Amber

I have a friend who is married, with children. He was telling me, the other day, about his six year old son. Now, my friend is not a pacifist. He just doesn’t like guns, though, and tried to keep guns, and stories about guns, away from his son. One day, however, totally out of the blue, his son came up to him, with his index finger extended, his thumb up, and said, “bang.”

 There have been in the history of mankind, most likely, six  year old girls who have, spontaneously, cocked their index fingers and said ‘bang’ to their mothers and fathers. If so, I have never heard of such an expression. I daresay, I doubt if anyone reading this have ever heard of a girl making a gun and pretending to shoot someone. As I said, I am sure it happens. In the realm of human experience, anything is possible…but for a girl to do this would be unusual. For a boy not to do this would be unusual.

 For some reason, boys play in terms of competition and war. It seems to be hardwired into their brains. While I am quite certain that, before the invention of pistols, young boys did not cock their index finger and say ‘bang,’ I am quite certain that young boys have always figured out ways to simulate weapons, if they did not have a real weapon with which to play. It is as much as being a boy, and being a man, as is anything else.

 Men love war. There were times and places where men were not afraid to say so, and other times where they were, but one of the few constants that exist in the history of mankind is that wars happen, and there has never been a lack of people around to fight those wars. Men volunteer to fight in droves, at the beginning of any war, seeking the thrill and excitement associated with the fighting, the uniforms, the saluting, drilling, the ability to make big explosions and destroy everything that can be seen….in other words, everything else associated with war.

 This impulse towards violence seems to be capable of being re-directed, as the level of civilization increases. A prosperous, economically well-off culture rarely goes out to seek a fight with another culture. While, even in these cultures, there are always males who seek the thrill of combat and destruction (the reason why police are always needed), most males seem to be able to channel their destructive impulses to vicarious enjoyment of others trying to kill each other, watching football, kick-boxing and watching John Wayne on the tellie, for instance, or taking out their aggression on business rivals. This gives us hope for a future time when war is a thing of the past.

 We do not live in that world, yet, however, and no matter how comfortable we feel in our home, watching the Red Sox cream the Yankees one more time, there are people out there who are not living a cultured, comfortable life, and those people have no problem with the idea of killing others. These are uncivilized males, barbarians, if you will, living in primitive societies who have not been given an alternative to war and killing. They have, historically, been the bane of civilizations. It is not that civilizations have been brought down by barbarians, in the past, but barbarians have always been at the edges of civilization, waiting for those civilizations to become so indulgent as to ignore their outer defenses. At that point, barbarians invariably take advantage of the weaknesses of the defenses, and pour through the breaches to take the civilization from within.

 We see this happening in Europe where, at the end of World War II, Europe essentially disarmed, under the assumption that civilized people do not prepare for war. The logical result is that Iran feels no compunction about taking British soldiers hostage, while British warships are standing by. Britain appeals to the European community for help, and the European community does nothing, because it can do nothing. While they excoriate the United States for doing their work for them, they cannot do anything without working with the strength of the United States. They are a self-made paper tiger, without the will and the strength to defend themselves. It is a consequence of civilization, that living becomes so much more pleasant than dying that one would do anything to live…even to giving up ones freedom and sovereignty. Few people understand what Stan Rogers, the famous Canadian Folk Singer, once wrote, “That to call myself a man, for my loved one I must stand.” Sometimes you have to fight to be a man.

I have written, here, for the past few months, about the coming war with Islam. In my opinion, this war is inevitable; while it can be, truthfully, said that the majority of Moslems have no desire for such a war, that can be said of any nation, at any time in history. Especially in nations which do not exist by the will of the people, what people want is almost irrelevant. The government can always couch wars in terms that people will, unwillingly, perhaps, support.

 In this, however, I have always assumed we can and will win. Our strength, alone, is equal to anything that can be thrown against us, and we have allies in the world, in the West, who will support us in this fourth attempt at Moslem imperialism against the West. Surely the West will not allow themselves to be overwhelmed.

 I am far less sanguine, now. Victor Hanson has written a very powerful article, outlining the weakness of Europe, in the face of Moslem infiltration. Not only does Europe lack the will to fight for their cultural identity, they lack the military strength. They are, truly, a house of straw. When Germany sought to ban the opening of an Opera, because of fears of violence, one knew that Germany was afraid.

