Well. Interesting responses. My take on it is that:
1) The so called "War on Terror" is vague and can be made to mean anything the President wants it to mean from moment to moment. One day it can mean hunting down Osama Bin Laden and his band of murderers another day it can mean bringing "freedom" to the Mid-East and another day it can mean tapping phone lines and illegal search and seizures and violating other basic liberties in the name of security. It is not a real war on a specific nation declared Constitutionally by Congress. It is a vague political slogan and anyone who disagrees with it must be against fighting terrorists somehow.
2) Seems like President Bush's favorite word in the english language is "freedom." That word flys from between his teeth every other sentence in his endless speeches (He may have more airtime than Clinton did as amazing as that may seem). It's almost his religion. It gets thrown around so much that it ceases to have any meaning except for what he want's it to mean. It has gone from being freedom from tyranny and able exercise fundamental God given liberties as a responsible people in the Christian West as our forefathers understood it to some vague ideological egalitarian French Revolutionary word used to justify whatever you happening to be doing at the moment. It has become a religion to him and other neo-cons. Really this is nothing new, it is something that has been developing since the European Enlightenment in the 16th and 17th centuries and picked up in America by Unitarian and Abolitionist thinking in the 19th century. In this case we have to go remake the Mid-East into some kind of Western style Democracy with our idea of "freedom." All we are doing is replacing one dictator with another potential dictator. As Mr. Meyer said, there are vast cultural differences. These people in the Mid-East are tribes who have been fighting among each other for 3000 years predating even Islam itself. There are deep cultural and tribal and religious differences that go back centuries. What makes the President think he is going to solve it now in 2006. Furthermore, a lot of arab people are offended by what we in modern America consider "freedom." Pornography, abortion, the way we view women, our entertainment industry, our materialistic culture. Regardless of how you, the reader, personally feel about these issues the fact is that many ordinary everyday Islamic Arabs are offended by these things and thus want nothing to do with the West and wants the West to have nothing to do with them. To paraphrase Professor Richard Weaver, "we are seeking to stamp out evil and thereby spreading it." In other words, we are creating even more problems than we attempt to solve when we just going into countries and overthrowing their governments and remake them and our image.
3) None of this has anything to do with hunting down and destroying the terrorists who are responsible for 9/11. We can't go around and police the world. There are MANY countries in the world that have terrorist cells in varying degrees and types and many who have even more brutal dictators than Saddam Hussein. We would have to invade most of Africa, the rest of the mid East, far East Asia and parts of latin America if we are to truly follow this "War on Terror" and "Operation Freedom" through.
4) In the meantime, not only are America's borders unsecure and being overrun by foreigners, but European nations are suffering the same problem. Just as massive Mexican legal and illegal immigrants are swarming into the United States, Europe is being flooded with Arab and Muslim immigrants. People say to me all the time about Iraq "well, it's better to fight them there than fight them here." What the heck does that mean? They are already here! Not only is Mexico swarming over our borders, but Islamic terrorists are in our country already. This hurts our economy, our liberty and most importantly our culture and identity as a people. America is a country like any other in the world. It has just as much right to exist as any other. Mexicans wouldn't appreciate "gringos" flooding down into their cities and states influencing them to change their laws and customs to suit us. Why should we feel any different?
5) The above said problem is a clashing of countries and cultures and will ultimately, sooner or later, lead to war. A bloody conflict not just between armies but among civilians of each country mixed on the same soil. This has happened before in history. What makes us think that it can't happen again just because we are "America: The Greatest Country on Earth" But we have our armies away on foreign soil trying in a futile effort to solve their problems leaving our borders unprotected.
) don't call it an invasion. THese are unarmed (for the most part) civilians coming from a crappy country. I liken it more to refugees than an invading force.