I would count myself as a utopian socialist as well, and the impediments to that socialist utopia that you point out are true. It ain't coming in either of our lifetimes, and meanwhile there are people like Saddam who are enemies of humanity in the fullest sense of that phrase. GW may be (actually, he is) a lot of terrible things, but a Hitler or Hussein he is not.
The US is undoubtedly going to make a lot of mistakes in Iraq, and it's a shame that our entire body of policy in that area isn't being completely overhauled, but I can't make the leap from that to the idea that past mistakes leave us helpless to do anything about the present situation.
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