To ignore the lessons of the past is to completely lose credibility.
We did not start the war unilaterally, we finsihed it from 1991.
911, despite the selective memory of the left, was an attack on us by terrorists manipulating a failed state. Iraq was close enough to that model for our CinC to think it should not be allowed to fester.
The occupation is tough, and made tougher by the divisive carping of the defeatists.
That many of the very widely held fears about Iraq may prove to have been wrong is as irrelevant for us today as it was for Truman when he decided to nuke Japan.
That the occupation and pacification of Iraq has unexpected surprises and misplaced efforts is no different than was the occupaiton of Germany and Japan after WWII. The final solution for the occcupation: The Marshall Plan and NATO was not even on the table at the end of WWII. They were solutions arrived at when others proved failures.
That you deny any relevance in this is as short sighted as those who deny that the Ramadan bombing is the equivalent of the Tet offensive. The lessons of WWII are plain and useful. The bluff being attempted by the baathists/terrorsists is as transparent now as the Tet offensive was in retrospect.
It is a matter of will. The defeatists lack the will to carry out tough policy decisions. LBJ ignored the facts of military victory of the anti-Tet campaign and quit. American quit then with tragic results for Vietnam lasting until today.
We have defeated the regime, but its supporters are still fighting the occupation. They are encouraged by those in the west who continue to to denigrate it. or to even call for, as many in Europe do, for our abandonment of Iraq.
Bush so far is committed to ignoring the defeatists.
For that he is to be praised and should be widely supported by any American who cares.
Ed