One Final Note re the Iraqi Soccer Team

I had somehow missed captain Younis Mahmoud's post-match press conference, where he announced that he would not be returning to Iraq because he feared for his life, and also that he wanted America out of his country. This follows on one of the star players of Iraq's 2004 Olympic team making it known that if he weren't on the team, he'd be an insurgent in his native Fallujah.

Look, guys, we get it: Deposing Saddam created a huge vacuum with all these violent reprisals, etc. And the US made certain mistakes, like not seizing the initiative and allowing the insurgency to develop and not planning well enough for the post-war nation-building. But if you think your lot in life would have been as good when Saddam's lunatic son Uday was running the Iraqi Olympic Committee, you're more than delusional.

And it's not like the US came to your country to run it, or to kill lots of people, or to oppress you and your neighbors. Moreover, terrorism, by definition the killing of vastly more innocents than enemy forces, is not the same as an organized armed resistance. It's sad that you can't recognize that.