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You can’t get much more direct than this:

Once we strip away the now-debunked U.S. justifications for entering Iraq, what we’re left with is an old-fashioned invasion of a foreign country.

Yep. I don’t think it’s ever been much more complicated than that.

The real flaw in the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism … is that it scrupulously avoids addressing the grievances that seem to drive people to terrorism.

Indeed, it never even acknowledges that grievances exist; terrorists are deemed to act out of nothing more than blind hatred and a wish for death.

A handful might, but only a handful; most people, even terrorists, are more complex than this. People do things for reasons that make sense to them; as fellow humans they usually deserve to be acknowledged, engaged, and understood, even if disagreed with.

Dismissing people and their grievances out of hand — as the Bush team habitually does to anyone not in full agreement — would piss off even a Mother Theresa. This fatally flawed black-or-white, you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us thinking has got to go. It does not reflect reality.