The Obama administration on Wednesday abandoned a controversial plan to make veterans use private insurance to pay for costly treatments of combat-related injuries.

Stung by the angry reaction to the proposal, the administration made the decision after a meeting between officials from 11 veterans advocacy groups and top White House officials.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the intent of the plan had been to "maximize the resources available for veterans."

He said, however, that President Barack Obama, who met with the veterans groups on Monday in their first trip to the White House, recognized their concern that it could "under certain circumstances, affect veterans and their families' ability to access health care."

The fact this never should have been a consideration in the first place, it was only pulled because they knew they'd be hammered over it and the idiotic explanation all notwithstanding: score one for the good guys.

With all the depressing news about the economy, our sinking foreign relations, etc. floating around, it's nice when once in awhile a story that fills you with an actual sense of hope comes along. I'm not talking about Hope & Change sort of hope here, I'm talking about real, maybe-we're-not-so-fucked-after-all sort of hope.

This is that sort of story:



Canadian Bus Driver Interupts Seal Hunt Protest to Club Mock Seal

The head of an anti-sealing group says it’s “extremely alarming” that Halifax regional police have decided not to press charges again a Metro Transit driver who stopped his bus, ran into their protest and attacked a mock seal with an extendable baton.

I'm sure they're alarmed...I'm sure they're equally alarmed when animal rights protesters display worse sorts of behavior and get arrested. The problem here is these retarded hippies have had their way unopposed for too long...when somebody stages a counter-protest by, say, smacking their baby seal puppet around a little, they get shocked. "Wait, he can't do that...only we can do that sort of thing!"

The weird attack happened around 12:40 p.m. Saturday in front of the main entrance to the Halifax Public Gardens. The driver, who was in uniform, stopped his bus near the corner of Spring Garden Road and South Park Street and ran toward the group of about 25 protestors brandishing a baton, said Bridget Curran, director of the Atlantic Canadian Anti-Sealing Coalition.

“It was a black retractable baton, which is a weapon, I saw it quite clearly,” Ms. Curran said Monday.

Calling it an "attack" is a bit strong...he beat up a fake baby seal. Maybe it was cardboard, paper mache', stuffed, whatever, but how do you "attack" a fake baby seal? And I'm not condoning this guy doing this in uniform, on company time. Okay, maybe I am a little bit. Point being, the guy has to take his lumps for doing this on the job (reportedly he's on a small vacation as I type this...suspended, taking vacation pay while the "investigation" procedes.)

After the odd incident, “he ran back across the street, got back on his bus and drove away,” Ms. Curran said. “We were all quite shocked. Because we were there to demonstrate against violence against animals and, in this particular case, the seal hunt, violence against seals. But he obviously thought that it was quite funny to simulate an act of violence against a seal.”

He's not the only one who thinks it's "quite funny", lady.

The bus number was 1036 driving east on the 1 Spring Garden Road route. The middle aged driver was “medium build and medium height, and he had a bit of a belly on him,” Ms. Curran said.

Way to profile and stereotype bus drivers, you hippy freak. How would you like it if I said, "I saw the protesters who's baby seal was attacked...they were all dressed in tie-dye, looked like they hadn't showered in a week, smelled like patchouli oil and were all standing around with lost, vacant looks on their faces"?

Here's a little fact the seal hugging crowd doesn't want you to know: the harp seal population is estimated at somewhere around 9.5 million. The Canadian quota for the hunt fluctuates somewhere between 250,000 and 350,000 every year, so roughly they're looking at culling about 3% of the total population with this hunt. The harp seal population is beyond stable; it has about tripled since 1970 (evidently in spite of global warming...) and they've never even sniffed at the coveted "endangered" status.




Any time we can twist the knife between the ribs of the collective hippy conscience, it's a good day. Let's hope this bus driver takes his suspension like a man, goes back to work, and enjoys a free beer or two at the bar while retelling the story.

Barack and Michelle Obama think very highly of the United States Military. Very. Highly. This is how highly they regard our servicemen and women:

The First Lady has vowed to be an advocate for the military, promising them that they have a "friend in the White House". Just last week, she paid a visit to Ft. Bragg, meeting with military families and touring the base. Her message: "Military families bear a very heavy burden, and again, they do it without complaint," Obama said. "But as a nation, we need to find ways to lighten their load."

