Not many, one would think, who are neither neoconservatives, Blairites nor arms manufacturers.  The more one ponders Iraq present and future and the mired progress in Afghanistan, the more difficult it becomes to see a durable enhancement in security for the West at the end of all this.  And that, surely, is the only honest measure by which we might justify all that has been done in our name, including the sacrifice of our sons.

The stakes are appallingly high, with a nuclear revenge attack on Western soil being considered “inevitable” by some US specialists.  Will an outside chance of victory in the WoT and even the establishment of American Empire and its hegemony in the ME really be worth that?

Beyond Iraq, here’s a swift tour of the good ole WoT in the ME.  Judge for yourself whether this is shaping up nicely for neocons or whether it has already spun out of control.

In Syria, according to Seymour Hersh, a covert war is being conducted against the Iraqi insurgency.  Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Malaysia and Tunisia are all said by Hersh to be engaged in counter-terrorist activity with American intelligence operatives.

Of the Syrian engagement Hersh writes:-

... covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border.

Is this likely to cow Syrians or cause instability and anti-Americanism there?

The most Condi Rice has been able to say of a possible American attack on Iran is that none is planned “at this point in time”.  The Iranians aren’t cowed, clearly - if that is the purpose of the intellectually-challenged lady from Titusville.  Now we have the diplomatically-challenged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offering helpful advice to Germany and Austria (“provide ... two or three provinces for this [Israeli] regime to establish itself, and the issue will be resolved”).  Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, with little George’s guarantee of America’s blessing already in his back pocket, is letting the bearded one know that Osirak need not be an isolated event.

Meanwhile, on the issues of homeland security, intelligence and foreign policy the 9/11 Commission has produced a rather diverting report card (pdf), as Justin Raimondo explains here:-

We’re talking capital-F failure, as in “massive intelligence failure” when it comes to five key areas:-

  * The commissioners were shocked – shocked! – to discover that, as the Associated Press reported it, we’re “distributing federal homeland security funding to states on a ‘pork-barrel’ basis instead of risk.”

  * Incredible as it may seem, we still don’t have a radio system that allows local police and fire departments to communicate with various federal and state agencies.

  * There is no single “watch list” for airline travelers passing through the U.S. If Mohammed Atta and his flyboys were still around, they could pass through our airports without being noticed. That their would-be successors and emulators are doing exactly that is certain.

  * Congress is forced to fly blind when it comes to domestic defenses against terrorism because this administration insists that everything must be kept secret – except, of course, what really does need to be kept secret. The intelligence budget is classified, and therefore cannot be discussed except behind closed doors, and even then only among a select few. If mistakes are made, it’s best to make them in the dark: that’s a nice way to cover your butt.

  * Our insistence on our right to grab anyone anywhere, declare them a terrorist, whisk them off to secret prisons, and torture them has, uh, alienated other countries whose cooperation is essential to capturing and detaining those who mean us harm.

Those Ds don’t look too promising, either. “Checked bag and cargo screening” – D. “International collaboration on borders and document screening” – D. Critical infrastructure assessment – D. Government-wide information sharing – D. The list goes on and on, but most of these Ds have something in common: they are all directly related to the task of physically preventing terrorists from blowing up large numbers of people, just as they did on 9/11/01.

On that latter note we are to believe that the elusive Osama is still alive and “leading the war on the West”.  His deputy, al-Zawahri, is certainly in rude health - to which news little’s George’s first reaction was, apparently, to bomb al-Jazeera.

By any measure, it is not an encouraging picture for the War Party, and not something for which Americans would have settled the day after the attack on the twin towers.  Most worrying of all, the Bushies seem strangely innured to the possibility that, as Raimondo says:-

Some Iraqi kid whose family was killed during the bombing raids we don’t hear much about is a perfect candidate for the next generation of terrorists.  How long before we get a message from an Iraqi terrorist group claiming responsibility for some future horror enacted on American soil?

It takes a fantastically inept foreign policy to bring us all to such an outcome.  Only Adolf did it better.