Winning and Losing

This conflict every bit as much as the three previous world wars must be won and won by western civilization. Victor Davis Hanson says it much better than can be said here, so here is the link.
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It may be hard for the world's new impatient generation to accept the truth: There are no simple black-and-white solutions at little cost in today's technologically connected but politically fragmented world. Restless Americans and a demanding global public are going to have to accept that in Afghanistan, Darfur, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Somalia and the West Bank, the United States itself — not just the bogeyman George Bush — has only bad and far worse choices.

What sometimes works against jihadists and tyrants in one place won't always in others. Unilateral, multilateral, react or preempt — these have no innate moral value but are just differing strategies for a baffling multitude of new problems that all defy a cookie-cutter approach. After 9/11, caution in the long run may prove deadlier than intervention has in the short term. People will die daily on CNN no matter what we do.

The only constant in this wired-together but split-apart global family? The frantic American parent will try its best, as it is blamed for saying no, yes — and everything in between

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Here is one GOP '08 'straw poll and here is another at Patrick Ruffini's place.