TERROR WAR REALITY CHECK
Mon Sep 29, 4:55 AM ET
New York Post
story.news.yahoo.com
How goes the War on Terror?
Not badly.
Not badly at all.
Certainly there is cause for optimism - never mind the borderline-seditious ramblings of ambitious Democrats and endless Chicken Little clucking from the media.
On the heels of spectacular victories in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), with boots on the ground in those countries and others unnamed, armed with unprecedented military might and an unequaled economic engine, America is poised to change the course of history in the Middle East - and beyond.
This is not an optional war, regardless of the rhetoric.
America didn't start it, except in the sense that America's unparalleled personal freedom and virtually limitless opportunity silently rebuke the despotism and despair that informs much of the Islamic world.
That is, for as long as America is America, it will be a target for the death-dealers of radical Islam.
This makes the question of how well goes the war nearly irrelevant. After all, when it's "fight or die," you fight.
Or you die.
The good news, of course, is that signs of progress are everywhere.
Washington has shown that it has the means - and an administration with sufficient resolve - to stay the course.
Which is key - because this clearly will be a long campaign.
But consider what's been accomplished to date. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have been deposed.
The Taliban and Iraqi Ba'athists are gone from power.
Stability and renewal are slowly, painfully, coming to the region - in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon even in the Palestinian Arab-occupied territories in Israel.
Terrorist funding is being squeezed. Even more significant, broad geopolitical shifts are under way.
Two realities are becoming ever-more clear, even to some of the most blind and craven regimes:
* America is in the Middle East to stay: We ain't goin' nowhere - and we'll do whatever it takes to win this war.
* Closing one's eyes to terrorists - or, worse, siding with them - can be hazardous to one's political, not to mention physical, health.
Example: Saudi Arabia. Long the locus of Wahhabi terror, the kingdom has itself come under attack; that Saudi soldiers have been waging gun battles with terrorists is, to say the least, interesting.
Meanwhile, more than a few Europeans - cynical, selfish, hoping to gain from America's losses - now see little profit in throwing up roadblocks: Washington has once blown right past them, and will do so again if necessary.
Continued anti-American belligerence can only cost them.
Which doubtless is why U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week that it his organization must "face up squarely to the concerns that make some states feel uniquely vulnerable, and thus drive them to take unilateral action."
And then he called for fundamental reform of the world body.
Meanwhile, one-time obstructionists like German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) are now saying they won't block America's efforts to rebuild Iraq.
Why, Germany has even offered to train Iraqi police!
Recently the European Union recognized members of Hamas for what they are - terrorists - and blocked all financial transactions with them.
Amazingly, some Arab states have followed suit.
The Bush team has, in effect, wisely permitted Israel to decapitate the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure.
Jerusalem has not only managed to carve a wide chip in the top ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but it has also put top terrorist Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) on notice. Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was actually targeted in an attack by Israel that left him alive, but injured.
Yassin and Arafat have beat their chests in response, but - with the exception of two strikes that killed 15 Israelis this month - suicide bombings have tapered off significantly in past half-year.
And some reports suggest the terror groups' setbacks may soon prove fatal.
Yes, the cost of this war is steep.
Hundreds of U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, more than 70 have fallen to hostile fire since major combat operations ended.
Military costs are running $5 billion a month, and Bush wants another $87 billion - hardly an insignificant sum.
Still, the most impressive fact is how little this war for the future of the world is costing - in terms of blood and treasure - when compared to other wars.
Vietnam - a favorite, if fallacious, analogy - claimed more than 57,000 lives and cost nearly half a trillion inflation-adjusted dollars. World War II took some 400,000 U.S. lives and cost more than $2 trillion in today's dollars.
And what about the costs of not fighting? 9/11 claimed 3,000 lives in one day. The sum to replace a chunk of Manhattan could easily top $100 billion, not to mention the toll on the broader economy.
Yet surrender is exactly what Democrats - and liberal media outlets - seem to be prescribing.
Descriptions of Iraq have been wildly distorted - suggesting that violence is spinning out of control and casualties are mounting intolerably.
Native Iraqis, they say, are becoming increasingly insistent that U.S. troops hand over control - to the United Nations (news - web sites), or the Iraqis themselves.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, hardly a model of integrity, called Bush a "fraud" for the way he justified the Iraq war.
This is a dangerous game.
Democracy can easily be misunderstood by those unfamiliar with it; the terrorists and Ba'athists may think they need only to continue to prick away at U.S. troops in Iraq, and eventually Washington will tuck tail and run.
If they hold out just a little longer - another month; another year. A Dean or a Kerry or a Clark may take the White House - and presently flies the last helicopter from Baghdad.
All citizens have the right - indeed, the duty - to oppose administration policy if they think it to be wrong.
But those who seek partisan advantage for its own sake, those steeped in blind ambition, need to consider the price of providing the enemy unwarranted hope.
It will be measured in dead young Americans.
This is a just war.
It is a necessary war.
America is winning.
That's the reality of it. |
