Thanks!
And yes, you can tell a lot about a man by his odd choice in walking sticks...

It's reminiscent of Saddams Iraq. It had a good health care system and reasonable standard of living before the first gulf war (notwithstanding I am not condoning how it was run). After the first gulf war, the US/others instituted comprehension sanctions on the nation, and the standard of living plummeted, the price being inflicted upon the citizenry of the nation rather than the ruling elites. Then comes a second gulf war to remove Saddam - and guess what? The place disintegrates into the morass of blood and chaos and suffering that it is now. Did it really do anyone any favour to topple the ruling force, however evil it was? Even the US didn't really walk away with the resources that presumably were the real motivation to invade a second time (under the pretext of WMD).

"Even the US didn't really walk away with the resources that presumably were the real motivation to invade a second time (under the pretext of WMD)"

Yeah, it's almost like they were never the "pretext" at all, or something.

And what caused the first war again? It couldn't possibly have been an aggressive and unprovoked military conquest of a neighbor by their ruler, right?

"Then comes a second gulf war to remove Saddam - and guess what? The place disintegrates into the morass of blood and chaos and suffering that it is now."

And that's certainly not leaving anything out, like years of peace and popular election followed by ridiculous mishandling by the President that came after.

Saddam's Iraq employed professional rapists. Let that sink in a few minutes.

Look at how things were before the premature departure of US troops and the multiple absolute cock-ups that went on in the following administration and tell me things weren't TREMENDOUSLY better there.

Now, of course, it's a horrendous mess, but that's also true of Libya, Syria, and multiple other places in the world that had little or nothing to do with Iraq.

Yep, it's one of those shitty situations where the best you get it still awful. Obviously it parallels well with Iraq/Vietnam/all that (and this is, obviously, intentional)

Personally, ignoring the theory that the US had secret or alternative intentions for invading Iraq, i'd still lay a ton of blame on Saddam. Kind of a 'forced our hand' sort of deal. Yeah, shitty things have happened. But you can argue that the US had no choice but to do *something*. And if it was a shitty something, you can almost place the blame for THAT on Saddam as well :P
But I thoroughly understand both sides of the coin.

Either way, there's another point to the comic as well, and that is :
It's important to remember that, in a fight between a fascist government vs a group of so-called freedom fighters - regardless of who is right, who is wrong, or what's at stake, the people in the middle are the ones who suffer. The soldiers on the front line, the civilians, and so on. It sucks for them, and almost always they aren't the ones at fault.

That's part of the reason Alice would hate being where she is right now (intervening, being looked up to, leading, etc). She's under the belief that even a well intentioned leader is still forcing his/her hand on others. And she really hates that, because of how it works out for her (causing all this calamity for innocent people) :P hah

So is it worth it or not? The debate goes on... haha.

"Forced our hand" with what, exactly? The WMDs he didn't have?

Iraq is the very definition of an unnecessary war fought purely based on the personal politics of the guy leading it, with insufficient resources devoted to accomplish anything other than the immediate objective. It only made things worse worldwide.

Especially when your money is the *only* thing they're fighting for, hah.

Thanks! ^_^

I guess, without condoning brutality or the awful things that happen/have happened in the world, it's at least worth discussion as to why such decisions or actions are taken. Evil things are not always done for evil reasons, for instance. Sometimes dictators have good intentions. But they are still dictators.
And in cases like this, it takes a lot of guts to risk a worse world in order to make the current one better.

But anyways, thanks man! My girlfriend keeps my story pacing in check haha... i'm always fretting that it's too fast or slow... and she calms me and reminds me just to do it and take er' easy haha.