Russell Seitz says that Khaddafi, despite his seeming change of heart a couple years ago after he saw Saddam being pulled out of his rat hole, continues to cause problems.

James Woolsey warns us not to underestimate the power of the Salafist vision:

…the Salafists’ theocratic totalitarian dream has some features in common with the secular totalitarian dreams of the twentieth century, e.g., the Nazis’ Thousand Year Reich, or the Communists’ World Communism. The latter two movements produced tens of millions of deaths in the 20th century in part because, at least in their early stages, they engendered “fire in the minds of men” in Germany, Russia, and China and were able to establish national bases. Salafists had such a national base for the better part of a decade in Afghanistan and have had one controlling the Arabian Peninsula for some eight decades. They haven’t attained the Nazis’ and Communists’ death totals yet, but this is only due to lack of power, not to less murderous or less totalitarian objectives…(The president’s “Islamofascist” term is thus perhaps understated

That’s what this Marine major says, though more politely than my post title does:

Most of the violent news is true; the death and destruction are very real. But experienced military officers know that the horror stories, however dramatic, do not represent the broader conditions there or the chances for future success. For every vividly portrayed suicide bombing, there are hundreds of thousands of people living quiet, if often uncertain, lives. For every depressing story of unrest and instability there is an untold story of potential and hope. The impression of Iraq as an unfathomable quagmire is false and dangerously misleading.

It is this false impression that has led us to a moment of national truth. The proponents of the quagmire vision argue that the very presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is the cause of the insurgency and that our withdrawal would give the Iraqis their only true chance for stability. Most military officers and NCOs with ground experience in Iraq know that this vision is patently false. Although the presence of U.S. forces certainly inflames sentiment and provides the insurgents with targets, the anti-coalition insurgency is mostly a symptom of the underlying conditions in Iraq. It may seem paradoxical, but only our presence can buffer the violence enough to allow for eventual stability.