Reply #21: "thousands of American soldiers"

[GreenArrow]

not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Not to mention the destruction and disruption of Iraqi culture and history. Not to mention the countless widows and orphans and terminally maimed injured and damaged left behind. Not to mention the theft of that nation's resources, or the multi-generational impact of the envrionmental damage we've caused there. It's important to rememember our troops as well, but sadly, that's as far as most Americans are willing to look. They prefer not to realize that one country was at fault here, one country was the aggressor, one country has acted illegally, immorally and that that country is our own. For most of us, the Iraqis don't count, they are lesser peoples, they had it coming...after all, our strategic vital interests outweigh those of the people who actually live there, which they do essentially at our pleasure.

Those who voted for it knew exactly what they were doing, and all Durbin et al have done is give further credence to what many of us already saw/see knew/know; that this was a vote for empire, for power and wealth, for political expedience and personal ambition. Most of the world saw this, so much so that even the carrot and stick diplomacy that's usually used to forge "coalitions" wasn't viable. And it's ironic; even if Bush had somehow managed to get the UN and our "allies" fully on board, the war still would have been every bit as unjustified and unecessary.