...has simply lost his mind. There's no other explanation.

this is after all America's post WWII exceptional foreign policy strategy--if you don't let us make money on your lands plundering your resources and people (or alternatively if you don't undermine those sovereigns we are seeking to undermine by whatever means possible) then you get bombed and we step in with our hand picked puppet regime of exiles.

It really is quite diabolical in its simplicity. Pull a Goebbels--tell the people they are under attack by the nefarious forces of evil (brown people of non-Christian persuasions and at one time those wily old Ruskies) and label any dissenters as unpatriotic and poof you've got mass support for mass killing anywhere on the globe.

That Americans believe in the myth of their own exceptionalism can only rightly be labeled 21st centure self-delusion. They are exceptionally gifted at overconsumption and hours of mindless television programming watched and turning an productive industrial/agricultural economy into one that creates wealth through three card monty financial market manipulation. Well it's also exceptional that they have a two-tiered legal system--one for the ultra rich and corporate entities and one for the serfs. Hayek the huckster. Friedman the willing fool. And Cheney the puppetmaster felon pulling the strings on Shrub his dyslexic marionette much to his personal amusement.

If you really don't care about a given country, then trying to introduce a better way of life is certainly a waste of time and resources. It's a much better idea to let the combatants kill each other off and let someone else rehabilitate the leftovers.

I reiterate the call to bring all the troops home (except Iraq) and let's tend to our own business.

Not that my previous screed needed padding, but it feels incomplete without a specific reference to the grotesque metastasis of private/corporate military forces, the burgeoning mercenary trade expanding rapidly to assuage the insatiable appetite of war and occupation.

It's another vast dance floor upon which to practice the slip-slidin' steps in the government and military partnership with for-profit service delivery systems; it's not your daddy's hardware store any more! The confluence of financial and economic forces aside, here's another area where the operational checks and balances are minimal and ambiguous.

This conspicuous absence of bright lines and boundaries sanctions gratuitous mayhem, and is devoid of accountability and consequences for personnel who commit crimes, either on or off-duty. I suppose I ought to drill Google for examples, but I doubt that there's anyone (except for the trolls) who hasn't seen stories from the allegations of rape to drunken homicide that slip through cracks in law and due process.

The criminal misfeasors atop the chain of command act out of a delusional and reprehensible realpolitik which transmits their pathological approval for the unrestrained exercise of force and violence to accomplish our leaders' virtuous and exceptionalist ends.

Our plutocracy, down to reptiles like John Yoo, make exactly the error confronted by Thomas More and his son-in-law William Roper in "A Man for All Seasons" [see sig for link].

In short, the ruling cabal has purported to cut down all laws in its righteous and relentless pursuit of The Devil, presumptively riding on an Axis of Evil as a witch rides on a broom. They are either utterly oblivious, or cynically and nihilistically indifferent to the ultimate consequence of this rabid folly.

We're noticing the painfully infected symptoms of a gravely compromised rule of law.

Supporters of the occupation (sorry fraternal assistance) of Iraq used to point to Somalia as an example of what should be done -- of how tough Ethiopians managed to avoid the problems caused by US softies. As far as I recall, such hawkish enthusiasts were not employed on the editorial board of The Washington Post. However, it remains true that if things seem to be going well in Somalia, some hawks will argue that our problem in Iraq is insufficient ruthlessness and if things go badly in Somalia (on a lesser scale than the disaster in Iraq) then hawks argue that this shows that invasions are needed, conveniently forgetting that Somalia was recently invaded.

Their intellectual error, hypocrisy, dishonesty, insanity and idiocy is so immense that it is beyond even Glenn Greenwald's patience to list the ways in which they are wrong.

Yes, Electro, and fellow travelers, look at the picture of that savage Iraqi pulling the dead body of his young son out of the rubble. What a bunch of f**king savages those Iraqis are.

You are always on about the Holocaust, Electro. Have you learned nothing from it? Or is it OK to demonize and dehumanize those "savage" Arabs?

The one thing we seemed to have learned from the Vietnam War is not to allow many pictures of what's really going on to appear on the Nightly News. Enough like that of the dead 3-year-old savages and maybe this war would be over.

Rosen, an Israeli journalist who speaks Arabic, has been on the ground in Iraq for years. This article, depicting what's really going on, and predicting worse, is grim:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/05/selling_the_war/

That article, and that picture of the Iraqi father and his dead child, and I am undone.

Am I calling for regime change?

Yes, but by us alone, and not any busybodies from abroad.

That's exactly what Bush did in Iraq because he couldn't convince any other countries whose assistance he wanted to join him and participate in his lunacy. You said:

"A government that uses air power on a civilian population that it controls has gone beyond the limit and needs to be abolished."

Arguably one of the justifications for our intervention in Iraq and possibly the only one based on fact. Almost every Kurd and more than a few Iraqis had been hoping for a "regime change" and asking for help from "busybodies from abroad" in achieving that. That's most likely why the Iraqi Air force used chemical or nerve agents on them. They had been asking Iran for assistance in achieving autonomy from Iraq during the Iran Iraq war. I'm trying to think of successful rebellions, revolts and regime changes that have not involved some form of outside assistance, intervention or interference. We had a fair amount of assistance ourselves from the French "busybodies from abroad". I cannot think of many. Now we try to effect this "regime change" here though more peaceful avenues such as politics and elections but even that doesn't always provide results that everyone is happy with. I'm not taking a position either way. I'm just trying to understand your position better because it seems unclear to me what you are advocating.