Either we do it or we continue to pay a horrible price. Fortunately the final decisions will not be left up to the soccer moms or the pacifists of this country. For over two hundred years, others have paid the price so that the soccer moms and pacifists might have a free and better life, if now is the time for them to join in the bleeding and dying, so be it.
No argument, except to point out that soccer moms were the deciding factor in electing Klinton; that we have a built-in core of [at best] neutral people; our mainline churches are totally prostituted; and that the media, for all it's jingoism now, will change back to the ones we have all come to know and distrust.
That will be a powerful coalition. Make no mistake: I maintain that we WON in VietNam, both locally and strategically. But our victory was all the more difficult and bloody because of the pacifist (a term of convenience--I'm not sure that was the only, or even primary, motivation) impulse. And that element keeps getting stronger with every military action we take.
My entire point is that that 81% or whatever had better know what it will take, or it will quickly evaporate to us hard-core 30 or 40%. I prefer that our leaders overestimate, rather than underestimate, the difficulty going in.