I'm one of those "dickbags" who are glad we took all of our troops out of Iraq, so middle-finger away. The Sunnis and Shi'a have been making war on each other for 1400 years; it's the defining feature of the Middle East. The interventionists who are saying we should help the Shi'a Iraqi government fight the Sunni ISIS were just a few months ago arguing that we should fight with ISIS against Shi'a Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

America has no compelling interest in what is essentially a recrudescence of sectarian war in the Middle East. Both sides will play us against the middle for their own ends. Your screed fails to note that our Iraqi "friends" asked us to leave in 2011, after refusing to accept a Status of Forces agreement that would have given our military and intelligence personnel immunity from Iraq's laws and judicial processes. Keep in mind that Sadamm Hussein was once our Iraqi "friend," when he was fighting our Iranian "enemy," who will now presumably become our Iranian "friend" in the fight against ISIS.

I don't like decapitations, but I'd rather see Middle Easterners being decapitated in their centuries-old war than Americans who have been sent to execute incoherent polices among ever shifting alliances for allies who take us for all we'll got and reward our "friendship" with betrayal (our Saudi Arabian "friends" are providing arms and funding to ISIS). That's not bitching and whining, it is based on a hard-headed calculation of America's best interests.

One thing I've learned. When someone has to resort to calling names and crude gestures, they don't have a well thought out argument.

I wasn't among that group either. The only thing I didn't like about going was there were no clear objectives set. If we went to get Hussein out of office, as soon as we got him out we should have left. What was our mission? If we went to investigate WMD's, after finding none, we should have said sorry and left. Saddam was a bully and bullies should learn not to taunt or threaten others they don't rule. Again, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong (besides it's all hindsight again).

The Non-interventionists were right because of our inability to be conquerors. It is no longer 1945, and our enemies do not fall into the neat bounderies of Germany and Japan. If we go into the chaos of the Middle East it should be to win, to take over, to reap the benefits and to stay as long as it takes to get them to be lawful under our iron fist. That is the only way it can be done when dealing with tribal primitives. If we don't have the stomach for that, than stay the hell out. Be sure to build up and support our interests with friends. Close the damn border and tap our own resources. Encourage rather than discourage with taxes marketing, manufacturing, and invention. Then, no one on earth will be able to come close to threatening us. Oh, sorry, I must have been asleep and dreaming.

Couldn't agree with you more.

I wasn't among that group. As I saw it, a trans-national gang of pirates, of the type to whom Saddam Hussein often gave safe haven and a place to train, had destroyed a commercial property and killed 3,000 people.

I didn't count on the Iraqi army being such cowards. You can't fix cowardice. So today I say: let it pass.

As for the battle to come in Arizona, this will be decided in courts, legislatures, via executive fiat. This "war" will be lost, too, because the US government does not have the stones to handle it the way that they should. They fear what will be thought of the US internationally more than they fear the American people's willingness to vote them out of power. Why should they fear the American people? Enough of the American people have been successfully bought off. My escape plan is in place.

Yes, the war was forced upon us. When a snake threatens, you cut off its head. You do not look for all of the other snakes and take them out, too. A special ops mission to take out bin Laden like what eventually occurred could have been justified, but not such a wide scale war. I have a hard time believing that, with the CIA and NSA, we couldn't track bin Laden that precisely.

Iraq was in many way like Vietnam. We could win all the on-field battles, but still lose the war. It was easy to predict that both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, once the US troops left (or will leave) that things will return to the same chaos they did before. The premise that the US can build other nations into productive friends is a false premise.

As for the country becoming a disaster under a black President, the disaster we are in has nothing to do with skin color. It has everything to do with altruism and fiscal irresponsibility. Herman Cain would have been a terrific president.

Me, too, as was Ron Paul.