Let's create a safe haven for terrorists!

FRANK MIELE

I have remained silent on the worldwide war against Islamic fascism recently, because, well, frankly, what is the point?

The war is lost, says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and he may be right. In D.C. this year, along with the cherry blossoms, there is the whiff of defeat in the air.

Oh, but wait, he was just talking about the war in Iraq, wasn't he? Certainly he did not mean to suggest that it is the war against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and the other Islamic fascists that is lost, does he? That surely would be treasonable.

But yet, have we heard any Democrats talking about how we are going to defeat the worldwide enemy we face? Has there been any discussion of how pulling out of Iraq will benefit our larger war effort against Islamic fascism? Or how we will redouble our efforts against our foe elsewhere?

Sometimes a strategic retreat is necessary in war, but does anyone imagine that Harry Reid will assure the Iraqis the way Gen. MacArthur assured the Filipinos when he was forced to abandon Corregidor? "I shall return!"

Of course not. Because what the Democrats propose is not a strategic retreat; it is simply surrender. The Democratic policy is based on the principle of avoiding death, not of achieving victory, and while no American is happy to see our soldiers perish in battle, military victory is impossible without such casualties. If you are unwilling to incur losses, then you are unwilling to fight. If you are unwilling to fight, then you have signaled your enemy that you are not a serious threat. That is what bin Laden always said about us, and maybe he is right.

It was MacArthur who famously said, "In war, there is no substitute for victory." But today's America seems not to have the taste for victory. Instead, it has acquired a taste for easy living - even our soldiers must be protected and pampered.

So once we conserve our forces by pulling out of Iraq, once we "redeploy" to Okinawa or Antarctica or California, or wherever Rep. John Murtha decides it is safe for our soldiers, what exactly are we going to do with them? Are we paying them merely to defend their home bases? Or are they actually going to be used as intended - to intimidate, to regulate, to force to negotiate, and if necessary to fight to the death.

I haven't yet heard any Democrats talking about where they want to confront the Islamic fascists with these redeployed forces, have you? Oh, that's right, the Democrats don't want to fight; they want to negotiate instead, don't they? Confrontation is immature and dangerous, we are told by the "peace at any price" crowd. So instead of winning the war, like MacArthur would recommend, we are told to ask for help from our biggest enemies - Iran and Syria - so they can take charge of ensuring security in Iraq and let us off the hook. ("Foxes, meet the hens. Hens, meet your doom.")

The Democrats (and their weak-kneed Republican friends) say the war has gone on long enough - the war in Iraq, that is. They say it is longer than World War II, as if that somehow proved something. I often wonder whether the Democrats would be happier if the war in Iraq had been shorter than World War II, but cost us the same number of casualties. Isn't that insane? Should we not be righteously happy that the lengthy war in Iraq has cost the lives of not yet 3,500 soldiers compared to the 407,000 American servicemen killed in WWII? Isn't it better to have a long war that takes fewer lives than a short war that takes many lives?

You would think so, but yet the Democrats continue to talk about how long the war is, as if there is some statute of limitations on defending your culture, your civilization and your way of life.

Perhaps they did not notice that World War II was a war fought between armies. Such a war is relatively easy, and relatively straightforward, although more deadly. It is not the same thing as a war against terrorists - not even remotely. But when you compare apples to apples, then our record in Iraq is quite admirable. As you remember, we captured Baghdad in about 20 days, with major combat operations declared completed three weeks after that. On the other hand, it took us more than three years to defeat the German army, and nearly four years to defeat the Japanese imperial forces. What happened after we defeated the Iraqi army had no equivalent in either Germany or Japan; thus any comparison is irrelevant.

Have no doubt. We could have shortened this war in Iraq considerably if we were a ruthless uncaring superpower. We could have used nuclear weapons not just to kill, but to crush. Does anybody even remember Hiroshima any more? Does anyone recall the terrible military power that the United States wields? Does anyone doubt that we could level city after city in Iraq with our jets and artillery, our cruise missiles and our other fighting machines?

But we did no such thing. Our goal has NOT been to subdue Iraq these past four years; our goal has NOT been to defeat an army, or even a nation. Instead our goal has been to find a way to bring Iraq into compliance not so much with a U.N. resolution, but with common decency.

