Either we will raise Arab/Muslim societies into free nations, or we will raze them to the ground.

You can say that, and still believe starting the Iraq war was a good thing? You can pretty much advocate genocide to prevent even the possibility that terrorists might strike the US homeland, and still believe you're on the side of the angels?

"We had to destroy the village to save it."

Indeed.

I am not advocating genocide; I am making the simple point that if the terrorists will not give up, eventually they will obtain nuclear weapons and attack the US with them. At that point, what do you think that the American reaction will be? If it is not a genocide against at least the militant Muslim societies, what would prevent a second, or a third, or a tenth attack on the US? At some point, either we will commit genocide or they will. If, that is, we cannot end the war before that point.

(And note, by ending the war I do not mean surrender, but victory. Surrender, from our side, means converting to Islam, and the most radical forms of Islam at that, and is not going to happen. And to whom would we surrender? What would prevent some even more radical jihadi group from continuing to attack?)

Now, we can do several things to try to make the enemy give up. We can fight them directly, as we are doing in Afghanistan, Iraq and (to a lesser extent) elsewhere. Or we can convince them that fighting is not going to get them what they want, which means making the jihadi ideology unattractive to so many people that they cannot replenish their numbers as we capture or kill them in combat, or changing the underlying dynamic that inhibits Muslims from resisting the jihadis, or some other set of changes.

It is likely that democratizing the Arab states will undermine the jihadis in a couple of ways: removing their cover, removing their major grievance (which is against Arab tyrannies), lessening their ability to recruit, strengthening local law enforcement's ability to deal with jihadis at an early stage, convincing some that the jihadis were not doing the will of god after all (otherwise, how could they have lost to such a decadent philosophy as democracy?) and so forth. In order to democratize the Arab states, there has to be an example that shows that democracy is a better alternative for the Arabs. Turkey doesn't count, and neither does Afghanistan: not Arab. And none of the Arab countries in the area are democracies. The only one that was was Lebanon, about half Christian IIRC. And it failed utterly.

But which state to democratize? Syria would have been relatively difficult, because it's not very Westernized except among the most elite - the ones who would need to be deposed - and there is not a causus belli. Egypt, while Westernized to some degree, is too populous and proud to submit readily to outside invasion; and Egypt is also close enough to us politically to be susceptible to pressure to reform, unlike Syria. Libya and the smaller states to its west are too distant from the heart of the Arabs to have much effect in spreading reform, which means that we'd still need to attack a core Arab country anyway. Saudi Arabia would work, but would be catastrophic. In addition to being among the most backwards and jihadi infested Arab state, the presence of Mecca and Medina would make the "war against Islam" argument actually hold some real attraction on more than just the fringe. Iraq, on the other hand, is a central Arab state, somewhat Westernized, hateful of their tyrant and his orwellian regime, and possessed of a causus belli: violation of the 1991 cease fire agreement and numerous UN resolutions since.

So I supported, and still support, the invasion of Iraq because it makes the spread of democracy in the Arab world more likely, removed an orwellian tyrant of incredible depravity, removed a potential path to getting nuclear weapons to terrorists, and gives us a fantastic land base to later attack Iran and/or Syria should that become necessary. (Hopefully it won't.) In other words, the invasion of Iraq makes the possibility of genocide somewhat more remote.

And I don't claim to be on the side of the angels, but on the side of the Americans. On the whole, we're a decent and useful people. Just don't push us to the point of kill or die, because at that point, well, ask the Japanese about that point.

I'm quite curious as to how you see the possibilities matrix in the Middle East and the war. Do you believe that it is not possible that the terrorists will get a nuclear weapon? Do you believe that they would not use such a weapon against the US, Israel or some European target if they had one? What do you believe our response would be? Do you think that we can end the war before the enemy could get such a weapon? If so, how?

*shakes head*

I'm not really interested in debating this with you - I've already read Den Beste, who's made arguments like this before, and I've already come away with grave doubts about a lot of the hidden assumptions that you're making above.

(Off the top of my head: Iraq was not and is not the most likely place for terrorists to get nukes, the idea that we could democratize by invading and setting up a democracy was questionable at best, and, while a very violent, incredibly small minority of Muslims would _like_ to set up the world-wide caliphate that you're so frightened of, they'd need a far larger support base, and a far greater degree of cohesion then they've shown so far, or are likely to if we keep up a modicum of support for existing democratic influences.)

