Dean,

Thats it - stout hearts and we'll win; its as simple as that. Or is someone out there going to try to say that even if we remain firm, the enemy can win?

I have every confidence in the common sense of the American people when it comes to these things, as long as we have leadership determined to stay the course.

Agreed. The problem isn't with the American people -- it's with the quality of our leadership.

I know nothing about Lexington Green or John Weidner, but I think I'm a living, breathing example of the Jacksonian tradition in this country, and I support the rebuilding of Iraq.

But not because I want to drain any Middle East swamps. (There aren't many swamps in the desert except at the head of the Persian gulf, but I guess you wouldn't want to destroy the way of life of the marsh Arabs who live there. Or would you?)

In any case, nobody will succeed in bringing western style democracy, or any other fundamental change toward national modernity, to any place that lives under islamic sharia.

But my interest in controlling and stabilizing Iraq is that it has an oil supply large enough to satisfy much of the demand of the western countries until western industry is ready to use hydrogen as a means of creating electric power in order to propel vehicles. Other than that, I don't give a hoot for what happens to the Iraqis any more than I do for what happens to the Saudis or any other Arabs.

I can't tell you much about what Andy Jackson preached, but I sure as hell know that is more or less what he and his generation practiced, when they got a whip hand over this entire continent.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

"Drain the swamp" is a euphemism for cleaning out the conditions that breed terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.

I don't share your view of sharia law, since I know there are already multiple traditions within it and that it's already quite a bit more tolerant in many areas than most Western laws were only a few centuries ago. But then, I do not and never have bought this load of bilge about Islam being somehow more of a zombifying religion than any other--including secular religions like Marxism and Objectivism.

Dean,

I agree with the jyst (sp?) of this post. We do need to stay in Iraq. Probably for a long time. However, I think that its fair to point out that this is one of the reasons why many people, including myself, didn't want to go to war in the first place. These costs are going to be enormous. A lot more than $87B or $200B. It's going to be a lot.... I would have rather see us cough up that money to fix problems at home (insert any one of 50k problems that could be fixed).

But, what's done is done. We need to stay there. I just hope this country has learned some things about how easy or not easy it is to occupy another country. And my hope is that we'll apply those lessons learned before we think about pulling the trigger again.

Arnold, you imply a common misconception:

Hydrogen is not and will never be a source of power. It takes power to generate hydrogen in the first place, because there are no hydrogen wells.

Hydrogen might become a good portable fuel, but we will need a lot more nuclear power plants to generate enough hydrogen to replace vehicular fossil fuels in the US.

All right Owen,

I am certain I would agree with you if I had taken the trouble to research the technical questions of hydrogen-based vehicle power further than I have. My key point is that the United States and its allies must not be left in a position of being dangled by the filthy fingers of a pack of Arabs over their control of much of the oil supply of the world. No matter what it takes, that condition must be terminated.

Thus, I have no interest whatsoever in the well-being of the middle east or its Arabs and other islamics, including whether or not they are able to pose as western-style democracies long enough to sucker us into even another decade of dependence on their oil fields.

If the nature of their culture cannot be changed by us with sufficient rapidity so as to assure the rest of the world with the tranquility that we would largely have if it were not for these Arabs, and if we cannot find a substitute for their oil, and if they initiate more terrorism against us, especially here on our own soil, then I hope the conditions come about that it becomes necessary for the United States to destroy these people in massive numbers, and that our government would do just that.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Eric: To put the price in perspective, I recently saw an exchange where someone suggested that the cost of Iraq over several years might reach 400bn. The response was that that's 3 years of farm subsidies...

If our efforts in Iraq succeed in creating a more stable world, the payoff will be huge.

Imagine if we had invested 40bn in fighting terrorism ten years ago. If we'd been successful, we would now be SAVING that possible 400bn...

Alternatively, allowing things to slide out of control might end up costing 4 Trillion later.

Obviously these are wild off-the-cuff numbers, but I think the basic idea is sound. Heck, I remember the first airplane hijacking! Imagine what the world would have saved if we'd nipped that in the bud...

Also, because we are a rich nation, most of the problems that can be solved by piles of cash have already been solved. The ones that remain tend to suck up any amount of money without improvement. For instance we already have a high per-capita spending on education, with results poorer than countries that spend less. Just adding more money doesn't solve the structural problems...

Well, John,

A good case could be made that we helped bring about the Arab terrorism that came to our shores. Now why do I make such a seemingly outlandish statement?

All through the middle and late 1980s, we were providing armed assistance to the muhajadin guerilla fighters in Afghanistan who were then struggling to end the Soviet occupation of that country and to bring down their puppet government. We, and they succeeded. Goodbye, nasty communism and nasty Soviet Union. Hello, big time troubles of an unexpected sort.