This is also how highly the Obamas think of the military: At a meeting yesterday at the Department of Veterans Affairs, PHBO said: "I think about my grandfather whenever I have the privilege of meeting the young men and women who serve in our military today. They are our best and brightest, and they're our bravest -- enlisting in a time of war; enduring tour after tour of duty; serving with honor under the most difficult circumstances; and making sacrifices that many of us cannot begin to imagine. The same can be said of their families. As my wife, Michelle, has seen firsthand during visits to military bases across this country, we don't just deploy our troops in a time of war -- we deploy their families, too."

To this end, PHBO, together with new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, want to "transform the Department of Veterans Affairs for the 21st century". Indeed, the plan is to increase the budget for the Department by over $25 billion (pdf). These funds will be used to expand the VA health care program so that it can serve an additional 500,000 veterans by 2013; to implement a GI Bill for the 21st century; to provide better health care; and to dramatically improve services related to mental health and injuries like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury. The funds will also be used for technology that will ease the transition from active duty to home for our nation's service members.

This is all excellent news. If you're not convinced yet just how highly PHBO and the First Lady value the military, I offer you this:

His administration is considering a proposal to require a veteran's private insurance to reimburse the VA for treatment of combat related injuries. Yes, you read that right. PHBO wants servicemen injured in defense of their country to have their own insurance reimburse any care provided by the 21st century VA.

Now, I'm not going to get into how disgraceful a betrayal this is to the men and women who put their lives on the line or how this violates the most sacred of trusts. Nor am I going to get into how we can provide full medical coverage to illegal aliens or how we can find 900 million to send to Hamas...er, I mean "Palestine" but we can't take care of our wounded servicemen. Really. Not getting into it.

Instead, I wonder about the financial aspects of this proposal. I don't know about the rest of you, but my insurance company specializes in finding ways to get out of paying for the care I'm supposed to get. Between deductibles, co-pays, riders and the all inclusive "pre-existing condition", how much will a vet's insurance really cover? And what happens to the portion they decide isn't covered? Even when an insurance company does pay, there's a maximum amount of coverage in a calendar year. What happens to the vet and their family after coverage is exhausted? For those discharged vets entering the workforce or reservists returning to work, how will employers deal with this situation? On the bright side, the improved treatment for PTSD will come in handy when vets face mounting medical debts.

I wonder if PHBO has thought about any of this. I also wonder if Michelle knows about this. I mean, did Barack not get the memo that she is BFF with the military?

Now, for those of you suffering from BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), before you start with "yeah, but Bush...", pay attention: Bush. Is. Not. The. President. STFU.

For the rest of you, if you think this is a disgrace...oh wait, I said I wasn't going to get into that...anyway, I urge you to write your representatives and senators and tell them to vote against any such proposal making its way to the Hill. I am blessed in this regard. Hailing from Massachusetts, my senators are the "Lion of the Senate" himself, Ted Kennedy and that "champion of vets everywhere" John Kerry. I am sure they will work tirelessly to defeat this proposal. What? You think THEY want to piss off Michelle?

Has anybody ever seen this movie starring Gomez Adams’ kid Rudy, or Samwise or something about a United States where liberals have taken the “create an even playing field for all Americans” to an extreme that’s ridiculous even by the most ridiculous of liberal extremes?

In an effort to create the ultimate “equality” among the citizenry, the achievers and gifted amongst the populace were given impediments to bring them back to the pack. The fastest runners and best basketball players had to wear leg weights to slow them down and screw up their vertical leaps. People with superior eyesight had to wear “corrective” glasses to give them a normal 20/20 vision range. Tera Patrick had to get a breast reduction.

Most importantly, everyone in the country had to wear this headgear thing that forced the brain to process information at the level of someone with an IQ in the 90-100ish range - flat average. The gifted were brought back to the pack in an effort to allow the rest of the people to “catch up”, to “become equal”.

I’m about to hurt your eyes people -

All men and women were not created equally.

Some are smarter. Some are faster. Some are better looking. Some are more inventive and creative. I don‘t expect to match up one-on-one with Lebron James in a pickup game anytime soon, and I’m certainly not about to bitch to The ONE to make him wear leg weights and screwy goggles to make it a fair game.

You can’t create artificial equality by punishing the achievers and leaders in this nation. Would Microsoft have become the industry giant without Bill Gates? Do the Bulls win six rings without Michael Jordan? Do you really want a bank janitor running AIG?

Ok, that last one’s a bad example, but you get my point, right? It’s ok to envy the gifted - envy leads to inspiration which leads to self-improvement, which leads to personal achievement (unfortunately this is only in theory)- but expecting your government to level the field by redistributing wealth or creating special laws giving preferential treatment or protection is just wrong.

