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I don’t think there is any need for passion or sacrifice of all Americans. Let the pros do what they are trained to do just as they did during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Would be nice if it were as simple as that but I am afraid the days of allowing the "Pros" to do their job is behind us. The civilians control the purse strings and if they are not in the war effort then the purse gets spent on other items.

Also it bears understanding that this isn't like other wars which were fought by the pro's. Most of those wars weren't existential affairs. This one is. In this war only one of us is going to walk out the other end. Used to be that the world was a big old place...it no longer is. Now if we don't get the population engaged and behind the war effort we will lose. Losing will not be some academic affair where we sit around drinking with Mike Wallace discussing where we went wrong. Losing will be a dramatic affair.

We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.Hussein Massawi, a former Hezbollah leader.

That is the sort of behavior we are fighting...we are fighting the sort of enemy that is terribly dangerous because of his ignorance and hatred of our culture. He doesn't want to reach accomadation...

I don’t agree. Consider Columbia. We have been fighting that for years and have now had some real success without getting the passions of the people involved. We have a million soldiers deployed all over the world without any notice. $100b is not that big a strain on our budget. We are being forced to pay attention to every suicide bomber in Iraq because some far leftists think it is a political opportunity. The best thing that could happen would be to let this go to the back pages of the news and let the military do their jobs.