It’s comforting to know that, despite what we think of the war in Iraq, we can all come together in supporting our brave men and women in uniform. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and all those in-between — we all stand behind our military, pray that they are successful in their mission, and want them to return home safe, as quickly as possible.

After MoveOn.org ran an advertisement in the New York Times (at a nice discount) accusing one of our top generals of “betray[ing]” our country, “cooking the books for the White House,” and claiming that he is “constantly at war with the facts,” it was encouraging to see the U.S. Senate “strongly condemn” the attack with a bi-partisan resolution.

The ad’s target — General David Petraeus — has dedicated his life to serving his country, and was unanimously confirmed to his current post, credited for having written the book on counterinsurgency. He graduated in the top 5% of his class at West Point, and he earned a MPA and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Our liberal friends at the Memphis Flyer also noted their disgust with the ad, calling the attack “utterly spurious,” “shameful,” “deceitful and disgraceful,” “loads of lies,” and an “outlaw smear campaign.” They even went so far as to call those behind the advertisement “assholes,” “liars,” and “malefactors of great wealth who would do something so dire against a man so pure and deserving.”

Oh, wait. Did I say the Flyer had written those things about MoveOn.org’s advertisement? My bad. That’s actually what they said about the Vietnam veterans who opposed John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. Sorry for the confusion.

Here’s how the Flyer actually described General Petraeus and his testimony before Congress: “dog and pony show,” “whoopee cushion,” “Bush’s new poodle,” “rigged report,” and “total poppycock.” (more…)

I appreciate the anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment espoused by John McCain, Michelle Malkin, Bill Hobbs and others. I certainly don’t like the thought of that madman, terrorist supporter and enemy of the United States traipsing around Ground Zero, which remains an open wound. In fact, I don’t believe the Iranian president should be allowed to step foot inside our country to begin with. On the other hand, how are you going to realistically stop him from viewing the site? You can’t prevent Ahmadinejad from seeing an empty space. To our shame, it’s still just a gap in the skyline. How do you prevent someone from seeing nothing? How far can you push him back until he can’t see what isn’t there? How can he defile a sacred monument that doesn’t exist?

Here’s an interesting comment on an old post of mine about Hezbollah. This comes from “ali” in Adana, Turkey.

hezbollah is not terrorist organisation , hezbollah is the freedom that all muslims are looking for , all the world specially islaqmic will be hezbollah we are going to cancel isrsel from this world , this is what allah says about it, hams and hezbollah with iran and syria are the winner inshallah we are going to beat israel to destroy it inshallah , also america at al iraq theey will loose

Who, those guys, terrorists? What, are you kidding me?! No, they aren’t terrorists. It’s just that they want to destroy Israel. And, oh yeah, Iraq and the United States, too. Just that. But, no, not terrorists.

Thanks, ali. We’ll make a note of it.

Bill Hobbs points us to an article that examines “What Harry Potter Can Teach Us About The War Against Islamofacist Terror.”

I thought I would offer my own contribution:

For those who need it: some background info.

Cpl. Micah S. Gifford
July 7, 1979 - December 7, 2006

Just a few weeks before he was killed by an IED while on patrol in Iraq, Micah wrote these words for his friends and family:

In case you are worried about my well being… don’t. I am proud to be a part of this fight. I signed up to do this for a reason and I hope that everyone understands why this fight continues to be important to every one of us… not just the Iraqi people.

Don’t pray that I come home soon.

Pray that the people that are causing us to stay out there can see the light and change their ways without harm coming to them first.

For no particular reason, I have undertaken an effort to catalog and categorize the reasons why Americans disagree with the war in Iraq or have increasingly turned against it.

What it reinforces for me is that people who are “anti-war” do not present a unified front, and should not all be lumped together — it shows how critics appear on both the Right and the Left.

A person can be against the war for only one of these reasons, or several; everyone theoretically has a threshold under category three — a point at which even the strongest supporters of the war would conclude that the cost of action is too high. And it also suggests that those who disagree on every point, or agree on every point, are being insincere.

The outline vividly explains why support for the war continues on a downward trend, despite any successes and victories the U.S. coalition and Iraqis have achieved.

Breaking it down also helps me pinpoint where people are coming from and puts me in a better position to offer constructive counter-arguments.

Can you add to this list (PDF)? At some point I may take the trouble to code this thing in HTML; until then, deal.