These people don't have the first clue as to what they are talking about. We can defeat the Islamic terrorists now, when they are relatively weak, or face them later, when they are stronger. It was our pulling out of Somalia that encouraged bin Laden to launch his campaign against the United States. So now the idiots want to repeat this failed policy by pulling out of Iraq?
This is a key question: is this a situation like Nazi Germany, where an intervention in the early- to mid-30s would have probably ended the threat much more cheaply? Or is it more along the lines of the Spanish American War, where the real rationale for the war was much different from the publicly stated provocation, the explosion of the USS Maine?
It's pretty clear that the situation is far closer to the former than the latter -- we're responding to a legitimate world threat, and not simply building up Cheney's Halliburton stock options.
The question is whether or not we can still have an honest enough national debate about this.
When you get down to it, THAT is the most important issue here. The national Dems are being profoundly dishonest. There's no other way to put it. Framing this in terms of "honest debate" is an incredibly powerful approach. One hates to call it a "political strategy," but in part that's what it is -- and it's not a bad thing, either. The national interest depends on the political defeat of craven politicians (not all of whom inhabit the ranks of the Democrat Party).