ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

[Lemur]

Let's be clear, America, along with the UK and France, is directly responsible for every stage of this mess. [...] If you have the power to act and choose not to, then you have chosen and becomes responsible.

For the sake of discussion, let's all accept that. Everything happening in Iraq can and must be laid at our door. Cool.

By that logic, are we (the U.S., U.K., and France) obliged to make a generational commitment of unlimited treasure and blood? Even if the Iraqis themselves do not want to be our colony? Do we stand over them, protecting them, shouldering the white man's burden indefinitely, in the hopes that they will grow into something that more resembles our ideals? How long can we sustain that? How long will the Iraqis tolerate it?

Infinite occupation of a place that doesn't really want you there has not worked out well for: the U.K., Russia, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and many other would-be colonial powers. Why do we imagine indefinite occupation of Iraq would be different?

What the writer is saying is that Iraq is not worth dead Americans, implicit in this is that Americans are, as individuals, worth more than Iraqis.

To Americans, yes, Americans are more valuable than Iraqis. I don't sere how that's amoral or wicked; every society values its own a bit more. You'd be more shocked by a guy down the street getting run over than you would be by 300 people dying in a ferry accident in Bangladesh. That's not some horrible racist thing; that's a perfectly normal response. I'm sure Iraqis value Iraqi lives more than they would American lives. And why on Earth not?