Observation: with the notable exception of the U.S. military, on the ground intelligence agents, some spirited individual diplomats, policymakers, politicians, pundits, and dedicated private citizens, this country, on the whole, is not serious about fighting Islamist fanaticism. Cowardice is the only word for PC-gurus on primetime television who opt to say the nice thing but fail to do the research and work -- and showcase some genuine gusto -- by saying the correct thing. This Congress, on the whole, is not serious. Our bureaucracies, on the whole, are inept, hindered by red tape, and lacking in seriousness. And most of all our media is not serious.

So it has already begun. The vindictive, spiteful ankle-biting which offers no alternative can no longer belly-moan about Rumsfeld, "too few troops," failure to acknowledge tactical blunders, or old classic realpolitik cynicism. Concerns over petrodollars falling into the wrong Arab hands now trump the previous refrain of "no blood for oil." Talks about conceding Somalia to Taliban-like creatures have morphed into scathing reprisals for aligning with Ethiopian despots in crushing those very same Somali jihadists. A failure is a failure until it becomes a success -- in which case it apparently remains a failure. While an Abizaid testifies that present U.S. force-levels in Iraq are adequate, curious senators wonder why the gifted David Petraeus differs in opinion. Once the pendulum swings, with Abizaid out and the administration following the advice of the now in charge Petraeus, the complaint changes 180-degrees: "Didn't Abizaid just say a surge was unneeded?"

It is a unique gambit which obstructionists often employ: Whatever the criticism, if answered, seek the opposite in its totality and you've discovered yet another, new, exciting detraction. We are told multilateralism, not unilateralism, was the answer in Iraq. We were told bilateralism, not the practiced multilateralism, was the answer with North Korea. And when the status quo was altered and we reached a fragile Libya-like deal with Kim Jong Il, we forget that just a few months prior ex-Clinton officials were calling for abject war on the peninsula. How would CBS have covered Pyongyang's recent pledge to disarm had Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz, and not William Perry and Ashton Carter, called for bombing North Korea last summer?

One may remember the promises, from the likes of former CENTCOM Commander Joseph P. Hoar and others, that we would lose thousands to get to Baghdad alone. That short-sightedness is apparent today just as it was in early 2003. It is an unfortunate truism that where there is disagreement with tactics, there is often opposition to strategy as well. How can we ever proceed accordingly, ascertaining our strategic objectives, if most tactical considerations, which are needed, come with a different worldview and strategic outlook as the byproduct? Lincoln gaffed in initially thinking three-quarters of a hundred thousand men would suffice in crushing the insurrectionists, but most would take the tactical error of the strategically vigilant and historically vindicated than the lack of foul-ups from the do-nothings and historically forgotten.

So it must be today, as well. This deficit of serious thinkers who can innovate on the doctrine of democracy promotion and military revolution will have to change as we decipher a way forward; a corollary to a Bush or a Rumsfeld. Think about it: if we were to go over the Iraqi incursion in sequential order, the war apparently begot the insurgency, and the insurgency begot sectarian killing. Okay, granted that is accurate… so have we had a sustaining and legitimate debate on counterinsurgency in this country? Have we discussed the nuances of, say, Algeria or the Philippines -- and how to apply that across Iraq? Can a truck driver or doctor in the Midwest discuss the tactical successes of 2005 across Anbar? Can a member of the House? Can they name all the players, backed by Iran, involved in the bloody carnage and sectarianism? We are fighting a war where the casualties produced by the government we were sent to overthrow are pooh-poohed, and the casualties of enemy forces are nearly unreported.

Conventional wisdom would have you believe Hussein was just another autocrat and the 140,000 some odd U.S. forces "occupying" Iraq -- imagine the LAPD occupying all of California -- are simply standing around, getting picked off one by one. When large quantities of adversaries meet our wrath, like the recent destruction of an apocalyptic Iraqi cult, we're chastised as the propagators of massacres (we can remember the "Highway of Death" in 1991 and the lunacy over a U.S. Marine killing a not-so-dead terrorist in Fallujah in 2004). American forces are villains in the foreign press, and, perhaps more infuriating to them, portrayed as victims in the domestic press. So we can't be killed, nor can we kill that much either. Any death, friend or foe, is advantageous to a propagandist enemy. We either cannot do what we want to do, or should not do what we can do; helpless or domineering, hopeless or ruthless. It is a pathetic discourse we partake in as we get set to confront Tehran.

Challenging the Iranians politically head-on in Iraq should have been done from the onset -- and it certainly should have occurred after the Israeli-Hezbollah war last year -- but doing so, according to our officers and commanders in the field, requires a small increase in force-levels. Suddenly the "not enough troops" line evolved into "stop the escalation." We still fail to see the "civil" war in Iraq within its proper context of the regional battle we have been engaged in for years. Iranian Quds agents and Revolutionary Guards are arming Mahdi Army ragtags and we're burying our heads in the sand. Am I seriously listening to talking heads of both the Democratic and Republican parties trying to distinguish between the elite Quds Force and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who the Quds directly answer to? Has our wartime resoluteness actually become wondering, hoping, or insisting that there is a miscommunication somewhere in Iran's chain-of-command -- and the Iranian killers destroying Americans and Iraqis in Iraq cannot possibly be answering to their military, political, and spiritual superiors? How far are we willing to go in defending and explaining to ourselves our enemy's transgressions against us?

