REGIONAL WAR AND "REALISM"

We'll soon have a new Secy. of Defense....after a lightning quick confirmation process, now that the Dems have been mollified by the President's selection of Mr.Gates. I confess to being ignorant of his background other than what's been stated on the evening news, but there's no reason to question his intent or qualifications for any public office.

However, his views lead me to question his understanding of our situation, regardless of either intent or qualification. In his confirmation hearing he stated that if we didn't manage the Iraq War correctly, in a few years we'd see a "regional war."

A few years? Whoops! We're engaged in a regional war RIGHT NOW! It extends from Gaza to Iran, and over to Afghanistan.

Isreal is engaged on two fronts at the South, as its enemy is funded and armed by Iran. Lebanon is on the verge of another Civil War as Syria has all but invaded....another Minister has been assassinated and street rioters and Hezbollah's demonstrators who formerly screamed of "Death to Israel" or "Death to America" now scream "Death to Siniora," Lebanon's Prime Minister who was (who knows now) supported by France and the U.N. in their fabulous "brokered peace," to which the U.S. Government signed on. Hezbollah claims to be fully rearmed by Iran and Syria, who are also actively supporting the murderous intra-tribal warfare in Iraq. Bin Laden's sons are given refuge in Iran. The Iranians are building atomic weapons, and missles capable of reaching London, and the whole world dithers and defines its terms.

The fighting, murder, destruction and mayhem are sponsored by Iran and Syria, carried out by their agents and proxies, and extend for thousands of miles across several international borders.

Mr. Gates....Mr. President...that looks to this Citizen of the Republic like "regional war" right now.

The issue isn't what it looks like....but what it is...and more important, what are we going to do next. That is a question for the Dems and Mr. Gates that Michael Moore won't like. Almost everyone but the lunatic left understands that we cannot leave on any timetable...guesses about a year or so from now are ridiculous, and too foolish to believe. Absent that, we have to fight.

Fight whom? Fight the perps. The Perps. The Enemy. The guy(s) who're funding the current killing, and training the killers.

"You're for us or agin' us" the President said, as he promised to pursue our enemies wherever they are. Sure he did.

Here's Andrew McCarthy's sense of it...(Read the whole thing)

But what is winning? What is the “victory” we are seeking?

On this, there is no consensus. That is why Americans have soured on Iraq. History proves that the American people have plenty of stomach for a hard fight, however long it takes, if they understand and believe in what we are fighting for. And this, consequently, is where history will condemn the Bush administration.

Leadership, too often, has been rudderless. After 9/11, the president deployed our armed forces but told the American people the best thing they could do was go on with their lives — go shopping, lest the terrorists win. There was no sense of shared sacrifice. No stressing that the nation as a whole had a vested interest in facing down not just a relative handful of terrorists but a fundamentalist ideology, shared by millions, calling remorselessly for our destruction.

Our military, alone, was left to bear the burdens. The 9/11 attacks were left to speak for themselves … and they faded from elite memory in about the time it took for habitués of the New York Times’ West 43rd Street offices to forget those two tall buildings they used to gaze on from their windows.

Perhaps worse, after rallying and winning reelection strictly because Americans trusted him more than Sen. Kerry to protect our security, the president went dark. From November 2004 until the middle of the following year, President Bush, leading a nation at war, was virtually mum on the subject. There were political reasons for this — there always are. We hadn’t found Saddam’s weapons; addressing the war risked reminding the public of intelligence failures and premature “mission accomplished” bravado; the administration wanted to use its pre-lame-duck months to focus on Social Security, immigration, and the rest of its legislative agenda; and so on.

On Iraq, the president decided his reelection meant he had already won the argument. But when you’re at war, and you’re the president, you’ve got to win the argument every day. If you’re not winning it, you’re losing it … and with it the public support essential to war-fighting.

So, facing down his critics, the president insists we will stay and “win.” The problem is: His vision of winning is a stable, democratic Iraq — something Americans would not have gone to war over in the first place. Sure, it is an outcome we should all devoutly wish to see some day. But it is not something we would have sent American troops to Iraq to die for, any more than we would send them, say, to Sudan — particularly when the case has never been made that either stability or democracy in the Middle East will make the United States safer.

...There is only one good reason for American troops to be in Iraq. It is the reason we sent them there in 2003: To fight and win the “war on terror” — i.e., the war against radical Islam — by deposing rogue regimes helping the terror network wage a long-term, existential jihad against the United States. You can argue that Iraq was the wrong rogue to start with; but destroying radical Islam’s will and its capacity to project power is what the war is about.

Iraq is but a single battlefield in that war. It is not “the war.” Stabilizing or even — mirabile dictu! — democratizing Iraq is not winning the war. It is the overseas equivalent of rebuilding the World Trade Center. The hard reality is that war exacts a terrible toll and its fallout must be addressed. This is why we hate war and resort to it only in the face of greater evils. But cleaning up war’s unavoidable messes is not the same as winning.

Winning the war means taking on the regimes and factions that are waging it. That is what the president promised to do after 9/11. “You’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

...“Death to America” is not just a slogan for our enemies. It’s a deeply held conviction, on which they are feverishly acting. Only when we are ready to take them seriously, when our leaders’ brave words are matched by determined deeds, can we win — in Iraq and, more importantly, in the greater war.

Fuck 'em. Let's Roll!