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The New York Times chose not to publish Bruce Schneier’s way to avoid the next 9/11 so he did.

Ten big news stories you aren’t hearing

On this past Sunday’s Meet the Press Vice President Cheney disagrees with the majority of Americans in each poll that Tim Russert shows him.  Surprisingly I agree with Cheney’s main premise:

“The basic proposition for our adversaries—and we ought to take a minute and focus on it—they, they want to re-create the old caliphate that stretched from Spain all the way around to Southeast Asia. They want to topple the regimes that are there today, they want to kick the U.S. out of that part of the world, destroy Israel, equip themselves with weapons of mass destructions, etc. In the course of doing that, their strategy for doing that is to break our will.  They can’t beat us in a stand-up fight, they never have, but they’re absolutely convinced they can break our will. The American people don’t have the stomach for the fight.”

Vice President Cheney is 100% correct.  Unfortunately he believes that by maintaining a 100,000 troop American presence in the region we will somehow manage to hunt down and outlive fundamentalists that have been terrorizing the region for centuries.  The President is correct in his assertion that the people of Iraq (and Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia…) must stand up (or as Cheney says “get the locals involved”) and create democracies but he is incorrect in his belief that somehow an American presence is encouraging this or can be maintained until it happens.

Here’s the fundamental flaw in Cheney and Bush’s thinking.  Even if Karzai, Musharraf and Talabani put their faith in the US and find that they manage to overcome some “insurgency,” will they feel as strong when we have withdrawn under banners of “Mission Complete” and the jihadists that have been terrorizing them for centuries return?

Finally, some constructive criticism for Mr. Russert: stop beating a dead horse (or the Vice President) for that matter.  He was wrong in his assessment leading up to and during the war and he admits it.  It would be great to hear some constructive discourse on the underlying premise that the Bush administration’s long term strategy on spreading Democracy will not work.

The next President of the United States will be the first person to come out and say that while Iraq is a mess, pulling out would be admitting defeat and the current strategy is not working.  Our next President will be the first person to stand up and say that we need to stop the partisan rhetoric and start working together on what we want to accomplish in Iraq and how we are going to to succeed because right now we do not know.