I think you just need to realize one thing: it doesn't matter how thorough and airtight you think your explanations are. If they start with a war of choice and end with, as you put it, "annihilating their entire societies", then you've become as much a monster as the people you're fighting. It's like having an equation that starts with "2+2=", has a huge set of impressive-looking transformations that fills up an entire blackboard, and ends with "=5". It's just wrong, and I dearly hope you move past the hubris that leads you to think otherwise.

That's fine; there's no need to debate if you don't wish to. However, I don't agree with your presumptions.

Iraq was not the beginning of the war, nor was it a "war of choice" independent of everything else in the world. Iraq is a campaign in a larger war. Yes, we chose this campaign; better we choose than that the enemy does. But not fighting this campaign does not end the war, merely drag it out and mean that we will fight the next campaign on the ground of our enemy's choosing. Right now, it's looking like the next campaign might well be fought in England.

Nor do I desire to end this war by annihilating the Arab/Muslim world. I see that as the least desirable outcome, in fact. I also see it becoming a likely outcome if we fail to democratize the Arab states. It is my desire to avoid genocide that leads me to support a more costly (for us), less certain and more difficult path.

You seem convinced, no matter how many times that I say it, that I want a genocide to occur, want us to wipe out utterly not only the enemy but every Arab and Muslim. And my answer is that there is only one thing worse than that outcome, and that is for the West and the very ideas of human dignity and liberty it embodies to be wiped out utterly. I do not want genocide, contrary to your repeated assertions, and hope that we can avoid it.

You are not interested in debating how to avoid it, at least not here, and that is fine. But by sticking your head in the sand and pretending that there is basically no threat worth worrying about, you are supporting policies and political figures that would make that outcome more likely, in my opinion.

While I'm on it, I have to say that you have been quite civil, and I'd really be interested in seeing your thoughts at more length. If you have a blog, let me know (in email if you don't want it associated here), because I'd be glad to read it.

Actually, looking at your most recent comments, I do have one question that might clear this up.

Suppose, for a moment, that the democracy we're currently trying for in Iraq does not take hold - I know you believe it will based on your most recent posts, but there's also some evidence that the new constitution might not be accepted in a vote.

Is your position that we would then continue to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and use increasingly wide-ranging tactics to deal with a rising insurgency? Or are you suggesting that if democratization fails, we'll withdraw from Iraq, get subsequently nuked by terrorists, and _then_ we'll see genocide as our only option?

If you take the first position, then I stand by my remarks; if the second, I apologize for misunderstanding you.

I have no blog; I waste enough time on the Internet as it is. However, it does seem like there are at least some areas we could productively discuss here. Case in point:

Iraq was not the beginning of the war, nor was it a "war of choice" independent of everything else in the world. Iraq is a campaign in a larger war. Yes, we chose this campaign; better we choose than that the enemy does. But not fighting this campaign does not end the war, merely drag it out and mean that we will fight the next campaign on the ground of our enemy's choosing. Right now, it's looking like the next campaign might well be fought in England.

Your use of the word "campaign" seems a bit odd here. It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that Iraq is a campaign in a larger war. However, using the same term to discuss the events in England seems highly inaccurate. Even in the unlikely event that the British start to get hit with terror attacks on a regular basis, we (or rather, the British themselves) would not wage war on one of our own countries - rather, strong-arm police tactics like mass deportations are more likely. Saying that England would be a "campaign" places a certain mindset on the problem of terrorism, and our response to terrorism, that isn't particularly accurate in this case.

Second, your statement that "better we choose than the enemy does" isn't necessarily true. There are chess players that prefer playing black over white, especially against an unknown opponent. Preemptive war _does_ make sense if your enemies are concentrated in a few locations, and you can decisively destroy a significant chunk of their strength in one fell swoop.

However, the root causes of terrorism are everywhere in the Middle East, and there's reason to believe almost any country there can become dangerous, and a threat to us. Focusing all our strength on Iraq deprives us of the opportunity to deal with new threats as they arrive. I credit Bush with a good-faith effort to get the terrorists before they get us, but the dynamics of the situation just don't work out that way - we seem to have more to fear from Iraq than Iran, but now have no military options for dealing with latter.

