Quote from AMT4SWA:
We as Americans do not own our morality and we are not superior to others in the area of morality. What we are though is "right" at this time in regards to terrorism. We choose to practice morality and the terrorists do not, thus we are "right" in our actions and they are "wrong".....period! The terrorists are not following any plausible moral guidance in their actions and thus they are not of moral directives.
Chris
It is still a matter of perspective. You sit in America and naturally have opinions on those who attacked the USA, I share the opinion that those who attacked the USA on 911 need to be brought to justice, through the proper methods of expensing justice in a civilized world.
Clearly, the world as a whole supported our efforts in Afghanistan to try and find the Taliban leadership who instigated the attack against us. Never has America been in a position to have such sympathy and support of the world. Republicans and Democrats across the board supported that effort.
Then suddenly, we go from that position, where nearly everyone is supporting a war on terrorism, to making a leap that we must rid the world of the Axis of Evil beginning with Saddam.
The rest of the world took a different view of our actions after that, and while you may not agree with their point of view, you stand on no absolute unequivocal moral ground to say that we were right to strike pre-emptively. You may feel it is so, but that doesn't make it so.
Were we a small poor country like Guatemala who had been attacked the way we were on 911, do you really think we would have stood up to the USA, CHINA, USSR, France and the United Nations if they had been opposed etc. and gone ahead with our war against Saddam because we stood on moral ground?
We acted because we had the power to do so, not because it was right to do so. We took little risk in the process, and to this point it seems that the little risk we took has an equal proportion of reward.
We need to act on the basis of what is right, not just morally, but logically, reasonably, and in concert with the majority of our allies. When we get on a high moral horse without satisfying the requirements of anything beyond moral indignation or a sense of moral self righteousness, we likely will land on our ass as we fall off our saddle.