When Did This Become The Global War To Liberate the Oppressed?

I must have missed that speech:

Why are the polls down? Is public support for the war crumbling? Well, no. But the explanation for plummeting numbers varies depending on which war you are talking about.

If you mean what started out as the "war on terror," support remains high. You may recall that war. It was about the eradication of militant Islam and its state sponsors. To the extent there is public uneasiness, it is not over the fact of that war but rather the manner in which it is being prosecuted, with terrorists continuing to score successes and their facilitators in Iran and Syria making war on American forces with impunity.

But if you're talking about what the "war on terror" has lately evolved into — namely, the war to spread freedom — public support cannot fairly be described as "crumbling." Public support for that war was never there in the first place.

This is the Iraq problem, and the confusion attendant to it was on display Sunday in this summation offered by David Brooks of the New York Times: "Today, public opinion is turning against the war not because people have given up on the goal of advancing freedom, but because they are not sure this war is winnable. Why should we sacrifice more American lives to a lost cause?"

This cry is a common one. It is also dead wrong, from its bedrock assumptions straight through to its dreary conclusion. The American people did not go to war for "the goal of advancing freedom." There are many countries which are not free, and while we work to change that, we would not invade them to change that. No, the American people went to war to protect the national security of the United States from current and gathering threats which they understood, after September 11, 2001, could no longer responsibly be waited out. Spreading freedom was not near the front of their minds.

Inasmuch as freedom makes Afghanistan and Iraq lesser threats to the United States, wonderful. Iran and Syria are the key exporters of terror---wouldn't mind liberating them to lance the festering boils they represent.

Other than that, I think we're tapped out.