As we all know, John McCain (R - Warmongerville) has stated that a commitment of 100 years in Iraq would be just fine.  The media sunk its claws in on this one, before taking them out in a well timed exercise of "but what he really meant...", explaining that McCain is actually calling for a deployment much like what we currently have in Korea (or Japan...or Germany).

Leaving aside arguments about the merits of military deployments to Korea , there's a larger point that the media has generally ignored.  

An American presence in Iraq ---even as a peacekeeping force or simply in the same "rent-a-base" fashion we see around the world--- would act as free propaganda for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

As the initial American invasion of Iraq, based from Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, was one of the primary reasons for the instigation of anti-American terror, so too would a permanent force of Americans in Iraq act as a reason for violence, not just against our soldiers, but against Americans and American interests around the globe.  While our presence in Iraq might not be quite so contentious as it is in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites, we can hardly rely on al Qaeda to be so kind as to make that distinction.  

But this isn't about al Qaeda.  Terrorists will draw the line of their propaganda where they will, and I've little doubt that, if we had no forces anywhere in the Middle East, we'd remain a target for other reasons.  What this IS about is public opinion across the Middle East --- giving those inclined to hate us one less reason to do so, and those inclined to like us one more reason to do so.  It's about taking away one more thing that, when pointed to as evidence of American Imperialism and hate of Islam, seeps into the consciences of generations of children.  It's part of the slow battle not to defeat those who are terrorists, but to defeat a desire to commit acts of terror and violence among those who remain uncommitted to doing so and to slowly diminish the potential base or terror recruits.

The Iraq War is a disaster.  In terms of long term costs, however, even a peace-time mission in Iraq would be a potentially much larger disaster.  It would be a fundamental failure to learn from past mistakes.  John McCain clearly has not learned from those mistakes, and his election would send a critical message that we, the American people, are committed to a military presence that is offensive to the people of the Middle East.  That would be, I'm afraid, another disastrous mistake.