Sadly, we have no real chance of people getting into office who will do the right thing because it makes them feel good to help their fellow citizens.
And nobody ever had such a chance. On rare occasion a person might appear combining the desire to do such good with the capacity for fulfilling it and the drive to achieve the necessary power, but any political system designed to expect a sufficient number of such people is doomed to fail.
While you can always reach for a pithy quote to support an attitude of mistrust of government by misportraying Adam Smith as calling for the state to stay completely hands off, actually reading the man's work reveals that he too saw a need for some degree of state regulation to avoid problems like monopolies
The quote I offered does not contradict the problems of monopolies. As soon as the mentioned butcher, brewer, or baker become the sole supplier you can pick, the quality goes down and the prices go up.
The man saw the benefits in a more laissez faire system, but he also foresaw pitfalls that have come to plague us today.
Absolutely. The government's goal ought to be to make it possible for the service-providers to compete. Unfortunately, the US government has made a number of errors in this regard, that we are still paying for. By making AT&T the sole telephone-service provider, we shot ourselves in the foot. Then we did it again by creating cable-TV monopolies — though that law is no longer in effect, the incumbents are entrenched enough to block most newcomers. When it came to cellular phones, we got "smarter" and allowed not one, but two companies (initially) to compete in each market — an improvement of sorts, but far from what Adam Smith would've recommended.
We still have monopolies providing public transportation, roads, fresh water and sewer-treatment, electricity and gas to most of the nation — justified by the myth of "natural monopoly". And all of these tend to suck even worse, than the Internet service.
And the government run one might actually spend money on maintaining their infrastructure
Like the bridges, sewers, and other government-run infrastructure are maintained in the US?
Take the parasites out of the equation, and the economics changes a lot.
Please, cite numbers. Rough estimates would do...
Because the for-profit model says "you'll get what we give you, when we feel like giving it to you, and we'll raise your prices any time we wish in order to keep profits up".
No, that's only true about monopolies. Governments ought to ensure, there is competition in every market — but that does not mean, they should be entering the market themselves. That would be the worst outcome, for government is itself a monopoly.
You are a fool, if you expect more from a politician, who needs only your vote every few years, than from a capitalist, who wants your money to make profit every day.
The government shouldn't be providing services that can be done by the private sector.
Why? If it demonstratively runs better...
Define "it". The Internet service may be better, but that's because it is subsidized by Sweden's considerable taxes.
Which means, the costs are (much?) higher than the bill says — and TFA cites — the difference is paid to the tax-authorities instead of going directly to the service-provider.
A government run Internet is a monopoly. I have 5+ choices for Internet access (all private companies) in my *small* town. That's not a monopoly.[...] The article even admits that it's all government run.
Actual MPG figures achieved based on typical drives for cars with small engines could be as much as 36% under the official number, while those cars with 3-liter engines would typically achieve 15% less than the official figure.
That the manufacturers try to cook the efficiency numbers is nothing new — and various measures exist, no doubt, to keep such padding in check.
Could it be, that these checking measures are deliberately relaxed to encourage the buying public to buy smaller vehicles? It is a perfectly safe for the bureaucrats to do — the blame for discrepancies always falls on the car-makers (who certainly deserve it).
And it need not be obvious — a manager in charge can sabotage any initiative in subtle ways: like appointing an incompetent (or dishonest) subordinate to run it, for example.
My personal favorite is how Americans measure pressure (such as in tires): pounds per square inch. It is so bizarre, it is beautiful...
The "pounds" are pounds of force (lbf), of course, but I doubt, an average person (be he American or European) can articulate the difference between mass and weight...
One of the big pieces was the addition of "Classic mode" in 3.8
I wonder, how far back the "Classic" goes... Does it offer the look-and-feel of Motif X-sessions of the early 1990ies — or the skimpy twm? Or the fvwm of the slightly later years? What exactly is "classic" today?
this is the same thing as the FBI pretending to be a terrorist cell and using information fed from informants
When FBI sets up a fake terrorist cell, they don't pretend to be an actual living person without their consent. An exception may be someone already incarcerated, which the woman in TFA is not.
from Solzhenitsyn at that, long since discredited as accurate data
Citation needed.
