The problem with helping out every country that we feel is being oppressed is that there's no way to stop. To carry the liberation to its final conclusion, we'd have to liberate China, Russia, Mexico, all of the South American countries, etc. But we won't do that will we? We pretty much backed down to North Korea since they have nukes, we won't go anywhere near China and Russia.

Helping a person getting attacked in the street is a personal decision. If you want to risk your safety to help someone else, go for it. If you don't want to, and can live with not helping them, that's your choice. The problem with a state attacking another country to "help" them is that 1.) they're going to injure a lot of innocent people, probably some of the ones they're trying to liberate, whereas beating 2 muggers down in the street produces a level of zero collateral damage and 2.)in order to wage war, you're going to need to force your citizens to pay for something they don't want, at gunpoint if neccessary. If you want to raise a coalition of people who want to attack Iraq, and have completely private funding, go for it. I don't want to, and shouldn't be forced to through taxes. The government will put me (or would if I payed taxes yet) in jail if I refuse to pay taxes in protest of the war, if I don't want to pay for the murder of innocent people, the government will either threaten me with force in order to remove my money, or they'll throw me in jail and take my money from me any way. If a private entity tried to do this, it'd be a felony called theft. Taxation is theft, plain and simple, and the people that commit it are sanctioned by law. It forces me (or it will) and millions like me to become in a war we find morally abhorent.

Go ahead, help someone being attacked in a street, but don't force others at gunpoint to help, or should I say, fight for you. That's an even worse crime than you'd be fighting.

Adrian