What He Said

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

In general, human beings do not appreciate it when foreign armies invade their nation, shatter its infrastructure, drop bombs throughout the country, kill tens of thousands of civilians, unleash anarchy and chaos, and then proceed to occupy the country with a force of 150,000 foreign soldiers. And that is true even if a genuine monster like Saddam Hussein is removed from power and killed in the process.

To be sure, I'd love it if someone were to kill George Bush and festoon himself with his entrails, leaving his head on a pike on the White House lawn as an example to future presidents. Or even if he were just summarily hanged.

If the cost, however, were that (a) I couldn't walk outside without fear, (b) my female friends and relatives could not walk outside at all without a male escort, let alone hold down jobs, (c) I would be without electricity for long swaths of several very hot summers, (d) many people I knew would be murdered, (e) many other people I knew would flee the country in terror, some becoming prostitutes out of desperation, (f) the job market would collapse, (g) the streets would be patrolled by armed foreigners--themselves in fear for their lives--who were openly contemptuous of my culture, and (h) I had loudly expressed my preference not to be invaded in the first place...well, excuse me if I wouldn't feel gratitude to the country that made it all happen.

If you ostensibly do something for someone else's benefit--particularly against that person's will--you have an obligation to make it a net benefit. You can't isolate a single item in the credit column and ignore pages and pages of red ink.