Oh, the punch line of Sean Astin’s “Harrison Bergeron”? Samwise takes his headgear off, realizes he’s a genius and ends up eating the business end of a pistol rather than live in a society devoid of creativity and achievement.

Do we really want to live in a society that embraces mediocrity?

Do we really want those that we should be looking up to to just give up?

So I’m at one of those all-you-can-eat family friendly style restaurants, an “Italian” - and I use the word verrrrry loosely - place called “Cinzetti’s”. The couple in the table over is pushing seven bills between them. Easy. Plate after plate after plate to the point where my daughters are talking about poor people not having enough to eat and I’m losing my appetite.

The waitress comes over to clear some plates away and the guy just about takes her head off of her shoulders.

“THIS PLACE IS ALL YOU CAN EAT!! WE’RE NOT DONE YET!!!!”

Want to know what really pissed me off about these pigs??

Universal healthcare.

In ten years we’re going to be paying for this slob’s triple bypass, stomach staples and one of those fat people scooters that you make fun of in grocery stores.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone. Otherwise known as "Amateur DUI Day".

Do us all a favor and stay the hell off the road.

Disagree with me? Please send your emails to ScrewYourselfSlowlyWith@Chainsaw.com

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a fund raiser hosted by Homes for our Troops. I hadn't heard of this organization until late last week but have since learned a great deal about the good work these people have undertaken.

As the name implies, Homes for our Troops is a non-profit grass roots organization, founded in 2004, whose mission is to remodel or provide custom built homes designed to meet the needs of severely injured service members. They raise donations of money, land, building materials and professional labor and coordinate the process of adapting or building the home. All of this assistance is provided at no cost to the service member. Since their founding, they have provided 20 homes in as many states with 35 more planned thus far. Of particular note is the fact they manage to keep their overhead down to 7%; a great many other charities can learn a trick or two here.

Last night's event was to benefit Army Sgt. Peter Rooney and his wife, Susanne. The Sgt. lost both legs above the knee when the vehicle he was riding in was hit by an IED in Ramadi, Iraq. He enlisted in the Army in 2001 at age 18; he is now 25. Think about that for a minute.

The general reaction of the service members who have been the beneficary of homes is this: they are humbled that complete strangers could be so generous just because they served their country. I suggest it is we who are humbled by their selflessness, sacrifice and honor.

The link to Homes for our Troops has been added to our list of recommended sites. It's more than more a look.

(March 14, 2009- Washington, D.C.)- President Barrack Obama is reeling this afternoon after a morning press conference in which the most powerful man in the world confessed that the snubbing of Great Britain Prime Minister Gordon Brown was intentional.


Obama admitted transgression following a string of questions from the media outlet WAF. The shocking transcript is reprinted below:


WAF: Mr. President, Led here, from WAF. Could you please explain exactly what happened with Mr. Brown’s visit and the snubbing of our closest ally?


Obama: There was no snubbing, and that is the, uh, end of the story.


WAF: Well most of England feels like it got the shaft.


Obama: Well how does Great Britain feel?


WAF: Sir?


Obama: You know England is just one small piece of Great Britain.


WAF: Sir?


Obama: I bet you, uh, the previous President was unaware of that fact.


WAF: So you’re saying you only intended to anger England and not Great Britain.


Obama: Yes. Uh, no. There was no snubbing.


WAF: Follow-up question. What were the DVD’s that you gave to Mr. Brown.


Obama: Let’s see there was Braveheart, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, I really love that one. There was uh, King Ralph, and uh, V for Vendetta.


WAF: Sir, that is quite a list. It appears that, well, that none of those really portray England very well.


Obama: What do you mean?


WAF: Well, Braveheart was about Scottish rebels fighting the evil English king. Robin Hood took on the feudal system, you know the whole redistribution of wealth. King Ralph is about an American becoming King of England, and V for Vendetta calls for an uprising and overthrow of the English government.


Obama: What is your point?


WAF: Seems like a pretty consistent message you are trying to send.


Obama: Let me ask you this, and I am, uh, of course, a student of history. Do any of these movies present a false image of the England as it, uh, currently exists.


WAF: What?


Obama: Do they present a contradictory message?


WAF: Well, yeah, I think so.

Obama: Well then, we have a differing opinion, don’t we?


WAF: Sir, are you contending that England is more closely represented by the DVD’s you sent to Mr. Brown than by our nearly two hundred years of friendship?


