> But it seems you don't see this at all. For you, there's apparently no
> stimulus and response in play here, only an abstract tendency to
> violence that would have flowered **no matter how well the
> military-corporate occupiers treated the occupied.**
I didn't say there was no stimulus and response. Nor did I posit the existence of any fuzzy "abstract tendency to violence." Rather, after Saddam was toppled, there _really were_ (and are) Baathists and Islamists intent on battling any US occupation, no matter how well-conceived and conscientiously carried out it was. Of course, I wish the US had perpetrated fewer acts of pointless brutality, but that's an utterly vacuous statement--the only folks who wish(ed) for more are the insurgents.
-- Luke