Submitted by Nolan Nelson, Mar 19, 2007 13:08

The significant despondency exhibited by Iraq war polls correlates with the recent Newsweek poll indicating two thirds believe the country is generally headed in the wrong direction. Beliefs maintained when job growth covers over 95% wanting employment, inflation stays at 20 year lows, stock market reaches highs fueling 401k's, and home ownership attains all time peaks. Malaise overcomes people, while they absent-mindedly feed garbage disposals sufficient food to enrich Darfur. Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness now require previously unimaginable increases in material possessions, leisure, and pleasure.

Such a country abhors principles requiring discipline, risk of life and perseverance against international terrorists. U.N. principles reviving collective security fostered resolutions requiring removal of Hussein's regime, because his support for international terrorism within Iraq always threatened more than individual pariahs such as bin Laden. Our 1998 resolution demanding democratic government for Iraq rested not only on our founding principles, but aligned with principles in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

Such principles perform poorly against demands for intellectual comfort food supporting serenity, apathy and selective moral exhibitionism. Willing political and intellectual functionaries transform passivity and perplexity into elegant foreign policy models achieving self-congratulatory righteousness with revised meanings for national interest, multi-lateralism, exit strategy and now redeployment.

Therefore, a decline in courage may be the most striking feature an outsider can notice about this country. We took extraordinary initiatives against adversaries believed weak and unsupported, but now seek mediocrity when facing determined malevolence. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's issue, not mine.

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