I find it interesting that most people I have listened to (both in the media and in person) who have discussed the issue of "responsibility" for the war in Iraq usually try to nail it down to one or two main culprits, if you will. For example, the Bush administration centers the blame almost exclusively on Saddam and/or Islamic militants; the Democrats blame Bush; the Iraqi insurgents say that they are only responding to US provocation, aggression, imperialism, etc. I am utterly puzzled, however, by the fact that no one, not even many purporting to write historical accounts of the war, is stepping back to look at the issue of war responsibility objectively, like historians should. I have read a great deal of military history, and one thing that I have noted in my study of the subject is that discussions of war responsibility usually undergo something akin to the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic. The most obvious case would be World War I. Most histories written during or shortly after the war placed the blame solely upon the Central Powers. During the revisionist era, the pendulum swung back the other way, with many historians placing the blame upon the Allies. To overgeneralize somewhat, most historians are now of the opinion that each Power should bear some share of the blame for the outbreak of war in 1914; the debate now is largely over how large a share each respective Power should be apportioned. One can find similar historiographical trends regarding just about any other conflict. Is there not some plausibility to the idea that maybe everybody involved in the war in Iraq should bear some share of the responsibility? Is it not possible that the US, Saddam, and the Islamic militants alike all stand guilty of contributing to the outbreak of war, at least to some degree? I am not suggesting that we oversimplify the issue, that we just say, "Well, everybody's at fault here," leave it at that, and move on. I am simply postulating that, when one examines the origins of the conflict from as objective a viewpoint as possible, putting party loyalties and patriotism temporarily on the back burner, it is foolish to try to argue that one person/group or the other is exclusively to blame. In my opinion, this almost sounds too obvious an historiographical conclusion to draw, yet I have not heard anyone else say the same thing. Anybody else have any thoughts on the matter, either in agreement or disagreement? This is, of course, my tentative view of the matter; I would like to hear the arguments of others, as well. --Chris