You'd think this course change and effort to hedge off against Iran in Iraq -- at the request and design of the unanimously approved General Petraeus -- would result in a modicum of bipartisanship and soberness regarding the reality of the difficulties we face. But it has not. What has instead happened is an obvious, but perhaps non-deliberate, attempt to skew the debate by holier-than-thou ex-generals and former intelligence officers, paraded around by the likes of a self-righteous Edward Murrow-wannabe Keith Olbermann, or championed by a sarcastic David Gregory. It was painful to watch the otherwise brave journalist Michael Ware -- CNN's infamous terrorist embed -- go out of his way to assure us all that "Muqtada" (I guess he's on a first name basis with the warlord?) and his "mighty Mahdi militia" wouldn't flee in exile as so many Iraqis are swearing he has: "… To suggest that he's running in fear of extra U.S. troops seems a little bit ludicrous."

Almost nothing is said candidly about our allies. Recall the "window dressing" criticisms leveled against Britain, Australia, Italy, South Korea, Japan, etc., by a presidential hopeful in 2004. Recall the small controversy regarding the level of Iraqi forces: when the Pentagon announced we were ahead of schedule in training Iraqi infantrymen, the news outlets cried out that few of those Iraqi units were capable of operating independently until smarter men explained to them that the barometer for what Central Command considered "independent ready" were raised -- having the unique effect of elevating both the goal and outcome. Ditto this dearth of stories regarding our enemies, on a specific scale. Are we to believe those with IEDs and EFPs in Iraq are no-names, just civilians-gone-nuts, floating around on magic carpets wrecking havoc? Are our elitists and editors afraid that the American populace will grow just a tad too scornful of our jihadist rivals if we learn more about their sadism? Why has nothing been written about Abu Omar al Baghdadi's seventh-century psychosis -- and how al Qaida has bestowed this previous unknown man the title of Caliph?

Hackneyed logic is the only excuse that comes to mind. Iraqi Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi speaks enthusiastically about early positive results from the crackdown in Baghdad and the news stations can only talk about a prewar document written by Gen. Tommy Franks in 2002, which forecasted a more optimistic outlook on postbellum Iraq. Meanwhile on the Hill, John Murtha continues to deduce himself into a sad, sad figure. For a moment compare his bombasts and pomposity -- the unrelenting barrage of "can't," "shouldn't," "won't" -- with a Pattonesque speech or Churchill's "Never give in" reminder from his bunker. The once confidant Democrat is approaching jester-in-stripes territory; a fine wartime leader, the ex-Marine, is not. Alongside Senator Kerry, hand-in-hand with Khatami, disparaging his homeland as a "pariah," a now-apologetic Senator Durbin comparing the tropical conditions at Gitmo and U.S. servicemen to Stalin and Pol Pot, or a visibly vein-in-forehead-angry former Vice President Al Gore talking about Islamophobia and Western insensitivities to Wahhabi clerics in the Saudi kingdom, there is not much else to say about Mr. Murtha. He, they, and many others, have all gone mad.

Just why do so many Westerners go out of their way to make excuses for sadist and nihilist fascists? In the manner we heard "Ba'athists are secular and would never align with Islamic fundamentalists," we now hear "Shi'ites in Iran would never align with Sunni terrorists." Whoever is actually the adversary of the moment is apologized for in the Western academia based upon some difference in ethnicity or ideology, as if Syrian Ba'athists do not support Hezbollah fundamentalists and Persian mullahs do not finance Sunni Arab suicide bombers in the West Bank. There is an explanation, albeit the sole one. I am not willing to go so far as to claim such intellectual lemmings want their country to fail (although their vindication is rooted in such an outcome, their humiliation linked to success).

No, it may be simpler than that. They're aware and terrified by the thought of a geopolitical strategic defeat in the Middle East, but, for whatever reason -- ignorance, playing to constituencies, fantasizing about universal Healthcare -- remain both indifferent and indignant to the effort in avoiding such a catastrophe. Whether it is the allure of personal safety, financial security, perpetual leisure, or the false aura of invincibility, somehow many academics, politicians, and media chaps in the West, and in America particularly, feel sheltered from the highly likely possibility of an Islamist-hijacked Middle Eastern subcontinent. So they blindly do not see the forest for the trees, they willfully ignore the intentionalist and consequentialist aspects of Iraq (do we not all want violence to end pronto?), they fall to the veneer of multiculturalism and socio-political relativism, and they just wish it'd all go away.

And that is infantile. That is not serious.