"'If we left Iraq prematurely as the terrorists demand, the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they'd order us and all those who don't share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines,' he [Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld] said" (Reuters, "Top U.S. Generals See Threat of Iraq Civil War," 03 Aug 2006, <http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N03270828.htm>).
That pretty much sums up what those who are in charge of the White House and Congress think. Their thinking is divorced from reality.
So is the pie-in-the-sky fantasy of most US leftists, who are always in search of "good guys," so they are incapable of defending what must be defended (in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, etc.) and unable to see the weaknesses of those whom they put on their respective sectarian pedestals (in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nepal, Iranian leftists in exile, etc.).
US politics consists of two fantasies on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, separated by a vast middle who are either uninterested in politics or easy marks for conspiracy theorists.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>