The first one, the gut reactiion, is "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen". The article is correct: we cannot win in Iraq without making them fear us. That's how we used to fight in all the wars before Vietnam. Level everything that fires at you, and if the civilians weren't evacuated beforehand, it's not your fault.

Then I let the coolaid out of my system, recall all I know about propaganda, and I realize that somebody did a card trck on me. While I was looking the other way, they substituted "prevent terror attacks on US interests" with "win the Iraq War". Those things may be connected, but not equal.

The best possible way to prevent terror attacks is to stop using oil. Make the whole region irrelevant. Bush's gamble on success in Iraq (assuming he was smart enough to understand that he is indeed gambling) was a very doubious way to stop terrorism. It's no quicker than alternative energy, and much more costly. And now it's failing.

The failure to create a decent country in Iraq is almost unavoidable. We can't convince them, and we don't dare kill them. If we had men like Roosevelt and Eisenhower at the top, we may have had a chance. With the scum we have now, things will get a lot worse before they get better. Arabs will learn not only to hate US, but to fear us not. They will re-learn that we can't fight people - a lesson lost since Vietnam. We will pay heavy price for Bush's gamble.