Intellectual Disconnect

I actually read the Iraq Study Group report last night (had a touch of insomnia), and when you look at it, I have to wonder...

Are there more people on really good drugs than what I've been told? You read the report, and you can boil down the 80+ pages of it to the following talking points-

• Sell the Iraqi government down the river to Syria and Iran, both of whom are pretty much waiting to carve the country up on the basis of religion and ethnicity and use the Iraqi oil fields as another weapon in the Great Jihad.
  
• Pull out American troops "with honor", and put the Iraqi army-which has barely been around for more than a year or so in a serious form-in "charge" of military security. Everybody that has dealt with the Iraqi army in the field has said that they are getting better, but they are not quite ready for prime time yet.
  
• Rely upon the United Nations to stop Iran's nuclear efforts (when they did such a good job of keeping Saddam Hussain from keeping his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction), and if Iran does mange to get a nuclear bomb...oh, well.
  
• Selling out Israel, by ensuring that the Hamas government (which has said, on multiple occasions that they are planning the world's biggest Jew burning since Hitler) can complete it's rearming and military encirclement of Israel in both the Gaza Strip, Palestinian territory, and Lebanon.
• And, in short, be nice to the Moslems-whom are either guilty by action or silence in supporting people that would cheerfully turn back the clock to the 7th century and kill anybody that thought another 13 or so centuries of progress was a good thing.
  

This is not just the Democratic Party's talking points. Nor is it just deluded Berkleyites that are still having acid flashbacks. These are points from people that have to know better, whom have access-in both official and unoffical manners-to the statements and information than most people can get via Open Source resources (the press, blogs, web sites, etc, etc). MEMRI is doing excellent service showing what most of the Islamic world watches-between the paranoid rantings of imans that state that American soldiers eat living Iraqi children and blood libel of Jews that even a fan of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion would find laughable-and how much they hate the United States and freedom and "loose" women.

I wish I had access to drugs this good. I would love to have hallucinations this vivid, that I could eventually talk people into doing things the way that I wanted.

My confusion is terrifying. I can look out across this-and see terrifying things. If we lose in Iraq, if we lose to an insurgency that is no more than political banditry, our enemies will cheer and claim that the United States is a paper tiger. That we can be hurt by just a few dedicated Soldiers of God. That Israel will vanish off the face of the Earth in nuclear fire. That maybe the last hope for a Middle East that doesn't glow in the dark from space may happen in my lifetime.

In the name of God in all of His and Her forms, why can't our leaders see what this means?