Obama: Two hundred years of friendship? These people tried to kill my ancestors. They tried to kill your ancestors.


WAF: Sir, I’m English.

Obama: Well how the **** did you get in here?


WAF: Sir, I’ve been covering you since you announced you were running for President.


Obama: Well okay then. They didn’t kill, uh, your ancestors, but they did mine. And everyone else in this country. Why do we forget that, if we are so concerned about, uh, terrorism? Who has had a more tyrannical history than England?


WAF: Is it your contention that the United States should sever it’s alliances with Great Britain.


Obama: Certainly not. But I don’t think they are anything special. They are just like the other 57 states, and 190 countries- all the same.


WAF: I think the people of England would beg to differ with that.


Obama: Friends? Do friends attack friends?


WAF: Sir?


Obama: Oh yeah, everyone forgets about the War of 1812. Like it didn’t happen. But I don’t. And where the hell, uh, were they when the Civil War was going on? Suddenly we save their ass in the 20th Century a few times and we are best buds. This relationship hasn’t really been, uh, mutual has it?


WAF: Again sir, I think England would beg to differ.


Obama: You can beg all you want, you aren’t getting any stimulus.


WAF: What about all of the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq that have stood by you since September 11th and put their lives on the line.


Obama: I told you I’m bringing all the troops home soon.


WAF: The English soldiers, sir.


Obama: What about them?


WAF: What do you say to them?


Obama: Tally ho?


At this point President Obama was whisked away by Secret Service because of an emergency that we later learned was whether or not the scones for the Saint Patrick’s Day dinner should have raisins.


Follow-up calls to the White House for clarification were not returned, though a source did say he thought the President was “joking” and was likely just caught off guard when his teleprompter did not work.


Representatives from Great Britain have also not yet returned calls for comment.

This morning, my office got a call from a very nice elderly lady, inquiring about the mechanics of filing a conservation easement on her property. She had started the easement process in the late 1990's and decided against it at the time. However, something had changed her mind in the past decade: "With the property taxes getting so expensive, I need to do something here to bring them back down."

Ay, there's the rub, as Hamlet would say.

A conservation easement, as the name implies, is generally an encumberance placed on a piece of property (generally a large or desirable tract of land) by the owner for the purpose of conservation for the future. Usually they limit future development and use of the property to specific small, "low impact" uses. There will often have restrictions on how the land may be divided, what sorts of structures may be built, how the vegetation/trees on the property will be managed, etc. They are generally billed as "preserving the land for future generations". This easement will become attached to the title of the property and carry these restrictions forward to any future owners. A property owner may have this easement written up independently, by a lawyer or title company experienced in these matters, but more often than not the easements are written up and enforced by a third party conservation or land trust organization (generally a non profit).

The largest nation wide organization managing these sorts of easements is The Nature Conservancy. In my home state of Minnesota, the Minnesota Land Trust is the largest state wide organization managing conservation easements.

The question is, when does a conservation easement no longer become a conservation easement, but a tax shelter? From the Nature Conservancy's website:

Here is a summary of the benefits available to many landowners who donate conservation easements:

- They can deduct up to 50 percent of their adjusted gross income in
any year (up from 30 percent);

- They can deduct up to 100 percent of their adjusted gross income if
the majority of that income came from farming, ranching or forestry; and

- They can continue to carry over unused portions of deductions for as
long as 15 years (up from 5 years) after the initial year in which the deduction
was claimed.

Those are just the benefits at the federal level; if you're state uses an ad valorem property tax system that uses the value of property as the basis for figuring property taxes, the argument then becomes that since these sorts of easements diminish the usability of the property, then the value of the property on the open real estate market is therefore diminished, and therefore subject to a lower level of taxation. This aspect of the system is openly advertised by the groups that specialize in managing these properties, like Minnesota Land Trust:

Income Taxes: As with other charitable contributions, the donation of a conservation easement under certain circumstances may allow the landowner to claim a federal income tax deduction for the value of the easement.

Estate taxes: A gift of a conservation easement may also reduce federal estate taxes, making this an effective way to transfer land to the next generation with its natural features intact.

Property Taxes: An easement that reduces the value of the land may result in lowered annual property taxes.

The tendency is to shrug these sorts of incentives off, but at what point does this change from a simple incentive to a shifting burden? At the local and state level, the total levy amounts will not be changed to compensate for these lowering values; the loss in revenue will simply be passed on to the neighboring properties in the same taxing jurisdiction. In other words, if your neighbor's share of property taxes go down, yours are likely to go up.