Given that communists did take over, surely that would be the numbers to compare, no?
No. Because Vietnam turned-out to be better than expected. Heck, we are even (sort of) friends with them today — unlike North Korea or Cuba. Possibly, because Vietnamese consider Communist China to be much worse, than the Capitalist USA.
So how many people did those Vietnamese commies kill in Cambodia?
Why don't you tell me? And then recall, that China punished Vietnam for it — killing many Vietnamese and annexing land. Somehow Leftists never remember Communists' wars, choosing to concentrate on American ones instead.
How many people slaughtered and villages burned do you consider acceptable to expunge a hostile ideology or hold it at bay?
Hundreds of thousands can be killed to save millions. The ideology is not merely "hostile" (to us) — it is murderous in its own right.
Now, what is your answer to that same question you asked me?
So pray tell, how many napalm-burned villages is an acceptable price from "preventing country from falling into communism"?
Funny, how the same enemy propaganda, that implanted this "napalm-burned villages" nonsense into your brain, didn't supply any ammunition for you to also attack our participation in Korean war — which was no picnic either, and where plenty of civilians (innocent and otherwise) perished too. That's my point — wars are never pretty, but that so many people are focused on our "atrocities" in Vietnam, but rarely if ever mention Korea, is proof, their anger is due to deliberate propaganda efforts, rather than anything especially outrageous (by war standards) having taken place.
But I'll answer your pity question anyway. The worst figures, that the US military is accused of, is 150K killed Vietnamese. It seems a reasonable cost to prevent something like the 20 millionkilled by Stalin (10-15% of the USSR) or 2 million victims of Khmer Rouge (about 40% of Cambodians, which a reasonable and knowledgeable person could have anticipated from a Communist takeover).
US supported and financed illegitimate coup d'etat, Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine, 2014.
(Argh, sorry — clicked on "submit" instead of returning to editing by mistake.)
The request was: Name the most recent invasion and installation of a mad dictator by the US.... You don't even accuse the US of invading Ukraine, nor are you even accusing Poroshenko of being "mad". And your accusation of us "installing" him remains rather tenuous — certainly without any substantiation.
US supported and financed illegitimate coup d'etat, Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine, 2014.
Petro Poroshenko was elected by free elections. He got 57% of the vote. There was no "coup d'etat", and you forgot to provide links proving American financing of whatever happened.
Communism and dictatorship orthogonal to each other. One can exist without the other.
Dictatorship can exist without Communism, yes — Sulla was one example, Pinochet was another. Communism, on the other hand, can not exist without dictatorship — its economic ineptitude is such, that people revolt very quickly unless the Communists manage to gain dictatorial power.
communism was never reached, never even tried for, in the authoritarian socialist republics. Socialism by itself is thriving and well in Europe in Sweden, Danmark, Finland, France, and others
Your attempts to distinguish between Socialism and Communism are silly — Socialism is nothing but "Communism-lite". Says so in "Das Kapital"...
Those are the countries with some of the highest standards of living.
No, they aren't — their apartments and cars are smaller, and everything (that is not subsidized) is more expensive. And what good they do have, is despite their Socialism, not thanks to it.
Hugo Chavez was not a dictator
Well, maybe, there are subtle differences between "president for life" and "dictator", but I'm not aware of it.
He also left the country [Venezuela -mi] in better state than he found it for its people
And what sources can you cite to support this claim? Maybe, it is the quadrupling of the murder rate in the country, which makes it better "for its people"? Or its "wonderful" GDP growth (despite the spiking demand for oil)?
And you just did [caused a coup and installed a dictator -mi] it in Ukraine last year.
Wow... Am I talking to Joe Biden? Please, cite the sources proving both: a) the US caused a coup in Ukraine last year; b) the current President of Ukraine is a dictator.
