Actually, US, I think you have a perfectly fine opinion. And, at least, the brains to recognize that it is an opinion.

The question left floating is to what degree is the Iraq insurgency a response to occupation by outsiders, to what degree is it a response by extra-national terrorists flocking in to have a shot at the Evil West, and to what degree is it ingrained political reistance by surviving elements of the old power structure under Saddam? I think all three are mixed together, and we have to take resposnibility, to some degree, for having generated the situation.

How we did that was by (a) invading in the first place, with an enemy that was not defined, against which we had a nebulous case (I mean Iraq, not AL Qaeda). And (b) allowing Iraq to become the staging area and theater for the whole dramatisation of any Jihadista that could be stirred up, were alreayd stirred up, or wanted to get stirred up into acting out their brand of extremism.

Now maybe it was clever to make a Middle Eastern region into the staging area and theater, drawing out the bedbugs from cells all over the Middle East into one region.

Maybe it was accidental, but still a good idea strategically.

Maybe it was a catastrophic blunder, requiring us to expend huge overhead for a looong time fighting another overseas war of intervention with inadequate rationale and terrible logistics.

Even if it was a good idea strategivcally it might be the case that it is morally reprehensible because it causes the loss of more human life than would be lost otherwise. Some people do not think killing others is morally wrong if they can muster a glib rationale for it.

Personally, I believe killing a human is deeply wrong and only worsens the situation. George Bush doesn't mind executing people and has been known to mock those who plead for mercy at his hands. ("She said, 'Please, Governor, don't kill me'", he laughed.) That's his style. The notion that hundreds of innocent bystanders have been pulped by his war machine is just an indifferent speculaiton to his mind. Why? An extraordinary ability to rationalize and jusatify, beyond normal human levels, thus keeping his conscience firmly enmeshed in a black web of ignoral from which it cannot be heard.

A