If some percentage of the Japanese citizenry and former soldiers had decided to wage a war against our soldiers after their defeat, then that war would have stretched on for many more years, too. But the Japanese did not want war after World War II, after Hiroshima, after Nagasaki. They had seen enough death. They had seen the full power of the U.S. Army, the Air Force, the Navy and Marines. They had seen death surround them; now they wanted life.

In comparison, the Iraqis saw 20 days of full-scale war, of "shock and awe" as it was called. They saw buildings crushed, but relatively little death compared to what might have been meted out. Then they saw the United States military forces try to become friends of the people of Iraq, and the terrorists in Iraq saw their opening. They knew that the United States would not wage ruthless war against the innocent bystanders of Iraq, so the terrorists decided to do so instead. This produced chaos, hopelessness, paralysis and fear - the four horsemen of the terror apocalypse.

The United States could not stop the killing, because for the most part we were not responsible for the killing. But the United States is held to blame for the killing because it followed our invasion. This is a simple but effective use of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, which erroneously claims that because one event is earlier in time, it necessarily caused the second event. Thus al-Qaida has brilliantly been able to kill thousands of people without taking any of the blame. Instead, it all comes back to us.

Al-Qaida is not an enemy to be underestimated. If you do so, then you can be sure that you will wake up someday to discover that another skyscraper has been leveled - or worse, a city. Al-Qaida knows the secret of war. Maybe they paid attention to MacArthur. "There is no substitute for victory." Or maybe they are just smarter than us.

But then, you don't have to be particularly smart to understand this. It is relatively easy to kill people. Someone as stupid as Cho Seung-Hui can do it. All it takes is a gun or some other weapon and a lack of conscience. You just have to care more about a cause than about your humanity.

And so the United States has indeed put its soldiers in harm's way in Iraq. There are indeed evil people who would kill them, just as they will happily kill innocent men, women and children on the streets of Baghdad. Just as they would like to kill men, women and children on the streets or schools or malls of the United States.

But what exactly is the Democratic alternative? We've heard from Harry Reid and other Democrats that they want to withdraw U.S. military forces from Iraq, and let the Iraqis take care of their own problems. We've heard that the conflict in Iraq is nothing but a religious-based civil war which we can't resolve. But no one on the left seems to care that this civil war was started by our enemy intentionally as a tactic to sow doubt and confusion among the American public. No one on the left seems to have the wherewithal to say that we Americans - the spiritual descendants of George Washington and Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln - shall not be manipulated nor moved by the fear tactics of al-Qaida and its deadly allies.

Indeed, they seem to be saying just the opposite. They have passed a funding bill for the war effort which includes language demanding that the troops withdraw whether the mission is accomplished or not. That bill will be vetoed, but that is not the end of the push to surrender. Even worse perhaps is the proposal voiced by Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico last week while he was campaigning for president.

Richardson proposed that the Congress should pass a resolution "de-authorizing" the war in Iraq - in other words, revoking the permission granted to the president to go to war in the first place. At first glance this seems like the moral equivalent of the timeline for surrender proposed by Harry Reid, but it is in fact quite different, and much more dangerous.

If the Supreme Court agreed that such a "deauthorization" was valid and binding on the president, it would essentially create a safe haven for terrorists in Iraq that would be almost impenetrable by the U.S. military.

Think of it, such a resolution would essentially create a haven for al-Qaida and for all other outlaws. The Islamic fascists would know that Congress had given them a free pass. Get to Iraq and you are safe.

And that would literally be true, because unless I miss my guess, no future Congress would ever again authorize a war against Iraq. No matter how unstable the situation got there, no matter whether al-Qaida were able to establish itself as the government of Iraq, we would never again have permission to launch military action against that nation. It's too dangerous, we would hear. They will just blow us up with their improvised explosives. How can we possibly beat such a powerful enemy? "Sorry, but military action in Iraq is 'de-authorized.'"

God forbid that we ever hear such talk. But we will if Bill Richardson gets his way. Then we can all agree with Harry Reid that not just the battle, but the war is lost.