I respect your position.
And I respect yours as well. . .
And, I also find war a terrible way to resolve differences.
John McCain said it himself (and being what he's been through, I believe him): "I don't like war. In fact, I hate war."
Persons with no demanding needs will almost always live in harmony. America is a land where we have total ability to meet our demands for those basic needs that satisfy and lead to harmony.
I agree with you there. That's why I love America and am proud to live in it.
World peace can be obtained by moving into a commune, turning off the news and withdrawing to your harmonious island of peace. It's like quickly pulling your hand out of a bucket of water, the water settles down and any turbulence in that water remains in that water.
LOL! I myself have contemplated (since my early twenties) being a "monk" of some sorts. To me, it's the only way to obtain any lasting peace or inner satisfaction in this world. Good point!
With that and what you wrote above in mind I look back at wars in America's history and often wonder why logic and reason didn't warrant a different approach.
I sometimes wonder the same things. I'm afraid, however, that I don't really have an answer (other than to say that the American mindset - especially during the Civil War period - was a lot less sophisticated back then).
Our most recent wars were born from splinters of former wars and our own selfishness. The Mid East nations were the losing side of WWI & WWII and as a result were minimized as subordinate nations to the victors. We have a long history with the Mid East since the founding of our nation. The USMC song with the words "to the shores of Tripoli" clearly displays our interaction as nations. The ME was once a very powerful nation state of the Ottoman Empire that was repeatedly diminished by changes in trade routes with the western Europeans big brains setting out to explore the world resulting in the discovery of America. With the losses of authority in trade and power related to war and economic changes in trade routes the victors put a little salt in the wound by establishing the state of Israel on their, or what they determined to be their land.
I studied the Ottomans in my ME history class last year. They were actually a very sophisticated Empire - they invented Algebra, for instance. Heck, I can't even do Algebra! LOL.
The Iraq War, stated based on a "selfish" choice background... While this portion of the old Ottoman Empire has been under Western Europe management since the breakup of the Empire the region had no impact on America. The reason the Iraq region was managed by Western Europe was because of war and the assets of oil in the region that must be protected by the victor to assure a future enemy would not use that oil to fight another war against the victors.
The Ottomans America wasn't interested in the Mid East outside of Cold War implications following WWII since it was in the interest of the Western Europeans peace.
The British Mandate for Palestine Selfish because America could not work out differences between political parties within America as it relates to American energy... as today in the late 1960's America no longer had enough domestic energy supplies to satisfy domestic demands so we were forced (we choose) to buy energy from the ME. It was then that Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the rest became a foreign policy area of national interest... a nice way to say, they have something as essential as air and water for our survival by our choice...
We could not afford to allow Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the rest of the oil producers to become too strong or join together or we would be at the will of the strong player... We had a choice, drill at home or go to war in the ME to protect our oil supplies, we choose war... Manage Iran, they take our citizens hostage, oh yea then we will give the neighbor some reasons to beat you up and make you weak... Iraq, oh yea now I'm feared in the hood so I'll beat up on Kuwait and then take Saudi Arabia... America and Western Europe, oh no you won't! It was our choice rather than to drill here to join in the Western European security problems.