The only period of sustained economic growth in your country? The economic and political hegemony?
I asked you, what did the US grab — as you alleged we did. The hegemony was simply due to the fact, we weren't destroyed by the bombings — thanks to geography, not any premeditated evil plan... Our laissez-faire Capitalism may have had something to do with our economic power too.
Cared for defeating Hitler and the Nazis? Stopping the atrocities?
Nothing was known by the outside world about Hitler's atrocities until circa 1943 — when Polish intelligence managed to smuggle some proofs from their (occupied) country. Earlier rumors were dismissed as anti-German propaganda. One of us, indeed, ignorant of history...
Of course, by 1943 we already deeply involved — helping our allies both economically and militarily — because we did (and do) care for these values even if we didn't know the worst of it, when we started.
When I make arguments, list couple articles on wikipedia
Listing a couple of articles does not make an argument. You can cite such articles to support an argument, but you didn't... Your arguments — and I am using the term loosely — were quite apart from the links you gave.
First go and learn history and politics
Shkolota, my knowledge of history and politics far exceeds yours — and even that of your Kremlin handlers:-)
WWI was a pointless battle between imperial powers and we should have stayed the hell out of it.
An interesting prospective and not an uncommon one — for Libertarian-minded Americans. But I was curious about the opinion of Europeans and Leftist Americans — they don't think all wars are wrong...
stealing Hawaii
Huh? We took over Hawaii in 1898 — 40 years before Pearl Harbor! And, whatever you think of the takeover, we didn't take it from the Japanese...
We should never have been in Korea or Vietnam.
If the USSR were allowed to take over much larger swaths of the world, chances were, the sheer numbers would've allowed them to prevail upon us despite the inherent inefficiencies of the Communist/Socialist economy... You may not think so, but your arguments aren't any better than those of the people, who hold the opposite view. That's practical.
The more emotional argument is analogous to interfering, when you see somebody being beaten by thugs — no law requires you to interfere. Except honor...
temptations of a standing army: once you've got one, you want to use it
Oh, you always want to use it — it is just that you only get to do so, if you have it.
Yours, BTW, is an argument against any sort of empowerment — not just a country with an army. An individual knowing karate or kung-fu may be tempted to use it in a situation, where a weakling (like today's Europe) would choose to turn away or limit himself to "raising awareness"...
Those people building the buildings and paving the roads, they do not perform a continual service like a security guard or even a janitor
Oh, so it is the "continual" service-providers, who must all be placed on staff if a company cares for its karma and approval by the Progressive community?.. Ok. How about all of the folks, who continuously supply Google's very-well stocked pantries with free (for the employees) food? How about the cooks in their famous cafeterias — as well as the farmers growing food (grains, veggies, dairy, meats), that's cooked there?
Is it not patently unfair, that the butchers, who carve up the beef, and the fishermen, who catch the fish, do not get the same benefit package as the software engineers who consume it?
Communism is not so bad, the dictatorship of communist party is pretty evil.
Meaningless difference — communism is bad because of the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Wherever attempted in earnest, Communism resulted in millions of dead and utter devastation for the survivors, who are left without both human rights (a given with any Collectivist ideology) and any material wealth.
But considering the US makes coups in countries to install their own dictators in them.
Dictators can be very different. Compare Pinochet, who stepped down on his own, and left his country as Latin America's top economy, with Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez — the guys, who never step down (only carried out) and turn their countries into shitholes?
on regular basis
What "regular basis"? We haven't done that in decades!..
As for the WWII, Japan sends its thank you card on regular basis.
Oh, so the country that attacked us and got its head handed to it as a result is upset with us — and that's your argument to support the notion of our being inherently evil somehow? But, great — if really do think, we should not have been "screwing with the world" during the WW2 either, then you've made my point...
As for Europe, you only went there to protect your own interest and to grab as much of Europe as possible before Russia gets there.
Really? So, just what land did we "grab" as a result and what sort of economic benefit did we get from it?
There are still no Japanese being born with straight teeth, 70 years later
Citation needed.
