Mr. Ish-Shalom uses the term "reality check" but it is clear to me that both he and Prof. Etzioni are far out of touch with reality. The latter admits to cognitive dissonance when he indicates that people told him, factitiously in the past, that Iraq was the wrong war, and Afghanistan the right war, but then admits that both wars have ceased to elicit major criticism from the two presidential candidates.

Iraq is stabilizing; now the debate is over whether the new, positive phase was brought about by "the surge," or by the inevitable alienation of ordinary Sunnis from Wahhabi jihadism, which I had predicted from the beginning. The latter was "the number one lesson from Iraq," and not anything derived from U.S. policy decisions.

Prof. Etzioni has a right to his opinion that the U.S. is trapped in Iraq but this view is by no means unanimously held or even very widespread any more. The claim that "a conventional army is no match for guerrilla forces" is exactly backwards, as history shows. Clausewitz had it right - guerrilla forces only succeed when they have the assistance of a regular army or government. Guerrilla forces were defeated in the Philippines and Malaya after the second world war, and in Peru more recently. The provision of a safe haven for guerrilla operatives is not sufficient to ensure victory: the Greek Communist guerrillas were defeated although they had safe havens in Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, at various times.

A third war has indeed begun in Pakistan. It was prepared and launched by the Taliban and their Pakistani enablers, as every informed and honest Muslim in the world is aware, and began some years ago. That is why an important part of it now involves horrific massacres of Shia Muslims in the frontier area of Parachinar, for which the U.S. or neoconservatives bear no imaginable responsibility.

Prof. Etzioni either misuses the term "narco-terrorism state" or libels the government of Hamid Karzai. How does Karzai's state support "narco-terrorism"?

No neoconservative ever predicted that a "picture perfect prosperous democracy" would be established in any former dictatorship, whether rightist or leftist. Democratization is a process, and it may happen quickly or slowly. The closest democracies to picture perfection have emerged in Portugal, Spain, the Philippines, Chile, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, South Korea, Taiwan, Croatia, and Mexico. Many others have had a much harder road to follow. Prof. Etzioni asks if we remember the Northern Alliance. Remember Salazar, Franco, Marcos, Pinochet, the Soviet politburo, the Czech Communist bureaucrats, Milosevic, Roh Tae Woo, the Kuomintang, Tudjman or the PRI?

Neoconservatives were secondary figures in debates over the definitive outcome in these countries, except for Wolfowitz on the Philippines and the neoconservatives in general when dealing with the ex-Soviet states and ex-Yugoslavia. Nobody ever seriously suggested that the neoconservative aim in Iraq was to establish a "picture perfect prosperous democracy," in the short term. Rather, it was to remove a dangerous dictatorship and begin a process through which the influence of Iraq could promote change in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Discontent with radical Islam is rising in the Saudi kingdom, as is repulsion against the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran, in both cases because of the success of elections and free media in Iraq, as well as Iraqi Sunni repudiation of Wahhabism and Iraqi Shia rejection of the Khomeinist heresy of clerical governance.

As for Mr. Ish-Shalom's musings, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan can be described as "failed states" or "authoritarian semi-regimes." I wonder if Mr. Ish-Shalom has any idea what a "failed state" looks like. Serbia is a good example. So are Belarus and Uzbekistan. Sudan is close enough. And Russia is a much better example of an "authoritarian semi-regime."

Let's look at the trope about Iraq and Afghanistan "pulling in terrorist networks." When one confronts a disciplined, ideological enemy one often finds that the foe is able to pull in more troops and allies than bystanders expected. War against Nazi Germany at first resulted in the fall of France and integration into the Axis of all of Western Europe except Iberia, Switzerland, and Sweden. War against Japan produced anti-Western puppet governments in the Philippines, Indonesia, Indochina, and Burma, elements of which in some cases survived to participate in governance after the war ended. Of course war against Saddam and Al-Qaida and the Taliban drew more jihadist recruits to the enemy's side. To have expected otherwise would have been absurd. Readers of Saudi media noticed appeals to fight in defense of Saddam in Iraq as soon as the U.S.-led intervention began.

Mr. Ish-Shalom dislikes the idea that "we need to force democracy at gun point, or that democracy promotion is a task for the United States." Well, we forced democracy at gun-point on the Axis, and before that we helped run French imperialism out of Mexico soon after our own civil war. Other examples are at hand. Democracy promotion has been the essential global task of the United States since the foundation of the republic.

Mr. Ish-Shalom is welcome to have faith in the so-called "international community." I lived under the so-called "international community" in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The outcome was 13 years of stagnation, unemployment, and frustration. How has the "international community" done in Gaza and the West Bank?

The "right peace" is a peace based on freedom. Americans have always put freedom before peace. That is what distinguishes us from Europeans and numerous others. Freedom first, not security first, which is merely, as I have written elsewhere, Prof. Etzioni's sanitized revision of the isolationist ideal of "America First." What is "in the cards" is the inevitable "vision" of world-historical events for 200 years: successful, global bourgeois revolution.