Eric,

All fine points - I will content myself with discussing just a few

But why would these peoples hold it against us for pursuing our own, and at least in the case of Europe, our common concern?

I believe it is called hypocrisy ("We will pursue OUR self-interest but YOU are not allowed to do the same because you are the SUPERPOWER") and self-delusion ("Islamic extremists aren't really diabolical, highly-organized, fanatical and out to rule and/or destroy the world, they're just misunderstood - more aid and policework will nip that little matter in the bud").

thanks Aaman, very salient points as always. Moving backwards, this is something of a follow-up to the Beinart-related post of a few days ago, where the moderate left and the middle have to grasp the moral and strategic importance of a strong stance against Islamofascism, as much of the left did against communism two generations ago. People in the middle - like me - who are prone toward a liberal social agenda, were turned off by Kerry's mushy stance re Iraq and the greater war on terror, and not inclined to take the chance at this delicate juncture. Whether conscious of all of this or not, I think that was the basic calculus in many minds.

Re the rest of the world, I'm glad to hear of the comprehension of the criticality of fighting terror, but sad to hear how cynical the view is of our motives and aims.

perhaps that cynical view comes from the fact that the rest of the world does not equate "fighting terror" with "waging war in iraq".

I can understand that disjunction, as many Americans who support the war on terror don't see Iraq as a wise or legitimate aspect of it; but as far as I can tell the generalized anti-Americanism around the world goes beyond that to include an antipathy toward, and mistrust in, the war on terror in general.

Rosenthal's analysis is a cop-out and demonstrates WHY "Democratic operatives" failed to win this election -- they simply didn't understand the electorate and the factors motivating turnout as well as the GOP did.

Yes, of course it looks like the war on terror was the clear deciding factor for Bush. THAT's the ONLY WAY he could have won. Any Bush scenario for victory would have had the war on terror high on the list in exit polls -- that was his friggin campaign.

The reason Bush won Ohio was Kerry couldn't convince people on the jobs issue -- the economy and jobs always trump "values" and more general fears that are America's default position. Kerry couldn't convince voters the jobs situation was bad enough, hence he lost.

Discounting the role of the gay marraige referenda in the 11 states they were proposed is also myopic. Karl Rove or any top GOP strategist would tell you that evangelicals were CRITICAL to this election and the main reason Bush expanded his base by a larger margin than Kerry did his. Gay marriage wasn't the sole issue -- remember the hundreds of thousands of evangelicals who stayed home in 2000 after Bush's drunk driving revelation and you'll see the GOP had a built-in increase in their base to begin with. But gay marraige was THE focal point for religious conservatives to mobilize around and was probably the primary reason more of them registered to vote and did vote on "values" issues, among which I also count the "war on terror." I would imagine there's also a highly predictive statistical correlation between those who opposed gay marraige and those who supported the war on terror. So there could be a very persuasive case made that the gay marriage referendum in Ohio, for example, brought out voters who DO support the war on terror that otherwise wouldn't have been motivated to vote solely because of it (like Olsen was) absent some other more current issue like gay marriages.

The exit polls overwhelmingly show that a huge majority of those who supported Iraq voted for Bush and a huge majority of those who opposed it for Kerry. This shouldn't come as any big surprise and doesn't exhaust our explanation of the election. There are smaller internal polls which indicate that this opposition wasn't iron-clad: for example, the significant majority of Americans and the significant minority of Iraq supporters who felt Bush misled the nation about WMD and felt the war was going poorly. Or, perhaps, a minority of Iraq opponents who opposed Kerry's stands on other social issues like gay marriage and abortion, e.g., some Catholics.

The war on terror was of course the backdrop for the election and the default position for all Americans who are still afraid. It wasn't the decisive factor until other, historically proven causative electoral issues were taken off the table.

Values only become the predominant concern when people think the economy and their jobs (and secondary issues like health care and Social Security) are good enough. They did, so they voted on their fears, as Olsen did.

The larger question of whether fear is enough to sustain a politics or an ethics is one that isn't so clear-cut in hindsight.

That is all.

Oh, and the vast majority of the world disagrees with us on Iraq. You can use more pathological language to describe the opposition to the war in the States as "obsessive" and "irrational," but the fact remains that almost all the rest of the world's leaders and populations opposes the war by a larger margin than we do here.

