Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
What I'm suggesting is that information and technology saturation has led more people to look to pundits rather than elected leaders for political cues.
I think I have to disagree. After 9/11 I thought that Osama would be public enemy #1 for a long time, but when the president said that Osama was no longer in charge of a country and we needed to worry about WMDs, Osama quickly disappeared from the public discourse. The bloggers were all talking about WMDs. IMO, the president still sets the agenda.

I think the strong opposition to the war comes down to the basics: Americans like to finish wars, not start them, there was a "bait and switch", people don't like their best and bravest killed and the most important element was that people didn't believe the claims of "progress."

Now that there actually is some progress, things haven't settled down considerably and I don't think that's because the Coulters and Moores of the world have become any less verbose.

Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
They believed there was a post September 11 window of opportunity for boldness which would close fairly rapidly. So they had to capitalize on it while they could.

The problem they've faced is that once we got some distance from September 11, the window closed. Hence they do not have the backing to attain their orginal objectives in Iraq (a unified liberal democracy spreading liberal democracy across the region) and have had to develop less ambitious and more readily attainable goals.
I won't disagree, but the person in the Oval Office makes a difference. I really think that - at his core - Bush believed that getting rid of evil leaders was the right thing to do. The other element was that the people surrounding him had too much faith in our high tech weapons. If doing the right is easy - and nothing could possibly go seriously wrong - why wouldn't you do the right thing?

I'm not convinced that this administration won't take bold action on Iran, even though many think that window closed a while ago. Of course, if they don't, maybe I'll concede your point and buy you a beer.