I do not think Khadafi is stupid. Bizarre, perhaps, but not stupid. He is a survivor, and I think that his turn towards the United States is probably geniune - but subject to verification through time.
To answer your question as to how the difference becomes easier to tell, I will reply with harshness of my own: if domestic killing begins, the wheat and the chaff will automatically enter a self-sort paradigm.
Second, while I am concerned in the long run about China, I think the Chinese, who are not moslems, will sit this war out: they're smart enough to know they can't successfully ally with the islamofascists. While they may try to exploit our vulnerability as we fight this war, they don't really have a dog in this fight besides us: after all, islamism threatens them as much in the very long run as it does us. Net, net, I don't expect much help from the Chinese, but not any serious opposition either. But, I would be interested to hear your analysis.
Vastly simplified, it is this:
1. The world will inevitably globalize.
2. There will inevitably be one government.
3. There will be one of two forms of this government. Either
a) One under which all men are created equal, and all men have inalienable rights, orb) One where they are not, and do not.4. There are only two viable contenders for this role of global hegemon:
a) The United Statesb) ChinaIt is worth noting that China has expected to win this contest, and prepared for it, for thousands of years. Against that patience and grim ruthlessness I match American ingenuity, fierceness and good-natured balls.
Third, I would not describe the total war we may yet come to as Goebbelsian, which has unfortunate associations that I think are inappropriate here, but rather as Shermanesque. We are not at a place where, ala France in the 1790s, Prussia after Leipzig, or America in the 1860s, where we have to mobilize the entire nation-in-arms, but, I fear we may come to it.
We are certainly not at the point that Germany was at in 1945, and thankfully so. General Sherman's methodology was successful, but rather cruel - and he did not have, as an underlying motivation, the re-educational transformation of the burnt regions behind him. It was punitive more than it was rehabilitative in intent.
To mobilize the entire nation will require death on a massive scale, along with political leadership prepared to properly focus the public will in the direction of survival, where it is currently and decidedly not.
I don't know. I do think another major attack on the US would result in our truly letting slip the dogs of war. It worries me. And, when make harsh analyses (as you note), it is not because I like them, but because I can't see how to avoid them.
It depends upon what the major attack consists of. The cry of "Havoc!" will not come, my friend, without millions dead on our own soil.
Until then, we will require patience of ourselves when dealing with those in the press, and in the public eye, who do not comprehend the vast gulf between their petty trivialities of self-inflated conscience - and the fate of the nation and, ultimately, humanity itself.
What I fear is an immediate nuclear attack upon the mainland by the People's Republic, which may judge our nation sufficiently staggered by nuclear detonations in Washington and New York to be unable to respond.
Islam is the dancing, taunting child with a ripped-off car antennae, prancing in mad glory between two serious street fighters about to decide ownership of the block. I'm sure China finds it all rather amusing.