If you actually cared, you entered the war in 1938 or 1939 or 1940 or 1941... you know?
Cared for what exactly? The war did only started in 1939, and we started helping soon afterwards.
As the other guy said, you really need to at least get through high school level history
You — and the other asshole — should stop ad hominems. Attack the argument, not the arguer next time.
Not quite. His air-defenses kept targeting our planes. A few of our personnel remained unaccounted for, and, most importantly, he continued to balance his obligation to account for all weapons of mass destruction with his desire to keep the neighbors afraid of him. These are the words of UN inspector Blix (a man rather disapproving of GWB):
“Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it.”
The above quote is from 2003 — 11 years after all of the disarmament was supposed to be finished per the original cease-fire.
Whether or not the full-scale resumption of hostilities was a good idea all things considered, it was certainly justified...
name a failure [of Obama -mi]
How about ISIS rising shortly after the US withdrew its forces? That's what Panetta is talking about in TFA — that the withdrawal was premature. Other failures include Libya (where a turned-around dictator was killed anyway throwing the country into chaos and making turning future despots that much harder), the "Arab spring", the lifting (instead of tightening) of Bush's sanctions against Russia (which encouraged it to invade Ukraine) — to name just a few...
Saddam did not violate any ceasefire agreements in anyway that mattered to US interests.
Bzzz! Lying substitution #1: I said nothing about "mattered to US interests". Only that he did violate the agreement. This is an important distinction, because we can spend years arguing, what the "US interests are" exactly, whereas the fact of violation of agreements stands.
Yeah, the US hates dictators. You have to got to be fucking kidding.
Bzzz! Lying substitution #2: I sad mad dictators. Pinochet — our kind of dictator — for example, not only stepped down voluntarily (what sort of tyrant does that?), but also left his country as the South America's top economy.
Killing thousands upon thousands of people
Bzzz! Lie #3. We did not kill "thousands upon thousands". The vast majority of deaths of Iraqis were — and continue to be — at the hands of other Iraqis. We killed very few, taking thousands of POWs — and releasing them promptly after we prevailed. The various counters deliberately omit this important distinction — either because it makes their efforts look silly, or because they sincerely can not. Either way, the fact remains — we took the country over very swiftly and shed relatively little blood.
leaving those workers disconnected from the company and lacking in the job security and benefits their co-workers take for granted.
Ok, I gather, janitors and landscapers will be next.
How about the construction workers, who build Google's fancy offices — and those paving the roads leading to them? Shouldn't they share Google's wealth and fancy (free) lunches too?
How about the makers of furniture used by Google? Is it not unfair, than anybody, who ever came into contact with this wealthy company — where even the rank-and-file professionals are part of the "1%" — is not automatically getting their fair share of the company's success?
After years and years of screwing over half the world?
Please, be more specific. Do you think, our involvement in the First World War was "screwing the world"? How about the Second? I bet, you don't lament those...
How about Korea? Possibly not that war either. But certainly Vietnam — right? Even though there are no perceptible differences in our reasons and motivations for it (preventing yet another country from falling into Communism — the most murderous school of thought known to man so far).
There was an incredibly strong pro-US sentiment in Iraq right after the invasion. That changed damn quickly.
Yes, because our enemies (including internal ones) weren't sitting on their hands — exploiting the slightest missteps into major propaganda brouha-ha. War is hell, and no occupying army is particularly pleasant to the occupied population, but the US is better than most — and improving.
None of it means, however, we should not have picked the fight, nor that we should not do it again in similar circumstances.
Slashdot Mirror
And nobody ever had such a chance. On rare occasion a person might appear combining the desire to do such good with the capacity for fulfilling it and the drive to achieve the necessary power, but any political system designed to expect a sufficient number of such people is doomed to fail.
The quote I offered does not contradict the problems of monopolies. As soon as the mentioned butcher, brewer, or baker become the sole supplier you can pick, the quality goes down and the prices go up.
