[MichaelGG]

How does one "preserve the balance"? Could you provide an example action you might take that is preserving this balance? I'm having trouble turning this into anything useful, other than a generic, general sort of "don't be hateful and rash; think things through; sides aren't perfect" kinda thing.

[rwallace]

The word 'balance' is vague and overused, to be sure. Here's my suggestion for a kind of action: if you have to respond to aggression, make the response targeted and limited to what is necessary. For example, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the right thing to do was use the military force necessary to kick him out. It should have stopped there. It should not have continued with twelve years of economic sanctions that condemned hundreds of thousands of civilians to death followed by an invasion and regime change that created a power vacuum leading to the rise of one of the worst regimes since the Nazis.

[pekk]

Well, Saddam's was one of the worst regimes since the Nazis. We really can't do anything right as far as intervention, at some point we have to accept we can't make things work out in other people's countries and there will always be evil rulers we can't do anything about.

[rwallace]

> Well, Saddam's was one of the worst regimes since the Nazis.

Saddam was a villain to be sure, but as far as people actually living in Iraq were concerned, his regime was nowhere near as bad as what followed. For some reasons why, check out http://riverbendblog.blogspot.ie/

> We really can't do anything right as far as intervention, at some point we have to accept we can't make things work out in other people's countries and there will always be evil rulers we can't do anything about.

I agree completely.