In addition, his infrastructure was relatively sturdy, despite a decade of embargos, and culturally his country was relatively moderate, allowed women in most roles in society, and was, except for the guy on top we didn’t like, one of the better regimes in the Middle East.

Instead of that relative stability, people are dying by the hundreds of thousands, millions have been made into refugees, and there is no government or infrastructure to speak of.

So where am I wrong in saying we are worse for Iraq than Saddam was?

The answer, of course, is “Yes.”

The trouble with this lovely thesis is that it leaves only one moral option: in order to avoid being responsibility for deaths everywhere, someone (presumably America, as the ones you hold responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world) must impose the kind of draconian control that Saddam imposed . . . and impose it worldwide. At minimum, we should immediately strive to impose it in Iraq. Pardon me, but I have a problem with that.

Granted our evil was far less deliberate and directed (though that’s an arguable point), but cronyism and unfettered profiteering is capable of just as much evil as direct malice and dictatorial will.

There are two main causes of the debacle in Iraq. One is the centuries of strife between the rival religious and political factions in Iraq, no doubt exacerbated by the excesses during Saddam’s regime. The other, and far more important factor, is the dissolution of governmental, military, and police structure (not to mention infrastructure) caused by our (illegal) invasion, and the lack of any modicum of competency in our subsequent half-hearted attempt at reconstruction. The biggest problem by far was the placement of political allies rather than people with the competence and will to actually fix the problems at hand. Tens (perhaps hundreds) of billions of dollars have gone awry, or have been wasted on useless endeavors that did nothing to advance the situation in Iraq. Halliburton and their ilk have made a killing (literally) but have done little to fix the problems there, despite the tens of billions they have extorted.

That is why I posted what I said above – because I truly believe that our administration and its reprehensible and irresponsible policies has become a bigger threat to the Iraqi people than Saddam had ever represented, and in result, that they have emboldened and augmented the funding and capacity of extremist Moslem terrorists worldwide.

However sleipner, I know you like to stir the pot, but what you said was crazy. We are nowhere near the brand of evil that Saddam will be remembered for long after he’s gone. So please, save the rhetoric. It makes you look silly.

We don’t play under the same rules as they do.

See, that’s the thing I don’t understand why more hawks don’t understand. The more we act like them and take on their tactics, the more it appears as if they’re winning.

That’s also why we need to fight a smart, prolonged campaign instead of thinking that we can go into incredibly dysfunctional countries (with a variety of hatred between groups that we can’t really understand) and try to get them to embrace our way of doing things. This policy/doctrine/wishful-thinking was almost doomed to fail from the start, and Bush’s lack of follow through sealed its fate very early into the post-war Iraq.

There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there.

He’s right, but do you know why? An American officer has the answer:

“A lot of us feel like we have our hands tied behind our back,” says Cpl. Peter Mattice, of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment. “In Fallujah, [insurgents] know our [rules of engagement] – they know when to stop, just before we engage.”

Ironically, with all of the complaining about the Iraq campaign, it is people like sleipner who are all to eager to apply the ropes.

As one who’s just to the right of Trotsky, I give Sen. Hagel kudos for the courage of his honesty in the face of a constituency that is emotionally still celebrating their 94-95 Husker football teams and the culture of that day.

Bucco