And Richie - it seems to me that thinking in terms of people getting their asses kicked is to misunderstand what we are up against, and what makes them tick.

The people who planned Septemebr 11 were not the least bit worried about sacrificing their people, any more than a general is worried about expending ammunition, so long as there is plenty more available. Why should they worry about a few thousand more deaths in Afghanistan or the loss of a few training camps of dubious significance or the deaths of a few figureheads? Or real leaders for that matter.

They are surely working on a longer term plan than that. Whatever happens in Iraq, it seems pretty self evident that the level of fear and hatred of America will be exponentially greater in its wake. Every move forward America makes promises to increase this effect. Sooner or later - maybe in a couple of years, maybe in fifty years or more, America will withdraw back home. And what is fifty years?

Here's a quote from Chesterton's long poem about King Alfred, The Ballad of the White Horse. It's Alfred speaking, and as a Christian, but it gives a sense what it is like to think in those kind of terms. And when you are up against people thinking in those terms, a very different aproach is needed if you are to hope to overcome them:

"...on you is fallen the shadow
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly
And you hang over us like the sky
You are more tired of victory
Than we are tired of shame.

That though you hunt the Christian men
Like a hare on the hill-side
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

That though all lances split on you,
All sword be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again."