Just say NO to the war hawks who want us to go back into Iraq

Rachel Maddow, in her msnbc commentary last night, addressed the war hawks' saber-rattling over Iraq, most notably John McCain, who seems never to have met a potential war he didn't want us to be in the middle of.

Here's Rachel, as quoted this morning on Huffington Post:  

"On her Thursday show, Rachel Maddow cautioned against any renewed American military action in Iraq, warning that the people who "most aggressively argued that we ought to start the Iraq War in 2003" should not be trusted when calling for intervention now.

"Pressure is building on the Obama administration to back the Iraqi government with airstrikes to fight against militants who are capturing great swaths of the country. 

"Maddow noted that people like John McCain and Kenneth Pollack, the "liberal hawk" who wrote an infamous book backing the 2003 invasion, have popped up again to call for a new military commitment to Iraq. But she pointed to the Vietnam War as proof that such open-ended commitments usually fail.

"'Right now the people who thought it would be easy and a great idea and cheap to invade Iraq under George W. Bush, they want us to restart that war again. Frankly, if you press them, they'll tell you they wish it had never ended in the first place....we have been here before as a country in a big way and we know how this goes.'"

Amen to that.   We now have not only Viet Nam but Iraq itself -- and Afghanistan.   When we go in with our Western values and expect to immediately convert another culture to our way of thinking -- to establish democracy without democratic institutions or traditions -- especially where we have destroyed what institutions they did have -- we should expect the outcomes we have gotten.

Ralph

1:oo pm addendum:   President Obama has released a statement saying we will not be sending troops back into Iraq.   "Nobody will benefit by chaos in Iraq," he said; and the U. S. will do its part in helping the Iraqi people;  but ultimately it is up to them to solve this problem.