Why failure in Iraq is not an option

Read here.

[S]uccess — or failure — in this war [on terror] will not depend on whether we can conduct better passenger searches or kill terrorist bands. It will depend on whether we can help to establish a competing ideology — of democratic capitalism with Islamic characteristics — in the Middle East. That is why the upcoming January elections in Iraq are so singularly important.

If we are able to help Iraqis — situated in the heart of the Middle East and bordering six major Islamic societies — to establish a synthesis of Western democratic capitalism and Islamic traditions, such an ideology will prove to be even more irresistible than religious purism-turned-extremist.

On the other hand, if we are unsuccessful in this endeavor or recoil from it, we will have to live with a continuing cycle of intrusive homeland-security measures and costly preemptive conflicts — a war without an end.