Phil Brennan
Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005

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  No matter how one views this war, it is global in nature, and, being global, it includes much of the Middle East, and that includes Iraq. Like it or no, Iraq is part of the war, and what happens there will have a huge impact on its ultimate outcome.

We are beginning to experience the first stirrings of Kriegschmerz – war weariness – the malady that helped defeat Germany in World War I. It saps the will of a nation to persevere in a lengthy struggle, and its ultimate effect is to provoke a strategy of cut and run.

The first line of that siren song we are hearing now includes the seductive words "exit strategy." This is another way of saying a planned cut-and-run strategy. I saw a cartoon the other day that well described this strategy: "Do one brave thing today and then run like hell."

Well, we did a brave thing in going into Iraq, driving out a brutal dictator, arranging to turn the nation over to the Iraqi people and establishing a beachhead on the main battlefield of the war on Islamic jihad. Now there are those who want us to run like hell before the job is done. That is their exit strategy.

It is time we took a step back and considered just what this war is all about. First of all, it is not a war against terrorism – that's a weapon, not a foe. It is a war against Islamic fundamentalism and the nations waging it against us, overtly and covertly.

We didn't start this war, which has its roots in the seventh and eighth centuries. As Thomas Madden points out in his new book, "A Concise History of the Crusades," Islam was born in war and grew the same way.

"From the time of Mohammed," he wrote "the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's death. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt – once the most heavily Christian areas in the world – quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. Under Suleiman the Magnificent the Turks came within a hair's breadth of capturing Vienna, which would have left all of Germany at their mercy."

Islam has never abandoned its goal of world conquest. As Jed Babbin wrote in the current American Spectator, "under the jihadist's reading of the Koran, only those who are true believers are entitled to life, and they must subjugate themselves to the dogma of jihad."

He goes on to explain that "jihadist ideology promises to restore the idealized Islamic past of a Muslim caliphate, ruling the civilized world."

That war continues today. Its first shot against the United States and the West was fired at the World Trade Center during the don't-rock-the-boat Clinton administration, which reacted by hoping the whole thing would go away and leave us alone to enjoy the benefits of the technology and stock market bubbles before they burst, hopefully in the next administration, under another president.

Another shot was the bombing of the USS Cole, also ignored by the Clinton administration. And then came 9/11, which was not ignored by the Bush administration, which understood that we were at war and took the required actions.

Afghanistan and Iraq are our footholds in the midst of a Middle East dominated by Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria – the nation-states wedded to the jihad. The existence of a democratic Iraq is simply intolerable to these bellicose Islamic nations. Were we to abandon our foothold in Iraq, it would be quickly destabilized and absorbed by one of its neighbors and Iraq's condition would be far worse than it was before we invaded the country.

Cutting and running from the Middle East would bring the war to our homeland. Left to develop its nuclear capabilities, Iran could be expected to share them with its al-Qaida allies and we would be facing a serious nuclear threat here at home. Fighting the war here at home would entail the creation of a police state mechanism where all America would look like Washington, D.C., during the Inauguration – an armed camp devoid of most civil liberties. And there would be no exit strategy, nowhere to cut and run.

This war is going to last a long time, far beyond my lifetime and those of most Americans. We have no option but to persevere. War is hell. Losing is worse.

Faugh 'a Ballagh

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

He can be reached at phil@newsmax.com

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