 But certainly there is Great Britain, our staunchest ally, our closest friend for over a hundred years, a nation which withstood the blitzkrieg, and cheered when their Prime Minister trumpeted to his beleaguered people during the darkest days of WWII that “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight them in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

 Sadly, it seems to be taking far less, now, for the British to surrender. Who would have thought that a British warship would stand by while a group of Iranian pirates captured 15 British sailors, and took them off to captivity and an uncertain fate? Who would have thought that British schools would avoid teaching about topics that might offend their Moslem students. Could it be that Tony Blair is the only reason why Britain still has a backbone? And with Blair stepping down from his job as Prime Minister, that Britain will join the legion of surrender to fears of Moslem violence? Certainly, his expected replacement, Mr. Gordon Brown, is not the person to stand up to Moslem terror. His forte is economics, and he is being strongly urged to distance himself from the pro-USA policies of Tony Blair. While miracles will happen, it does not look like, from this perspective, that we can depend on Britain, if there is a fight.

Diana West on the hostage crisis and the surrender culture… says, “when a civilization no longer inculcates an overriding attachment to its own survival, well, it no longer survives as a civilization.” While our civilization is, in many ways, the last hope for humanity, we should not be so afraid of losing our civilization and our culture that we are not afraid to risk it to defend it. In the same light, we should never be so afraid of the consequences of our actions that we fail to do what is right. Very often being right alienates you from the majority people who want to be safe. It is better to be right than to be liked.

We return from this important digression to the current situation in Iran. The Iranians learned, in 1983, that, by taking hostages, they can gain great benefits from the Democracies. Not only did they humiliate the largest nation in the world, but they were paid over 1 billion dollars in bribes to free the hostages. If one studies the history of this kind of ‘Danegeld,’ whereby nations pay off barbarians in order to avoid being attacked, all it does is encourage the barbarians to return for more money. This is what is happening in Iraq. No matter which factional dispute originated this hostage taking, Iran will not back down until either it suffers for the action, or it is bought off.

There are many who prefer to negotiate. Negotiation implies a give and take, whereby two sides eventually come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial. Past negotiation with Moslems demonstrate, amply, that, while mutual agreement is often reached, the Moslems often do not keep the agreements. One needs only to follow the various negotiations between the Islamic forces and Israel during the decades following the 1960’s to understand what negotiating with Moslem terrorists yields. What is accomplished, in the end, is the giving of bribes to the terrorists we are negotiating with, to buy them off for as long as possible. Danegeld, by any other name.

Barbarians do not recognize negotiations between equals; the assumption, on their part, is that if a stronger power wishes to negotiate, it is from weakness, not strength. Barbarians do not negotiate in order to settle disputes, they negotiate in order to gain advantage. We do ourselves no good by attempting to negotiate with terrorists and terrorist States. They do not want to live in peace with us. They want to destroy us.

It is very likely that we will be in conflict with, at least, Iran and, more likely, more than a few Moslem States. It is very likely that the ‘we’ I was talking about is, in fact, the United States, as most of our traditional allies will stand on the sidelines and wait to see which side will win. It is possible that this war will cripple our economy, due to the cut-off of our supplies of oil from the Mideast, that we will suffer terrorist attacks that will kill thousands of people in the continental United States, and for those reasons and more, we could lose, with Europe being under a nominal Moslem suzerainty, and the United States in a state of economic and political collapse. This is all possible.

We will not win, if we do not resist. Michelle Malkin is selling a line of clothing with the motto, in Arabic, which says “I shall not submit.” A more American version of this motto would be the motto on the Gadson Flag, “Don’t Tread on Me.” Our American ancestors did not travel into untamed wilderness, with enemies all around them, they did not rise up against the most powerful military force in the world to declare their freedom, they did not fight a horrendous civil war to determine who would be free so that we would allow some pissant barbarians from an eight century civilization determine our future, without us standing up for what we believe.

We are Americans. There are many reasons why we should feel pride in being able to say that about ourselves. If others dislike us because we are proud of what we are, that is not our fault. If others envy us, and want what we have, or want to destroy us because they cannot have it, we have no reason to feel cowed because of that. We can and should stand up for what we believe…and if we die doing so, we die for the sake of a humanity of the future, or of a humanity that could have been. Either way, far better that we die standing on our feet than lying face down, waiting for the executioner’s blade. Americans bow for no one.

By Spring of 1864, the American Civil War seemed to be going no place to many of the American people. The Federal government had undergone a sting of tragic defeats and pyrrhic victories and to the average citizen, the war seemed no closer to ending than it had four years ago, when it started.

