Andy F wrote:
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> Wasn't the invasion pretty popular -- quite a margin more than 50%?
Not relevant. What is relevant to Yoshie's argument is whether a democracy (rule of the demos, not merely a formal structure) would have on its own decided to invade a nation thousands of miles away. The popularity of the invasion did not really refer to the invasion but to public acceptance of the judgment of its leaders.
I have argued many times on this list that in an individualized social order it is rational, makes good sense, for most people to accept and support the decisions of their leadership. Attacks on the u.s. public are in a sense supremely ignorant of the extreme difficulty the isolated individual has in reaching any sort of "independent" judgment. The willed ignorance is not on the part of the public who support the war but on the part of leftists who attack that public.
Carrol