ARTICLE: The Thin Green Line: What the latest violence reveals about the failed U.S. strategy in Iraq, By Phillip Carter, Slate, Oct. 18, 2006

Except everytime somebody who's thought it through lays out a vision for how we fix the mess we're in, they basically recite the concept--chapter and verse.

I've said for almost five years now: this isn't gonna happen because it's cool or elegant or visionary. It's gonna happen because without such capacity we're gonna keep f--king it up royally and getting people killed needlessly. It's gonna happen beecause we can either deal with these people over there or we can wait and deal with them over here. We can either get good at it, or we can keep doing what we're doing and hope to get a different outcome. We can either tackle these problems at their source, or firewall ourselves off against fantastic bogeymen who "rule our world."

We can either grow up and face the world and its challenges as they are, or we can retreat under cover of the Powell Doctrine and play spy-on-terrorist games, pretending that's the sum total of the challenge.

We can either get smarter or we can get madder.

Thanks to Jason Brantley for sending this in.