Lastly, your comment - "But by sticking your head in the sand and pretending that there is basically no threat worth worrying about, you are supporting policies and political figures that would make that outcome more likely, in my opinion." Tell me, what exactly did I say to state or imply that there was "no threat worth worrying about"? In my experience, even the looniest of lefties (which I am not, thanks) admit that there's a threat - the question is, how bad is that threat, and what should we do about it?

Being against the Iraq war (or campaign, or what have you) doesn't make someone completely oblivious to the threat posed by Islamic terror, and pretending otherwise does the whole country a disservice (as does pretending that, say, Bush is only in Iraq for oil, or some such nonsense.)

And I'm likewise impressed by your civil response thus far; thanks for that.

Suppose, for a moment, that the democracy we're currently trying for in Iraq does not take hold - I know you believe it will based on your most recent posts, but there's also some evidence that the new constitution might not be accepted in a vote.

Is your position that we would then continue to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and use increasingly wide-ranging tactics to deal with a rising insurgency? Or are you suggesting that if democratization fails, we'll withdraw from Iraq, get subsequently nuked by terrorists, and _then_ we'll see genocide as our only option?

The object of war is victory. To achieve victory in the war, we have to destroy the terrorists to the degree we have destroyed pirates: they have to become a nuisance that no state supports and all states attack within the best of their capabilities. To destroy the terrorists, we have to attack them at several points: we have to kill or capture and indefinitely detain as many active terrorists as possible; we have to change the governments of any states supporting jihadi terrorism so that they no longer do so (that means, at present, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, other minor players and possibly Pakistan and others); we have to change the societal underpinning to remove the attraction to and support of jihadi fascism amongst the Arabs and Muslims (and parts of the Western Left like Galloway and Right like the "God hates fags" guy). In the meantime, we have to ensure that nuclear, chemical and biological weapons do not get into terrorists' hands, to avoid triggering an outsize response to a mass-casualty attack.

OK, so one aspect of this is getting states to stop supporting terrorists, as we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq through war and in Libya through diplomacy. Ideally, we democratize Iraq, and the spirit of that democratization being shown to work pervades the Arab/Muslim world, causing the people there to overthrow their local tyrants and install representative governments that do not support terrorism. But let's say we fail, and Iraq cannot be democratized under the current or any future negotiated constitution. What then?

Then our strategy of democratization has failed. That does not mean we've lost, though it does mean that Wilsonianism as a doctrine of grand strategy in this war would have to go. The goal is still to get states to stop supporting terrorism. If Iraq fails as a democracy, we could still install a pro-Western dictator, preferably a free-market oriented dictator for reasons that I will explain in a bit. Then we simply get out of the way and let his armies do the work, without our interference but with our active support. (We still wouldn't be able to do this in Iraq for at least another two years, because it takes a long time to train officers and NCOs, and we're only about half way there by all indications.)

However, this has some very bad and costly ramifications, because it means that we will be unable to let representative government take its course, and we'll have to invade at least the states I named above as sponsors of terrorism - or threaten them into submission - to remove their support for jihadi terrorism by replacing their governments under duress. This would be costly in lives (ours and the enemy civilian populations), money, time and our moral sense of ourselves, but it could be done.

If we're very lucky at that point, and have installed free-market oriented dictators that can last, we may be able to pull a long-term save out of our asses. The reason for this is that I have yet to see a modern country with free internal markets last for more than 50 years without becoming free. It's an outgrowth of private property rights that seems to be pretty much inevitable, absent a crackdown that destroys those rights (such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela, which are going in the opposite direction). See S. Korea and Taiwan as examples, though there are others.

But this has a huge component of risk: because it will take longer to assure that we convert the most dangerous terror-supporting states to non-hostile states, the risk of nuclear weapons getting into jihadi hands is increased, and thus the risk of their using them on us or Israel or Europe or Japan or some other ally is increased. And if the enemy gets their hands on nuclear weapons, and they attack us or our allies with them, our only recourse would be genocide, which would be an even worse way to attain "victory" than would installing pro-Western dictators. In fact, at that point, I wouldn't even say we'd gained victory, merely survival.

It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that Iraq is a campaign in a larger war. However, using the same term to discuss the events in England seems highly inaccurate. Even in the unlikely event that the British start to get hit with terror attacks on a regular basis, we (or rather, the British themselves) would not wage war on one of our own countries - rather, strong-arm police tactics like mass deportations are more likely. Saying that England would be a "campaign" places a certain mindset on the problem of terrorism, and our response to terrorism, that isn't particularly accurate in this case.

