IRAQ OUTLOOK...HOMELAND SECURITY...IT STILL LOOKS BAD

W. Thomas Smith, Jr., who was once a Platoon Leader in the USMC, reflects on the issue of Iraq and the men and women fighting there.

Austin Bay posts some possible scenarios for Iraq if our troops are withdrawn. Only one looks rosy, and I think it is the least likely one, at that.

Stories like this one make me wonder how it is that we have managed to avoid a major terrorist attack here at home since 9/11. I guess it just means that the terrorists are even less competent than our Federal protectors. Along those same lines, this story indicates that Al Qaeda has regained its strength back to pre-9/11 levels, which means that either the Bush strategy for defeating Al Qaeda, or its execution, or both, is fundamentally flawed.

President Bush will declare that some gains are being made in Iraq, according to this story in the New York Times. Politically, it does not matter, because Dick Morris is absolutely correct about the electoral consequences of maintaining our current troop levels in Iraq.

David Ignatius says there is a possible consensus on how to get out of Iraq. He might be right, but I suspect the competing political forces in Washington and the ugly realities of Iraq will prevent us from reaching that consensus.

The bottom line remains the same. This Administration has squandered its historic opportunity to defeat Islamism politically and militarily through a series of mistakes since 9/11. For those reasons, and because the American people are not psychologically equipped to support long, drawn out, and seemingly inconclusive limited wars, we are now on the verge of a historic defeat, and are moving ever closer to the much larger, more devastating shooting war that will be seen as the natural consequence of the mistakes made between 2001 and 2008 (and beyond). Ironically, the American people are far better equipped to handle the big, unlimited war, even if it is of an extended duration. Of course, many more people will die in such a war who would not have died if we had been able to better support our more limited efforts. In that sense, I believe future historians, while faulting President Bush and his people for their many mistakes, will give them credit for trying to avoid the global conflagration (much as President Wilson is given credit for trying to build a global security organization...the League of Nations...and ensure American participation in it, even though he failed).