"Influence, dominate, manipulate, sure. But an occupation is a different story. It can only succeed in a state that is contiguous, as Chechnya is to Russia and Tibet is to China. Success demands utter ruthlessness: secret police, assassinations, the murder of civilians, and leveling neighborhoods and sometimes entire cities. Open societies like ours find that hard to tolerate. Good intentions – reform, rebuild, bring democracy, modernize, civilize, liberate, pick up the white man’s burden – don’t turn the trick." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

Part of the problem is that we have volunteer army a small professional force that almost no one knows so its easy to comit the bodies sort of like sending in the Foreign Legion. Those caskets coming into to Dover are easy to ignore if its someone elses son daughter. bother sister,father and you don't know them at all - universal conscription would force us to account for every mothers child and make spending that blood matter -now we let teh neo-cons play and ignore the toll to our peril as a nation - WarLord