Michael Ledeen is often single-mindedly passionate about bringing peace and stability to nations where there is none, but he deserves quite a bit of credit for leveling a balanced critique at the Bush administration and American foreign strategy at large:

This confusion [of who we're fighting in Iraq] derives from several causes. First and foremost is the disarray of the intelligence community, produced over more than a quarter-century of politicization, mounting restrictions from Congress, a surfeit of lawyers, and America's own cultural shortcomings (we don't study history, geography, or foreign languages).

...It makes no sense, nowadays, to try to distinguish one group from another, because they are all working together. Osama and Hezbollah's operational chieftain, Imad Mughniyah, have met several times, and Mughniyah is now working closely with Osama's deputy, al-Zawahiri. The two met very recently in Iran to coordinate activities in Iraq. They have the full panoply of terrorists at their disposal, from Baathist survivors to the foot soldiers of Ansar al-Islam, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and all the rest.

Instead of talking about separate organizations, we would do better to think of the terrorists as a galaxy, with the various comets, stars, and planets revolving around the tyrannical terror masters, themselves linked by a sort of common gravitational field.

Thus the problem that baffles our experts — Who's the enemy here? — is answered by President Bush's original insight into the nature of the war against terrorism. We are at war with a series of regimes and thousands of terrorists, and they are all after us in Iraq.

This is what I've been saying - only superficial traditions and loyalties separate a Ba'athist thug from an al Qaeda or Hezbollah thug. Totalitarians are fundamentally alike, and in the Near East, they thrive. And they want to destroy us after they succeed in throwing us out of the region. The security of Iraq and Afghanistan depends largely on disrupting the ability of hostile neighbors to send men, money or equipment for destabilization efforts. Which means, as Ledeen warns, that playing defense is not a winning strategy.