In the Palestine/Israel conflict, remember that Ariel Sharon _started_ a war (against Lebanon) while Yasser Arafat _ended_ a war (by pursuing a peaceful road of negotiations and ultimately winning the Nobel Peace Prize).
In the meanwhile Iraq, "terrorists" and "insurgents" torture and kill hostages, and american soldiers torture and kill wounded prisoners. Might makes right? Perhaps from the political-historical perspective, but certainly not from the moral perspective. At the very moment of perpetrating a crime you are guilty. Not in the judgement of posterior generations, but in the eyes of the present one. The winners write history, so it is obvious that later generations will not likley condemn their own ancestors' deeds. But in the here and now the american soldiers in Iraq are hardly better that the Iraqi resistance. The ideals may be all right, but the methods to realise them are reprehensible, and it is my very humble opnion that the methods by which you attain the desired results _do_ in fact matter. That is the only way that democracy and freedom are different from dictatorship and coercion: by the way in which laws and policies are made, namely with the consensus and the authority of the population that undergoes them. In Iraq right now the US Army is the law and order, and they are mostly just causing death and destruction. I fail to see how that wil llead to the desired result of freedom and democracy ...
