Sometimes thoughts are just too insistent to keep in. Our daughter is on a three day, 60 mile cancer walk. Deserves a post but that will have to wait.

Wouldn't it be nice if in fifty years, their version of historians and talking heads would bring up the Invasion of Iraq and say it was the stroke of genius that saved untold lives and prevented unspeakable horrors. True, the odds are not good that this will be but it is in the realm of possibility.

Said it before and will say it again, however, we should not have attacked. In the movies of my formative years, the good guy did not slap leather first. And God was on his side. I like the Twenty-fourth Psalm. Part of it says: "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in his holy place? He who hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessings of the Lord and rightiousness from the God of his salvation. He shall be shone the face of God. He shall be shown the face of the God of Jacob. Lift up your heads ye gates, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord of hosts, mighty in battle." We, the attackers, do not have clean hands not a pure heart. And who is more vain? Nor more deceitful? The Lord, mighty in battle (armed warfare and economic) is against us. Thanks, Bush and Cheney, for your dirty hands and impure hearts, your vanity, your deceit. We are paying, our children and grandchildren will pay. We have a long, uphill battle and God will hide His face from us. Lots of lives and treasure.

But that is all in the past, now. We should not be there. But we are.

The dream of a democratic Iraq is a neat dream. And it is a possibility. Not likely but a possibility. But it is the problem of taking a feudal civilization and making it into a modern one. It took us over a hundred years just to settle the Articles of Confederacy vs the Constitution. The Civil War - aka War for States Rights, War of Northern Aggression - just to see if the right to secede is part of the deal. And we want to drag feudal Iraq kicking and screaming into a democracy in five years? Ten years?

Give the point to McCain on this one. The dream of stability in the region is a good one. A strong American presence in Iraq, now that we have broken it, gives some stability and security against the corruption and tribalism that is certain to obtain if we allow it. And it may take a peace-keeping force there for a long time.