For those of us who were alive at the time, the runup to the Iraq war was all about mushroom clouds and oceans don't protect us anymore and balsa wood drones of death and gotta fight them over there instead of fighting them over here and scary vials of weapons of mass destruction and we're all going to die unless we take out Saddam, basically. Magically right about the time of the invasion, before the Bush administration had even bothered to clue in their sycophantic lickspittles in the right wing media, suddenly we we were talking about spreading peeance and freeance, about democracywhiskysexy, about painting schools, and liberty. Sure before that some eventheliberalhawks pretended this was about freedom for the Kurds, or something. Remember everyone had their own personal "real reason" we're going to war in Iraq. That there were about 17 contradictory ones didn't seem to dissuade anybody.
And you might remember that the logical of humanitarianism was used to justify bombing Libya. Does anybody remember Libya? For some reason no one talks about Libya anymore. How'd that humanitarian intervention go? Good, I assume! Our freedom bombs are the freest! Even some eventheliberals who opposed the Iraq war supported that one! It was quite amazing how they adopted the mantle of dripping condescension that the Iraq war supporters sported as the latest fashion. Silly hippies, this time it'll be good! Things are bad in Libya! Our freedom bombs will help them! Why do you hate the Libyan people! We must do something!
How'd that one work out?
There are people I used to consider friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, that can piss the hell off for all I care. Not over the disagreement, but because they were assholes about it then and are and silent about it now. Oopsy! Destroyed your country! Sowwy.
Anyway, the day that people who spend most of their time advocating freedom bombing advocate spending even 20% of that cost on actual humanitarianism is the day I'll listen to them. Painting schools doesn't count.