 The Democratic party saw an opportunity for victory in the 1864 Presidential election by exploiting this war-weariness that had spread throughout the country. Their rhetoric against the Lincoln administration, and its handling of the war had become more and more heated as the war dragged on. Wisconsin newspaper editor Marcus M. Pomeroy called Lincoln “fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism” and a “worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero… The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer…. And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good.” Others claimed that Lincoln “prefers to tear a half million more white men from their homes … to continue a war for the abolition of slavery rather than entertain a proposition for the return of the seceded states with their old rights.” Never mind that no such proposition existed; Democratic newspapers convinced thousands of Northern voters that the South would have accepted such a proposition if Lincoln had not made abolition a condition of peace. The New York Herald, an independent but Democratic-leaning paper with the country’s largest circulation, opined that Lincoln had signed his political death warrant by making abandonment of slavery “a ne plus ultra in the terms of peace. Edward G. Roddy, owner of the Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Genius of Liberty was an intensely partisan Democrat who saw blacks as an inferior race and Abraham Lincoln as a despot and dunce. Although he supported the war effort in 1861 he blamed abolitionists for prolonging the war and denounced the government as increasingly despotic

 On August 31, the Democrats nominated McClellan for president and a Peace Democrat for vice-president on a platform that declared, “After four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war … [we] demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union.” This last phrase was little more than window dressing; almost everyone recognized that an appeal by the U.S. government for an armistice would be tantamount to confessing defeat. McClellan himself recognized this, and his letter accepting the nomination made peace negotiations contingent on prior agreement to reunion as a basis for such negotiations.

 The Presidential election of 1864 was a marvel. There were some who suggested to President Lincoln that the election should be cancelled, considering the fact that the nation was in the middle of a fight for its survival, and no honest election could be held under those circumstances. Eleven of the 30 States would be, in fact, absent from the election due to their secession from the Union, and the legitimacy of the election itself was in question.

 Nevertheless, the election went forward and, due to the heavy vote from the soldiers in the field, Lincoln was overwhelmingly reelected for his second term. Six months later, the war was over, with an overwhelming capitulation and surrender by the Confederacy. The Democratic predictions of doom, and their efforts to champion retreat and defeat were thwarted by the victory that Lincoln, Grant and Sherman understood all along to be inevitable, once the power of the United States were concentrated on an achievable goal.

 The Democrats have not changed. They have opposed every war we have ever fought. They opposed our entry into WWI. They opposed our entry into WWII, an opposition which forced the President into subterfuge to aid our allies. They opposed our entrance into Korea. In at least one war, Vietnam, they managed to turn a certain victory into a drastic defeat.

 In this war, Iraq, they have turned the level of rhetoric up to the point of hysteria. Charles Krautehammer has even coined a phrase to describe this phenomenon, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), defined as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.: BDS is evidenced by those who suggest that the President was smart enough, and clever enough, to subvert the electoral process to be elected, and then re-elected, despite the will of the people, and also too stupid to not be controlled by a cabal lead by Vice President Dick Cheney, who has conspired to lead us into war in order to increase the profits of his co-conspirators in industry. The President has been accused of foreknowledge of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, of conspiring to ensure that minority citizens die during a major hurricane catastrophe in New Orleans, of tricking Congress into voting to support our current war in Iraq, of subverting the Constitution, of attempting to foist a fundamentalist Christian regime on the American People and aiding and abetting the destruction of the human race, by opposing panicky efforts to stop an imaginary threat to our environment.

 Quite a record for a stupid man, one would think. It goes further, though. Apparently the President is also willing to send thousands of American troops into a futile effort to spread (GASP!) Democracy through the world. Only the Democrats understand that the rest of the world is too stupid to understand or accept Democracy. The effort in Iraq was doomed, from the start, and the only cure for the stupidity/devious brilliance of the President is to abandon our commitments and bring our troops home, presumably so the troops can march down Broadway in New York City to celebrate another defeat for American arms!

Hugh Hewitt writes, in the popular Conservative web site “Town Hall” that:

 In the past three weeks I have spoken on air with every member of the GOP leadership: Republican Leader Boehner, Republican Whip Blunt, Republican Deputy Whip Cantor and Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Caucus Tom Cole. And none would utter even the mildest criticism of their GOP colleagues who are in the process of deserting the war effort, “emboldening the enemy,” to use Congressman Cole’s words, and sending a message to American allies and yes our enemies that the desire to cut and run now has bipartisan support

 Hugh is missing a point, one that many people miss. The House of Representatives is far more responsive to the voice of the people than is the Senate. If the leaders of the House are moving away from a position of support for the war, it is an indication, far better than any poll, that the American people are abandoning support for the war in Iraq.

