High profile terror attacks are down only because legitmate Al Qaeda operations are cyclical in nature.

Low profile terror is everywhere now and we have fanned the fire. This saps focus on the group most likely to damage our allies.

That’s not the only item. The man we should have tried to co-opt, and at one time probably did when he was resistance to Saddam internally, Moqtada Al Sadr, could at any moment light a fuse.

There’s a damned good chance he’s found ways to establish influence beyond the region, via copycat groups, to run parallel attrition efforts. They just await inspiration, and we can’t even act against him at this time for fear of making him a martyr.

Think of one person’s statement becoming a regional trigger for retaliation, with groups like Hamas joining the effort in a way that overloads our capacity to watch over things. Al Qaeda doesn’t even need to say anything, the only time they do now is when Bush is needing a ratings spike, odd that.

Suddenly Israel, Arabia, and Syria see new spikes and any one group’s reaction to the threat could invite retaliation or be considered justifaction for further tresspass in the name of pre-emption.

Al Qaeda recruits its main assets from the ranks of the educated, even the affluent, the kind of people we have made refugees or dissidents, in these ambitious fireworks displays of empire.

So, people seeing the plight of those persons suddenly become hardened to the idea of assimilation, and that resistance drags down the high flying aspirations of playing cowboy diplomacy.

By static, by drag on the winds of perception, we’re weakened and diminished in our ability to fight the opponent. This erosion wears at the effectiveness of any policy and intensifies the odds of collateral damage.

Fareed Zakaria, January 28, 2008:

The Democrats are having the hardest time with the new reality. Every candidate is committed to “ending the war” and bringing our troops back home. The trouble is, the war has largely ended, and precisely because our troops are in the middle of it.

Of course anyone who was only mildly sane was waiting for the new uptick in violence. But when I read this lovely bite, I flashed on an image of Zakaria sitting at a table with a bib tied around his neck with a huge bowl of stewed Newsweeks in front of him, and a whole bunch of us (you know, the sane people who always knew this surge thing was going to blow up), and we’re force-feeding him the pages of the magazine, literally making him eat his words.

And that’s about all I can say at the moment. The brutal absurdity of our whole situation is just too overwhelming.

One’s POV depends upon one’s experience.

Most of the bloviating on this war is done by those whose experience in these matters is, to put it most charitably, “thin.”

It puts me in mind of being lectured about sex by a nine year-old boy.