Taking stock

A bunch of guys debating where we are in the WOT, five years later. Ralph Peters is on a massive ouzo binge, making the analogue of the famous "as long as they don't bomb Versailles, we're OK" case:

I also disagree that we are a primary target for Iranian nukes (which Tehran likely will get, since the West is so gutless). We're way, way down on the target list.

Looks like Jeff Babbin has the better part of the argument:

President Bush has made a strategic error in focusing on democracy as the weapon to counter radical Islam and terrorism. It doesn't matter whether Iraq or Iran or Syria or Saudi Arabia are democracies, so long as they do not threaten our security or our interests. By making the establishment of democracy in Iraq a precondition to other action, the president has given control of the pace and direction of the war to the enemy. It may not be possible to establish democracy in a Muslim nation (except those that decide -- like Ataturk's Turkey did almost a century ago -- to set aside Shari'a law in favor of democratic ideals) but that shouldn't matter to us. We have to divorce ourselves from the naivete of this neo-Wilsonianism and reorient this war to fighting and defeating the enemy which means attacking him ideologically and militarily at his centers of gravity. We can be in Iraq for another sixty days or another sixty years, and nothing much is going to change there unless and until we remove the regimes in Syria and Iran, and force the Saudis out of the terror-banking business.