Democracy and War

From Mithras:

"We didn't win the Cold War by fighting. We won it because the other guy lost. We won it by not fighting. We could have nuked China; we didn't and China is slowly moving down the path to freedom. We killed a million Vietnamese for no good reason and it took far longer for them to move to a free-market economy than it would have if we had dealt with Ho when he first came to us, after World War II. So much suffering we caused by blundering around, so much harm we did inadvertently to the cause of freedom.

A war to liberate people from an invader, as we did in Europe in the 40s or even in Kuwait in the 90s, makes sense. A war to liberate people from the trials of their own history does not."

Sometimes the correct thing to do is to do nothing at all. It sorta reminds me of when I was in High School. There was a girl I was fanatically in love with and I showered her with gifts (that I couldn't afford) and praise (that she wasn't worthy of) and the more I pushed the less she liked me. Years later when I saw her again, she told me, "Yeah, I thought you were cute, but you were annoying as F-ck!" That might just be the eulogy for the US in Iraq. We liked your Democracy, we hated your war.

By the way, now I'm only as annoying as shit.