So continuing with your simplistic analysis - if someone was from a democratic leaning state and none of their elected officials voted for the resolution does that mean those people are free from blame? What if someone's elected official voted in favor of the resolution to invade Iraq but that individual was themself against it. So that individual is held to blame?
The US may have a system of democratically electing representatives but many(most?) of those elected representatives look out for themselves first, their party second and the will of the people that put them in office a distant third.
The US may have a system of democratically electing representatives but many(most?) of those elected representatives look out for themselves first, their party second and the will of the people that put them in office a distant third.
Good thing you didn't start off with a snide remark about the simplicity of my analysis.
Anyway, I would separate "blame" and "responsibility". There's a difference between the blame for the war and whatever responsibility the United States has to Iraq going forward. The blame lies in the past. The responsibility to improve upon our mistakes is pretty obvious if we want to pretend we have some sort of national morality.
>"Good thing you didn't start off with a snide remark about the simplicity of my analysis"
There was no intention on my part of being the least bit derogatory. Your entire argument for why and entire country is to blame amounted to two pithy sentences.
I'm not sure why you would fail to see that how that might considered overly simplistic. Instead you have chosen to interpret it as a personal attack of which it was not.
The US may have a system of democratically electing representatives but many(most?) of those elected representatives look out for themselves first, their party second and the will of the people that put them in office a distant third.