The first sentence of this post on DailyKos made me realize that there's a weird justification for the charge of "terrorism" in the Iraq war, although Josh Marshall neatly destroys the myth here. My own point of view is that tactics are neutral. The opposition uses their advantages, they attack the US where we are the weakest. But the fact that the methods are "terrorist" means nothing.

The fact that a large number of Iraqis are getting "fed up" with the resistance likewise has little meaning. The majority of Iraqis have probably been fed up for some time. Indeed, I'll even grant that most folks probably recognize the need for the continued occupation. But that unfortunately doesn't matter. ENOUGH Iraqis are engaged in, or in support of, resistance to occupation. Consider: Most folks living in slums are NOT drug dealers/addicts, prositiutes, common criminals, and the like. MOST folks living in slums are law-abiding citizens--indeed, they are likely to have strong feelings regarding lawlessness, since they live in its midst. But ENOUGH criminals are active in the slum to make, uh, me, for instance, avoid contact as much as possible.

In other words, Iraq is complicated. We STILL don't know exactly WHO we are fighting against--we surmise some foreign fighters--yes, there probably are some. After all, we're the BIGGEST foreign force in the country, and we've got other nations involved as well. I don't doubt there are Middle Easterners from other countries who've moved in. But these folks don't work in a vacuum. SOMEONE inside is helping out. And we don't know exactly who that someone is.

Forging democracy under these circumstances will make trying to stop the wildfires in California seem easy. In a sense, it is the ultimate faith-based initiative, because without unbelievably good fortune, it will fail miserably.

Note: C-SPAN is airing Fletcher's victory speech. I'm getting distracted, and also want to catch up at dailykos.