Are you brave?

My fellow Americans. It has come to my attention that support for the war in Iraq is falling. Why? I ask you to sincerely reflect upon this in your quiet moments.

During discussions I've participated in with people who support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq I have attempted to understand their point of view. I'm perfectly willing to be convinced that we should withdraw from Iraq. But nobody has convinced me. I have yet to hear a war opponent give me a good argument for leaving Iraq. And now, I'm beginning to think that their opposition to the war is grounded in the selfish, short sighted and possibly disastrous desire to oppose anything and everything that comes from the Bush Administration; in other words, their opposition to the war is based on politics. Since the presidential election of 2000, I've heard people claim that the election was stolen by Bush. And in 2004, sure that they would see John Kerry win only to see him lose in another close election, the opposition to Bush has grown into irrational hate. When I cruise the World Wide Web, and I come across chat boards in which I find images of George Bush photo shopped into grotesque images of Adolph Hitler, or a chimpanzee or any number of childish things, I automatically tune them out. I refuse to listen to anyone devoid of the self discipline to participate in a discussion in an adult, civil manner.

The war in Iraq is an unconventional fight. It is a kind of war we have little experience with. It is not quite an insurgency, and it is not quite a fight against terror, it is something else, something in between, it is a hybrid war, a war with the hallmarks of several different kinds of war, but for the sake of this entry I refer to it as an insurgency. It will take us some time to figure out how to fight it effectively, the history of warfare tells us that. To expect the insurgency in Iraq to be put down by now is unrealistic. Historically insurgencies have always been lengthy efforts, requiring patience and determination from the counter insurgent. But in the society we live in, where we routinely receive instant gratification our ability to stay focused, our willingness to accept delayed gratification seems to have gone the way of the Do Do Bird. My friends, the only way we will lose in Iraq is if we allow it. Our military has had a steep learning curve, but they've figured this out and now, they need our unwavering support. Indications are, that our government has finally figured it out as well, and they need our support as well. This will not require any sacrifice on the part of the average American family, all it requires is for America to stop being hyper critical.

And now my friends, what will happen to Iraq if we leave? First, you must answer this basic question; do you care? It seems to me that in listening to the war opponents lament the loss of innocent Iraqi lives, that America does care. And since that is the case, pulling out of Iraq now makes no sense at all. Because if we do, Iraq will become a blood bath. If you think the sectarian violence is bad, consider this. If we leave, an all out civil war will erupt in Iraq, pitting the Shia majority with the active support of Iran, against the Sunni and Kurd minority. The killing will be countrywide, it will be Kosovo all over again only worse, ethnic cleansing on such a massive scale that it might be better described as genocide.

Do any of you trust Iran? Why would you possibly support our withdrawal and hand Iraq over to Iran complete with gift wrapping and ribbon? This my friends, without a doubt, will give international terrorism a home base, a sanctuary the likes of which they have never had before, complete with military arms, ammunition and equipment sitting around unattended ready to use. If we leave, who will be left in Iraq to prevent this? The Iraqi government is not strong enough, the Iraqi military isn't strong enough, there will be nobody to oppose the bad guys and the Iraqi people will be at their mercy.

The basic problem, most Middle East experts agree is the situation with Israel and the Palestinians. If we leave Iraq, our credibility or whats left of it, will be in tatters. It was bad enough that upon driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm that President Bush told the Iraqi Shia that if they took up arms against Saddam Hussein that we would assist them, and then to have abandoned them allowing Saddam to massacre them by the thousands. What will remain of our credibility, if after overthrowing Saddam, allowing chaos to ensue, only to leave before the job was done? Who would possibly take the chance in trusting us again? Iran will become the sole dominant force in the Middle East, along with a much weakened Israel. Israel, still smarting from the Lebanon conflict, and with the prospect of unilateral withdrawal completely discredited, will have little leverage with Iran. And my friends, it would only be a matter of time. A simple matter of time if we left, that the sectarian violence in Iraq turned into all out civil war, drawing in Iraq's neighbors, igniting a regional conflict and ultimately resulting in a military attack against Israel. And then, guess what? We will be back in the Middle East, participating in a bigger, more costly, more deadly war as an ally of Israel.

