Getting reasonably realistic about the long war

■"Bush Estimates Iraqi Death Toll in War at 30,000," by Peter Baker, Washington Post, 13 December 2005, p. A19.

■"21st-Century Warnings of a Threat Rooted in the 7th," by Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, 12 December 2005, p. A21.

■"Hillary Clinton Crafts Centrist Stance on War," by Dan Balz, Washington Post, 12 December 2005, p. A1.

Bush talks calmly and openly about the realistic figure of Iraqi civilian deaths: something north of 25k and south of 35k. Some crazy (and universally reputed) estimates run as high as 100k, but the consensus figure of many groups is the one Bush cites.

Now, let's put that in perspective: the UN admits we killed about 50k kids under the age of five each year in Iraq with sanctions across the time period between Desert Storm and OIF. That's about 600k dead. We won't hit that annual average total even at the three-year mark on OIF, so why not focus on all the Iraqis not dead, I ask? How about crediting the U.S. military with saving all those lives, sacrificing over 2k of their own in the process?

Doesn't anybody do math like that?

Meanwhile, an ABC poll of Iraqis says 71 percent said "things were going well in their own lives." Hmm. Wonder what percentage we'd get in the States right now?

44 percent felt the same way about their country. Geez, Bush would love those ratings for himself, no?

"Schools, crime, health care, security, water, electricity and jobs were all rated in good condition by more people than in February 2004," which is when the U.S. started to get serious about its nation-building in Iraq. How about crediting the Army and Marines and SOCOM and CENTCOM and the Guard and the Reserves on that score?

While Bush is speaking in Philly, Murtha complains down the road, saying he opposes the U.S. "occupation" first and foremost.

We've got to get real on that term. We stopped occupying Iraq and running an occupational government a long time ago.

A lady asks Bush to explain the 9/11-Iraq link and he simply says 9/11 changed his view of the world. She's not happy with that, complaining that Bush must think people like her are morons. Apparently she only believes in wars of direct retribution.

How about a global community enforcing global norms against a horrid criminal who killed over a million of his own citizens during his long murderous reign? Where's our sense of global outrage on that one?

Or our sense of the stragtegic picture?

Bush, Abizaid, Rumsfeld, and new Under Secretary for Policy Edelman are now talking up the "caliphate" to express the long-term strategic threat posed by radical Salafi jihadists, and they are quite right to do so.

Let's call the enemy for what he is and what he seeks to achieve. Experts say this is a fanciful goal, not unlike . .. I dunno, a "thousand-year reich" or "global socialist revolution"?

So we stood up to those threats in the past as we made them chimeras, condemning them to the dustheap of history. Good for us then, and good for us now.

Abizaid says we had our chance with "Mein Kampf" and ignored Hitler's designs, so why do the same with Osama and AMZ? And this is the regional expert and Arab everyone praises as the perfect choice to lead CENTCOM right now, so why not pay attention to his expert advice?

So we get more and more realistic about the long fight, and that realism spreads to serious Dem candidates for president in 2008, like Hillary. Good for her. Let the left pour scorn on her. She'll remain a credible national leader in the process, instead of some braindead lefty with nothing to offer except their putrid hatred of Bush.