I can't really argue these points any more. The talking points of this war have been ossified to the point where any time I try to bring up what would have happened if we had left Iraq alone for the next thirty years, everybody's brain shuts down.

At best I get fingers in the ears and cheap shots about SF and fantasy.

At worst I get idiotic premises about how we would have quickly won in Afghanistan, and destroyed al Qaeda forever by killing bin Laden. End of problem.

It's all so simple for them. Bush is the problem, no Bush, no problems.

It's part of a much larger and more frightening pattern. It isn't just the war in Iraq proving to our enemies that we will do a much better job of destroying ourselves than they need to do to us. The war in Lebanon did the same thing to Israel. The ruthless beating the civilized, with the ruthless, as usual, getting all the good press.

Pakistan. Somalia. Thailand. You seen the news on these and other battlefields lately? Look at the larger pattern. Where do you WANT the wars to be? Because wistful thinking aside, they aren't going to just leave us be. At some point, your side will, someday, have to come up with a real answer instead of just flinging bottles from the stands.