The quote you have on others supporting their economic and trade interests and the development of the EU doesn't come anywhere NEAR the kind of foreign policy the Bush doctrine espouses. None of the examples you give in that quote deal with military interventions or armed conflict, nor even nation-building on a model of our own making. That's a fallacious analogy and reductionist logic. Europe (especially the EU) clearly didn't view Iraq as being in their own interests and all our rhetoric to the contrary then and now hasn't done any good in convincing them of it. Of course they are worried about the threat of terror and Al Qaeda. But they (rightly) don't see any connection between Iraq and 9/11 or Al Qaeda and realize that our efforts have strained our military to the breaking point where we can no longer be a good ally in fighting terrorism within Europe. You can't explain this away with broad rhetoric about how "terror is terror and they oppose our way of life and we have to strike anywhere we can to send a signal to those who won't join with what our idea of terror is."

Stop quoting Bush's campaign stump rhetoric about Kerry -- he didn't believe "aid and policework" were the sole extent of the war on terror. He made it very clear that he would support exhaustive intelligence and military efforts focused on Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. I realize retrospective posts like these are an attempt to convince yourself your choice was right, but please don't distort positions and facts. I'm as likely as anyone to criticize Kerry and see his faults, but you're mis-applying some of his suggestions for how to keep Iraq stable (through the establishment of aid and a nation-wide police force) with his more aggressive ideas for how to hunt down Al Qaeda.

I also don't think you or most of America (including myself) understands the dynamics occurring within the Islamic world. That's why 9/11 happened and that's why our intelligence efforts have been a failure. I'm not sure that imposing one worldview upon a part of the world we've already proven that our administration doesn't understand enough to prevent tragedy is an effective way to strike terror at its source.

Olsen, I respect your passion but I can't understand why you continue to press this case. Bush won this debate in terms of public sentiment, but your case for his position lacks logic and evidence. It's based on generalities, triumphalism and emotional response.

I give you credit for being a thoughtful guy, so I'll say this. I predict, if you're still doing this in four years, that you'll write a vote saying your vote for Bush was a mistake. I give you credit in advance for the kind of self-analysis that that will entail.

That is all.

Eric, at what point does rooting for enthusiastic zealots who have abundantly proved they are incompetent need to have a performance review. And I don't mean an election, because that's just rock-paper-scissors. Everything your current administration has touched has turned to shit, and you, my friend, will wind up holding the bag.

And when you turn out to be wrong, and international criminals, who's going to to take the fall?

How long can the rest of the world tolerate the USA? Not much longer I think until, you go sit over there with Russia and discuss hangovers.

if there is a way to completely be rid of terrorism, war certainly ain't it.

there are a number of issues being confused and conflated here - in no particular order:

In Ohio, Bush did not "expand his base more than Kerry did." Per the Rosenthal article: We added 554,000 votes to our totals, but the Republicans countered with 508,000, enough to keep the state in their column.

And regarding church goers: The 2004 election brought no increase whatsoever in the portion of the voting electorate who attend church on a weekly basis or more often than that, according to exit polls. In Ohio, the share of the electorate represented by frequent churchgoers actually declined from 45 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2004. Nationwide, Bush improved his vote among weekly churchgoers by just one point over 2000, while increasing his support among those who don't go to church by four points.

The characterization of voting to support the war on terror as "voting for fear" is demagoguery plain and simple, and where the whole "how could a smart guy vote against logic and evidence" approach falls apart.

Supporting the war on terror -- for me and I can only truly speak for myself, but everything I read and hear tells me there are millions who see it approximately the way I do -- means supporting actively and aggressively pursuing the terrorists rather than defensively hunkering down and waiting for them to show up, it means actively pursuing democracy rather than supporting authoritarians who happen to say some things we want to hear, and it means changing the mentality of dealing with terror, and in particular jihadist terror and the mindset that supports it, from that of an ongoing law enforcement issue (pre-9/11) to that of a great focused and transformative campaign, ie, a war.

Failure to see that Kerry was perceived as more ambiguous than Bush on the greater war on terror and certainly on Iraq -- whether one agrees with this perception or not -- is willfully obtuse.

I disagree that an election is meaningless "rock paper scissors" and the citizenry could not have been much more focused on the issues of the campaign, nor have taken it much more seriously. This was not a cavalier or tossed-off election, as evidenced by a hundred factors including turnout.

The public also was wise enough to see that "competence" in war is extremely unpredictable and variable, and that war NEVER goes as predicted or as planned for, and the best you can hope for is an odd and difficult combination of commitment and learning from mistakes.

The question was "is there any reason to think Kerry will do better" and the verdict, though close, was no.

You can argue all you want about what you think should have happened - I am attempting to look at what did actually happen and apply my own logic and paths of thought to those of other voters. And the line of reasoning that concludes over half the country is stupid and illogical is not a line of reasoning at all.

I have no idea how I will feel in four years, and neither does anyone else. I guess we'll see.

