[qq=The Captain]If helping the Iraqi people gain refuge from Saddam was our newest and "Best" reason for Iraq, what about the Sudanese government committing genocide against their own people? What about the mass acts of atrocity occurring every single day in Central America? What about North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran even?[/qq]

Maybe the US doesn't have the time or the resources to save every person in every single country in the world. If I saw a school bus full of drowning children and I saved one or two but couldn't save the others, would you say that I should be held accountable for all those innocent deaths? Would you say "Why did you place the value of those lives above the value of those others?" If I gave $50 to charity, would you say I was a bad person because I had $950 in the bank I didn't touch?

A good deed is a good deed, whether you do it once or do it a hundred times. Saving one country full of people from being killed at the hands of a corrupt government is better than saving none. You can't say "America went to Iraq but not Africa, therefore America is wrong" unless you're willing to say that everyone who didn't even go to Iraq at all is MORE wrong. Unless you hold hypocrisy to be the absolute highest of evils, and I'm not sure you could even say that America's policy is hypocritical.

In any case, I disagree that saving Iraqis from Saddam was the best reason for going to Iraq. I think it was a good side effect, but to call it our main motivation for going there would be a lie, because it wasn't.