 There are many who decry the lack of staying power of the American people, suggesting that we are no longer the ‘World War II generation,’ but have become so besotted with our wealth and comfort that we do not have the stomach for a long war. That is not an invalid point. In fact, I have made the same point, more or less, from time to time.

 However, we must also keep in mind the proscription attributed to Winston Churchill that “American always does the right thing, after trying everything first.” I have lived a fairly long life, and one thing I have learned is that the American People are right, more often than not. Those who ignore the will of the American people are ignoring the collective wisdom of a Democratic people, the distilled knowledge of 280 million free peoples of every imaginable ideology and process of thought. That is the strength of our Democracy, the reason why we are strong, and we ignore it at our peril. This is an important point, to me. You have to trust the people. One can ignore that will, for a period, if one thinks one is right, but it does not pay to ignore it for too long, because that will might have a point.

 That point has been reached in Iraq. We, as Conservatives, can not ignore the fact that public patience with our efforts have reached an end. The polls show a devastating verdict on the effort. More people think we made a mistake in going into Iraq, oppose the current surge of troops into Iraq and disapprove the way we are fighting this war than support, by a large margin. There are few, if any positive points in the polling data. The American people are overwhelming in their position that we are not progressing in Iraq. Few think we are losing, but there is an obvious lack of faith in the administration’s ability to accomplish the mission it has outlined.

 Let me say that I think the people are wrong. I have a lot of hope that the current strategy is going to work, and have said so many times. That is not the point, though. The people do not think so. How could they? I have spent 30 years studying military history, have a pretty good perception of what is happening, what needs to happen, and have used that experience to make an informed judgment. How many people in this country have that experience? Very few. People have to make judgments based on the information they have, and the people have not had the in-depth analysis of the situation they need to make that judgment. How could they? I have not seen that kind of analysis in any of the media, and I look for it. One can find it if they look, but it is not readily available.

That has been the greatest fault of the administration in this Iraq venture. Where is the vocal analysis of the war? The President should have been meeting with the American public every week, telling us what he is doing, telling us what is happening, admitting the defeats, crowing about the victories, boosting support for the war effort, engaging the American public, making the war part of our lives, and telling us how we can support the war. None of that has happened. Perhaps the President is not a good advocate for the war; he is not a good public speaker and, frankly, he is not that bright or charismatic…but there are people who could do just that. There are ways to do this. They have not been utilized. I have often been frustrated with having to defend the administration, when they do not do so themselves. I can explain what is going on in Iraq, demonstrating it in a very positive light, and I have done so, to the best of my ability but, to be honest, that is not my job. We have people who are being paid a lot of money in Washington. Someone there should be safeguarding the policy on which we are spending so much money. I do not see it happening.

 So, we, as Conservatives, have to accept that the American public has been patient, but the patience has run out. To blame the people is foolish. They need to know that we have a chance of turning this around, and that case has simply not been made. Blame who you wish, the main stream media, the President, the Democrats, it does not matter. The people have lost faith. Not only that, but I suspect that they have also lost trust; the people do not trust the Democrats any more than they trust an administration, which has claimed time and time again that the war is almost done; in 2002, planners predicted we would need only 5000 troops in Iraq by 2007. In 2005, Vice President Cheney predicted that the insurgency was in its last throes. The people are tired of predictions. They want evidence. Rightly so.

 I still believe that General Petraeus is on the right course, and we should see light at the end of the tunnel by Spring. Once General Petraeus and the Iraqi army secure Baghdad, the Iraqi government will have a level of legitimacy and confidence to go out and start taking on the burden of the war itself, which is what we have worked for since the elections, last year. I do not foresee obstacles to this, either from Congress or the enemy, before Spring, and figure we can start standing down after that.

 But we must understand that this is all the time we have. If the Iraqi government and army does not stand up for itself by Spring, we can do nothing more. We must start withdrawing our troops, no matter what happens in Iraq. This is our last chance for victory. Failure, here, is final failure.

