A hundred more dead jihadis isn't nearly enough
After the Beslan massacre and the car-bombing death and dismemberment of dozens of Iraqi children in Baghdad the other day, I really enjoy reading news stories like these one:
"U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major assault Friday to regain control of the 'insurgent' stronghold of Samarra, trading gunfire with rebel fighters as they pushed toward the city center. The United States said 96 insurgents were killed."
Why do I enjoy reading such news? Because we're exterminating vermin. Really, I've felt this way going at least back to 1997. The only difference between then and now is that America is now as much at war with these barbarians as Israel has been for decades. That is why we are so much more aware of them and what they are, and why, no matter what John Kerry claims, turning back the clock is impossible, because they won't let it be - until either they get to turn it back not a few years, but some fourteen centuries, or every last one of them is sent straight to hell.
This has always been, and always will be, a war of annihilation - again, because that's the way they are fighting it. They're perfectly and happily willing to blow themselves up if it will take "infidels" and Muslim "apostates" - and little children - with them. So there is no reason for us not to accept those "rules of engagement."
This enemy cannot defeat us militarily, and they're not trying to. They're trying to defeat us politically, in finest Giapian tradition. If they succeed in breaking our will by getting us to replace George Bush with John Kerry, Iraq will fall into their hands like overripe fruit. But their war against us will not cease. It will simply continue elsewhere, wherever we have a presence overseas, and yes, in our own country.
In short, we can withdraw from Iraq, or Afghanistan for that matter, but we cannot withdraw from this war. And if we dare show weakness by another such retreat in the tradition of Saigon 1975 and Mogadishu 1993, the conflict will at best lengthen enormously, and at worst become one that we really might not be able to win, at least not without casualties and losses and sacrifices and horrors that dwarf the comparatively paltry 1,100 or so military fatalities (and nearly three thousand civilians ones) we've suffered thus far.
Here is a pregnant parting point to ponder: suppose that Kerry were elected, and we withdrew from Iraq, and it fell to the "insurgents." And then, one bright, sunny morning in 2007, one or more suitcase nuclear devices annihilated the central business districts of one or more major American cities. (And for the record, I think that's more likely under Kerry than it will be under a second Bush Administration - and if Ted Kennedy and his fans don't like it, they can go bleep themselves) Remember what 9/11 felt like? How much worse would it be with not three thousand killed, but three hundred thousand or three million?
How much worse the options for the President, especially if it were Kerry and we no longer had substantial forces in the Middle East to exercise any conventional military options besides Clintonian symbolic pinpricks. If Iran were behind it, either primarily or tangentially, what could we do, since they'd have nuclear weapons of their own, targeted at Israel, to deter any such action? Or Pakistan, which was flipped over to our side in the war by George Bush and would be more likely to be abandoned by a Kerry White House, since, after all, according to Lurch any ally Dubya has made isn't "real"? They have nukes as well, and if the Islamists finally knock off President Musharraf, the nightmare scenario expands exponentially.
Would an American president, ANY American president, incinerate Tehran to avenge the terrorist incineration of Los Angeles? And isn't it far better to minimize the likelihood of ever having to face that question by not deluding ourselves that we can disengage from this fight now?
Deliberate atrocities like Beslan and this week's slaughter of the innocent in Baghdad prove that Islamists will do the same in the heart of our own country on as large a scale as they can manage - if we let them. And part and parcel of not letting them is continuing to mow them down now, in their own backyard.
As I said to our brave men and women in uniform eighteen months and thirteen days ago, so I say now: Good luck, Godspeed, and good hunting.
"U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major assault Friday to regain control of the 'insurgent' stronghold of Samarra, trading gunfire with rebel fighters as they pushed toward the city center. The United States said 96 insurgents were killed."
Why do I enjoy reading such news? Because we're exterminating vermin. Really, I've felt this way going at least back to 1997. The only difference between then and now is that America is now as much at war with these barbarians as Israel has been for decades. That is why we are so much more aware of them and what they are, and why, no matter what John Kerry claims, turning back the clock is impossible, because they won't let it be - until either they get to turn it back not a few years, but some fourteen centuries, or every last one of them is sent straight to hell.
This has always been, and always will be, a war of annihilation - again, because that's the way they are fighting it. They're perfectly and happily willing to blow themselves up if it will take "infidels" and Muslim "apostates" - and little children - with them. So there is no reason for us not to accept those "rules of engagement."
This enemy cannot defeat us militarily, and they're not trying to. They're trying to defeat us politically, in finest Giapian tradition. If they succeed in breaking our will by getting us to replace George Bush with John Kerry, Iraq will fall into their hands like overripe fruit. But their war against us will not cease. It will simply continue elsewhere, wherever we have a presence overseas, and yes, in our own country.
In short, we can withdraw from Iraq, or Afghanistan for that matter, but we cannot withdraw from this war. And if we dare show weakness by another such retreat in the tradition of Saigon 1975 and Mogadishu 1993, the conflict will at best lengthen enormously, and at worst become one that we really might not be able to win, at least not without casualties and losses and sacrifices and horrors that dwarf the comparatively paltry 1,100 or so military fatalities (and nearly three thousand civilians ones) we've suffered thus far.
Here is a pregnant parting point to ponder: suppose that Kerry were elected, and we withdrew from Iraq, and it fell to the "insurgents." And then, one bright, sunny morning in 2007, one or more suitcase nuclear devices annihilated the central business districts of one or more major American cities. (And for the record, I think that's more likely under Kerry than it will be under a second Bush Administration - and if Ted Kennedy and his fans don't like it, they can go bleep themselves) Remember what 9/11 felt like? How much worse would it be with not three thousand killed, but three hundred thousand or three million?
How much worse the options for the President, especially if it were Kerry and we no longer had substantial forces in the Middle East to exercise any conventional military options besides Clintonian symbolic pinpricks. If Iran were behind it, either primarily or tangentially, what could we do, since they'd have nuclear weapons of their own, targeted at Israel, to deter any such action? Or Pakistan, which was flipped over to our side in the war by George Bush and would be more likely to be abandoned by a Kerry White House, since, after all, according to Lurch any ally Dubya has made isn't "real"? They have nukes as well, and if the Islamists finally knock off President Musharraf, the nightmare scenario expands exponentially.
Would an American president, ANY American president, incinerate Tehran to avenge the terrorist incineration of Los Angeles? And isn't it far better to minimize the likelihood of ever having to face that question by not deluding ourselves that we can disengage from this fight now?
Deliberate atrocities like Beslan and this week's slaughter of the innocent in Baghdad prove that Islamists will do the same in the heart of our own country on as large a scale as they can manage - if we let them. And part and parcel of not letting them is continuing to mow them down now, in their own backyard.
As I said to our brave men and women in uniform eighteen months and thirteen days ago, so I say now: Good luck, Godspeed, and good hunting.
posted by JASmius at 4:22 PM
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