[Comrade]

What's wrong with comparing Japan and Iraq?
Both have a flaw in their culture (in Japan's it happened to be militarism rather than religious fundamentalism), which we were perfectly ready to do the whole live and let live, then we were attacked, by both Japan's militarism and by Islamic fundamentalism. Only going after Al Qaida would be solving the symptoms, not the cause.
And like in Japan, we are going to, through armed presence, stamp out the repressiveness, and allow Arabic culture to survive in the modern world.
Groups of men walk around Saudi Arabia with sticks, they beat any women wearing "inappropriate clothing" or not accompanied by a man.

By the way, excusing Japan's imperialism as "just a phase capitalist countries, (which, by the way, is incorrect, as 19-20th century Japan's economy was centrally controlled), go through" is worthless. They expressed the flaws of their culture, attacked us, and we went from live and let live to live and remove the harmful influences.

Sonart, are there not an equal amount of things that were said would happen that DID happen? Such as rebuilding of infrastructure, an Iraqi constitution (of COURSE it was overseen by us. We did the same thing to Japan and Germany, and you can't say they're worse off for it), things that actually matter? Or is leftist (because that IS where this sentiment comes from) defeatism somehow more comfortable?