And the "administration are international criminals" line of thinking is simply laughable: compared to whom? For what? As adjudicated by whom?

And the world "tolerating" the U.S.? The U.S. will be the political, economic, philosophical, military backbone of the world for some time to come. About the only foreseeable change on the horizon is China becoming the world's largest economy, but its economic power will remain relatively diffuse as per capita earning and spending power will lag behind the West (and much of Asia) for a long time to come. Eventually China may come to look and feel like a very large Japan, but I don't find that vey threatening at all.

Well thank goodness it wasn't the toothless ridgerunners who made the choice here in Ohio - I suppose they were too busy being strung out on meth and letting their remaining teeth rot out of their vacant skulls to go out and jump start their Pintos and make it to the polls.

Those damn wavering wussy moderates, not hateful enough to be right-wingers, but not idealistically motivated to be lefties.

The war on terrorism = good, war in Iraq = deadly, demoralizing, disastrous, dragging on for another ten years (perhaps), taking focus away from the overall war in terror, tying up precious resources, draining the economy and fueling decades worth of new terrorists.

But hey, we needed to blow up something didn't we?

It is what it is - can we talk about Santa Claus now, all the political chatter makes me feel all glummy?

Eric, I don't know if you watch "The Wire", but the last ep had the best summation of this horrid mess the USA has gotten into (plus, given Chris Rock's observation that the Marines wouldn't dare invade Baltimore).

If you haven't seen it, a district chief, Bunny Colvin has made drugs "legal" in a deserted section of West Baltimore, "Hamsterdam". And he explains the difference to one of his sergeants between busting heads and policing. You have either occupied territory or a policed community. And occupation doesn't work.

What the current administration is doing is occupation (buy one Gaza, get the intifada for free!), and it is doomed to failure. What is lacking is accountability. In four years, when you've turned everything you've touched to shit, who is going to be accountable?

Are you going to step up, and say, I fucked up! and my buddy George is going to honour our commitments! Past performance of the rubble he has "managed" says not.

So, start the process to change your name to "Patsy Harvey".

I admit to being Wireless, but the idea IS to turn control over to Iraqis, who would then police rather than occupy, themselves, but they don't appear to be ready just yet.

I did a quick search through US news sites and didn't see much of how your overlords see you:

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, visiting U.S. troops in Kuwait that are bound for Iraq, heard rare criticism about a lack of armour for their vehicles and long deployments. He bluntly replied: "You go to war with the army you have."

An American soldier was slain Tuesday by small-arms fire while on patrol in Baghdad. On Wednesday, the Pentagon's website listed the total number of U.S. combat deaths at 1,001.

Eric, it isn't about what you want, it is all about the consequences. I'm sure you really want a pony. But when I look at Dawn, while she, too, wants a pony, knows that just won't work, and lord knows, you can't be expected to scoop up after the shuddering, hairy beast no matter how much you say you really, really want a pony and how girly-gleefully squealing Dawn would be with a pony (never-mind how much they shed).

So, are you willing to sign up for the consequences? Will you take the mortgage for the American War?

Don't rush for an answer, because I'm going for a bowl of pho in at the Ho Chi Minh resto next door.

You know what? That bowl of pho was really good!

So is Iraqui food good too? Or is it just more stuff with chick peas, goat and yogurt?

Because we've already got that here in Toronto. But you might like it in Cleveland.

Considering your existing history of persecuted food for persecuted people, and how in a couple of years you will have to make room for the refugees. (What, Shrub didn't tell you about that part? heh, suckers.) Just think about --whatever-- on a stick.

"Honor the Fallen"

"Army Sgt. Mjr. Michael B. Stack, 48, of Lake City, S.C.; Assigned to 2nd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, Ft. Campbell, KY; was killed April 11 by hostile fire in Anbar Province, Iraq."

Mike Stack, although 48 years old, did not believe that it was "too late" to serve his country in combat in Iraq. He leaves behind his widow, six children and three grandchildren.

This brave soldier was killed on Easter Sunday while manning a machine gun on his Humvee when his 12-man Special Forces team was ambushed. His actions helped saved the lives of the rest of his team, posthumously earning Sgt. Mjr. Stack the Silver Star.

Mike Stack enlisted in the Army in 1977 and joined the Special Forces in 1988. He served in the Balkans and the Gulf War. Deeply religious, Mike taught bible classes at Ft. Campbell and organized prayer groups in Iraq.

Stack is one of 31 American soldiers over the age of 45 who've been killed since the Afghanistan/Iraqi invasions.

"All gave some...some gave all."
- MCH, Vietnam era vet

tragic and noble at the same time