Iraq is weary of war and right now has some optimism. That is why the protests are not there.

Tell it like it is, Mr. Hanson. It is always darkest before the dawn. Too bad the media and Bushing-bashing cadres successfully foisted the term "war weary" on America forcing us to bow out prematurely from of what looks like a revolution that could not be stopped. The danger now is, of course, the same that took place in Gaza, where democracy brought a terrorist organization into political power.

But the human desire for liberty cries out in the streets. It is a natural desire of the human heart to be free - unlike that revolution which is falsely conjured by social engineers to make us all slaves.

There are a few Iraqi refugees I could introduce Mr. Hanson to that may disabuse him of his notion that Iraq is now a peaceful and happy place. The refugees that I work with still say Iraq was an easier place with Saddam in power--then, you knew what rules to follow so you could go about your life in peace. Currently, for many in Iraq, there is no way to escape the violence, which does still rage.

How easy it is to evaluate war so glibly from afar...

Unsurprisingly, not one liberal commentator has linked the popular uprisings in Middle Eastern countries to our Iraq intervention. Just maybe the sight of Iraqis casting votes freely inspired ''the Arab Street'' to think: ''we can have that too.''

I've seen many attribute these riots to food prices going out of control. These are middle and lower class people rioting against food prices as inflation engulfs the world. I'm sure there are about a million OTHER reasons that made this food price thing break the camel's back, but food prices are what seems to be getting these things going in the M.E. and also soon in S.E Asia. Laos and Sri Lanka have seen their food prices rise 30% or more.

Mr Hanson conveniently forgets the violence that engulfed Iraq just a few years ago.

Mr. Hanson, your rationale for why those 'old narratives' have been dropped, is deeply flawed, and amount to nothing more than chest-puffing self-aggrandizing, bordering on delusion.

The reason the 'narratives' are no longer needed is because the allies that were propagating them had won the debate over the American people. It didn't matter that their argument was flawed, or based on outright lies. It mattered because they presented their argument with basically little opposition from the Bush Administration, the Republicans in Congress, and more particularly, those Republican senators (Kyl, Warner were disgustingly silent on this point) who won the arguments that sought to change the scope of the reasoning for going into Iraq (Authorization: public law 107-243), but lost the argument in horrendous fashion in presenting their reasoning to the American people.

It was Dick Durbin's amendment (S.AMDT.4865) that started the canard that we were going into Iraq for WMD, and reading this amendment, it can't be argued any other way, since it specifically seeks to change the very language of the authorization to this wording. It was Carl Levin's amendment (S.AMDT.4862) that sought to usurp the authority of the UN weapons inspectors, rework the mandates of the security council, and put the onus on the American armed forces for finding, classifying and destroying those weapons, thereby providing the litmus test for the success or failure of the Iraq War; the end of the Bath party rule and Hussein's demise be damned.

Those responsible for maintaining the message failed so badly that even Bush was forced to resign his earlier positions on Iraq, and declare that he wished we had found the weapons. This is capitulation in its fullest, and why the man lost my respect.

If you want to wrap yourself in supposed platitudes of principle that simply don't exist Hanson, that's your right. But the fact is that while the war was a justifiable excursion, and its genesis is irrefutable, the defense of its merits were left to people completely unable to defend it, and that can only be termed as incompetent when stacked up against the costs of that war, and those that are still profiting politically from their flawed, but winning argument.

I have the highest respect for Professor Hanson.

But I say again; a conservative must see the world as it is, not how we might want it to be.Islamic countries can never be truly reformed as long as Islam is a factor. Our elites and diplomats in both parties refuse to discuss nor deal with this reality. While Obama is an embarrassment the constant refrain to blame him or demand he do something here or any where(like Iran) seems pointless. What ever comes after Mubarak or the mullahs in Iran or what ever hack is in charge of Yemen will be no better and probably worse. There is little he can do, nor should do.We are not going to have another war anyplace no matter how much some may think it's advisable. And it is not; it would be craziness. There is no public support for the current wars.

If the GOP and conservatives continue down this road, it will only lead to ruin. Senator Rubio's offerings here yesterday were disturbing. What is conservative about thinking against all objective evidence we can change such places into Western-style democracies? Please stop.

We have troops on the ground in Iraq for almost a decade, Afghanistan over a decade. The antion building exercise is a failure, unless you are atop the Karzai heroin cartel or part of what ever collection of kleptocrats are running Iraq at any given time. These wars no matter how well-intentioned have not changed the cultural problems in both (very different) places because they are still culturally Islamic. And this is true of the entirety of north Africa and the Middle East (spare Israel, obviously).