As for our leadership, I have less faith in Obama than I did in Bush. Bush lost his mojo, alright, but he could have been much worse. A man of lesser political courage would have thrown in the towel in Iraq in ’04 or ’05, and especially in the dark days of ’06. While he never went full steam ahead — to win the larger war — changing strategies with the surge, and salvaging Iraq will go down in history as an act of foresight and political courage.

I don’t see too many people on the GOP side who “get it,” either. Giuliani does, Fred Thompson does, Gingrich does… I’m not sure what their political futures hold, however. It seems like the new crop of GOP leaders — Palin, Jindal, Pawlenty, etc. — have good instincts, but are more rooted in domestic political philosohpy. They’re no Reagan, who spent his entire life thinking about his hatred for communism.

Nowadays, our presidents are young, popular governors or senators who have domestic appeal. If the Palins and Jindals of the world surround themselves with good foreign policy people, I don’t see why this soldier’s hope and vision cannot come to fruition.

A better way to look at the situation is that the middle east just has many of the characteristics that make for revolutionary and violent environments, including weak governments, poor economic development, historical rivalries, and valuable resources. Those conditions will draw in any wannabe dictator that wants to gain power at the point of a gun. You could say the same thing about many parts of Africa or SE Asia or Latin America, and its more or less why & how Khomenei and Saddam Hussein came to power.

Where the “clash” occurs is that the US has economic interests in the middle east and defense ties to Israel, and just can’t afford to let the entire region become an Islamic fundamentalist super-state. But projecting US power a continent away is difficult militarily, economically, and politically, and the wannabe dictators know that and have no trouble using US occupation as a recruiting point and then waiting us out.

However I think one often overlooked point in our favor is that the Arab man-on-the-street really is not as radical and aggressive as his leaders pretend. Yes, there are lots of radicals out there, but they’re a small percentage. That’s why both Afghanistan and Iraq collapsed like a house of cards when we came in force. The exact same thing would happen in Iran – few would care if their leaders were killed tomorrow and replaced with someone a little friendlier to the US. That’s not to say that groups wouldn’t move against us – they would of course – but the average person is not going to put their lives on the line to kill Americans.

As a veteran of the Marxist Left from many years ago, I know exactly the purpose of the label “progressive.” For the record, I never went along with it, which refusal got me constantly in trouble with the true leaders of the Gramscian Marxist movement. I would refer to myself as either a Marxist or a socialist, and was told to NEVER use those descriptions of my ideological orientation. I was often told to use the new label for the package called “progressive.” The word did have a history on the Left some decades before, and its use was revived in the Seventies in order to make our ideology more appealing and less threatening. It grated on my sensibilities, since I was a bookish, academic type. But the activist leaders truly do drive the movement. They have become experts at roping in useful idiots.

So glad I broke with Marxism in 1987.

Today the Left tosses around the word “neocon” to mean a lot of things that are negative. It means anyone who is in favor of our war against Islamic jihad. And it also is used to mean “dirty Jew.” The Left has devolved into a nether world of ugly demons who revel in murder and mayhem.

We keep the chaos and evil of the nether world at bay because of the young soldiers like the one who wrote the above thoughts.

On the other hand, people who defend tyrants against democratic forces are called “progressive.”

Nuts.

the reason: put USA down in international perception and in the eyes of naive Americans. EXACTLY the same as was done in Vietnam war when soviets spent 85% of resource at the anti-war propaganda active mesures

The neighbors of Iraq needed USA to protect them from Sadam. Now they did not. Iran became the most powerful player in the area. And there are other disadvantages.

But we can not roll back the time, so we have to stay and i would say the best path would be to increase our influence in the region:

we should finish regimes in Iran, Syria and may be some more.

Obama is a new guy and world trusts him. So he ‘s got to do it in the mosty aggresive way

We will win this war and they will come back to their families safe and sound.