Absolutely. The government's goal ought to be to make it possible for the service-providers to compete. Unfortunately, the US government has made a number of errors in this regard, that we are still paying for. By making AT&T the sole telephone-service provider, we shot ourselves in the foot. Then we did it again by creating cable-TV monopolies — though that law is no longer in effect, the incumbents are entrenched enough to block most newcomers. When it came to cellular phones, we got "smarter" and allowed not one, but two companies (initially) to compete in each market — an improvement of sorts, but far from what Adam Smith would've recommended.
We still have monopolies providing public transportation, roads, fresh water and sewer-treatment, electricity and gas to most of the nation — justified by the myth of "natural monopoly". And all of these tend to suck even worse, than the Internet service.
Citation — comparing the profits of American vs. Swede's ISPs — needed.
Citation comparing executive bonuses needed likewise.
Like the bridges, sewers, and other government-run infrastructure are maintained in the US?
Please, cite numbers. Rough estimates would do...
No, that's only true about monopolies. Governments ought to ensure, there is competition in every market — but that does not mean, they should be entering the market themselves. That would be the worst outcome, for government is itself a monopoly.
You are a fool, if you expect more from a politician, who needs only your vote every few years, than from a capitalist, who wants your money to make profit every day.
Define "it". The Internet service may be better, but that's because it is subsidized by Sweden's considerable taxes.
Which means, the costs are (much?) higher than the bill says — and TFA cites — the difference is paid to the tax-authorities instead of going directly to the service-provider.
So, is it a monopoly or is it not?
That the manufacturers try to cook the efficiency numbers is nothing new — and various measures exist, no doubt, to keep such padding in check.
Could it be, that these checking measures are deliberately relaxed to encourage the buying public to buy smaller vehicles? It is a perfectly safe for the bureaucrats to do — the blame for discrepancies always falls on the car-makers (who certainly deserve it).
And it need not be obvious — a manager in charge can sabotage any initiative in subtle ways: like appointing an incompetent (or dishonest) subordinate to run it, for example.
My personal favorite is how Americans measure pressure (such as in tires): pounds per square inch. It is so bizarre, it is beautiful...
The "pounds" are pounds of force (lbf), of course, but I doubt, an average person (be he American or European) can articulate the difference between mass and weight...
I wonder, how far back the "Classic" goes... Does it offer the look-and-feel of Motif X-sessions of the early 1990ies — or the skimpy twm? Or the fvwm of the slightly later years? What exactly is "classic" today?
When FBI sets up a fake terrorist cell, they don't pretend to be an actual living person without their consent. An exception may be someone already incarcerated, which the woman in TFA is not.
This is a new low...
Citation needed.
No. Because Vietnam turned-out to be better than expected. Heck, we are even (sort of) friends with them today — unlike North Korea or Cuba. Possibly, because Vietnamese consider Communist China to be much worse, than the Capitalist USA.
Why don't you tell me? And then recall, that China punished Vietnam for it — killing many Vietnamese and annexing land. Somehow Leftists never remember Communists' wars, choosing to concentrate on American ones instead.
Hundreds of thousands can be killed to save millions. The ideology is not merely "hostile" (to us) — it is murderous in its own right.
Now, what is your answer to that same question you asked me?
Funny, how the same enemy propaganda, that implanted this "napalm-burned villages" nonsense into your brain, didn't supply any ammunition for you to also attack our participation in Korean war — which was no picnic either, and where plenty of civilians (innocent and otherwise) perished too. That's my point — wars are never pretty, but that so many people are focused on our "atrocities" in Vietnam, but rarely if ever mention Korea, is proof, their anger is due to deliberate propaganda efforts, rather than anything especially outrageous (by war standards) having taken place.
But I'll answer your pity question anyway. The worst figures, that the US military is accused of, is 150K killed Vietnamese. It seems a reasonable cost to prevent something like the 20 million killed by Stalin (10-15% of the USSR) or 2 million victims of Khmer Rouge (about 40% of Cambodians, which a reasonable and knowledgeable person could have anticipated from a Communist takeover).
