I do not think there are many people who would say that the Bush administration has done a good job of selling the war in Iraq.  There are few wars in American history that did not have to be continually repackaged and resold to keep everyone on board, those that were not either did not last very long or were otherwise unpalatable.

Afghanistan has many of the same issues, however there is less need to re-sell that theater as a necessary front to the American public.  Osama Bin Laden and Al-Queda were allowed residency there by the Taliban leads to 9/11, QED.

Iraq on the other hand is another front in what amounts to a wider ideological war, a front we made the choice to fight on.  Regardless of all the flip flopping from prominent Democrats who voted for the war (if they were duped by that nefarious Bush then why they would be good Presidential material is beyond me,) or the continual carping about WMD's and how you want to interpret U.N. resolutions...all of that was likely beside the point when arriving at a "legal" cassus belli against Saddam Hussein's Iraq - very possibly the subject of another blog entry.

The hard fact is that we are there now and the loss of this front could actually prolong the wider ideological conflict we are engaged in, thus potentially costing more American lives in the long run than simply paying the cost of following through in Iraq.

One comment that often arises when discussing Iraq with my more liberal friends is their strange concept of if the Iraqi's are "worthy" of democracy, or more directly "worthy" of our cost in blood and gold to attempt to give them democracy or force it on them at gunpoint...it all depends on what day of month their liberal hearts are bleeding.

Of course the whole concept of being "worthy" of democracy smacks of Kipling, Colonialism, and the White Man's Burden.  My liberal friends do not like it if I point this out, apparently it makes me a bad person.  When I figure that logic out I'll write a psych dissertation on liberal hypocrisy.

This is where the White House sales job has failed the war in Iraq.  Allowing this "Iraq shall be a democracy" concept to float around willy-nilly.   When in actuality the goal is to introduce the ideals of classic liberalism into a greater society of araby that threatens to become moribund, bound to repressive theocratic ideologies and celebrating a culture of death.

This kind of reactionary direction by societies is not a new phenomena.  Cults of Death have sprung up numerous times from cultures that were either stagnant or otherwise held in thrall.   The modern "islamofascist" is no different in his death culture than the SS in Nazi Germany.   They both have populations they would like to eliminate entirely from their world and take active steps to make that happen; they both repress their own populations to live in a certain fashion.

Combined with the relative lack of power the modern islamofascist has, he must resort to taking his Cult of Death to the most extreme incarnation - that of the kamikaze, the suicide killer.  There is no moral restraint in this kind of person.  This is what allows them to bomb a mosque and ignite massive sectarian killings to keep feeding their cult of death.

The very ideals of classic liberalism, an open society with individual rights, is abhorrent to the death cult crowd.  When people of their own culture assert individualism they can be murdered out of hand by the islamofascist, be it man or woman, young or old.  This does not enable a free and fair market for the classic ideals to be debated and their merits weighed against the status quo.

That free and fair market of ideals and thoughts are what we are fighting to provide the Iraqis.  They turned out in droves to get their blue thumbs and vote in elections, some with the threat of death hanging over them, I would think they have shown the national desire to engage in the fair market of liberal ideals.  They may not pick every single classical talking point, but they are absolutely interested and involved.

Sounds like they are worthy enough as any of us, perhaps even more, to have the chance.  If just a few of those liberal ideals can get thrown against the wall and stick in Iraq or Afghanistan we will have a victory against the Death Cults who want to keep their brother muslims bound to a stagnant theocratic ideology and destroy the west to prevent all the corruptive influences produced there.