A War To Be Proud Of

If that phrase makes you cough and sputter in passive spurts of indignation, you should read this article by Christopher Hitchens, who makes the case for war the administration has yet been unable to.

Among the many highlights:

The peaceniks love to ask: When and where will it all end? The answer is easy: It will end with the surrender or defeat of one of the contending parties. Should I add that I am certain which party that ought to be? Defeat is just about imaginable, though the mathematics and the algebra tell heavily against the holy warriors. Surrender to such a foe, after only four years of combat, is not even worthy of consideration.

Yes. You're going to hear a lot of talk about "phased withdrawl," "timetables," and "goals" for removal of American troops from Iraq in advance of the coming midterm elections. "Stay the course" is perhaps not the best response, as the current course has more than a few divots. Perhaps more like, "we'll sleep when they're dead."

Resolve is what's needed to defeat this form of facism and the remaining autocratic oppression, cloaked in Islam, in the middle east. (Resolve, and lots of guns, which we already have in any case.) Breathless reporting of every spilled drop of American blood, titrated with Vietnam-era peacenik pansyism about use of American military force in any (although especially a Republican) capacity, has a lot to answer for in this regard.

Hitchens later makes an enormously important point, almost offhandedly. This is a nihilistic enemy. Think for a minute about what that means.

Last:

Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, either. If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat.

Have you?