Boot, Don't Spatter.

Truer words were never spoken.

Once Upon a Time...: "it is worse than futile to try to solve the problem discussed by Atrios and Sullivan (or any similar problem) in isolation, disregarding this much more fundamental issue. If we're in charge, if we call the shots, then do it -- and be prepared to accept all the consequences. We don't get to choose just those consequences that are 'acceptable,' or that will not be too bloody or too horrifying. If we're going to be occupiers, then be occupiers. If we want to destroy the country in order to save it, then do it, and be judged accordingly.

Otherwise, get the hell out."

I'm not "anti-war" = that's as silly as being anti-rain. I am against being rained upon. Likewise, I have a great aversion to being warred upon. Nonetheless, there are some situations in which one must turn up one's collar, turn one's umbrella into the wind and dare the elements to do their worst.

And this is also the case when the human weather is inclement, such as, say, during the Battle of Britain, or subsequent to Pearl Harbor, when there was really no choice but to put on one's welliles and slog through the mud and the blood.

But in this case, we are the inclement weather, and we are the ones being met with dignity and fortitude. One cannot "win" such a war.

And if someone tells you that, by the Lord Harry, we CAN, ask them what non-abstract provable improvement in life will accrue as a result?

Further ask them, what are they willing to lose to ensure that victory?

For as Silber points out, there is only one way forward to an incontestable victory - and that is to pile up skulls until the memory of the Assyrian Empire is buried beneath them, until the streets run as red as the steps of an Aztec temple, until, in short, everyone in the entire middle east with the will to resist us is dead, or broken beneath the wheels of our chariots.

That, of course, would be what we would need to sacrifice in order to "win." We would have to sacrifice our humanity.

Faced with that choice, I think we need to consider the example of one who may come to be known as the greatest single hero of this conflict.

Iraq War, War Resistance, Impeach,