There are two methods one may use to become "Great". One is to create great things. The other is to destroy great things, because it takes someone of great power to destroy something great. John Hinkley shooting Reagan to impress Jodi Foster comes to mind.

Intellectuals of today seek to defeat the United States in Vietnam or Iraq, not because it will strengthen the country, but because it will weaken it, thus demonstrating their true own power and superiority.

So many great things have been done in the last two centuries, that it is difficult to imagine doing something big enough to be "great". But destroying the Twin Towers took only a few hours and 19 volunteers. Now Bin Laden is seen by millions as the "Great" one.

You write at TCS, "Leaving Iraq will be worse than leaving Vietnam, not necessarily in terms of bloodshed, though that will be no comfort to those who will be slaughtered, but because the jihadist threat today is more dangerous than the Soviet threat then."

Huh?! You've GOT to be kidding. The Ay-rabs and Moslems are all a bunch of ignorant, third-world, camel jockeys. Whereas the Soviets were a second-world power with technological capability, 10,000 nuclear ICBMs, a formidable military, a worldwide aggressive ideology, a vast empire, with nation after nation succumbing to communism, half the world's population living under communism, and client states in western hemisphere and threatening to expand in the western hemisphere.

The Muslims high water mark was at Vienna in 1528. It's been downhill for them ever since. Please DO NOT insult my intelligence.

If we're this stupid and this paranoid, then we deserve to lose for being stupid and cowardly.

I really resent war supporters expecting me to shrink my brain to the size of a pea and magnify these stupid-ass Ayrab camel-jockies into something to fear. Oh puhlease!

Bruce13 -- doesn't get it, as the saying goes. Was it ignorant camel-jockies in those airliners on 9/11? I don't think so and neither do most thinking people. Bruce13 isn't afraid because terrorists aren't pounding on his front door.

Josh, I read your excellent piece in the TCD. What I have to say about intellectuals: most of them are loosers hiding their failures behind their own hubris while attacking those who at least are trying to bring about success. The accidemic who has had to accept tenure as the boobie prize for his failure to achieve a CEO position with a large corporation. So he bitterly attacks all corporations as too stupid to see how brilliant he is. We should always ignore intellectuals and columnists with a private axe to grind.