“I’m sure the otherside will say that were are serving the goals of a dictator and that the dictator is named Big Oil.”

They would be lying, as usual. Most of the leftie lies just need to be ignored. The truth is the best antidote to that kind of propaganda.

I could understand your comment about our troops being mere cannon fodder, except that we are not serving the goals of any of the ares’s dictators.

I’m sure the otherside will say that were are serving the goals of a dictator and that the dictator is named Big Oil.

It’s not an accurate statement of course, but with the Populist sentiment out there right now it may be effective nonetheless.

Paul: The trick is to call Iran out, which Israel is doing right now. You want the other fella to have the long supply line, which is what will happen should Iran reveal its true intentions and attack Israel directly. Even the Europeans won’t be able to ignore the truth then. Just a thought.

O: I could understand your comment about our troops being mere cannon fodder, except that we are not serving the goals of any of the ares’s dictators. We are serving our own purposes(all the real Americans, at least) there, and our forces are never mere cannon fodder; whenever we are in the fight, it’s ours to win. We just have to let the military do what it does best, and keep the politicians away.

The time has come for Syria to take a fall.

Too, too true! But Israel does not have to initiate this, either Syria attacks or it winds up looking very weak. Kicked out of Lebanon, now leaving it’s proxy without support to get wiped up with a dirty dish rag… They have set themselves up for a major embarassment if they do not act.

P: I still disagree with your premise, and read it as you wrote it. Compared with the rest of the ME, Iraq has always been more Western in it’s outlook, so it was the perfect place to start. I guess your and my definition of “Western-style” might differ, and my use of it originally conforms to my definition. Since you made your statement without asking what my definition was, I assume you thought you knew what I meant by that term, or you just didn’t care, in your haste to differ with me.
Notice I said “Western-style” and not “Western”. Too nuanced for you? I never attacked you, btw. I simply disagreed with you. Maybe to you, dissent is attack, I don’t know.

Attacking Syria would be nice and all, but right now the rockets and missiles are being lobbed in from Lebanon. First, destroy your enemies ability to hit your population with hardware, then move on if necessary to the next stage: Kick the crapola out of Syria.

It’s nice to hear that someone is getting the long range strategic purpose of going into Iraq.

Oh I understand that strategic value very much so.

Unfortunately the strategic reality does not shut the door on the argument that our men and women are meer cannon fodder in a region that wants to destroy itself.

Iran could never “roll over us” but they could take us out of being any help to Israel. Fortunately we’ve armed them well over the past few decades.

Still, going after Syria would have been a better option from a PR standpoint on Irael’s part.

O: I know it’s comforting to have a bad guy to blame, because it excuses us from having any responsibility in the matter, and we can just whine and wallow in our collective misery, but some of us don’t really want to live that way.
Think about it this way: We develop our own resources, overthrowing the environmental ayatollahs in this country in the process; we cut off imported oil for five years. Think of the consequences to the ME, which has generally done nothing but spend their oil profits. This is what we need to do; even starting to move on it will scare the crap out of them, like when Ronald Reagan announced the committment to SDI. The Soviet Union, which had been our sworn enemy for two generations, collapsed. They threw in the towel. We need direct, decisive action, not short term political thinking.

Iraq will never be a Western style nation.

Weren’t liberals saying a while back that Muslims/Arabs were incapable of democracy too?

Three elections in Iraq later I wonder where that claim went.