57% of those polled want to attack Iran

So says a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. Which according to the story it's 57% of all Americans who want to go to war with Iran, when it was really only that percentage of those who happened to be polled.

Let me say this from the getgo: the guys running Iran are bad people. That does not mean that the Iranian people are bad. The population by and large must not be punished for whatever their whacko leadership is doing.

I do wonder if we are justified at all in trying to beat the wardrums for attacking Iran now though, three years after getting bogged down in the quagmire that is Iraq.

Yeah, there's no other word for what it is happening in Iraq right now. The moment we pull out our own soldiers, that place is going to collapse like a house of cards. Over two thousand of our best men and women are dead... and all that we've got to show for it is a rising Islamic fundamentalist government. Like we used to say on the basketball court: "Smooth move Ex-Lax".

So we're committed - oh yes, we are definitely committed now, with no easy way of leaving - to Iraq. And now those people from the "neo-conservative" mindset - the ones who believe that it is a virtue for government leaders to lie to their people - are gearing up the people of this country to want to go to war with Iran. A war that could only realistically be fought by large-scale strategic bombing, since our conventional forces are stretched so thin. Some here in America are even suggesting the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Like, isn't this the very same thing we're claiming now that we are trying to prevent Iran from doing?

How is it that the United States is now doing the very same thing that the Soviet Union did: invading countries and setting up puppet governments?

Is this really our problem to deal with at all? Is America now and forevermore going to be the policeman over the rest of the world? Were we even right to assert that role to begin with?

George Washington was right: we should have avoided "foreign entanglements" completely. Over two hundred years later another George thinks he knows better, and mucks us into whatever strikes his fancy.

And the damned thing of it is, there will be lots of politicians and pundits and preachers and the like faithfully falling into line right behind the President as they tell us that yes, we must go to war, because our government knows what's best for us.

Well damn them. Damn them all.

Until Iran presents a legitimate threat to the United States, we should butt out. Let Israel handle this... it seems to be their fight they want anyway.

We should have stayed out of Iraq, and let the people of that land hash things out on their own.

Fortunately, I doubt that 57% of Americans really want to go to war with Iran. I really hope so anyway. Because if that many do want it, it will definitely damper my belief that the American people are still capable for the most part of thinking for themselves.