Though we did prefer some of them over the alternatives, we did distinctly dislike all of them... Just as I said.
(Argh, sorry — clicked on "submit" instead of returning to editing by mistake.)
The request was: Name the most recent invasion and installation of a mad dictator by the US.... You don't even accuse the US of invading Ukraine, nor are you even accusing Poroshenko of being "mad". And your accusation of us "installing" him remains rather tenuous — certainly without any substantiation.
Kremlin too much, indeed...
Petro Poroshenko was elected by free elections. He got 57% of the vote. There was no "coup d'etat", and you forgot to provide links proving American financing of whatever happened.
Kremlin much?
Dictatorship can exist without Communism, yes — Sulla was one example, Pinochet was another. Communism, on the other hand, can not exist without dictatorship — its economic ineptitude is such, that people revolt very quickly unless the Communists manage to gain dictatorial power.
Your attempts to distinguish between Socialism and Communism are silly — Socialism is nothing but "Communism-lite". Says so in "Das Kapital"...
No, they aren't — their apartments and cars are smaller, and everything (that is not subsidized) is more expensive. And what good they do have, is despite their Socialism, not thanks to it.
Well, maybe, there are subtle differences between "president for life" and "dictator", but I'm not aware of it.
And what sources can you cite to support this claim? Maybe, it is the quadrupling of the murder rate in the country, which makes it better "for its people"? Or its "wonderful" GDP growth (despite the spiking demand for oil)?
Wow... Am I talking to Joe Biden? Please, cite the sources proving both: a) the US caused a coup in Ukraine last year; b) the current President of Ukraine is a dictator.
I asked you, what did the US grab — as you alleged we did. The hegemony was simply due to the fact, we weren't destroyed by the bombings — thanks to geography, not any premeditated evil plan... Our laissez-faire Capitalism may have had something to do with our economic power too.
Nothing was known by the outside world about Hitler's atrocities until circa 1943 — when Polish intelligence managed to smuggle some proofs from their (occupied) country. Earlier rumors were dismissed as anti-German propaganda. One of us, indeed, ignorant of history...
Of course, by 1943 we already deeply involved — helping our allies both economically and militarily — because we did (and do) care for these values even if we didn't know the worst of it, when we started.
Listing a couple of articles does not make an argument. You can cite such articles to support an argument, but you didn't... Your arguments — and I am using the term loosely — were quite apart from the links you gave.
Shkolota, my knowledge of history and politics far exceeds yours — and even that of your Kremlin handlers :-)
Name the most recent invasion and installation of a mad dictator by the US...
The no-fly zones enforced by those aircraft were part of the cease-fire agreement.
Nope. Not until we promise Russia to not fly over certain areas ourselves and agree (however grudgingly) to allow them to enforce it.
An interesting prospective and not an uncommon one — for Libertarian-minded Americans. But I was curious about the opinion of Europeans and Leftist Americans — they don't think all wars are wrong...
Huh? We took over Hawaii in 1898 — 40 years before Pearl Harbor! And, whatever you think of the takeover, we didn't take it from the Japanese...
If the USSR were allowed to take over much larger swaths of the world, chances were, the sheer numbers would've allowed them to prevail upon us despite the inherent inefficiencies of the Communist/Socialist economy... You may not think so, but your arguments aren't any better than those of the people, who hold the opposite view. That's practical.
The more emotional argument is analogous to interfering, when you see somebody being beaten by thugs — no law requires you to interfere. Except honor...
Oh, you always want to use it — it is just that you only get to do so, if you have it.
Yours, BTW, is an argument against any sort of empowerment — not just a country with an army. An individual knowing karate or kung-fu may be tempted to use it in a situation, where a weakling (like today's Europe) would choose to turn away or limit himself to "raising awareness"...
Oh, so it is the "continual" service-providers, who must all be placed on staff if a company cares for its karma and approval by the Progressive community?.. Ok. How about all of the folks, who continuously supply Google's very-well stocked pantries with free (for the employees) food? How about the cooks in their famous cafeterias — as well as the farmers growing food (grains, veggies, dairy, meats), that's cooked there?