The American Marine Corps has a motto, “no better friend, no worse enemy” that could very well describe the nation as a whole. Americans have a tradition of being anti-war; through our history, we have been loath to maintain a standing army, have de-mobilized those armies that existed the instant that their need has been met, and avoided new military entanglements as much as possible. Yet, we have never lost a war; there is nothing as fearsome as a free people aroused.

 Foreign policy is a coin with two sides; on one side, we offer the opportunity to talk over our problems, and come to an equitable solution. On the other side, we offer the sword, if that solution is not possible. Unfortunately, many Americans see only one side of that coin, and not the other. There are some who see only the side of us that is righteously smiting our enemies. There are many others who see only our peaceful side, and reject any notions of strength through arms; they see our strength as a weakness, and so will do everything they can to keep that side of our national personality in check. They see war as the evil, and will do everything to stop our war efforts, even when we are winning…and they often have come close to losing wars that we were on the verge of winning.

 In 1864, the American people were involved in a great Civil War. The two sides in this war had been battling each other for four years, and the end did not seem any closer than it did when the war began.

 The Presidential elections were coming up, and one Democratic candidate arose to oppose the sitting Republican President, Abraham Lincoln. This opposition candidate was Brigadier General George Brinton McClellan, the former commander of the Northern ‘Army of the Potomac’ through the first two turbulent years of the war. The Democratic platform was that the war could not be won, and it was far better for the nation to end the bloodshed, and seek peace with the enemy Southern States.

 General McClellan had a large following in the war-weary North, tired of large casualty lists for no apparent purpose. In the month before November, the outcome looked so much in doubt that President Lincoln penned a statement to the effect that the Lincoln government would cooperate with the will of the people, should it lose, and begin negotiations with the South towards recognition of the Southern Confederacy. He insisted that each of his cabinet officers sign this statement.

 As it turned out, Lincoln won the election, helped in large part by the huge vote of the soldiers in the ranks, who knew that they were, in fact, winning this war, and by the appointment the previous March of a general who knew how to win wars, Ulysses S. Grant, as Supreme Commander of the Northern Armies…and, in fact, six months later, in April of 1865, the war was over, with a huge victory for the Northern Side.

 The important lesson to be learned from this is that the public is often unaware of the true status of wars in progress. Without a thorough grounding in the history of war, of strategy and of tactics, a war in which we are winning can often look like the verge of defeat. More serious, though, is the ability of people in a Democracy to express their inherent horror at the reality of war; while most wars begin with bands and flags, it is not long before casualty lists bring home to the public that there is a price to be paid for everything.

 There are parallels, in the above example, to what is happening domestically with the war in Iraq.  The Democrats are today, as in 1864, pushing for us to quit the fight, retreat and pull out before the war is over, forcing the Iraqis fend for themselves. Former Generals are suggesting that we cannot win this war, and at least  one Congressman, Representative John Murtha, is using this policy to further his political goals. Some Democrats want to wait longer before we pull out than other Democrats, but the Democratic Party is continuing a long tradition of not understanding the basic fundamentals of war, how it is fought, how it is won, and the ultimate cost of losing a war. For the sake of political advantage, many Democrats are willing to let us lose.  The continuing cacophany of defeatism can convince the public. The day after day news reports from Iraq serve to keep the reality of the war in people’s minds even moreso than in the 19th century.

 This has ominous implications for the future, because war clouds are gathering, and we are coming close to the time when the United States might have to commit all its heart and soul into both defending itself and the world, and to defeat a black scourge that is spreading throughout the planet. As Omar, from <a href=”http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2006/07/why-not-syria.html”>Iraq the Model </a> says:

 And if Zawahiri, Nesrallah, Ahmedinejad and Sadr are calling upon extremists whether, Sunni or Shia, from all over the world to put aside their differences and unite in this war against the free world and to establish the Empire of terror from “Afghanistan to Andalus” then this is more than enough reason for you in the free world and for us who are struggling for our freedom to put aside our differences and disagreements and unite, from Sydney to Mumbai to Baghdad to Paris and London all the way till California, all must stand against this evil that is trying to destroy our world

 Certainly, no sane person desires to live through a state of war. William Tecumsah Sherman, the great American Civil War general said, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.” There is no better summary of the meaning of war, and this from the man who virtually invented the concept of total war against an enemy. Sane people do everything they can to avoid war, and that is what is happening all over the world, now, as diplomats attempt to somehow negotiate our way out of war with our enemies. We see the rather pathetic image of civilized people begging barbarians to choose some other course than the course upon which they are set, and the barbarians using this seeming weakness on the part of the civilized world to enhance their preparations for what they see as their ultimate victory. Of course, such barbarians always underestimate the strength of Democracy, and they stand a very good chance of losing, as totalitarians always do faced with the strength of a people united…but the possibility exists that they can cause a lot of damage before they are beaten, and they could win, and that is what worries me.

