You should not bring 18th and 19th century morality into 20th and 21st century debates.  In today's world most of founding fathers would be considered monsters.  In fact, they were some of the most enlightened people the world has seen.  

What are the terms of the debate here?  Are you suggesting that there is no qualitative difference between life in America and life in a Stalinist inspired Iraq?  Are you suggesting that life has not been better for those that fell into the American orbit, rather than the Soviet orbit?

I don't think that is your point.  It seems your point involves America's treatment and policies toward the third world throughout the Cold War, and how our policies had devastating consequences for many peoples.  On that we could agree.

But that has almost nothing to do with what this country is willing and capable of doing to put down the insurgency in Iraq using our own troops.

We have seen Bush take several steps beyond where America thought we would go: blowing of the Geneva conventions, using torture, denying American citizens habeas corpus, utilizing domestic surveillance, leveling Falluja...

But there are limits.  There are limits that Saddam did not suffer from.  Those limits are not military limits, they are moral limits.

Some of the moral limits are reflected in the flawed case for war.  America did not spend too much time naval gazing over the bombing of Dresden because there was a total consensus that the Nazis needed to be defeated.  If the war had been a little optional sideshow, people would have howled at such cruelty.  If you not engaged in a moral effort, even the smallest amount of violence is impossible to justify or rationalize.  So, that creates the biggest obstacle to subduing the insurgency.  But, there is also the matter of the intrinsic difficulty of such operations.  And we simply do not have the national will to overlook our moral scruples and commit to the level of repression and violence that would be needed to create 'stability' in Iraq.  

And, as I said earlier, that is a very fortunate thing.  Because that is ultimately why we will leave Iraq.