I posted this late on another Glenn article and I think it reinforces what you so clearly said.

American ignorance, arrogance and love of winning comprise the disease and why accurate and professional observers like Glenn find so much wrong with our government and culture and unfortunately, of those ill from the disease, many don’t or can’t realize they are sick.

Here’s some of the kind of winning thinking that plagues Americans and America and all of us “liberal” commenters could add many more:

I’m a winner, America is a winner, Christians and Jews are winners, the M$M are winners, our balance of power trilogy of government is a winner, our two-party election system is a winner, our candidates who honor pollsters and attack opponents with untruths are winners, our intellectual scholarship particularly in foreign policy is a winner, our any complex problem has a simple solution mindset is a winner, our capitalistic dog-eat-dog winner take all is a winner, the position of president is a winner regardless of who is holding the position is a winner, our best in the world military is a winner, our wounded and dead are hero winners.

Competition when it is a zero sum game diseases the winners and losers. We love combat on the football gridiron until there is a serious injury and then we rationalize that when you play the game you assume the risk of injury or even death.

Now transfer that thinking to Iraq and low and behold, you get millions of displaced, hundreds of thousands of deaths, emboldened Jihadists, a civil war that unleashes centuries of revenge and a game that can’t end because then you have to accept the consequences and admit you are a loser- not a winner.

Would we have let this Iraq tragedy happen if we had the foresight to understand we have become an empire with a mentally ill emperor and advisors who love to watch their gladiators kill the philistines and terrorize the spectators?

The drug to combat this illness is simple. Cultivate the value of learning to love ourselves, open minds, humility, love of learning, love of nature and humanity, give up the need to have to put someone down so that you can build yourself up and learn that the true value of competition is to challenge yourself and honor your competitors.

“My best guess is that change will come in response to some major crisis, one which I hope we can repair.”

Thanks for the reasoned response instead of emotionally firing back as some do.

I never thought that anything good could come from the invasion and all its terrible repercussions, but today maybe something has. Maybe the American people needed something so wrong as this war to wake them up to the nightmares that so called experts and leaders have wrought. The crisis that it has aroused in our thinking could inspire us to take the next step- action. The polls seem to indicate that the wonderful Americans that are having so many fine Internet discussions are waking many citizens from their slumber. I certainly hope so and I’m sure you do too.

My words to lightning_fast_draw equally apply to you. Thanks.

“The spectre of existential threat annihilates probabalistic reasoning like Pascal's wager does. When you include terms of zero, one, or infinity in probabilistic calculations, all possibilities are overwhelmed by the existential term, leading to the "One Percent Doctrine."

You just reminded me about this ridiculous doctrine. Darth Cheney while he was falsely stating in 1994, that appeared yesterday on youtube, why it would be so wrong to go to Baghdad said what daddy Bush wanted said, but you could see in his eyes that he was pained to say it. He believed then, that daddy was wrong and I believe vowed to one day prove daddy wrong and he, the great know-it-all, right.

He plotted since then and saw his opportunity to strike because of 9/11. I never trusted the guy and it is one of so many reasons why I was against the invasion and did not trust any of the so-called evidence regardless of the accuracy of the intelligence. Darth Cheney wanted a pre-emptive war for his excuse and that shows how dangerous and fatal pre-emptive wars can be.

"Darth Cheney while he was falsely stating in 1994"

Falsely means that Cheney did not believe in his words, his listing of the severe problems that would come from an invasion, were very accurate and truthful to me. I don't remember if I heard them or not in 1994. I was certainly cheering Scowcroft and daddy's decision at the time.

Discredit the military genius and hero Gen. Petraeus through the truth instead of innuendos and propaganda, and you discredit the surge and our continuing presence in Iraq.

I send you with luv a beeyooty from Anne Morrow Lindbergh, "One can get just as much exultation in losing oneself in a little thing as in a big thing. It is nice to think how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy!"

To play war by convincing people it is a melodrama or for ego building is obscene. How anybody can callously send people to their death this way is beyond my comprehension.

I missed you too. Your wise comments were how I got started commenting in this space. Thanks.

The undisputed world heavy weight champion and chairman of this board is and was Darth Cheney. Chalabbi and Allawi wanted to run Iraq and Cheney wanted to be champion of his domain and go down in history as the most influential figure ever to grace our shores and doing so as the unseen puppet master until everything was done and he could emerge triumphantly from the shadows. It has nothing to do with hindsight regarding Cheney and the Iraqis when you believe in any means to justify your end. I agree with you and El Cid on the probable role of all the enabling institutions fools or otherwise.