It is time for Americans to find their backbone. It is time to draw from the well of the generations of Americans past. For, they had the courage, discipline, the basic understanding that if they did not do the hard thing now, that they would be required to do a much harder thing later.

This fight is more important than perhaps most of the war opponents think. This fight isn't about oil or imperialism, those are just meaningless buzzwords used cavalierly by the opponents. It is a fight for our survival. This is a fight to change the attitudes of future generations of Iraqis, Arabs, and muslims. If we do not defeat the enemy in Iraq, they will have virtual free reign to recruit, finance, plan future terrorist operations and to train future terrorists for generations to come. Is that the kind of prospect that you want to leave to your children and grandchildren? Radical Islam is on the march. Who is going to oppose it if we do not?

My friends, it is far too early to give up. You defeatists out there who lack the courage of our ancestors, you need to educate yourselves and you need to wake the hell up. For all of the talk of how grim the situation is, to those of your prone to believe the politically motivated doomsday sayers I say; think for yourself! We overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein, liberated more the 50 million people from these two murderous, oppressive regimes. Don't you feel good about that? To write off the effort in Iraq as lost at this point would be like writing off the possibility of democracy in Europe because the failure of the revolutions in 1848. The problem in Iraq isn't that the people reject democracy. It is that there is not enough democracy there yet.

The enemy is getting support from Iran Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Do you note any democracies in that bunch? For all the yammering about how democracy doesn't stand a chance to grow in Iraq, has a credible alternative been offered by the anti war crowd? That's my whole point. The anti war crowd isn't thinking this through! Are we to return to the pre 9/11 paradigm and supporting our "friendly" dictators like Mubarak or the Saudi Royal Family? If our support for the Shah of Iran or of Yasser Arafat taught Americans anything, it should surely be that a secular strongman cannot keep the lid on indefinitely. We have to fix this, just like we did in Europe and Japan.

Again, we will not win overnight so stop acting like we should people! The President has told us from the outset that this fight would be a long one, and since the American people aren't suffering in support of it, whats the beef? Do not forget my friends many Americans were in utter despair at the prospect of the Cold War. In the late 1940s, communism appeared to be an unstoppable force, just as Islamism does to us today. Our enemies then; China and the Soviet Union were far, far more powerful than Al Qaeda and Iran are combined today. When Whittaker Chambers publicly broke with the Communist Party in 1948, he declared, "I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side." Yet the West ultimately prevailed. And just as the Soviet Union collapsed in record time, with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the Inter zonal German Border Fence, so, the cancer of Islamism in the Middle East could fall apart even faster than any of us expect! It could be, that all that is required is for a functioning model of democracy in a major Middle Eastern country. There is a little talked about fact of the Middle East the main stream media doesn't tell you about, there is a huge, underground, grass roots hunger for democracy among the younger generations in the region, yes, it's true. In Egypt, Iran, the people of the region yearn for change, to modernize, the dissatisfaction is palpable in the streets from Cairo to Tehran and the spark these people may only need is for Iraq to succeed and they will set themselves free.

My fellow Americans, as we well know, only democracy can satisfy the deepest desires of human nature. The question is not the outcome in Iraq now, it is how many people on both sides will die in the intervening decades? As our historic fight against communism and fascism suggest, determined American leadership can lower the death toll and speed up freedom's victory.

A retreat from Iraq now, will only serve to delay the inevitable emergence of democracy in the Middle East, it will only prolong the suffering of the Iraqi people and the people of the Middle East (for they are indeed suffering) and it will almost preordain, a major conflagration in the region, a conflagration that will draw us back to the region only under much more dire circumstances.

Think about it.