If England undergoes a sustained bombing campaign, England will fight that campaign. As Northern Ireland shows, England will use its military as well as its police to attempt to defeat the enemy in such a campaign. How does this differ from the campaign in Iraq, except that the percentage of the country supporting the enemy would presumably be smaller?

Second, your statement that "better we choose than the enemy does" isn't necessarily true. There are chess players that prefer playing black over white, especially against an unknown opponent. Preemptive war _does_ make sense if your enemies are concentrated in a few locations, and you can decisively destroy a significant chunk of their strength in one fell swoop.

There is a difference between preemption and offensive warfare in general. Preemption is an attack specifically to remove the enemy's freedom of action, or spoil his plans to attack you. In fact, the military term is not preemption but "spoiling attack". It is not possible to win a war purely on defense: unlike in chess, the pieces are not fixed, and the enemy is not compelled to act until he is ready. The end result of that is that if we allow our enemy to choose the time and place of combat, he will choose that time and place that is favorable to him (as the enemy did for the 9/11 attacks and the prior attacks on the USS Cole, the African embassies and so forth).

While the attacks on Iraq may have been preemptive, but probably weren't, an attack on Iran would not be at all preemptive: Iran is already attacking our forces in Iraq (as is Syria, though less directly). It would still be offensive warfare, as opposed to sitting in Iraq or at home and waiting for the enemy to come to us, but it would not be preemptive of any particular attack. Unless, of course, Iran should succeed at getting nuclear weapons, in which cases such an attack might well be preemptive.

However, the root causes of terrorism are everywhere in the Middle East, and there's reason to believe almost any country there can become dangerous, and a threat to us. Focusing all our strength on Iraq deprives us of the opportunity to deal with new threats as they arrive. I credit Bush with a good-faith effort to get the terrorists before they get us, but the dynamics of the situation just don't work out that way - we seem to have more to fear from Iraq than Iran, but now have no military options for dealing with latter.

I absolutely agree with you with every statement here. It takes years to raise a division to the standard we expect of our fighting men. I fault President Bush for not beginning the process immediately after 9/11, for not seeking a declaration of war that precisely names our enemies (along with the associated and necessary effort to rally the country behind the war we would have to fight, and have been fighting) and for breaking the reserve system instead of acting to change the composition away from the disastrous post-Vietnam reorganization. (The reserve/Guard system is specifically designed to make it impossible to fight a long war without a full mobilization, which I do not consider a desirable feature of the system.) We must now defeat the enemy in Iraq, at least to the point that the Iraqi government forces can finish the job, before we can deal with any other country, unless we are willing to undertake an emergency mobilization, with all the associated costs and dislocations.

ell me, what exactly did I say to state or imply that there was "no threat worth worrying about"? In my experience, even the looniest of lefties (which I am not, thanks) admit that there's a threat - the question is, how bad is that threat, and what should we do about it?

My apologies. I was wrong to make that characterization of what you said. And I certainly don't consider you the looniest of lefties; if anything, you have shown yourself to be among the more sane people I've talked to recently.

As to opposition to the Iraq war making someone completely oblivious to the threat of terrorism, I agree that the two are not necessarily linked. It is surely the case that one can oppose the Iraq war for good reasons (though such reasons are sadly not often seen).

That said, those politicians who oppose the Iraq war are generally the ones most likely to support policies that make genocide more likely. We have seen the failure of the law enforcement approach to terrorism in 9/11 and in 3/11 and in 7/7. We must, must fight this as a war, or we will surely wake up one day to find ourselves in the three conjectures world, and that puts us into the position of suffering or committing genocide. And I know of no sane person who wants to see either outcome.

Then our strategy of democratization has failed. That does not mean we've lost, though it does mean that Wilsonianism as a doctrine of grand strategy in this war would have to go. The goal is still to get states to stop supporting terrorism. If Iraq fails as a democracy, we could still install a pro-Western dictator, preferably a free-market oriented dictator for reasons that I will explain in a bit. Then we simply get out of the way and let his armies do the work, without our interference but with our active support.

