Defeating The Defeatist Mentality

America has never lost a war, and the only time we have been defeated is when we have defeated ourselves, by either losing the will to finish what we started or by simply retreating in the face of adversity. Our enemies in our current war know this, and on this fact their entire strategy in defeating the United States is predicated. Every bomb that explodes in the streets of Baghdad, or in the train tunnels of London for that matter, is targeted not at those that bomb kills or injures, but at the observing public back home, who justifiably cringe every time they view the carnage it inflicts on the nightly news. Al-Qaeda’s only hope of defeating us rests in the prospect that the American people will, after seeing too many of these pictures, lose the will to carry on. For the United States to be defeated the American public will have to conclude that the price simply isn’t worth paying, that if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone.

In this the terrorists are having some minor success, for already we are hearing from some circles that the war in Iraq has created more terrorists than had previously existed, and that the U.S. occupation has become a rallying cry for indoctrinated young Muslims who are swelling the ranks of al-Qaeda. These people believe that as a result of our presence in Iraq we are less secure than we were before, that we are more vulnerable to terrorist attack. Some of the more extreme elements even believe we should simply cut our losses and leave Iraq right away.

However to retreat from the world and the Middle East in defeat would be to fall into the same trap all of us willingly rested in before 9/11. We in the free world invite attack not when we are strong and active, but when we are, or at least are perceived to be, weak and dormant. We weren’t in Iraq or Afghanistan when our embassies in Africa were bombed, or when a boat full of explosives hit the Cole, or when planes were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To fall prey to the belief that our actions are the culprit for terrorist acts perpetrated against us is to hand the terrorists the very victory they have been seeking and expecting.

Our main task then becomes not so much defeating the Zarqawi network within Iraq, but defeating the defeatist mentality that Zarqawi and company hope to foster here at home. What our leaders need to do, and specifically what our president needs to do, is come before the American people on a regular basis and reassure the people that what we are doing in the Middle East is right, and that winning in Afghanistan and Iraq is the only long-term solution to ending the type of terror that plagued us in London and New York, and that strikes in Iraq on an almost daily basis.

America and the free world will win this war, and we will defeat Islamic terrorism just as we defeated Communism, Nazism, and Fascism. The only way we can possibly be defeated is if we stop believing in our moral standing and purpose in this endeavor. As Ronald Reagan once said, "no arsenal, or no weapon, in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have." With that will and moral courage there is no one or no thing that can defeat us, without it we become as vulnerable as we were pre 9/11. Our enemies know this, so must we.