There's an old Johnny Cash album I like from Carnegie hall back in the 60's. At one point he talks on it about visiting Vietnam with his wife and giving concerts for the wounded. Some reporters asked him if that didn't make him a hawk. His reply was no, he wasn't a hawk, but he might just be a dove with claws.
I'm not much of a war hawk. I don't really care about Iraq, or Korea, or oil, or WMDs. But I also don't believe in being an ostritch. Trouble doesn't go away if you turn away and hide your head in the sand. I do care very strongly that Americans have died in Afghanistan, in Iraq. But I don't feel that pulling out and leaving a fledgling democracy to fall on it's ass is the way to respect their sacrifice either.
People have died, plenty of them innocent, many not so much so. There have been abuses. However, an important difference is those abuses have not been officially sanctioned. They have not been set up by people who practice tyranny and genocide, by a dictator who intentionally modeled his life on Josef Stalin, one of the most horrible monsters the last century had to offer. Does that excuse those abuses? Hell no. I suggest we hang the perpetrators of those abuses up by the toenails, and let their victims loose on them.
I don't believe in the reasons we gave for going into Iraq. Having WMDs now? Who cares. I care that he had them in the past. I care that he used them. I care that if he'd never had a single shell with mustard gas, what he did to his people was so horrific that he never, never should have been allowed to stay in power.
I hate the fact that we're fighting there. I would hate worse for it to be wasted. Ignore problems and they always come back to haunt you. Look at Afghanistan, look at the Korean War, look at what happened after we overthrew the government in Iran, when we set up Noriega in Panama, then left him alone, when we pledged help to Vietnam, then withdrew that promise at the French's request after WWII.
I say stay out of war whenever possible, but backing down at the wrong time costs more blood in the long run. Don't be penny wise and pound foolish with American blood. I'm not a good war hawk. I'm sure as hell not an ostritch. But I try like hell not to tear apart something I won't help any more than to say a few angry words. I know there's more than a couple of people at JU that are against the war, but try like hell to help soldiers out directly, wherever they can, without criticism. I don't always agree with them, but I hope that even if we don't agree, they might just be doves with claws.