In some areas, where these programs are very attractive to landowners of large tracts of land, the tax burden can get shifted down to folks who own pieces of property that are smaller, less desirable from a conservation standpoint, and lower in overall value. Theoretically, the owner of a multi million dollar property should be in a better position to pay their fare share of overall property taxes than a person who owns a family home on a small lot...but in the end, what constitutes their fair share becomes a point of conservation debate and not a simple fact.

There is more talk now than ever of additional government incentives to "be green", everything from subsidies to set aside farmland to a tax break for driving a high mpg vehicle. Having failed to get majority of people to enlist in the fight to save Mother Earth by appealing to our collective environmental conscience, they're now trying to get us to do it by appealing to our individual wallets.

At what point do a person's motives to "be green" come into question? Should the general public subsidize a person's conservation efforts when the sole point of that effort is to lower their taxes?

Is the planet really going to hell so fast that we can't slow down, take a look at some of these programs and say, "Wait, is this really in the average American taxpayers' best interests?"

Like Kermit said, it ain't easy being green.

A long, long, time ago Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil, remarked… “all politics is local.” Now, as the good, God fearing Liberal that I am, I hang on just about every word Ole Tip said. So when I hear that there is some $8.2 billion of “pork” in a $410 billion budget, I’m not troubled. I mean a few million dollars to investigate pig odor and manure removal doesn’t seem so important to me, but to the guy that lives around them, it’s a different story. Congressmen get elected based in part by what type of bacon they bring home to their district. So, if a few million goes to local pet projects, that’s fine. They all do it…..politics is local, remember.

Warren Buffet is going to have to turn in his cool kids club card.

While technically not an economist, Mr. Buffett has amassed enough of a fortune, and developed enough of a reputation in the investment world, that liberals have been quick to parade his endorsement of Barrack Obama out when anyone dared question the acumen behind the administration’s economic recovery efforts.

Until now.

Speaking to CNBC on Monday, Buffett related the current economic situation to Pearl Harbor, saying that we are in an economic war, and not so subtly adding that the crisis the Democrats keep talking about as an opportunity not to be missed is shameful.

“(We’ve) heard this comment recently from some Democrats recently that a `crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” Buffett said. “It’s, in my view, it’s an economic war, and–I don’t think anybody on December 7th (1941) would have said a `war is a terrible thing to waste, and therefore we’re going to try and ram through a whole bunch of things and- but we expect the other party to unite behind us on the- on the big problem. It's just a mistake, I think, when you've got one overriding objective, to try and muddle it up with a bunch of other things.

What Buffett fails to recognize is that this has been the Democrats plan all along. They’ve just advanced it at a quicker pace than many thought possible due to the initial overwhelming support for the President (Hope!). While Buffett gives their intentions the benefit of the doubt, he does not agree with the treatment of the GOP, which the left has attempted to label as a party of no.

“You can’t expect people to unite behind you if you’re trying to jam a whole bunch of things down their throat,” he said. “So I would–I would absolutely say for the–for the interim, till we get this one solved, I would not be pushing a lot of things that are–you know are contentious, and I also–I also would do no finger-pointing whatsoever.”

Strike two. And then came the big no-no in Liberal Land, the defense, or at least the calling off of the dogs on the former President. He even called him George. Really.

“I would–you know, I would not say, you know, `George’–`the previous administration got us into this,’” Buffett said while signing his liberal love death certificate. “Forget it. I mean, you know, the Navy made a mistake at Pearl Harbor and had too many ships there. But the idea that we’d spend our time after that, you know, pointing fingers at the Navy, we needed the Navy. So I would–I would– I would–no finger-pointing, no vengeance, none of that stuff. Just look forward.”

In the last week, Obama’s big name advisor has called into question the Democrats ability to manage this economic crisis, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has questioned the honesty of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Nancy Pelosi threw out the idea of a second pork-filled stimulus package, and word came that Obama does not have the votes to pass his budget.

Most of this is being overlooked because the media cannot bother to talk about news, and the Dow had one of its starts Tuesday, gaining more than 5 percent.

Soon it will go back down as more government programs are proposed with no viable funding source. There will be more job losses, but we will continue to hear about how many jobs are saved or mythically created. Barring a miracle where the country rises up and stops this abhorrent taxation of achievers for the benefit of the non-contributors, there will be no light at the end of the tunnel. Not yet.

No, I am not an economist. Not that it matters anymore.

