But also, those who were against the war were not advocating sensible alternatives about what to do with dictators and terrorists.

A simple, five-minute examination of the geographic facts about Iran, Korea, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Russia, China, and most anywhere else 'dictators' and 'terrorists' reside leads to one inescapable fact: they are all different in size and position on the globe.

A little further study of their respective social, political, economic, and ethnic make-up leads to another startling insight: they each present different challenges and require different strategies.

Ergo, you have to be a bigger godsbedamned moron then George Walker Bush to even suggest coming up with a one-size-fits-all strategy for dealing with these places and people!

So, until you are prepared to actually accept we live in a damned complex and often confusing world, please don't think you can lecture anyone about what the 'anti-war crowd' should or should not be doing about the rest of the world.

There are plans aplenty already offered for getting us out of Iraq. Perhaps you should confine yourself to debating those (after reading them of course) and leave the high-minded fantasies to those on Wingnut Welfare.

They could not see things from the other guy's point of view at all, they denied the humanity of the Iranians. - Aycharaych

I'm not saying that to be smart. Its an essential element of any group that depends upon identity politics for its survival to deny the fact that their enemy 'other' is the same as themselves.

The cliche terrorist is some immoral, psychopathic monster. As such, they are no longer human and thus can be killed without remorse. One cannot help but wonder if that's precisely how the 'terrorist' sees those they attack.

Perhaps without fully realizing it, we as a society have internalized this de-humanization of our nominal enemies, thus all but negating the moral and ethical argument against armed intervention in the world. Hence Miss Slaughter and company being unable to understand the core fallacy of their assumptions.

Something to think about I suppose.

For my money, education is (or should be) always about learning to read and write, over and over again

Travel to other countries and learning other languages couldn't hurt either, could it?

Did you know that scientific opinion polls have been around since the mid 1930s?

Then by all means, cite the relevant ones to prove your underlying thesis.

I'd bet there's some relevant national opinion poll statistic for each of these wars if someone cared to do the research.

Clearly you don't care to do so to support you own position (such as it is). Unless you're just bitching that somethings can be better grasped intuitively than quantitatively, something that sounds in opposition to the training you cite.

Here's a question for you: in your opinion, has the United States ever shot itself in the foot - politically, economically, militarily and diplomatically - as completely as it has since embarking on this mad march into Babylon five years ago?

Writing dross like this makes me wonder:

You all keep proving Slaughter’s point. You are progressives, so start progressing rather than saying you can’t fix important things! Saying that no one will listen to us is pathetic.

Remind me which side of the debate published the plan "A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq"? You can find it at http://www.responsibleplan.com/

What’s the point of being progressives, if you keep saying that ending war and terrorism isn’t possible?!

Its called "facing reality".

We just need to expand the basic idea of governance and policing from the local level to the international level. It’s the same principle. Ending mass killing isn’t a controversial goal, so we can get agreement from every nation at least in principle.

No, its not a controversial goal in the slightest and truly admirable one that has, in large measure, been accomplished.

But if you seriously expect the rest of the planet to accede to some kind of 'world government' dictating to them, you are (again) a bigger godsbedamned moron than George Walker Bush. We can discuss it all we want, but getting the rest of the world to go along with the idea is going to take generations (at least).

In the meantime, there's the not very small fact the causes of violence and terrorism are legion, and thus beyond the capacity of any central authority to legislate or work against. The most we can hope to do, now and today, is minimize the damage it causes.

Its reality. Deal with it, will you?

Its about the ongoing, unfolding, inescapable tragedy that is the US occupation of Iraq.

We can debate whether it is the single worst strategic blunder in American history or just one of the Top 10.

We can debate the quantitative measures of that measure for now until we're all collecting Social Security.

But such debates are cold comfort and frankly irrelevant to the families of the following:

The 3,996 US service members KIA

The 50,000+ US service members WIA

The 145 US service members dead of self-inflicted wounds

The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians KIA

The 2 million Iraqi civilians displaced and presently refugee

sources:

http://icasualties.org/oif/

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22537.pdf

http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/9679

Those are the quantitative measures that we should care about now. At least if any of us actually cared about what's happening today.

I get the sense some of commentators here don't.

Speaking for myself, I do care.

My comments were directed specifically at a couple who are insisting on "quantitative measures" and withholding judgment until history is written.

No offense was meant to the rest.