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Surrender!!!Cut-and-jog The war on terrorism is over. America has surrendered. I’m not trying to be witty or alarmist. Just stating the facts. Like Vietnam, Somalia, Korea, and so many of the wars over the past 50 years, America surrendered before the job was finished. It’s merely a matter of time. Why would I say this? After all, despite taking over Congress, only a few noisy Democrats are actually demanding we pull the troops out now. Some are suggesting a gradual withdrawal. A few even support the war. So what’s the big deal? Here’s the big deal. Republicans quietly abandoned President Bush. He became powerless. And he knows it. Now, he’s trying to massage a graceful exit. Historically, that’s known as “surrender.” The first turn towards surrender began when Bush acknowledged the Iraq Study Group, a “bipartisan” crew of old Washington plowhorses led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Democrat Rep. Lee Hamilton. Experienced in diplomacy, but not victory, their advice boils down to two recommendations, which give unquestionable victory to the terrorists. First, they are openly seeking middle ground between victory and cutting-and-running. It’s being called “drawdown,” “redeployment,” or the hilariously twisted, focus group tested, Washington PolitcalSpeak, “phased redeployment,” which means quitting a few thousand troops at a time. We’ll call this “Cut-And-Jog.” Second, this Kumbaya Commission recommended we sit down and cut the brie with Iran and Syria, the two greatest active perpetrators of terrorism in the world, and certainly the greatest instigators of violence in Iraq. Now think for a second. Can you imagine sitting down with Adolph Hitler in 1938, asking him to help cool tensions in Europe? Oh, that’s right. The Europeans did exactly that. Certainly the moment Neville Chamberlain offered Czechoslovakia in exchange for peace, Hitler knew he would be marching under the Arc de Triomphe. And you can bet when the Paris Peace Talks began, Ho Chi Minh knew he would have a city renamed after him. But will the average American consider this Cut And Jog approach a success? As Nancy Pelosi so Clintonianly suggested, “It depends on how you define “victory.” We can speculate on liberal America’s historic definition of victory, which curiously resembles how America’s modern enemies define victory. NSA translators probably deciphered the word “congratulations” a dozen times monitoring calls between Syria’s Assad and Iran’s Ahmadinejad over the last few weeks. If they were allowed to listen. The worst thing about this mess is that it was preventable. Unfortunately, President Bush made two tactical military mistakes: He underestimated the long list of enemies surrounding Iraq and didn’t make them pay any price for ruining our effort. If Bush had taken out a bridge in Damascus every time an IED exploded, and bombed an Iranian government building each time a mosque was bombed, you can be assured terrorism would have been curbed. If Bush had taken out Moqta Al Sadr the first time his little rag-tag death squads bumped off a shepherd, Marines wouldn’t be facing a 50,000-man Hezbollah trained militia today. Notably, Bush made the exact same tactical political mistakes. He underestimated domestic enemies, and they never paid a price for their treasonous efforts to lose this war. If Bush had attacked Democrats as traitors, locked up reporters who printed America’s secrets on the front pages, reigned in giddy Republicans running amok through the halls of Congress, and above all if he paid more attention to pleading his case to the American people, he wouldn’t have found himself snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of learning lessons of the past, we just combined the two greatest mistakes of the last century: chatting with a rabid implacable enemy (WWII) and fighting a political war instead of a military war (Vietnam). Now, America will suffer. But so will the global community. For the next 50 years, American allies will keep a distance. Prospective allies will be wary, many staying perched on the fence. Enemies will smell our weakness. Oppressed people will fear making the smallest personal alliance with Americans. The predominant diplomatic mood towards America will range from skepticism to disrespect. One by one, the weak will be picked off. Because today, America surrendered. Winners don’t need peace talks. Only losers negotiate. Unfortunately, President George Bush has chosen the sad path of suing for peace. Today, our enemies know we are tossing in our cards. We’re just trying to protect our chips. The enemy knows they won. And now, so do we.
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