Posted by
Jay Noble on Monday, October 23, 2006 4:23:34 PM
The news is that the White House is busy formulating "time tables" to present to the Iraqi government. Presumably if the Iraqis fail to meet the time tables then we will draw down our forces in the country and let the chips fall.
However labeled or categorized, if the Administration
has indeed succumbed to the mindset we must be out of Iraq, whether by a date certain, or by the Iraqi government attaining or not attaining certain goals and
objectives, then the mindset necessary for victory has been abandoned and one of defeat and ignominy has taken its place.
Victory is not defined by deadlines and war is not fought according to time tables. When the belief takes hold that it is acceptable for Americans to leave Iraq without securing victory, the contest becomes simply a matter of endurance, with the insurgents secure in the knowledge that if they will hold on just a little longer, Iraq will be theirs. Meanwhile, on our side, more voices will loudly question why we sacrifice blood or treasure in a country we've already decided to leave, to achieve goals not particularly important to us. The countervailing voices, those that insist we must remain until the objectives are met, will become weaker as time passes and casualties mount. Americans will not long sustain a conflict in which victory has been
discarded as an option. In this aspect the parallel to Vietnam will be accurate, for just as the United States abandoned the South Vietnamese to their fate, as ignominious an act as ever committed by this nation, so we will in the end abandon the Iraqis to the jihadists.
Far from setting time tables, whether for withdrawal or the attainment of results, the United States should
loudly reassure the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people of its determination to defeat the insurgents and secure the nation. Having undertaken the task, we cannot afford now to "bug out" under pressure. No nation can expect others to respect its word or commitments if it retreats whenever it encounters difficulties or sustains casualties. Leaving Iraq under pressure from this enemy would be vastly more costly to our nation than the retreat from Vietnam. Then the enemy did not have designs on the American homeland; the enemy in Iraq is one spearhead of a foe with the avowed goal of destroying our society and replacing it with Islamic caliphate.
Once before in this generation a fifth column of liberals and fellow travelers, aided and abetted by the media, sabotaged the effort of the American Army in the field. Americans forces left Vietnam not in defeat but without victory; defeat was accomplished by the Democrat dominated liberal Congress, which subsequently prohibited essential aid to the South Vietnamese government, ensuring its defeat. Millions of innocents in Vietnam and Cambodia paid the price with their lives. Now, another fifth column of liberals and the liberal media, recycling the same false arguments, often voiced by retreads from the Vietnam era, are working assiduously to undermine another American army, this time in Iraq. They cannot be allowed to prevail again.
The Bush administration must not succumb to the temptation of time tables or deadlines. The enemy in Iraq must be destroyed, whether it takes one year or twenty. Of this there can be no negotiation or compromise. Anything else is to again suffer the United States of America as complicit in ignominy and the death of innocents.