[fineman]

Cutting and running does not work. We're still in Germany and Japan 70+ years later and we'll have to have that kind of roadmap if we plan to help in the middle east.

And help we must. We can't sit back and watch madmen kill millions, even if doing so would spite our idiot leaders (on all sides) who caused it in the first place.

[webXL]

Germany and Japan have tolerant and compatible cultures, and "world opinion" was controlled by the Allies. I don't think it's possible to shape "world opinion" anymore. The Koran doesn't permit any kind of integration and tolerance. Western "nation building" (rebuilding) is perceived as an attack on that religion. My own libertarian bent tells me that it's at least an unjust attack on their way of life, how alien that might be to Westerners.

[fineman]

An unjust attack on whose way of life? The girls being sold into slavery? The boys forced to fight or die? Those simply murdered?

I'm pretty sure the other 99.9% are hostages, and not half as committed to the bullshit as you think, except in stockholm-syndrome ways. Soon after they weren't being killed for not being fervent, they'd be as non-religious as we are.