Artful Dodger:
> The US can't win:

This is true in the sense that our western governments have played a political game in which they want to prove to their voting puublics that they are acting with the best intentions. I call this the "Peace Keeping Syndrome". Being a Canadian I blame Canada to a great extent for this because the "Peace Keeping Movement" at the UN was spear-headed by Canada.

Our governments used military force to bring about relative peace to certain parts of the world. In particular Lebanon, Cyprus and others. The UN was successful in stopping some military conflicts, but the UN charter forbid a foreign power from coming in and changing the internal political system. That meant letting dictators (or any government) do as they pleased inside their country. Peace keeping was not an option unless the conflict spread outside of a countries borders.

Things did change with Iraq. Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait and the UN Charter allowed military action against him, but it forbid removing him from power. It is why George Bush (Sr.) did not order the army to enter Bagdad.

George W. Bush and his administration did try to get backing from the UN. They engaged all possible diplomatic channels and in the end convinced 49 countries to form a coalition. The big problem was that the intellegence (or lack of it) was bad. The threat that Saddam posed externally turned out not to exist. If the had found WMDs things would be different now. The actions would have been militarily justified.

In all of this you will notice the great effort spent in justifying military action, both at home and abroad. That is the "Peace Keeper Syndrome". We want to enforce peace. We want to enforce democracy, rule of law, freedom, etc. We want to enforce things that are abstract ideological constructs.


> It's a small world after all. And it's getting smaller. The US must do something,
> along with the international community, to stop the thugs of the world.

We get to the heart of the matter. We MUST do something. What if we didn't? The thugs would run over things. Yet to stop the thugs we must become thugs ourselves. We want to save the world, and use force to do it. We want to have it both ways. Go to war and impose our system on others, but we want to be called lovers of peace and democracy at the same time. Our politicians know this and they try their best to convince us that the idelogical justifications are what matter. The ulterior motives (like oil and power) should be ignored.


> N. Korea is a good case in point. You people feel safe with these thugs having
> nuclear arms?

Perhaps at this point we get to a case of hypocrisy and double standards. It is OK for countries that already have nuclear weapons to keep them for "national protection and defense". The assumption is that we are sane, rational, peace-loving nuclear powers. The other guys are dangerous thugs. The truth is that nuclear powers have a monopoly of military might and they want to keep it.

If Iraq had truly had WMDs, would the US have truly gone to war?

Our excuse is simple:
"We have WMDs, but the thugs should not get their hands on them because then the thugs can attack us."

We want to keep our deterrent we don't want others to have it. I guess our presidents will always be sane, and our failsafe systems will always be there. North Koreans really want to use nuclear bombs against us. They are all insane and they have a death wish!