Several fascinating dramas are being acted out before our very eyes that point at the twilight of an age and the reordering of civilization.  At the very least, I believe we are witnessing the twilight of Western Civilization because it is in the calculus of conflict that great civilizations rise and fall.  Here are some examples:

• In the late 1600s and early 1700s, the European financial center in Amsterdam shifted to Lombard street in London as the Dutch floundered through land combat, refusing to raise the combat strength necessary to defend their vital European interests.  
• Napoleon at the end of the day could not raise the revenue necessary to retain the combat strength required to both hold his gains and deal with resurgent enemies.  Great Britain, on the other hand, through tax reform and truly representative government, raised the revenue necessary to defeat Napoleon at sea, on land, and support allies who joined the cause.
• By the end of World War I, Great Britain accumulated such huge debts paying for military strength that the world financial center shifted to Wall Street.

These nations could not (because they were broke and had too much debt) or would not (because of conflicting perceptions of national needs) pay the price of extending combat power in their own critical, national interests.  The comparison to today is actually very frightening with both huge national debt and a wide range of perceptions of US national interest landing in the public arena.  Yet, while we spend billions building Iraq, we fight the war on terror and beat each other bloody in the public arena. Meanwhile, the terrorists and their friends are fighting a very cost efficient guerilla war. 

Before I continue with my main point, this is worth closer examination. The terrorists extort money from the wealthiest segments of Islamic society, calling it religious contributions and humanitarian aid.  Then, instead of buying a surgical wound kit, Tank, cruise missile, or rocket guidance package, they strap as much explosive and metal shrapnel to a human volunteer as they can, and launch him at a target.  I apologize for sounding really brutal, here, but from the perspective of the terrorist organizations and nations, the C4 and detonators cost a couple of hundred dollars, a check to the parents is maybe ten grand, and then they use a human brain from an endless supply of humanity as the guidance package.  This and other terrorist / guerilla tactics are dirt cheap and require little or no logistical support beyond a last meal and a couple of guys dumb enough to use wire cutters on detonators when assembling bomb vests.  Their perspective on handling wounded terrorists is equally brutal and cheap.  The Japanese actually brought this method to modern warfare.  It is basically this - If you are wounded and can not walk to sufficient medical care, then you are expected to kill yourself or die fighting the enemy. 

Great nations throughout history solve problems like terrorists and guerillas by extending combat power to the trouble spot until the trouble is erased from existence. The Romans had a very simple method of handling these scenarios.  Once most combat operations were complete and if the populace continued to resist, all men over 14 were crucified or sold to the slave galleys (remember Ben Hur...), all women and children were turned over to tax farmers to be sold into slavery and dispersed to the far corners of the empire, and the lands were repopulated with Roman colonies.  Examples include the conquest of the Balkans, re-conquest of Palestine in 70 AD, and numerous tribes in Gaul and Germania.  Historically, long term solutions to guerilla war are very unpleasant and costly yet successful when kept out of site of the bleeding hearts in the public arena.

Phenomenally positive things do happen in Iraq that “We the People” will not hear in the main stream press.  Geraldo Rivera had an excellent report on Hanity and Colms the other night in which he pointed out that the press seems "hell bent" on screaming at the Bush administration rather than telling the true story of building Iraq. I spent 17 years in the Army and know these people. They are fabulous, patriotic, and brave. I have prayed with many of them, cried with many of them, and seen many of them embrace salvation in Jesus Christ. These are not the demonized killers our press seems to enjoy characterizing. Rather, they are our best and brightest at the point of the spear. Yet, like most spears, overuse will eventually shatter the point, making it useless for the fine art of war beyond bludgeoning the bad guys with force. In analyzing the Vietnam war, Colonel Harry Summers pointed out in his book, “On Strategy: a Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War,” that the army gutted its training command of experienced officers and NCOs to replace leadership losses in Vietnam. By 1969, the Army had inexperienced leaders at training bases rushing kids through basic and advanced training who in turn were little more than targets in Vietnam. Between stretching the force too much, lack of support from home, leaders who simply got out, avoiding multiple combat tours and lengthy stretches away from family, the Army hit rock bottom by the early seventies and the spear point was shattered. Leaders like Powell, Schwartzkopf, Franks, and others were a dynamic part of rebuilding and reforging the tip of the spear that executed Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom but that was a process that took nearly two decades. Operation Iraqi Freedom and follow-on operations are nothing like Vietnam but Colonel Summers’ observations about wearing down the force to the point where untrained youth are executing the mission are very relevant and poignant.

I think a fascinating quote sums up the present situation: 

"We live in a wondrous time in which the strong is weak because of his moral scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity."
Otto von Bismarck

What is my gut call?

· I think the President of Syria has allowed Hezbollah and several other terrorist organizations to gain unprecedented power in Damascus.  They pretty much dictate Syrian foreign policy and I personally believe Assad will be allowed to live only until Syria builds a nuclear weapon with material and systems sent from Iraq before the Allied invasion.

· Assad is tolerated by the US because of the megawatts of electricity we purchase from Syria to power Iraq. At the risk of sounding a bit too simplistic, we are paying money to a terrorist government so that Joe Iraqi can have a light in his bathroom. This money goes right into the hands of the people who build bomb vests, attack buses full of children and ambush our sons on the streets of Iraq.

· Many make the comparison that we lost 22 soldiers a day in Vietnam for thousands of days but we barely lose 18 a month in Iraq.  This is an accurate comparison for now but how far are we from someone using a WMD on a US military target somewhere in Iraq or the Persian Gulf region? That will dramatically change the calculus of casualty computation.

· Several months ago, a lawyer named Noah Feldman was sent to Iraq.  He is a very sharp individual and came back with the following four disturbing conclusions that were recently published in Debka Weekly (one of the finest intelligence and political analysis electronic magazines in the world):

1. Whatever policies America enacts in Iraq, the long-term result will be the same: Iraq will never embrace the path of democracy but will end up as a Muslim state.
2. The text of a constitution the US-appointed interim governing council is now compiling will never be accepted by the Iraqi people; it will ultimately make way for Islamic law, the Sharia. Even before America finishes shaping a democratic regime in Iraq, it can already be said that democracy has no chance of taking hold in the country.
3. That being the case, Feldman states his view that Iraq will not evolve into a pro-Western nation and American’s hopes in this regard will never be realized.
4. Neither is there any short-term or long-term prospect of Iraq ever signing a peace treaty with Israel. The Bush administration had hoped that the new Iraq would blaze the way for the old Arab regimes to make peace with Israel on a more amicable basis than the Egyptian-Israeli accord. Feldman advises Washington to abandon that hope.