[Jacob Kell]

Maybe they were thinking about our success in democratizing Germany and Japan after WWII. You guys think? They were probably different from the Middle East.

[Alberta's Child]

Only a damn fool would look at different situations 60 years apart -- and in different parts of the world -- and expect them to unfold in a similar manner.

At the very least, the two WW2 cases started with a multi-year military campaign where the enemy's cities were bombed to rubble before a single U.S. soldier occupied those nations. That approach seems to be conspicuously absent from all of the nation-building crap we've seen since then.

Another thing that is conspicuously missing is a formal declaration of war against an enemy nation, too.

Let me fill you in on a little secret: When the president of the United States stands up and declares that the nation is engaged something as silly and banal as a "war on terror," you know damn well that the @sshole doesn't intend to actually win anything.