 In battle, it is foolish to fight on a ground that gives the enemy the advantage and you the disadvantage. In order to optimize one’s chances of winning, one must choose the ground which gives the best opportunity to win, and which gives the enemy the least opportunity to win. In this situation, we are not doing this. We are following the mature course of seeking every possibility, no matter how remote, to avoid a conflict….as if our enemy were demonstrating even a modicum of desire to avoid that conflict. Iran has stated, over and over, that its goal is to develop nuclear weapons and destroy Israel. North Korea has broken every agreement it has made and, despite world-wide condemnation, has exploded a nuclear weapon, and is preparing new tests. There is no evidence that diplomacy will save us from this upcoming conflict.

 We are confronted by megalomaniacal madmen, whether it be President Ahmadinijad in Iran, Kim Jong Il in Korea, or the various Islamofascist madmen in the Middle East. There is no negotiation possible with a madman. We cannot hope for peace as long as these people are in power, and growing in that power. They get stronger the longer we wait.  We know where our enemies lie; Syria and Iran have stated openly their intentions of destroying us, and our allies and their supported lackeys, Hizbollah, Hamas, al Qaida, al Aksa, etc. have worked diligently towards that end. We know that they are implacable in their goals to destroy the Western Democracies.

 There is not a question, here, of whether war can be avoided. As our former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said, we ARE in a war; call it WWIII, or WWIV, we are facing an enemy who does not respect or even want diplomatic solutions to their policies. The Islamofascists have a stated goal of our destruction. To not listen to what they are actually saying is to ignore a threat that is evident before your eyes, as did those who ignored what Adolph Hitler was saying, before WWII. They are telling us what they wish to do, if they see it as possible. It is up to us to make that not possible, not to pretend that it will not happen.

 We must join with our only true ally in the Mideast, Israel, as well as our other true friends and allies, and aggressively go after our enemies, before they manage to find a position that can cause us serious harm. We must change the regimes of Syria and Iran, we must totally defeat their lackey militias, and we must impose a peace on the region that can not come into existence without the strong arm of the Western Democracies. While, as I said, no sane person desires war, the other side of that coin is that no sane person allows themselves to be killed, when they know they can defend themselves. If my neighbor says he is going to kill me, soon, I am not going to sit idly by and allow it to happen. To protect myself and my family, I am going to ensure that he will not and can not do what he says he is going to do. We, as a nation, and as a civilization, can do not less.

 We seem to feel that we cannot lose, and thus have the luxury and time to do everything possible to avoid the inevitable conflict. However, it would not take a large number of committed jihadists to significantly damage our nation. Seven bombs, carefully placed, could totally isolate the island of Manhattan, isolating our largest commercial center. A few hundred jihadists, snuck across our totally open Southern border, with guns, rockets and missiles, could throw our major population centers into total disarray. One or two radiation or biological terror bombs could send all of our cities into panic.

 This is not an unlikely scenario. In fact, except for the ability of our enforcement agencies, there is nothing to prevent it. I repeat, we cannot prevent this kind of aimless terror from disrupting our nation. That is what happens when one falls back to the defensive, and  allows the enemy to determine the battlefield; one gives them time to come up with a winning strategy.

 While it is quite possible that deft diplomacy can pull us from the brink of an inevitable conflict, we cannot put war in a secondary position to diplomacy. As Mao Zhe Dung said, war is an extension of politics; it always has to be a possibility that diplomats can use as part of their negotiation, or the diplomats lack credibility. In a world where power is the stock in trade of brutal megalomaniacs, diplomacy is our shield, but war is our sword. They both are needed, both are equal partners in our foreign policy.

  If war is necessary, as with any endeavor, we must throw ourselves into the endeavor as much as we throw ourselves into anything. War cannot be fought on a part-time basis. It cannot be fought in small escalations, Victory is won by putting everything one has into the fight, without hesitation, without reservation. If we do not believe in what we are doing, we might as well give up and go home…because the livcs lost will be wasted.

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 <small><i>&copy; 2006 Steve Haas, All Rights Reserved.  The author also has his own weblog, <a href=”http://amberandchaos.com/blog”>Amber</a>.</i></small>