Responding to my e-mail from a soldier in Iraq a few posts below, Scott in Iowa writes:

Today, I looked at your blog and noted the following comment from one of your readers:

"The anti-war movement could do a lot of good by providing humanitarian aid to the many benevolent and struggling Iraqi communities here... The pro-war movement should put their money where their mouths are and enlist."

A lot of wisdom there. In fact, even before His Fraudulency, G W Bush, took us into Afghanistan, I was one of the folks arguing that the best thing we could do to improve the world is provide humanitarian aid (food, medicine, supplies, doctors, teachers, etc.) to the rest of the world.

Mr. Bush had the opportunity after 9/11 to take the world and this nation into a new reality. Instead of returning violence with violence and destruction with destruction, we could have killed the beast of hatred with kindness. Alas, this is not what happened--but what else could we have expected?

I remember hoping shortly after 9/11 that we could sweep up bin Laden without an intentionally showy display of violence and widespread civilian casualties, which I believed would only incite more terrorism. Suffice it to say, pursuing shock and awe in Iraq did not even occur to me (though I did read a Washington Post article not long afterward about how some wanted to attack Iraq, which seemed nuttily implausible to me at the time).