Is it not patently unfair, that the butchers, who carve up the beef, and the fishermen, who catch the fish, do not get the same benefit package as the software engineers who consume it?
Meaningless difference — communism is bad because of the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Wherever attempted in earnest, Communism resulted in millions of dead and utter devastation for the survivors, who are left without both human rights (a given with any Collectivist ideology) and any material wealth.
Dictators can be very different. Compare Pinochet, who stepped down on his own, and left his country as Latin America's top economy, with Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez — the guys, who never step down (only carried out) and turn their countries into shitholes?
What "regular basis"? We haven't done that in decades!..
Oh, so the country that attacked us and got its head handed to it as a result is upset with us — and that's your argument to support the notion of our being inherently evil somehow? But, great — if really do think, we should not have been "screwing with the world" during the WW2 either, then you've made my point...
Really? So, just what land did we "grab" as a result and what sort of economic benefit did we get from it?
Citation needed.
Cared for what exactly? The war did only started in 1939, and we started helping soon afterwards.
You — and the other asshole — should stop ad hominems. Attack the argument, not the arguer next time.
Not quite. His air-defenses kept targeting our planes. A few of our personnel remained unaccounted for, and, most importantly, he continued to balance his obligation to account for all weapons of mass destruction with his desire to keep the neighbors afraid of him. These are the words of UN inspector Blix (a man rather disapproving of GWB):
The above quote is from 2003 — 11 years after all of the disarmament was supposed to be finished per the original cease-fire.
Whether or not the full-scale resumption of hostilities was a good idea all things considered, it was certainly justified...
How about ISIS rising shortly after the US withdrew its forces? That's what Panetta is talking about in TFA — that the withdrawal was premature. Other failures include Libya (where a turned-around dictator was killed anyway throwing the country into chaos and making turning future despots that much harder), the "Arab spring", the lifting (instead of tightening) of Bush's sanctions against Russia (which encouraged it to invade Ukraine) — to name just a few...
Bzzz! Lying substitution #1: I said nothing about "mattered to US interests". Only that he did violate the agreement. This is an important distinction, because we can spend years arguing, what the "US interests are" exactly, whereas the fact of violation of agreements stands.
Bzzz! Lying substitution #2: I sad mad dictators. Pinochet — our kind of dictator — for example, not only stepped down voluntarily (what sort of tyrant does that?), but also left his country as the South America's top economy.
Bzzz! Lie #3. We did not kill "thousands upon thousands". The vast majority of deaths of Iraqis were — and continue to be — at the hands of other Iraqis. We killed very few, taking thousands of POWs — and releasing them promptly after we prevailed. The various counters deliberately omit this important distinction — either because it makes their efforts look silly, or because they sincerely can not. Either way, the fact remains — we took the country over very swiftly and shed relatively little blood.
Ok, I gather, janitors and landscapers will be next.
How about the construction workers, who build Google's fancy offices — and those paving the roads leading to them? Shouldn't they share Google's wealth and fancy (free) lunches too?
How about the makers of furniture used by Google? Is it not unfair, than anybody, who ever came into contact with this wealthy company — where even the rank-and-file professionals are part of the "1%" — is not automatically getting their fair share of the company's success?
Please, be more specific. Do you think, our involvement in the First World War was "screwing the world"? How about the Second? I bet, you don't lament those...
How about Korea? Possibly not that war either. But certainly Vietnam — right? Even though there are no perceptible differences in our reasons and motivations for it (preventing yet another country from falling into Communism — the most murderous school of thought known to man so far).
Yes, because our enemies (including internal ones) weren't sitting on their hands — exploiting the slightest missteps into major propaganda brouha-ha. War is hell, and no occupying army is particularly pleasant to the occupied population, but the US is better than most — and improving.
None of it means, however, we should not have picked the fight, nor that we should not do it again in similar circumstances.