neither side is particularly appealing. Intervening necessarily means taking sides. My view about such cases that take place completely within the accepted borders of countries is that however sad they're none of our business. If the French, British, or Germans wish to use their own forces in intervening in these civil wars, let them do so.

Your point is well taken, but it should be noted that among the serial rationales used by the Johnson administration for Vietnam was that it was a humanitarian mission, which of course it was not.

A mission to the Congo or Darfur would be clearly delineated as such, but the danger is indeed such missions spreading beyond their original intention.

Obama will not commit a folly of this enormity because, among other reasons, he has no intention of refighting the Vietnam War as the neocons have. Still, he cannot shrink from the real possibility that there will have to be new U.S. military intervention abroad on his watch. (Can you say Congo?)

We can only hope so.

However, putting troops in Congo or Dar Fur would be much more like the way things started in Viet Nam than it would be like the way things started in Iraq.