For over a thousand years humans have been killing other humans in the name of God and Freedom and the practice has not been a success.
It seems that the time is overdue when we should evolve into a species which attempts to solve differences by Peaceful means and not by violence.
Many thousands of civilians have been killed in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. I am sure that many of those killed were not supporters of the previous regimes.
What right have we to decide that others must die so that we can impose "Democracy"?
If we are serious about bringing democracy to other countries let us make a start and create a department of Peace. This department could be funded by taking funds from the department of Foreign Affairs (foreign interference) and the department of Defence (attack).
Let us find out if our foreign policies are a success by determining if the number of friends Australia has is increasing or decreasing week by week.

Go Alistair!

The previous poster, "Peace" has a crazy misnoma - "Apeasement" is more like it! If Europe had stood up to Hilter sooner, rather that lettimg the Apeasing Peace-nics delaying the inevitable showdown, peace would have been quicker and cheaper in lives and money. And if our friend "Apeasement" had prevailed we may still have been under the Nazi jackboot.

C'mon the Peace. Explain to us how this is to be acheived. It must be so easy & you have the answer

Probably protested the liberation of East Timor, didn't you. & if you didn't then you are a hell of a hypocrite Peace.

If you want to use Hitler analogies then you might care to think about which country was invaded by an enemy that possessed overwhelming force, and which country was a basically defenceless third world country that happened to possess a lot of a particularly valuable resource.

The present day United States is interested in just one thing - and that is control of the world's oil supply - all the talk about "freedom" and "democracy" is just a smokescreen which anyone (except perhaps a naive teenager) who is even slightly aware of geopolitics would be aware of.

Beware of making comparisons to fascism as you might find that (to the disgust of many people) that this time the fascists are our allies - and we're helping them.

You might find some of these articles to be of interest:

The Oil Factor In Bush's 'War On Tyranny' - http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC03Dj02.html
Living Under Fascism - http://austinuu.org/sermons/2004/2004-11-07-LivingUnderFascism.html
Fascist America - http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0122-10.htm

bigav, you sound like a typical old time Comm or a young Marxist who doesn't want to realise that Fascism and Communism are twin brothers.

I congratulate George W. Bush for having the courage to grasp the nettle and knock off Saddam and his twisted sadistic sons before they became too powerful to challenge short of nuclear war. He has probably saved us from the unthinkable, Saddam's terrorist friends al-Qaeda being given chemical, biological and eventually nuclear weapons by Saddam.

This struggle in Iraq could well change the course of world history towards democracy in the Middle East. In years to come, George W. Bush could be as revered as FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan.

Actually I'm a libertarian - I agree that fascism and communism are equally evil - George Bush's United States is the twin of Brezhnev's Soviet Union - a nation whose political structures have begun to calcify and is increasingly reliant on the use of military force, propaganda and the restriction of civil rights in order to achieve its ends.