Will

Visiting with family over the holidays we discussed the situation in Iraq. My mother remarked she hoped we were done by the 2008 elections. My reply was this has been building since Turkey turned Secular in the 1920's. This problem has been building for 80 years, and we are not going after the heart of it.

Victor Davis Hanson wrote a very interesting article for the Military History Quarterly discussing how it was Sherman, not Grant, which ended the Civil War in the most human terms possible. In short, Sherman was not a murdering rapist. He did plunder, but he was careful to take and destroy from the Confederate Government and the Slave Owning Gentry who in his view started the war. While he did burn and steal, he tried to leave the poor alone; they did not kill women and children, and only returned fire when attacked. Yet Sherman brought war home in a way that broke the Confederacy, attacking not the manpower, but the ability to support the manpower.

Further, there are reports coming out of Iraq of success. Slow, to be sure, but success. However, Iran is supporting the insurgency. Iran is working towards obtaining nuclear weapons. No one seems to dispute either of those 2 claims, and yet we are not addressing either issue militarily. Diplomacy hasn't worked to date. There are reports that predict the economy of Iran will collapse in 5-10 years because the infrastructure that supports oil export is being ignored. Most of the money is going to Iran's nuclear program. Also, Whabist Oil Money, read Saudi Arabia, is still out there funding a lot of the backbone of the Islamofacists.

Attacking either Iran or Saudi Arabia seems unthinkable in the current scope of things. Saudi is supposed to be our friend after all. But, let's face it, they have their own agenda. But I don't know as much as President Bush. We do have limits, and I don't even know all of the limits he faces. But one limit we are currently facing is the will of the American People.

Having the will to win might not guarantee that you win, but it will prevent you from losing by giving up. 30 years latter, the picture of Vietnam is becoming clear, we were winning militarily in Vietnam, we lost our will at home. Will Iraq become another Vietnam? In a fight, you get hit. In a war, you loose soldiers even as you are winning. Just because the other side is fighting back does not mean we are loosing.

Be clear, the Islamofacist goal is to spread their brand of Islam world wide. They want the world to look like Afghanistan under the Taliban. Today is just the latest chapter in the ongoing history to spread Islam. The US and the Western World are just the most potent adversaries and the ones they are focusing on, but the goal is world domination.

So why are we not fighting harder. I've asked in an earlier post, are we at war?

One of the big limits in our Democracy is the support of the public. Our press aids and abets the enemy. How much coverage has been given to what motivates the Islamofacists? How much has been aired about their goals? How much has been aired about our soldiers being killed, and our setbacks? How much about our enemies set backs? How much of this has affected public perspective and support?

Our grandparents defeated Germany and Japan in WWII in such a way that their children and grandchildren would not be required to do it all over again. We are not thinking about our children. We whine about our imperfections and refuse to look at why the US is so much better than Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. We are not perfect, but we are worth fighting for.

Little problems grow to be big problems, and big problems can grow to defeat if not hit with everything you can muster. In a shipboard fire, you don't use a graduated response. You hit it with everything you can as fast as you can, until the fire is out. The consequences are too severe otherwise. Islamofacism is the fire onboard our ship-the planet earth.

In the end, I don't believe Islamofacism will win. The question is what will be the final cost? The less you fight the fire, the more it burns and destroys.