Mark Whittington hits the nail squarely on the head:
In the five years of the War against Terror, or the War against Islamo Fascism, of just World War III, the worse we have suffered took place on the first day. Since then fifty million people have been given a chance for freedom and peace. Many terrorists who rose in jubilation as the twin towers fell and the Pentagon burned, celebrate no more. And it has all been at the cost of lives of what was often a days work in World War II.Whatever one thinks of the current war, whatever one thinks of the motivations of those prosecuting the war, whatever one thinks about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, in the end all of these things don't matter. What does matter is that there is a war on now, and there are only two outcomes: either the United States wins or it loses. (And yes, I know there are allies like Britain, Canada, Australia, Poland, and others, but it is the USA that is the cornerstone.)
This writer is therefore astonished to hear voices counseling retreat and surrender. Do the people giving this craven advice think making war is an easy, painless thing? Do they think that peace can be bought by quitting? Even more absurd, do they think that we can cut and run from one theater of the war and hope to pervail in another?
And if the USA loses - and this is the critical difference between this war and, say, the war in Vietnam - then everything that the home-grown critics of the war supposedly value (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, womens' right to vote, you name a freedom) ends. That's it, it's over, fit yourself with a burka.
There is only one option if the USA, for all its faults, is to survive. America must win.
Technorati Tags: September 11th, Terrorism, Warfare
2 comments:
quoth robot guy:
Whatever one thinks of the current war, whatever one thinks of the motivations of those prosecuting the war, whatever one thinks about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, in the end all of these things don't matter. What does matter is that there is a war on now, and there are only two outcomes: either the United States wins or it loses.
Let me suggest one reason why those things do matter.
Defeat and victory, in the traditional sense aren't the only possible outcomes. In fact, it is very unlikely we'll experience either in its fullest sense. When we leave, we will undoubtedly have left having achieved some of our objectives and not have achieved others.
In that case, it matters a great deal what the objectives are. If the goalposts keep moving, then not only is there no end it sight, it's highly suggestive of disarray in our strategy.
I have read the While House's "National Stratey for Victory in Iraq", and while it contains much of interest, it is particularly weak in specific objectives to be achived between now and the complete victory embodied in its eight "pillar" goals. There's a great deal of attention paid to what we have done in the past, and what are doing at the time of the writing, but not a lot about what we need to do between here and victory.
Altogether, the problem is that we have too much of an improvisational stance towards our future strategy. While you do have to adapt and change, having no clear idea of what comes next gives the initiative to the enemy.
Fighting a war in which we cede strategic initiative to the enemy is one of the the ways we can bring about the unlikely scenario of complete defeat.
And if the USA loses - and this is the critical difference between this war and, say, the war in Vietnam - then everything that the home-grown critics of the war supposedly value (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, womens' right to vote, you name a freedom) ends. That's it, it's over, fit yourself with a burka.
It really didn't feel all that different back in the Vietnam days. Remember the domino theory.
Vietnam does have an important lesson: wars in a generational conflict aren't about victory and defeat, they're about achieving valuable objectives in the larger struggle.
In Vietnam, we manifestly failed to achieve our goals of stabilizing the South Vietnamese regime. However we were much better positioned on the larger goal of containing communism.
The question north americans should ask themselves, and any muslim questioning the intervention of the coalition forces, is this: are Iraqi muslim men beheading Iraqi muslim women in football stadia? No? then the coalition forces have brought justice to a corrupt state.
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