It baffles me that so many Amercians support Bush

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1. You are dodging the issue of the resonsibility of Americans for their government, quibbling with "overbreadth" while refusing to acknowledge even any minimal responsibility. Why don't you just tell us what that responsibility is, as you see it? For example, if someone supports a policy, urges others to do the same, and takes some action to see that officials who also support that policy get elected (like voting), how are they absolved of all moral responsiblity if the policy is implemented and innocent people are foreseeably harmed as a result?

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You have on more than one occasion blamed ALL Americans for EVERYTHING bad ANY elected officials have accomplished. I say that is a crock. Now you may be softening your stance to attacking only those who support such policies by vote, but if so, you can't include me in your criticism, because I didn't vote for Bush in 2000.

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2. Once again, you can't get over your stupid assumption that the test for the morality of foreign conquest isn't the rights of the conquored, but the rights of the conquerors, or more specifically the rights of citizens in the conquoring country, as if the motivating force for conquest was some desire to "make the world British" or some such other imperial nonsense.

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The rights of the citizens of the conquering country are a fairly good indicator as to what rights the conquered will enjoy. Look at Germany and Japan after they were conquered in WWII, for example, then contrast that with what rights the East Germans and bloc countries had when they were controlled by the USSR for decades. West Germany's citizens' rights more or less reflected the rights of citizens in the USA, whereas East Germany's citizens rights' reflected the rights of Soviet citizens. No freakin' comparison at all. Additionally the USA is trying to get democracy going in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you can't point to instances of dictatorships the USA has supported as contraindicatory examples, because in those cases the USA was not trying to get democracy going. Where the USA tried to get democracy going (Japan) it succeeded; only time will tell if it will succeed in the Middle East.

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Quote:
"And no country that is not a tyranny or dictatorship is on the receiving end of our military might."


This is false.

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So name one country please--in the present, not the past.

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But if we assume that the people living under a tyranny or dictatorship are the primary victims of that regime, you are saying that it is usually appropriate to kill these people because of political problems beyond their control.

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No, quit twisting my words. That was a BAD twist there, Chris. What I'm saying is that it can be reasoned as morally acceptable to remove a bloody tyrant even at the (inevitable) cost of some innocent lives through collateral damage. Comparing numbers may provide some indication as to whether it is acceptable or not.

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Whereas most people believe that the tree of liberty must be occasionally nourished by blood, you use the absence of liberty anywhere as a general excuse to kill innocents.

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Not so. I suggest considering targeting the worst tyrannical dictators, and taking other things into consideration as well, including our own interests.

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Lets' see. How many countries on this forum have you urged the use of direct or indirect military force? Five? Ten? Probably closer to the latter.

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I have suggested that some countries might best be presented with ultimatums, most especially certain terrorist-supporting countries.

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The best that can be said for it is that it reflects an adolescent inability to distinguish actual people and the various conditions they confront from the abstraction of a "country."

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quote]Quote:
"I don't dispute that there is some causal nexus."


Then just assume that I'm referring to the degree of causality you'll admit, and that whatever that is, the U.S. is 100% responsible for it.

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Not at all. In your view that the USA is responsible for all these new terrorists, you are discounting two important factors: 1) the stupidity and fanatacism of the terrorists themselves, which should not be discounted; in other words, they, not the USA, are primarily responsible for their own actions, and 2) that some number of new terrorists were going to spring forth regardless of whether or not the USA had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. This should be obvious based on past terror attacks including 9/11, and because Saudi schools and Pakistani madrassas regularly teach hatred of the West to their youths.