Resolve or Retreat

Thomas Sowell, RCP:

But elections are not about which politicians get to keep their jobs, though the media cover the news as if the political horse race is the issue. Elections are about the fate of 300 million Americans and the future of this nation.

That fate hangs grimly in the balance as two irresponsible regimes in North Korea and Iran seek to gain nuclear weapons. Neither leader of these regimes can be deterred by threats of nuclear retaliation, as the Soviet Union was deterred.

Both are like Hitler, who was willing to see his own people decimated and his own country reduced to rubble rather than quit when it was obvious to all that he could not win. If you can imagine Hitler with a few nuclear weapons to use to vent his all-consuming hatreds in a lost cause, you can see what a nuclear North Korea or a nuclear Iran would mean for America and the world.

Jed Babbin, RCP Blog, of a talk with Sec. Rumsfeld and Gen. Pace. on North Korea, Iran, the danger of nuclear proliferation, and then Iraq, in a dangerous area of the world:

Rumsfeld elaborated. He said that Americans were raised - "socialized" was the word he used - to believe that our military can win any war by going out and defeating a nation or an army. But times have changed. He said of Iraq, "There's no way the military can lose. There's also no way the military can win all alone. That isn't the nature of it...There's no major army, navy, air force to go and attack and destroy." In wars like this, there will be no "clean wins."

How long will it take? How will the American people support a war such as this? Rumsfeld said, "We have to be smart enough and wise enough as we were in the Cold War to recognize the danger, and to recognize that it takes perseverance."

Gen. Pace added, "We're back to the common understanding of the threat. The American people are willing to withstand a long-term challenge as exemplified by the Cold War and the Soviet Union...The good news is that since 9-11 we haven't been attacked here at home. What that means is that some Americans don't yet grasp fully the very real nature of this threat to the survival of the nation."

Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, RCP, quoting Jonah Goldberg, NRO:

"If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003."

Is that really how this war -- or any war -- should be judged?....

The point is that we don't know. Like earlier Americans, we have to choose between resolve and retreat, with no guarantees about how it will end. All we can be sure of is that the stakes once again are liberty and decency vs. tyranny and terror -- that we are fighting an enemy that feeds on weakness and expects us to lose heart -- and that Americans for generations to come will remember whether we flinched.

Reuters, "West can't abandon Iraq, says deputy PM":

He stressed that Iraqi forces were gradually taking over responsibility for security but said Iraq needed the "enduring support" of the international community to combat what he called "a difficult onslaught by terrorists".

Asked about a pledge by Australia's opposition to pull the country's troops out of Iraq if it wins the next election, Salih said: "I do believe there is no option for the international community to cut and run."

"The fate of Iraq is vital to the future of the Middle East and the world order," he told reporters.

And what would be the fate of Iraq if we left? It would be a bloodbath, with the most reasonable and gentle being murdered first.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, Weekly Standard, "Running from Iraq" asks why those who fault America first only talk about Iraq and ignore history. Part of why America is hated is because of our egalitarian treatment of women---should we abandon this? They also hate Israel and the peace process:

What's more, if the Middle East evolves democratically--and the democratic conversation, amplified by the deposing of Saddam Hussein, remains vibrant--anti-Americanism will shoot through the roof. Fundamentalists will enter the public conversation even more loudly than they have already. Unless one believes that the regimes in place can kill off Islamic militancy and squash Islamic organizations that have terrorist movements within them, then the only solution to bin Ladenism is for Sunni fundamentalism itself to kill it off. Throughout much of the Islamic world, fundamentalism is now mainstream thought. But holding power will deprive militants of the luxury of mere opposition. In power and out, fundamentalists and more moderate Muslims will focus more seriously on Islamic political thought and practice. Under representative government, Muslims will have a harder time avoiding the rot--the ethics that allow young men to kill so easily.

Muslims' questioning of their own world has gained steam since 9/11. Perverse as it is, the carnage in Mesopotamia, like the slaughter in Algeria and Egypt in the 1990s, has forced some reflection among Muslims about their faith and the hideous abuse it has suffered at the hands of some believers. It would be wrong to call this widespread, but it is a start. If the United States gets driven from Iraq, the soul-searching necessary to combat Islamic extremism will also suffer a rout. When Hezbollah appeared victorious over the Israelis this summer, even moderate and liberal Arab Muslims began to rethink their accommodationist stance toward the Jewish state. The very liberal Mustafa Hamarneh, director of the University of Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies, who has welcomed Israelis to Amman, jumped for joy when the Israelis bogged down in Lebanon. He referred to the Israelis as Nazis. Can one ever compromise with Nazis? Intellectually honest, and unquestionably voicing publicly what many moderates were thinking privately, Hamarneh wondered why Arabs should seek peace with Israel if in fact the Zionists were beatable on the battlefield. If we withdraw from Iraq, expect Muslim liberals and moderates to once again nose-dive throughout the Middle East.

When Islamic activists become more responsible for governance, the fundamentalist civil wars will begin. (This process is starting in the Palestinian lands.) The introspection, debates, and fall from grace will be painful and quite possibly violent, as devout Muslims who incorporate the community's popular will into God's law fight it out with fundamentalists who view man-made legislation as an insult to Allah.

This contest is not what the Bush administration foresaw when it espoused democracy in the Middle East as part of the solution to the evil that struck us on 9/11. But the president's democratic reflex was correct. And as faithful Muslims decide how much of Western political thought to incorporate into their own, anti-Americanism will skyrocket. Indeed, rising anti-Americanism will be a pretty good barometer of how serious the democratic-religious debates are in the Muslim Middle East. The more serious the debates, the more furious the flailing out against America by the hard-core militant Muslims will be.....

Leaving Iraq will not make our world better. We will be a defeated nation. Our holy-warrior and our more mundane enemies will know it. And we can rest assured that they will make us pay. Over and over and over again.

Resolve or retreat. The Democrats would like us to take another holiday from history, like they did in the 90's. But we can't do that. These are serious times, and we need to step up in a serious way.