War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill
English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)
Note: I liked this quote not because of my feelings toward our efforts in Iraq, but out of a sense of frustration with that minority of folks who never think war is justified. Meanwhile we still perform over 3000 surgical abortions per day on the most innocent... The number of U.S. soldiers lost in Iraq to date still doesn't match the pregnancies ended in a single day. Any mention of the comparison in main stream media? Nah. The latter is considered a necessary evil with barely a mention while the former is the subject of thousands of hand wringing news stories in media around the world.