I've seen you around and I think you and I are largely on the same wave-length, politically speaking.
Lately, I'm getting this unsettling feeling from Washington DC. Something like what those with some foresight might have felt at the beginning of the Vietnam War.
To wit:
Rumblings about no bombing during Ramadan;
Pinpoint (prick?) missile attacks that leave Taliban troop concentrations in place. Where are the B-52's? Why aren't we carpet bombing those bastards? On the Northern Front, we know where they are, right?
Kow-towing to our Paki and Saudi "allies";
Ummmm, when do we start destroying Saddam's WMD facilities? Can't we walk and chew gum at the same time?
Better start preparing people for civilian casualties and stop reacting to every lie re: same from the Taliban.
I don't know, maybe I'm over-reacting, but it doesn't seem like we've taken the necessary steps to accomplish our goals here. Krauthammer has a great column in the Washington Post about this today. Powell is making a fetish out of coalition building and I think we are seeing that this is an impediment to accomplishing our objectives.
It is a gagger alright. And it will keep up so long as we need a route into Afghanistan through Pakistan (I don't think we can fly all our craft out of range of Paki weapons). The real world is full of semi-"friends" like this.
As for American Muslims why can't we at least be playing a bit of straight up political hardball? Bush should be giving access and exposure to the more conservative and mainstream American Muslim Council, and freezing out the liberal, special interest, minority mongering, peaceniking, and arrogant arabist oriented CAIR. Why are we ignoring the political fundamentals here? While they are paying close attention we have a great opportunity to be sending signals to American Muslims about where their best interests lay, but we are blowing it.