Senate report concludes: no proof of contact between

[kandrathe]

This isn't WWII - this emergency has no end. It is hence, an unfair comparison. And yes, I'm well aware of the internment camps, both in the US, and here, as well as the various other measures in place.

The Cold War would be a better one (And we all know what happened to McCarthy, there...)

WWII was also set for a stalemate, until we set aside our morality and dropped a couple nukes on the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshimi. Just as Vlad the Impaler had done to stop the Ottoman Turks, the US demonstrated its will to utterly destroy Japan in a most horrific manner. The insurgency in Iraq believes that if they can shed enough American blood, aided by the outcry of the press, the Americans will lose their stomachs for fighting and the Jihadi's will win. How's their strategy working? Does the West have the will to stay and win? If we give up on Baghdad this time, where will we make a stand? Paris? Madrid? London? New York? Toronto? Does no one else see the consequences of appeasement and capitulation to the jihadis?

I'm also reminded of Colonel Kurtz from Apocolypse Now. When you go into a war offering nebulous concepts like "democracy" and your enemy is willing to delve into the extremes of horror, how can you win? This is simply a twisted lesson in Maslow's pyramid of need. The citizens of Iraq are worried daily about survival. What tangible is the US and friends offering them at the base of the pyramid? If you look at defining moments and conflicts in history, winning is more about willpower than raw numbers, superior tactics or technology. As Sun Tzu would say, in order to defeat the jihadis we must defeat their strategy.

The similiarity to the Cold War, might relate if the comparison were of Communism to Islamic Jihad. Not many people in the west bought into the notion of collective farming, and redistribution of wealth -- so too not many people will be very interested in sharia law and burqa's. If you want to see how it happens, look to Londonistan, or France.