[Porsche-O-Phile]

Impressions:

1. That article gives WAY too much credit to George W. Bush's "vision" (there isn't one) for the M.E. Its failure to mention the quagmire in Iraq by name is a conspicuous absence.

2. Is written solely to convince the west to fight Israel's battles for it, or at least ride to their aid.

3. It is absolutely correct however that radical Islam must be contained and if possible, rooted out and destroyed. The mechanism of this however is debatable. I would suggest that the best "containment mechanism" is moderate/secular Islamic interests, which are the majority in the nations of the Arabian peninsula, Asia and northern Africa.

4. There should NOT be any negotiation with terrorists. Period. Stated policy of the U.S. for decades. This should not change.

5. Thinly-veiled war cry. Actually I'll cut through the crap and come right out and say it - this is flat-out war glorification of the type that appeals to war mongers. Are there things worth fighting for? Sure. Are there situations that might arise which SHOULD be dealt with militarily? Absolutely. But the case is not made for more violence, bloodshed, killing, etc. here.

"War on Terror"? OK, I can see/understand/support that. Use all tools at our disposal to destroy murderous Islamist terrorists. No problem. Subversion, infiltration, special ops, surgical strikes, assassinations, whatever. That is justified. However, to use this as a springboard for some kind of global war on Islam is (1) unjustified, (2) stupid, (3) short-sighted and (4) exactly what the jihadists want.

You don't fight a guerrilla war/enemy with open military formations. Did Vietnam teach us nothing? To say nothing of our own revolutionary war?

If we stopped using "War on Terror" as a political buzz-phrase and actually put it into action quietly killing and dismantling legitimate threats without patting ourselves on the back (like Israel's Mossad does, for example) we might be getting somewhere. As long as this whole "War on Terror" thing is just a flag-waving rah-rah rallying point for a bunch of warmongering shoot-em-up cowboys here, we're going to be exactly where we are in I-wreck - adrift, without purpose, without ultimate goal and without the moral high ground.