It doesn't matter how clearly something is explained to them, they keep coming back to the same point of mystification and lack of understanding.

Take Ronald Brownstein of National Journal and MSNBC.

First, if McCain doesn't envision a 100-year American front-line combat presence in Iraq, how long is he willing to keep U.S. forces in that role? So far, all he has said is that the United States should withdraw only if it concludes that the Iraq mission is unachievable or when it has achieved success, which he defines as the establishment of "a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state."

McCain hasn't said how long he would keep fighting to reach that demanding goal. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of McCain's closest Senate allies, recently said he thinks that McCain would maintain current U.S. troop levels in Iraq through his entire four-year presidential term if military commanders recommended that course to maintain stability there.

Yeah, McCain hasn't given Brownstein the cutoff date that he and other liberals want. Why not? because as conservatives (and liberals who actually understand such things) have repeatedly noted for the last year or two, setting a date for withdrawal (and that is what "how long" is really asking) simply tells your enemy "how long" they need to bide their time until the US surrenders. The correct answer -- one that Brownstein seems unwilling to accept -- is "as long as it is militarily appropriate for us to continue the mission."

Brownstein then tries to distinguish the US presence in South Korea (which remains a source of great political division among South Koreans) as well as in Japan and Germany (in which we were initially an occupying power which forced our presence upon those nations at the point of a gun) from an ongoing presence in Iraq, which he argues would be both divisive among Iraqis and lead us to be viewed as an occupying power by the Iraqi people! I guess that Brownstein really isn't familiar with the history of the places he cites.

Which leads us to the third point -- the views of those who have doubts about the current Iraq strategy.

As Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean asked this week, "Does anyone think ... if you keep our troops in Iraq for a hundred years, people won't be ... setting off suicide bombs?"

In an interview, retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Mideast, echoed that concern. Zinni said that McCain is right that America needs the capacity to respond to regional threats. But Zinni believes that it should do so with a light and flexible force stationed outside Iraq, probably in Kuwait. "Keeping a large formation of combat troops [in Iraq] is a mistake," he says, "because you are going to be seen as an occupier, and a colonial power, and you are going to attract people that will want to attack those forces."

Which begs the question -- having achieved success and victory in Iraq, what makes Dean, Zinni, and others believe that the same tactics will not be adopted by al-Qaeda against American forces in Kuwait? After all, their success will merely embolden them in their efforts to drive the Crusaders" of the "Great Satan" out of Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam). Will Dean and Zinni (and their ideological successors) tell us a decade from now that we must withdraw from Kuwait because the cost in American casualties is too high? After all, the logic of Iraq will be just as applicable in Kuwait if even a small segment of Kuwaitis becomes radicalized.