Reply #26: Okay, a few points.

[Deep13]

First, I don't want to imply that I am crediting the figures you cite. They may be right, but I don't know.

Second, the Gulf War was over when Clinton took office. So the decision whether or not to go to war over Kuwait was immaterial.

At the conclusion of that war the U.N. (not the USA) used sanctions to prevent Iraq from destabilizing the region and threatening its neighbors. Part of this was to prevent Iraq from securing fissionable material which they were seeking in the 1980s. I agree that we should not have been dependant on Mid. East oil, but we were and so were a lot of other people. Don't forget, "the economy" is ultimately how people feed themselves, so it was not a trivial matter.

Despite this, Iraq continued to act aggressively and challenge U.N. sanctions. Had Iraq complied, the sanctions may have been lifted. We were not killing anyone after the war. The Iraqis (Sadam and his henchmen) were doing that on their own. Had Sadam abdicated, the sanction would have been lifted. The only alternative to sanctions and inspections while still keeping Sadam pacified was open war with Iraq. We did that in 2003 with disasterous concequences.

The Lancette did a study a couple years ago that found that the Iraq War caused roughly half a million civilian deaths in Iraq. These were not necessarily people shot by US/UK troops, but rather died from all war-related causes. Plus their economy is destroyed. Plus ours is wrecked. Plus we have what, 4000 dead GIs by now? Plus the military is wrecked. Plus Iraq is poised to become another Islamic fundamentalist state.

I'm sorry, but your view of foreign policy is good for aspirations, but it is not an accurate relection of what foreign relations actually do. Foreign policy has always had real reprocussions for real people. That is why it is so contentious. That is why people are willing to resort to war to get what they want. The outcome of a dispute may decide whether a group of people continue to exist or become extinct. It may be the difference between peace and slavery. Stakes are always high and even unavoidable consequences can be disasterous. There often is no right answer to a problem.