So what did we get in its place of the puppet government in Afghanistan? The Taliban government of the mullah Omar, who, in addition to ending education rights of all the women and defacing historically-valued Buddhist statues, brought in the al Qaeda Arab gang of Osama bin Laden to set up fundamentalist islamic terrorist training camps around their Aghan host country. Next stop? The World Trade Center and the Pentagon, on 9/11/01.

In addition, the hand-held ground to air missiles that we surreptitiously supplied to the mujahadin for purposes of disabling or destroying Soviet helicopter gunships are now used to target western civilian jet airliners. All the chickens have come home to roost, along with their rotten eggs.

This is part of the reason I do not support the idea of "freedom" for moslems of any type, and for Arabs in particular. One day, the army that we are now arming in Iraq will be selling its weapons to the terrorists of the middle east. It's in their culture. Maybe in their blood. Whatever. In any case, it amounts to trying to raise and domesticate pit vipers in someone's garden.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Since we seem to be going in for "Wells" tonite:

Well, Arnold, you write "So what did we get in place of the puppet government in Afghanistan? The Taliban government of the Mullah Omar..."

Unless I misread you, this comment seems to reflect the school of thought that our proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan created the Taliban. An anachronism. The Taliban as a warring presence in Afghanistan did not exist until well after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, except as a gleam in the eye of Zia Ul-Haq, then boss of Pakistan. The T, in that era, were literally students in Paki madrassas, rocking back and forth on the floor as they memorized the Koran. The mooj that we armed, trained, and supplied were Pushtun and Tadjhik warlords, most notably figures such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Massoud, who drove the puppet Najibullah from Kabul in 1992, and then fell to fighting each other. The resulting chaos impelled the Pakis to recruit, train, and arm the Taliban and exfiltrate them back into their home country. In the suceeding 3-way war, the Taliban possessed a "secret weapon" in the Paki regular army, which came to their aid whenever they got into trouble. It was Pakistan, not us, who inflicted the Taliban on the people of Afghanistan. Our guy Massoud, in particular, fought the T right up to the moment of his assassination.

None of this dusty history in any way argues against your concluding paragraph. As to that, Bush is rolling the dice, and I am not making any come bets.

My own belief is that democracy coupled with capitalism trumps religious fanatacism every time, if both are given a chance to flourish together.

Iraq has a well-educated population, including a considerable middle class, and enough ethnic and religious diversity to know that one group cannot dominate another if free speech and democracy are the rule.

Afghanistan was well on its way to being just such a place, before the Soviets backed communist infiltrators in their government, then helped them stage a coup, then invaded when the coup leaders they'd helped got into trouble.

The benefits of modern technology, freedom of speech and press, and an influx of capital investment by private enterprise, all of which Iraq is seeing now, should do well, and should save us tons of money in the long run.

The only lesson I'm learning, Eric, is that we did absolutely the right thing, and that the plan so far is working splendidly. This is a huge step forward in our war against international terrorism and radical Islam, and one of the cheapest wars we've ever fought. ;-)

Arnold, as swamps breed disease-vector mosquitos, Iraq and its environs bred disease-vector mujahedeen... zealot, anger-filled, hatred-infected killer-plotters who feared, loathed and resented America's strengths.

'Draining the Swamp' is analogous to draining a huge, pus-filled wound which, in itself, was not immediately life-threateningly dangerous, but which continued day-after-day to ooze poison into the lives of those who suffered within Iraq, and those who used Iraq for their OWN hate-filled agendas, namely al-Qaeda.

NONE of the al-Q types, nor Uday/Qusay/Saddam and his crew, nor Boy Assad and his ilk, are practicing the compassionate, courageous non-violence which COULD be emphasised in the Koran. They call themselves Muslim, but they're doing un-Muslim actions left and right...

And this is to be expected, since they KILLED their 12th Imam, their Promised One, Who came in fulfillment of their prophecies and traditions in 1260 (1844), and in SPITE of their holy prophecies which said that when the Holy One came, Muslims would kill Him, their clergy DID anyway, after the Armenian Christian rifle regiment failed to do so after firing 750 rifles at Him, pointblank!

But hey! Its history now, isn't it?

Dean,

I put it in more mundane terms - we are relying upon the essential humanity of the Arabs.

What is really bizarre (sick, actually) is that our so-called "anti-war" people are basing their opposition upon a theory that the Arabs are incapable of self-government.

I guess its no surprise, a lot of these people think that Americans are incapable of self-government...