Why do you believe that those soldiers aren't realistic?

I understand that it's terrible that civilians die in war and my friend doesn't want that to happen, but he'd like to be able to defend himself and his fellow soldiers if he gets deployed once again (and he is willing to go again if necessary).

I can agree with this.

World War II was treated by politicians as a war. They knew that the threat of Nazi Germany was real and that it had to be stopped. Politicians in World War I did the same.

Contrast that with the politicians today.

Bush is not innocent here at all; however, you are correct that the terrorists are the bad guys.

And I'm not arguing with that. The KneeJerks on this board (and others) think I hold Bush guiltless ... I don't. But I'll always stop short of making him the bad guy, which is where liberals simply go too far. It's akin to blaming the victims (thus my analogy, which was also apparently lost on them).

You have no problem with Bush being held accountable for what decisions? Are you suggesting he has bungled something that has led to a worse outcome than was otherwise necessary (i.e., allowing the situation to become awful)?

It isn't even debatable that those most responsible for the violence in Iraq are those who are shooting each other and the American troops (and not all of them are terrorists like you want to argue). But we knew they were there before we went in, we knew what would happen if we removed Sadaam (and if we didn't, it is appalling), and we had no plan for handling the situation. The situation is much worse now than it needed to be (possibly beyond repair), and the blame for that fact rests on the shoulders of Bush and his administration.

I think it would be worth the effort to rid the world of terrorists. But that will never fully happen. To me, it is about allocation of scarce resources, money, manpower, and interdiction against terrorism. If we devote all of our resources for such a long time to the building of Iraq, what are we unable to do elsewhere? Look at what the lack of focus on Afghanistan has done to the effort there. The situation has regressed steadily there since the Iraq war began. Then look at Iran, even if we wanted to there would be nothing that we could militarily to address that threat, other than bomb them, so they effectively no that invasion is off the table, for the forseeable future.

Finally, I am with you in saying that the best solution, in a perfect world, would be a multi-decade heavy presence in Iraq that would help turn into a functioning democracy. But the world is no perfect, and I KNOW that the political will necessary is not there to do what is in the super-long term interest of the United States. We also may not be able to afford it.

I'm not convinced. We created the conditions for the suicide bombings. This is the same as the domino fear mongering re Vietnam. Sometimes you just have to let time take its incremental toll and let people work out their own salvation and path to enlightenment.

Let me ask you this? Since when has forcible occupation by a superpower ever been a solution for anything? These are not aboriginies like Caesar found in Gaul, or American settlers found in our continent. It's a culture highly developed for better or worse. We can't impose righteousness and liberty on them.

This problem that you identify is my main beef with the neocons. I believe that a democratic Middle east would be fantastic and in that sense I think that the neocons are visionary. But I don't think that you can impose democracy at the butt of a gun. Unless you are willing to hold that gun, for a very, very long time. Even then it is highly unlikely because imposition of values is nearly impossible.

Well, the terrorists want to impose their brand of righteousness and liberty on them. If the US withdraws, that gives them more courage to do so.

They're essentially murdering their own. We can't straighten that mess out. It's unfortunate we've contributed to it, and to the extent there may be a hell I think that GWB and Cheney may have some explaining to do to the judge.