National Pride: I'm absolutely enamored with our country (of course, you can't discount my war-mongering Germanic roots) and it's willingness to lead and protect the rest of the world. Do I think it always does it for the "right" reasons? No. But, this gets back to the means vs. ends debate we had a while ago. Moreover, I'm reading The Guns of August right now, which is certainly a wonderful book, but was news to me as I had not heard of it before coming acrost it on a bookshelf in a bookstore. I admit to not having known jack about WWI before delving into this tome. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and if the book teaches you anything, it's that aggression must be checked, even at great cost. Now, I'm not about to compare Saddam to the Kaiser or Hitler-led Germany, but when you examine history, it's clear that those who defied, rather than placated, the aggressor, won in the end - and thus were able to dictate what came next. You wouldn't know it from today, but France, in WWI was a real bad-ass, and although not as technically or strategically gifted as the Germans, hardly were ones to shy away from conflict (red pantaloons and all). Kind of sad to see what has become of them 100 years later.