"Endeavor to Persevere" Words to Live (and Win) By

Quitters never win and winners never quit. This is the message of the post World War II conflicts in which America has been involved.

Twisting Arms Isn't as Easy as Dropping Bombs

By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, January 29, 2007; Page A02

Whenever the United States goes to war, pro-war and antiwar advocates immediately reach for different history books. Hawks always equate the situation to a Hitler-Chamberlain standoff to show why hesitation can be fatal. Doves invariably pull the Vietnam War off the shelf to argue that plunging ahead can be foolhardy.

Two wars that the United States has launched against Iraq perfectly illustrate the problem with cherry-picking your history. Hawks and doves made their usual arguments before the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Antiwar advocates who predicted that forcing Saddam Hussein to retreat from Kuwait would result in thousands of U.S. casualties were proved wrong by Operation Desert Storm. And the neoconservatives who warned that ignoring Hussein's weapons of mass destruction was like appeasing Hitler now have egg yolk dribbling down their faces.

The history book getting the most attention right now is about the 1954-1962 French colonial war in Algeria. Hundreds of thousands of people died in that conflict before Algerian guerrillas handed the French army a humiliating defeat. President Bush said he is reading Alistair Horne's account of the conflict, "A Savage War for Peace," to glean insights about the U.S. predicament in Iraq. Horne, a British historian, recently told PBS's Charlie Rose that he sees similarities and differences between the U.S. war in Iraq and the French war in Algeria -- and hopes his book will help Bush find a way to succeed in Iraq.

Political scientist Patricia Sullivan recently decided to take a different tack than the political pundits. Rather than look for a single war to provide insight, Sullivan decided to look at all post-World War II conflicts between the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and weaker nations.

The message from Ms. Sullivan's work that Mr. Vedantum seems unable or unwilling to discern is that failure to win in post WWII conflicts comes not from a lack of military might, but from the lack of American political will.

Many Conservative voices have been saying the exact same thing since this war began, our enemies cannot defeat us, only we can defeat ourselves, and that is precisely what is happening in Iraq today. Our society's pathologically short attention span is causing the American voter to become restive over the length and expense of this war in Iraq. This natural reaction is being egged on in every way possible by a Democrat Party bent on achieving power no matter what the cost to America's prestige and security.

The Democrat Party's avarice for power is the most dangerous domestic force in America. It is far more dangerous that any threat posed by hidden terrorist groups here in the States because the Democrats have demonstrated that they will stick at nothing to achieve power, including lying about our mission in Iraq, and betraying top secret information designed solely to embarass the current administration and aid our enemies.

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