...it's a policing problem. The insurgents are setting off bombs and getting away with it. The more bombs they get away with, the more chaos they sow, and the easier it is for them to get away with setting off bombs.

With enough police and enough informants, the insurgents can't get away with it. That's what Saddam had in place before we invaded--a network of police and informants in every alley and street. That's why nobody was blowing up things under Saddam, even though all the political and sectarian tensions were the same.

And that's why we're not going to 'win' in Iraq. We are simply not ever going to put in enough police to control the insurgents. The cost is too high. It would require either a draft or an equally ruinous expenditure on foriegn mercenaries.

'Fighting' the insurgency is just useless. It would be like fighting car jackers in Detroit--you may kill some car jackers, but the collateral damage would be so high that the neighbors will end up supporting the car jackers. At that point, you've lost absolutely.

There is NO military solution to Iraq. There's nobody to fight because there's nobody to surrender or kill off. No matter how many insurgents we might finish off, more insurgents will be developed, just by the act of killing them.

War is about killing people and breaking things. The more people we kill and the more things we break in Iraq, the more resilient and entrenched the insurgency will become.

...that every guy thinks he's misunderstood (or misunderestimated). In reality, only a very few are. Bush isn't one of them.

...who has the 'good' vs 'evil' mentality. It's the country itself. You see it on every pundit show, where anyone who even sort of suggests that Americans could be at fault for anything is pounced upon and derided as an America hater or a traiter or an appeaser or whatever. And you see this on every topic, not just political topics.

Thus country doesn't tolerate complex, nuanced arguments anymore. It will not tolerate any sort of criticism of what is seen as 'the American people.' That's a terrible thing, because we're a democracy and in a democracy it is always the people who are responsible for what a democracy does. If we can't criticize Americans when America is going wrong, then we will never be able to fix America.

The real problem with Bush (IMO) is that he's not so much a 'decider' as a defaulter. Unlike Clinton, he never even presumes to stand up to America's worst impulses, he just goes along with them and endorses them. Americans don't like taxes, so he gave them tax breaks even though the tax breaks ate the surplus. Americans wanted to kick ass after 9/11 so he went after Saddam and invaded Iraq--even without any clear idea of why he was doing that. Americans had no idea what to do next after invading Iraq, so now neither does George Bush.

...but not a word about "for."

You can be against anything and everything, but until you explicitly come out and say what you are 'for,' you really don't stand for anything. And that is the problem with liberal bloggers, and the problem with liberals and Democrats in general these days: just what are they for?

Getting the hell out of Iraq. Rebuilding our alliances around the world. Providing health care for everyone in the country. Developing real, sustainable renewable energy sources. Federally funding stem cell research. Enforcing existing environmental laws.

Republicans could be for any of those things, even health care for everyone.

The problem is that if liberal bloggers are only AGAINST things, then they are wide open to the charge that they could be FOR those same things, if the 'right' president had done them. Would the 'left' blogosphere be against the invasion of Iraq and torture of detainees if Al Gore had done these things instead of George Bush? It's not at all clear to me that they would be. The reason it is not clear is because most liberal bloggers (including Greenwald) pretty much refuse to discuss fundamental beliefs and instead indulge mostly in attacking who isn't one of them.