With all due respect, I don't think that this entirely answers my earlier question, although I appreciate you detailing your thought processes. However, I suspect that the "install a dictator" approach would not be a workable solution - the US is currently having a great deal of trouble because it's seen as an "occupier", even though it really is trying to midwife a liberal democracy into being. If we actually were to try and install a dictator, benevolent or otherwise, I'd forsee a massive popular uprising that would more likely than not lead to the observation on "razing societies to the ground" that began this conversation.

As Northern Ireland shows, England will use its military as well as its police to attempt to defeat the enemy in such a campaign. How does this differ from the campaign in Iraq, except that the percentage of the country supporting the enemy would presumably be smaller?

I can think of two ways. One is that (and I may be mistaken on this count, but I don't think so) that the British military in Northern Ireland were used primarily as a very heavy police and security force (yes, in a way similar to what we're doing now in Iraq). Taking over Iraq and toppling Saddam would, in my view, qualify as a campaign, but what we're currently doing does not. Two is that NI was, to a certain extent, an occupied territory, as is Iraq. London, Leeds, what have you, are not. "Police action" would seem to be the most apt term, even if England was to use its military to deal with internal terrorism.

The end result of that is that if we allow our enemy to choose the time and place of combat, he will choose that time and place that is favorable to him (as the enemy did for the 9/11 attacks and the prior attacks on the USS Cole, the African embassies and so forth).

This is true, but, respectfully, seems somewhat irrelevant - there seems relatively little proof that Iraq per se has limited the enemy's ability to strike at us when he pleases. And the notion of offensive warfare with regard to terrorism only holds true if our attack somehow damages Al Qeada's power base. A liberal democracy in Iraq might arguably have done that, but a dictatorship or worse might be said to only exacerbate the problems in the Mideast that have led to terrorism in the first place.

That said, those politicians who oppose the Iraq war are generally the ones most likely to support policies that make genocide more likely. We have seen the failure of the law enforcement approach to terrorism in 9/11 and in 3/11 and in 7/7. We must, must fight this as a war, or we will surely wake up one day to find ourselves in the three conjectures world, and that puts us into the position of suffering or committing genocide. And I know of no sane person who wants to see either outcome.

I have to take exception to your citing 3/11 and 7/7 as failures of the law enforcement model - Spain and Britain were both involved in the Iraq war, and the leadership of both countries seemed as committed to the idea of the War on Terror as anyone, save perhaps Bush himself. 9/11 is a better example, but I would argue that all three attacks suggest that no model, not law enforcement, not war, and certainly not "razing societies to the ground" can guarantee that all terrorist attacks will be blocked. We simply cannot protect every major civilian population center and critical piece of infrastructure from malicious attack - the security apparatus needed to do so would have to be bigger and more complex than the society it's protecting, much like a suit of armor needs to be bigger than its occupant.

My feeling is that, if complete protection is impossible, our goal must be to minimize terrorism, and therefore the root causes of terrorism, as much as possible. If you are convinced that going to war will prevent millions of US deaths from nuclear terrorism, then obviously almost any war, and any tactics, will seem appropriate. If you feel that war is not absolute protection from WMD terrorism, then the moral necessity of war falls away, and soft power - such as the power of private property rights you spoke of earlier - must become your primary offensive tool.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what else we can fruitfully say to each other - we perhaps agree on more than we might think, but at this point the issue of how much war prevents terrorism is more theory and faith than demonstrable fact. In twenty years our kids will know the truth of the matter, but for now it's beyond proving for either side.

Thanks again for a civil, intelligent conversation.

Certainly, installing a dictator would lead to a huge fight in Iraq, much prolonging the terrorism, as well as dramatically strengthening the insurgency. It would also mean that further campaigns (Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia) would have to be fought, and would be much tougher than they otherwise would have been. This would be bad, in comparison to the slow but steady spread of democracy by example. But it's still better than losing, as beating Japan was not as good as having Japan become less militaristic voluntarily, but was still better than losing to Japan would have been.

To be more clear on your earlier question, I'm not sure we would withdraw if democracy fails; I hope we wouldn't. However, were we to withdraw, and democracy to fail, in either order, the terrorists would win a great victory. This would embolden states supporting the terrorists, making a nuclear strike by terrorists more likely, and thus making a nuclear response by us likely. As long as we win in Iraq, the terrorists suffer a defeat, the state support of terrorism withdraws some, and the odds of nuclear genocide become less likely. Winning "good" (that is, via democracy) is not only morally better in the narrow view, it also is a better victory in that it shrinks state support for terrorism more, and more rapidly.

