Sour Grapes

A voice of reason from the right

I found [via Capitol Hill Blue] this worthwhile piece by Clifford D May titled "This War is Winnable:"

As President Clinton might say: "It depends on what the meaning of 'win' is."

By now, you've no doubt read all about it: President Bush told NBC's Matt Lauer that he didn't think America could win the War on Terrorism. Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards accused Bush of declaring defeat.

Bush then told Rush Limbaugh that what he meant to say was that the current global conflict is not like World War II. No enemy general is going to hand over his weapons in ceremonial surrender.

But that's not how the last great international struggle ended either. The Cold War — which some historians now call World War III — concluded when the Soviet Union collapsed and ordinary citizens smashed the Berlin Wall into paper weights.

In the War on Terrorism — or World War IV — the Free World is battling totalitarian ideologies that have borrowed freely from both Communism and Nazism, but which stake their claim to legitimacy on a radical interpretation of Islam and Islam's doctrine of jihad, or holy war.

Terrorism — the deliberate slaughter of civilians by combatants disguising themselves as civilians — is simply the means by which the Jihadis believe they can defeat decadent, infidel democracies.

And terrorism is a weapon the Jihadis believe they have all to themselves — infidels, they are confident, will not indiscriminately slaughter them and their families. Our reluctance to use this weapon is, in their view, a symptom of our weakness.

Original post by Hugh at 9/02/2004 05:41:00 PM Eastern time :: 0 comment(s) :: links to this post

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