The price of failure

From The Washington Post:

Faced with almost daily reports of sectarian carnage in Iraq, congressional Republicans are shifting their message on the war from speaking optimistically of progress to acknowledging the difficulty of the mission and pointing up mistakes in planning and execution.

Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.) is using his House Government Reform subcommittee on national security to vent criticism of the White House's war strategy and new estimates of the monetary cost of the war. Rep. Gil Gutknecht (Minn.), once a strong supporter of the war, returned from Iraq this week declaring that conditions in Baghdad were far worse "than we'd been led to believe" and urging that troop withdrawals begin immediately.

I would like to ask the esteemed elected representatives of the people a question. How, exactly, does this kind of talk help convince the enemy to pack it in and give up?

These men have to realize that a small number of evil men who aren’t afraid to take risks and who don’t care how many innocent people they kill can cause carnage out of all proportion to their numbers. After all, how many people were involved in the Oklahoma City bombing plot?

If Islamic nutjobs had never tried to use violence as a tool before today people could be forgiven for not knowing how to respond to it. But the fact is that from its origin Islam has sought to advance itself through murder and conquest.

In the beginning they were very successful at this. However when Christendom finally gained the upper hand, driving Muslim forces back from the gates of Vienna, Islam began a retreat which culminated in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

In response to this long period of defeat and decline Muslims began to evolve a doctrine which did not require the faithful to engage in perpetual warfare.

Muslims again sought to use force to correct what they perceived as an intolerable situation after the rebirth of Israel. Arab/Muslim nations looked at the tiny Jewish state and felt powerful, in comparison. They tried time after time to destroy the Jewish state and failed each time, suffering extremely humiliating defeats in the process.

Muslims, realizing that they could not win a stand-up fight, changed their tactics and embraced terrorism. The PLO and its spin-offs were born. After decades of failure to destroy Israel even Palestinian terrorism was beginning to show signs of sputtering out – until it was revived by the astonishingly stupid blunder of negotiating with Arafat and starting down the whole “roadmap for peace” dead end.

The lessons of history are clear. When Muslims sense weakness in their enemies (anyone who isn’t exactly the same kind of Muslim they are) they will attack with ruthless savagery. When they sense superior strength and the will to use it they will retreat into passivity. The sense of Muslim entitlement to rule the earth will still be there but it will not be acted upon.

Muslims (along with America’s other enemies) have observed the United States’ actions since the end of the Second World War and learned their lessons well. We have taught them well that if the conflict lasts too long, costs too much money or kills too many of our soldiers we will cut and run. They have learned that the American public is too soft, too lazy, too weak willed and selfish to endure anything perceived as too costly or too hard.

In their view it is only necessary for them to be willing to endure for one more day than we are, then we run away and they win.

We must realize that we are being watched. The entire globe is observing what we are doing. Every dictator, every rogue regime, every preacher of every hatful, anti-liberty, anti-life doctrine has his eyes glued to Iraq and Afghanistan and will base his future actions on what we do there.

Red China is watching and calibrating their plans to drive us out of Asia and establish their own hegemony there. The increasingly fascist Russian government is watching our actions and wondering how deeply to involve itself in alliances with the Arab World.

The European people are watching us and wondering what kind of example we will be to them in their own twilight struggle against an internal Islamofascist threat.

And, perhaps most importantly, we are watching ourselves. What pattern of behavior will we confirm by our actions today? Will we finally prove that we are no longer the America of JFK which will “bear any burden, pay any price” in defense of liberty?