As to campaigns, I tend to think of a campaign as a distinct set of military operations intended to obtain a certain strategic goal, within the context of a broader war. To take the two recent Iraqi wars, the 1991 war had one campaign only, and the campaign's goals were identical to the war's goals. The recent war, though, consists of at least three campaigns so far: the initial invasion, the defeat of the Sunni insurgency, and the reconstruction and democratization. These three campaigns have distinct goals, sharing a spatial and temporal component to where and when they occur, and are fought by distinct forces where they overlap. They are still only lesser strategic goals, though, in a broader war, that to end jihadi terrorism. Still, it's just terminology, and it's only important that we understand what each other means, and not that we agree on which terminology is better for whatever usage we might make of it.

The reason that I take 3/11 and 7/7 as failures of the law enforcement model is that both Spain and Britain were treating their internal Muslim populations as law enforcement problems only; that is, they were not attempting to preemptively take down terror cells that had not acted. For example, Britain until last week tolerated Hizb ut-Tahrir, which differs from Hizb'allah primarily in that it doesn't have an armed wing. They preach jihadi hate, train terrorists, finance terrorists, commit terrorists to attacks abroad and so on, but do not themselves make attacks, and so were not targeted by the British government. That is a failure in the war, caused by applying law enforcement reasoning to a problem that is not a law enforcement problem. Just because the population is already in our country does not mean that they are not enemy. (The problem, of course, is to separate the enemy from the non-enemy that is just like the enemy except that the non-enemy doesn't believe we should all die for being infidels, or at least isn't willing to use that belief in an instrumental way.)

I agree that our goal must be to minimize terrorism, by minimizing the root causes of terrorism. I wonder what you believe to be the root causes of terrorism?

I think that the root causes are threefold:

1) There is a deep feeling of failure in the Arab world, which is exacerbated by Israel, which proves that just being in the Middle East is not an excuse for failure.
2) There is a cultural paranoia that is strong in the Arab world and that seeks to make external excuses for every failing.
3) Arab states are dictatorial, and frequently police states, and dissent is not possible internally; this leads to frustration being directed outwards.

This is why I think that democratization is the key to ending terrorism: it breaks point 1 by increasing the Arabs' success, point 2 by making the common people responsible for their governance, and point 3 by allowing outlets for frustration and anger.

To my mind, we have to attack the terrorism problem with both hard and soft power in combination. We have to use hard power to defeat the intransigent states that support terrorism, particularly those such as Iran that are also working towards nuclear capability, because soft power will not work in the necessary time frame. This is limited in scope: Iraq, Iran and possibly Syria are the only places I see us needing to do this under current conditions.

Soft power is more useful over a longer time frame, so long as we are successful in our hard power usage. And actually this is something that really worries me: will the Republicans support the next Democrat elected president? For the most part, I doubt it. And currently the Democrats are, for the most part, not supporting the current president. To win, all parts of our society have to be in this fight together. We need the Republicans supporting the Democrats by supporting intercultural contacts within our society and between our society and other societies, letting frustration get screamed out without shouting "treason" every time someone thinks President Bush is wrong, and not trying to pin the blame for everything bad on Democrats.

We need the Democrats to support the Republicans by using art as a weapon against the enemy, rather than against the West and the US; supporting the use of force against enemies that cannot or will not submit to bargaining and negotiation; and not trying to blame every bad thing that happens on Republicans.

I agree that this is largely a matter of faith. Which of us is right might never be known, and perhaps we are both utterly wrong in fundamental ways. However, we cannot let lack of knowledge bind our hands, because I believe we would both agree that doing nothing is not possible. Our political system solves the problem of imperfect knowledge by electing agents to act in our stead, and right now our national agent for foreign policy is George Bush. I disagree with him on a lot of things, but that is irrelevant to this point: as our agent on foreign policy, I support him because I hope he's right. When another president is elected in 3 years, I will support that president, no matter who he/she is, in the hopes that they will be right, so long as it is not clear that their policies are leading inevitably to disaster.

And I hope that we come out of this without a disaster.

I have been really enjoying this discussion. You are the third person, in almost four years now, that disagrees strongly with my premises, but has been willing to debate them civilly. Without such willingness from every side to reach across our political preferences and presumptions, we are sadly lessened as countrymen.