Originally Posted by raptor10

From my (admittedly inexperienced) point of view, the Middle East and South East Asia are the last two hotspots for major conflict to break out (I am ignoring Africa as destability in that region does not have the possibility of destabilizing the world). Because of this threat America needs to have a long term Democratic Muslim Ally in the Middle East. Someone that understands Muslim Culture yet is still dedicated to democratic ideals. And that is why we are in Iraq to cultivate a satellite state that will act as an interloper in future conflicts, and serve as a model of Muslim Democracy. If this works then this will hopefully turn into a reverse Domino theory where one state after another "falls" to democracy. Success in Iraq means we have done the impossible, and others will take notice. Failure will be fuel to Arab hatred of the west. And noone is saying that it wont be difficult. We've given the Iraqi people the cliffnotes version of Democracy, compressing our 200 years of trial and error into 3. And if you'll remember we got it wrong our first time at bat.

So this war is important not only for security today, but lasting security for the forseeable future.

Thats why this war is good or more correctly necessary.

Now what the Military and the Administration asks from the media is to understand that when you take cameras into war and document it then you become a part of the war effort, whether you wanted to or not, and you become either a rallying point to the troops (with movies like this Operation Enduring Freedom) or a rallying point for our enemies with videos like the one shown above. And they must understand this if they want to have a moral account of this war.