Worse Than Vietnam

I've written before that nothing can defeat the mighty American military but a failure of will here at home.

Now, Mort Kondracke rightly points out that Iraq is going the way of Vietnam -- a good cause where Americans can prevail, but where, thanks to the voices of defeatism here at home, tragedy could ensue. The big difference, as he notes, is that if we leave Iraq to the bad guys (as we did in Vietnam) the consequences are going to be much worse for us (as you'll recall, the results in the Vietnam War weren't so great for the South Vietnamese or for the Cambodians).

It's pretty amazing that, as Debra Saunders observes, Iraqis are more upbeat about conditions in their country than Californians are. That fact emphasizes the extent to which the events in Iraq have been misreported, and, perhaps, unrealistic American expectations about what's going to be required to win the war on Islamofascist terror.

The loss of every American soldier's life is heartwrenching. What we need to decide -- and what the Democrats need to tell us -- is whether it would be better to leave Iraq as a safe haven for terrorists, and wait for the fatalities to take place in American cities instead.