In the thrall of defeatism

Tony Blankley:

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If Washington gossip is right, even many of the president's own advisers in the White House and the key cabinet offices have given up on success. Official Washington, the media and much of the public have fallen under the unconscionable thrall of defeatism. Which is to say that they cannot conceive of a set of policies -- for a nation of 300 million with an annual GDP of more than $12 trillion dollars and all the skills and technologies known to man -- to subdue the city of Baghdad and environs. Do you think Gen. Patton or Abe Lincoln or Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin would have thrown their hands up and say "I give up, there's nothing we can do?"
Or do you suppose they would have said, let's send in as many troops as we can assemble to hold on, while we raise more troops to finish the job. If the victory is that important -- and it is -- then failure must be unthinkable, even if it takes another five or 10 years.
And yet, when I exclusively interviewed two members of the Baker commission last week they explicitly told me that they didn't propose increased troops strength because their military advisers told them it wasn't currently available.
Well, in 1943 we didn't have the troop strength for D-Day in 1944, and in 1863 we didn't have the troop strength (or the strategies) for the victory of 1865. But we had enough to hold on until the troops could be recruited and trained (and winning strategies developed). And so we do today. I have been told by reliable military experts that we can introduce upward of 50,000 combat troops promptly -- enough to hold on until more help can be on the way.
Sometimes, current tactical logistical weaknesses must not be used as an excuse for, or a signal of, strategic failure. In 1861 newly elected President Abraham Lincoln faced such a dilemma over the siege of Fort Sumter. Lincoln had decided to ignore his military advice to surrender the fort. While the final published version of his explanation for this decision in his July 4, 1861 Message to Congress did not reflect his personal anxiety in coming to that decision, it might be useful to Mr. Bush to read Lincoln's first, unpublished, draft -- which did reflect his mental anguish as he tried to decide. All his military advisers, after due consideration, believed that Fort Sumter had to be evacuated. But Lincoln's first draft read:
"In a purely military point of view, this reduced the duty of the administration, in this case, to the mere matter of getting the garrison safely out of the Fort -- In fact, General Scott advised that this should be done at once -- I believed, however, that to do so would be utterly ruinous -- that the necessity under which it was to be done, would not be fully understood -- that, by many, it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy -- that at home, it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden it's foes, and insure to the latter a recognition of independence abroad -- that, in fact, it would be our national destruction consummated. I hesitated." (See "Lincoln's Sword," pp 79-80; by Douglas Wilson.)
Lincoln was alone in the self-same rooms now occupied by George W. Bush. All his cabinet and all his military advisers had counseled a path Lincoln thought would lead to disaster. He was only a month in office and judged by most of Washington -- including much of his cabinet -- to be a country bumpkin who was out of his league, an accidental president. Alone, and against all advice he made the right decision -- as he would do constantly until victory.
Mr. President, you are not alone. The ghost of Old Abe is on your shoulder.
God Bless you and Merry Christmas.
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The suggestion that we are losing in Iraq is ridiculous. That is not to say we have won yet, but clearly the enemy does not have the military capacity to defeat us or the Iraqi government. The enemy has run a very successful media campaign. Here is his script. He murders non combatants to get media attention. The media gives him that attention and blames the US and Iraqi government for not stopping the wickedness of the enemy while never mentioning that the enemy strategy is based on the commission of war crimes and done in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. The media has in fact turned the Geneva Conventions into an unilateral contract binding only our side of the war.

That is consistent with the hypocrite's of the anti war left, many of whom are part of the media. They are only against our side of the war and have the bazaar notion that the war will stop if we quit. Militarily the enemy in Iraq has been defeated. That does not mean he cannot still make a mess. The Klu Klux Klan terrorized people in the south for a 100 years after the south lost the war.

The only way the enemy wins this war is if we quit. If we do, it will be the media's misreporting that causes a strategic defeat much as the media misreporting of the Tet offensive caused a strategic defeat in the Vietnam war.