Sorry if that sounds defeatist, but the future of the world depends on what the United States does in Iraq in the next two years. As a resident of Israel, I am acutely aware of this. If cut-and-run is the new policy, as it appears to be, then God help us all.
Wait till February or March. By then, the new Congress will have the real political battlelines drawn and we'll know what Bush (and Gates) intend to do about them. We'll also begin to have an idea about something equally important: what the likely 2008 American voters will support.
You and I know the enemy more than many people in this forum with all due respect to everyone. I am originally from Lebanon and I am a Christian and I know as you do the nature of our terrorist enemy. It is on words that these people live and act, when they get comforted by defeatist words from their opponents, they get more embolden and they will attack us more and more. Some people on this forum, only few to be honest, do not know the most horrible and beyond any of our worst imaginable nightmares that will happen if we lost our will and defeat Al Qaeda, Syria, and Iran inside Iraq.