In "No Way to Run a War", Mark Helprin penned a Wall St. Journal article that criticizes both the Republican Administration and the Democratic opposition for their respective approaches to dealing with the threat from Iraq. Read it and chime in.

Here’s the crux of his case, and the best graf in the essay:

In the Middle East, our original purpose, since perverted by carelessness of estimation, was self-defense. To return to it would take advantage of the facts that the countries in the area do not have to be democracies before we require of them that they refrain from attacking us; that a regime with a firm hold upon a nation has much at stake and can be coerced to eradicate the terrorist apparatus within its frontiers; and that the ideal instrument for this is a remounted and properly supported U.S. military, released from nation building and counterinsurgency, its ability to make war, when called upon, nonpareil.