Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq -- NRO framing the issue correctly: "Again, the question now is an existential one: Can the United States — or anyone — in the middle of a war against Islamic fascism, rebuild the most important country in the heart of the Middle East, after 30 years of utter oppression, three wars, and an Orwellian, totalitarian dictator warping of the minds of the populace? And can anyone navigate between a Zarqawi, a Sadr, and the Sunni rejectionists, much less the legions of Iranian agents, Saudi millionaires, and Syrian provocateurs who each day live to destroy what’s going on in Iraq?"

Patience, it takes years. We win if we stay, we lose if we leave. Those wanting to leave, want to lose.

The Belmont Club on Rumsfeld's info war: "Some commenters believed that information warfare should be used to goad the Muslim street into a final, apocalyptic confrontation. Pork Rind for Allah seriously argues for the use of ridicule 'to drive them insane', reflecting the view that the mental struggle between Islam and the West was between two irreconcilable camps, in which perhaps the jeer is the only remaining statement to make. While many commenters did not believe the world was locked in a final war of civilizations, the question of whether any resolution between the two intellectual camps other than an indefinite truce remained hanging in the air. For Freedom quoted an Asian Times article authored by Spengler which examined the question as legitimately intellectual exercise: When Even the Pope has to Whisper."

I think the US gov't could do more -- like offer US gov't cash prizes to the best reporting. Of the truth. Ignored or underreported by the MSM.

Chosen by D.o. State? Or by bloggers? Or by technorati links? Or some combination?

Belgium should become two countries in a velvet divorce.
Times: Cupid's wicked arrow splits Belgium : "HE IS a senior conservative politician, she a young Socialist MP, but it is not only a political clash of allegiances that has turned the love affair between Hendrik Daems and Sophie Pécriaux into such a big scandal in Belgium.

Nor was it the announcement by Daems, 46, that he is divorcing the mother of his five-year-old daughter and having a child by Pécriaux, 38. Their greater crime — strange as it may seem in 21st-century Europe — was loving across a cultural divide between Flemings and Walloons. Daems paid for it last week with his job."

Brussels should become, like Wash. DC., outside the "states" of Wallonia and Flanders; with Brussels, Belgium should become 3 states.

And push Brussels to be more English-speaking.

Is terrorism defined by its purpose?
normblog: Terror's victims and the UN: "The Madrid Declaration of 2004 states the matter in a clear way:

'Terrorism is never justifiable... Whatever its form, terrorism is always an unjust and unjustified, cruel, abominable and repulsive crime. It is an affront to the most basic rights of individuals and communities.'

.....
I would like to look at how the most important global organization in the world is dealing with terrorism. I am speaking of the United Nations.

A committee of the United Nations has been trying for the past nine years to write a convention against terrorism. For ordinary people like us, this does not sound like the most difficult thing for lawyers and diplomats to do. We know that terrorism means the deliberate targeting of civilians for injury and death. But there is an international association of states... comprising some 57 countries, nearly 30% of the 191 member states of the United Nations. For nine years, this association has frustrated the writing of the United Nations anti-terror convention by insisting that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose."

Murder, too, is defined by its purpose.
Killing can be murder or manslaughter. Maybe terrorism can be, too.

Wasn't the fire-bombing of Dresden partly terrorism?

The terrorists can NOT win without terrorism. This is war.