In last week's Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria had a very well written opinion piece called Learning To Live With Radical Islam (and let's face it, Fareed Zakaria is really the only compelling reason to read Newsweek anyway.)

Zakaria's article was released with impeccable timing, as this past week President Obama himself expressed the possibility of reaching out to the Taliban in Afghanistan as part of the solution to the Afghanistan campaign.

Both men cite the successes of the U.S. in dealing with former Sunni and Shi'a radicals in Iraq as at least part of the motivation for their concepts, and that we need to separate the local jihadists from the global ones.

Zakaria makes a very compelling argument for isolating local jihadists and letting their radicalism "burn out" so to speak. For instance, he points out that in Nigeria:

After the end of military rule in 1999, 12 of Nigeria's 36 states chose to adopt Sharia. Radical clerics arrived from the Middle East to spread their draconian interpretation of Islam. Religious militias such as the Hisbah of Kano state patrolled the streets, attacking those who shirked prayers, disobeyed religious dress codes or drank alcohol. Several women accused of adultery were sentenced to death by stoning. In 2002 The Weekly Standard decried "the Talibanization of West Africa" and worried that Nigeria, a "giant of sub-Saharan Africa," could become "a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists."

But when The New York Times sent a reporter to Kano state in late 2007, she found an entirely different picture from the one that had been fretted over by State Department policy analysts. "The Islamic revolution that seemed so destined to transform northern Nigeria in recent years appears to have come and gone," the reporter, Lydia Polgreen, concluded. The Hisbah had become "little more than glorified crossing guards" and were "largely confined to their barracks and assigned anodyne tasks like directing traffic and helping fans to their seats at soccer games." The widely publicized sentences of mutilation and stoning rarely came to pass (although floggings were common). Other news reports have confirmed this basic
picture.

Residents hadn't become less religious; mosques still overflowed with the devout during prayer time, and virtually all Muslim women went veiled. But the government had helped push Sharia in a tamer direction by outlawing religious militias; the regular police had no interest in enforcing the law's strictest tenets. In addition, over time some of the loudest proponents of Sharia had been exposed as hypocrites. Some were under investigation for embezzling millions.

Zakaria's point seems to be a simple one: that people will always choose order over chaos, and in the Muslim world "order" often simply means Sharia. Later, in time (and the loose examples that Zakaria uses tend to make it seem like it will be sooner rather than later) the people and government will softly "rebel" and the strictest interpretations of Sharia will fall off on the wayside, and things will moderate of their own accord. Unfortunately, history is filled with examples that prove Zakaria's examples are really not the norm, but part of his argument defies a historical examination: that in this modern age, radical Islamism cannot exist long term and will eventually fade and die as a system of government due to its own nature.

It is a compelling and attractive position, and comes back to the core argument that by pulling back our overseas deployments we will no longer be the invaders on foreign soil, angering the locals into jihad, and that the global jihadists will lose support once the locals don't have foreigners walking around to piss them off.

The question then becomes, how much presence is too much? The existence of an embassy alone was enough to set off the Iranians in 1979. There were only a handful of infidels within spitting distance of the Taliban in the late 90's when foreign jihadist training camps flourished after the Taliban's rise to power in the mid 90's. Rhetoric about global jihad continues to grow in Indonesia. And everywhere that any form of Sharia rules supreme, the boogeyman of Palestine is always available to whip up some nationalistic/religious fervor among the natives.

The reality of the situation is that while the local Islamists in Muslim countries may not support a global jihad themselves, history has proven they are more than willing to tolerate the presence of global jihadists among them, and that's all it takes.

Everyone can agree that the problem of how to combat the global Islamists is more complicated than it seemed back in 2002. However, there is danger in the concept that by pulling back forces now, it is guaranteed we will make more friends than we will enemies. Rather we need to recognize that there are not individual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is only one war, it is global, and the battle will ebb and flow through different campaigns, of which Afghanistan and Iraq are only two of what will certainly be more. During this war, anywhere on the globe that radical Islam creates the atmosphere that allows global jihadists to exist, we will be forced to be at odds with it, no matter how "localized" the phenomenon is.

I am at my core a "live and let live" sort of guy. Zakaria seems to be saying that the vast majority of Muslims out there are too, and I don't have a problem believing that. The problem is, their religion doesn't have much "live and let live" about it, and as long as a Muslim in Asia is willing to tolerate living next door to someone who believes in delivering the war to our doorstep, we're going to have this problem. How we decide which threats are local and which are global in the next couple of years is going to frame the success of the war, and in large part the security of the nation.