The state of things

I'll admit it, I'm depressed about the state of the world right now. 

• I just finished listening to an interview with Thomas Ricks author of a new book Fiasco on the US military in Iraq. 
  
• In Connecticut, JoeMentum wasn't enought and Leiberman was defeated in the democratic primary for senate.
  
• The only headlines I seem to be able to find on the war against Hizbollah are how many "civilians" Israel killed in targeted strikes.  Where is the outrage that Hizbollah hides among civilians with the express purpose of causing civilian casualties?

Unfortunately I think that the biggest problem we have is not the violence in the middle east, or the number of military mistakes the US has made, or the number of our own soldiers killed in afghanistan. 

 

The biggest problem we have is that 

  a) we do not realize that the west is in a war with radical Islam, a war that started even before the end of the cold war, and that

  b) we therefore are not really committed to winning - to doing what it takes to completely defeat the enemy

 

Every death is treated as a reason to re-evaluate our committment and our decisions.  We hope that if we just pull out of the madness - and it is madness - that maybe we can go back to our dreamy little pre 9/11 world. 

 

The west is unbeatable militarily.  We have the best trained and equiped soldiers, with the strongest economies behind them.  But we will be defeated as the Americans were in Vietnam and Somalia because we are so weak, because we have no real concept of war and the horrible alternatives.  As Mark Steyn wrote in the recent National Review, so many are willing to simply manage the what they see as our inevitable decline.

 

Israel doesn't have that luxury.  They are on the front line of the war against radical Islam, but they are only one front.  Hizbollah has killed Americans and other westerners  for over 20 years, and yet some think this is just Israel's fight. 

 

I'm sick because of all of this.  We should be clear minded about who we are fighting and what it will take to win.  We have to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have to defeat the insurgency in Iraq and enable the democracy to stand up on its own, and we have to support our allies when they fight Islamic terrorists.  Some of this is being done, or at least attempted. 

 

But most of all we have to be steadfast at home.  We have to be committed to winning, to defeating an enemy that surely wants to to defeat us.  This isn't a war of our choosing, but it is our war none the less.