The Losers

Jed Babbin on defeatism in Iraq:

Regardless of whether civil war erupts, we cannot abandon Iraq now, for to do so would be a strategic defeat in the larger war. William F. Buckley, Jr. cannot be blamed for concluding that "Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans." It is President Bush's fault, because he has not performed as a wartime president must, to define the mission, chart clearly the course to its completion, and lead us to it. That brief flare of leadership that burst over us last fall has fizzled and died in the darkness of silence. At this moment, the president should be on our screens and in our ears to explain, again, what the mission in Iraq is, how he means to prosecute the global war on terror, and how we can unravel the mess that Iraq has become. The fact that he is not is cause for alarm.

His speeches, such as the one he delivered to the American Legion this week, merely repeat the rallying cries of the past four years. To repeat, as he did then, that we are going to win the war by ending tyranny and by growing democracies in the Middle East surrenders control of the outcome to religious leaders who reject democracy, who have no interest in freedom. President Bush cannot mean to do so, but if he does not, he needs to say what he does mean. We are still waiting.

IS THE PRESIDENT SO OBLIVIOUS to events that he doesn't understand that he has set Americans adrift in an ocean of hostile media, leaving the formation of public opinion to the New York Times, CBS, the BBC and Alec Baldwin? Are he and his principal staffers so mired in the Dubai port deal and the everlasting Katrina recriminations that they are unable to realize how badly the President is failing? Is it even possible to wake him up to the job at hand? I fear not. As the months pass, the Bush administration looks more and more like that of Lyndon Johnson. Instead of setting and pursuing a course to win the war, it is only responding to the press-inflicted beatings it absorbs each day. The President should remember what Lincoln learned the hard way: that the media are the worst war strategists. Allowing the media to set the terms of the debate is a clearly marked path to defeat.

If we'd listened to these folks in 1942, we'd all be speaking German.

Defeatism serves only the enemy. It is the only thing our brave soldiers fear, for it is the only way America will lose this war.